Journal Review and Clinical Q&A: Life Skills, Elopement, and Automatically Maintained Behavior - I reviewed a new study on a life skills program used in a self-contained kindergarten special education classroom at the University of Georgia. - The study found a functional relationship between the program and increased life skills, plus early evidence the skills generalized to other settings. - I questioned whether this "life skills program" is really new or just tier two of the original preschool life skills model that clinicians have used for years already. - Most skills got mastered through whole group instruction, not one-on-one, and that matters because a proactive intervention has to work at scale to be worth it. - Friendship skills were the hardest for the kids to master. Maintenance held up pretty well but wasn't perfect. - On elopement, I said clinics should not use one identical definition for every client. I define it by location and eyesight, not a flat five feet rule for everybody. - On a head banging case, I walked through why the soft version and the escalated version of the behavior might not share the same function, and why intensity matters more than raw frequency. - On nail biting, I explained the difference between a replacement behavior, which needs a known function, and a competing behavior, which is what you use for automatically maintained behavior where the function is unknown. Watch today's full video: https://www.skool.com/free-aba-ceus/classroom/bb197702?md=b2a576640f2b48c79cb91a9ed6b70865

Journal review: the augmented competing stimulus assessment for self-restraint - I broke down a new article on the Augmented Competing Stimulus Assessment (ACSA) for self-restraint and SIB. One of the researchers on it was actually my thesis advisor for my master's degree. - I pointed out the article took almost four years between submission and final acceptance, and talked through why that happens: slow review, a hard-to-find niche reviewer, or a paper that sits while the team decides whether to keep pushing it. - I explained how ACSA differs from a standard competing stimulus assessment. A regular assessment just swaps items in and out to see what competes with the behavior. ACSA adds repeated prompting and blocking during that process, which teaches engagement along the way. - The study found at least one high-competing item that cut self-restraint and SIB by 80% or more without hurting toy engagement, in four of the five participants who finished the assessment. - My take: ACSA is a strong tool for very niche, treatment-resistant self-restraint cases, but it's heavy to run day to day. For most kids, standard modeling and prompting gets you the same learning without the extra steps. - In Q&A, I walked through why you can't call the function of a punch just from knowing a classmate threw someone's backpack in the trash. You need the consequence that followed to know if it's attention, tangible access, or something else. - On the circle-time question, I said don't build a goal around a classroom expectation your client might face someday. Base goals on current quality-of-life gaps, assessment data, and what the caregiver actually needs right now. - On the telehealth-BCBA-fraud post, I said you need to know how many BCBAs were hired before six departures means anything, and that both telehealth as a modality and the company's own incentives can be driving fraud. Watch today's full video: https://www.skool.com/free-aba-ceus/classroom/bb197702?md=01f175bab0f640bb82d260a43c2e78aa

Hello, and welcome to the Open CEU Community! My name is Matt Harrington. I have been a BCBA for 6 years, and have given out over 10k CEU certificates through the Behaviorist Bookclub. This community originally started as the ABA Clubhouse, and we have been doing weekly free CEU events since the beginning of the year. In July 2026, our new software, openceu.com launched! OpenCEU is a CEU hosting platform that aims to reduce the response effort (and cost) of publishing CEUs. More on that in one of the pinned posts! A little about me! ✅ RBT -> BCaBA -> BCBA -> Clinic Director -> ABA Marketing ✅ 3 kids (2, 4, and 6) + Married 7 years ✅ Values are family protection and creation/production A little about the community 🦄 Free weekly CEUs 🦄 Community chat regarding things BCBAs ACTUALLY care about 🦄 Sharing CEU events encouraged! What to do next 🧚‍♀️ Browse the classroom (or go straight to openceu.com) and watch some CEUs 🧚‍♀️ If you are an ABA Complany director/owner, check out the pinned post to learn about the ABA Back Office or go to https://www.skool.com/the-aba-back-office 🧚‍♀️ If you are an ACE Provider, check out the pinned post to learn about how you can host CEUs at no cost at OpenCEU.com BTW, you may notice that this community is free, but you can also subscribe for $5 or $25. Let me explain. OpenCEU was built on open access, meaning I charge nothing for ACE providers to host on the platform and take 0% platform fees. BUT… As OpenCEU gets more popular, the cost to maintain the software has increased as well. So the $5-$25/month is a small donation to help me keep the platform open access and encourage the dissemination of future research. So, if you would like, every subscription goes directly into keeping this mission alive!

Getting the Right Answer Isn't Enough- By Dana Pettus, BCBA 12 PM EST- Starting now! Link-> https://openceu.com/live/24482ba1-eeb0-424e-8567-b8049ecc8d7e

BCBA Q&A recap for August 11 - Today covered three reader questions from the BCBA resources group. - On escape: when a client learns that dropping assent means they escape, that's not a moral failing. It just means they left the task. - Escaping a task beats escalating to self-injury or severe behavior. In the response hierarchy, reinforcing escape at the bottom can stop things from climbing to the top. - Once escape is reinforced and severe behavior settles, you can shape tolerance. Ask for one more response before escape, then two more, building up from there. - You can also shape escape into a functional communication response, like teaching the client to say "leave" instead of escalating. - On staff saying "no, we don't hit": it depends on what's reinforcing the aggression. If it's attention, flood the child with positive attention for other behaviors instead. If it's escape, the staff's words don't matter much. - Dual controlled behavior sounds real but research shows it's hard to actually build. Staff responses to aggression usually come from their own upbringing or fear, not training. - On treatment hours: low hours can work, even one to three hours a week through parent training over video calls. Lower hours often mean more direct time with the BCBA, since there are fewer RBTs in between. Watch today's full video: https://www.skool.com/free-aba-ceus/classroom/bb197702?md=fd0d0022c76941eda8381930330f60d5