How to Include Your Child's Preferences in ABA Planning

Ask directly and accessibly

Offer meaningful choices in the person's usual communication form and allow time. ASHA says AAC users should always have their communication tools or devices. A caregiver can add history without replacing the person's direct input.

Distinguish preference from function

Choosing an activity identifies current preference in that context. Evidence that a consequence strengthens a response answers another question. Avoid restricting favorite people, communication, food, rest, movement, or ordinary enjoyment merely to make them more valuable.

Connect preferences to planning

The BACB Ethics Code addresses client preferences, involvement, consent, assent when applicable, assessment, intervention, and evaluation for covered professionals. Ask how the plan records dissent and changing choices.

Review change over time

Omar chooses among six available activities across three check-ins. Four remain selected, one drops out, and one new option appears. The team records the pattern without declaring a permanent ranking and asks Omar which activities belong in goals, breaks, or free time.

Build the client-preference review

Use the client-preference review to bring the person's current choices, priorities, dissent, and everyday experience into ABA goals, settings, schedules, supports, and outcomes. Lock the person, review period, and eligible events before calculating any rate. Give each row a source, observed state, owner, next action, due date, and closure artifact. Keep the family's accessible summary linked to the detailed operational record so a new staff member can understand the current situation without relying on memory.

Collect only records that serve the named decision: person and communication forms; meaningful options; direct statements or selections; approach, avoidance, assent, and dissent; context and date; access supports; caregiver history; goal and setting implications; ordinary free access; possible reinforcer assessment; reviewer; and next check. Label the author or issuing party, effective date, scope, and version of each item. A schedule screen, portal message, call note, clinical record, authorization, and billing artifact answer different questions. Preserve conflicting items together until the responsible role resolves the difference.

Work in an order that can be audited. Ask directly through the person's reliable communication, offer meaningful options including declining all, and record context. Separate direct report from caregiver or staff interpretation. Use preferences to inform planning, preserve ordinary access, and review whether choices remain current after the setting or routine changes. Preserve the original event when a correction occurs, then add a dated correction with its author and reason. Store health, education, and financial details in approved systems, limit access by role and purpose, and avoid copying sensitive narrative into a broadly visible scheduling queue.

Keep each decision with the right person

Write the decision owner beside every open field in the client-preference review. The person's communication is primary evidence of preference. Caregivers add history and context. A qualified clinician interprets assessment evidence and makes clinical recommendations within scope. Staff can offer choices and record responses without declaring a permanent preference hierarchy or behavioral function. Administrative staff can collect evidence, calculate from verified inputs, and route questions. Software can flag omissions or conflicts. Neither should invent a clinical conclusion, disclosure authority, payer decision, family preference, or emergency instruction.

Turn the record into an understandable choice. Ask how preferences affect goals, schedule, setting, activities, communication, people, and measures of success. The family can challenge a goal that conflicts with a stable priority or carries disproportionate burden. Preferred food, relationships, rest, movement, communication, and ordinary enjoyment should not be broadly restricted to create leverage. Explain which facts are confirmed, which are provisional, what could change, and what the person and family can do next. Use the person's usual communication. Provide language, disability, sensory, mobility, and AAC access throughout calls, meetings, visits, and written follow-up.

Prepare for the next conversation with specific questions: What does the person want more or less of? Which communication form works? Are the options meaningful and available? Can the person decline all? What remains freely accessible? How does the preference affect planning, and when will it be asked again? Read the answers back, name the owner and date, and send a written summary through an approved channel. When the contact cannot answer, ask for the role or formal process that controls the question instead of treating a convenient response as final.

Use a release gate and failure plan

The client-preference review should define a release gate for the action at issue. A preference-based decision needs accessible communication, meaningful options, context, direct input, applicable consent and assent, ordinary access safeguards, source labeling, qualified interpretation when clinical, and a review trigger. Hold a decision when the person cannot access the offered response method. A cleared gate applies only to the named person, staff, provider, site, service, communication supports, and time period. Recheck any field that can change before the visit, information transfer, service record, claim, fee, or return occurs.

Plan for realistic failures before the family is under pressure. Preference data can fail when options are inaccessible, AAC vocabulary is missing, adults offer false choices, refusal is ignored, one selection is treated as permanent, caregiver prediction replaces direct input, preferred activities become contingent throughout the day, or a preference assessment is mistaken for proof of reinforcement. Record the observed problem rather than an assumed motive. Preserve the evidence, protect live safety and administrative deadlines, stop the affected action when appropriate, and tell the family what remains available while review continues.

Give the client-preference review a written fallback for each high-impact failure. Name the trigger, person authorized to decide, immediate safe action, information needed, family contact, clinical or financial effect, alternate route, and review time. Immediate health, safety, emergency, or reporting duties use their applicable route while routine administrative correction continues.

Work through a realistic complication

Omar reviews eight activity options in three contexts. Five are selected at least once, two are consistently declined, and one is unavailable because the communication page lacks its symbol. Report the available choices and access failure separately rather than ranking all eight. State the numerator, denominator, unit, time window, and status of every excluded or open item before interpreting the result. A percentage cannot show which event was unsafe, burdensome, clinically significant, expensive, or still waiting on another party.

Add one later complication to the client-preference review. A staff change, new health fact, school update, access failure, corrected service record, payer response, or family preference may invalidate an earlier decision. Link the new artifact to every downstream event that relied on the old state. Keep the history visible so the family and provider can see what was known at each point.

Verify the full cycle and improve the process

Revisit preference after staff, health, schedule, setting, communication, or option changes. Ask whether the chosen activity remains enjoyable in practice. Link updates to the affected goal or routine, and retire outdated summaries so they do not follow the person indefinitely. A calendar entry, sent message, portal status, staff promise, or completed form is an intermediate artifact. Close the client-preference review only when the expected real-world outcome and family-facing record agree. Name who performs that reconciliation and how an unresolved mismatch returns to the active queue.

Measure the client-preference review with explicit units. Name the start and end event for every duration and every eligible event in a denominator. Report pending items by count and oldest age. Keep sessions, minutes, staff assignments, communications, forms, service records, claims, and households separate. Pair every rate with raw counts and relevant exceptions.

Finish with a short retrospective specific to the client-preference review. Ask which fact was hardest to verify, which handoff or support failed, whether the person and family could communicate and participate, and which narrow control should change. Test the correction in the setting where the failure occurred. The examples on this page support planning; they do not establish another person's clinical need, legal right, coverage, or likely outcome.

Ask preferences through accessible communication

ASHA's AAC guidance says users should always have their communication tools or devices. A preference check needs vocabulary, access, time, meaningful options, and a way to decline or correct. Record what the person communicated, how options were presented, and which supports were available. Do not convert a missing symbol or inaccessible choice layout into a negative preference. Carry the result into a visible decision: which goal, setting, activity, partner, schedule, or outcome changed because of the person's input. If nothing changes, explain why and preserve the person's disagreement. Revisit priorities privately when group dynamics or adult expectations may shape the response, and make room for preferences that fall outside the existing treatment menu. Ask about dislikes and tolerated limits as carefully as favorite options. Record whether a preferred activity belongs in free time, a shared relationship, a goal, or a narrow contingency. Review side effects such as reduced spontaneity, pressure, satiation, conflict, or loss of ordinary access before expanding its use. A changing choice is updated information rather than a failed assessment.