Written By:
MS, BCBA
Introduction
When a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) walks through the door for an in-home ABA session, many Maryland parents find themselves asking the same question: “Okay… what do I actually do now?” Some feel pressure to be hands-on every minute. Others wonder if they should disappear into another room and let the therapist work. Both instincts are understandable, and the honest answer sits somewhere in between.
In-home ABA therapy works best when parents are partners, not passive observers, and not constant interrupters. This post walks through what that partnership actually looks like (what parents do before, during, and after sessions) so you can settle into a rhythm that supports your child without burning yourself out.
Why Parental Involvement Shapes ABA Outcomes
Research consistently shows that children make faster, more durable progress when caregivers reinforce skills outside of therapy hours. A child might learn to request a snack with words during a Tuesday session, but if no one prompts that same skill at breakfast on Wednesday morning, the behavior often fades.
This is why Maryland’s ABA providers, including ours, build parent involvement into the treatment plan from day one. The therapist runs structured sessions, but you live with your child the other 150 hours of the week. The skills your child learns need a household that recognizes, prompts, and rewards them.
What Parents Typically Do Before a Session
Most families develop a short pre-session routine within a few weeks of starting ABA therapy. This usually includes:
A brief check-in with the therapist about how the past few days went. Did your child have a rough morning at school? Did they sleep poorly? Are there any new behaviors, good or concerning, that the BCBA should know about? Two or three minutes of context helps the therapist calibrate the session.
Preparing the physical space. Some families clear a corner of the living room or set up a small table in the child’s bedroom. Reducing distractions like loud TV, busy siblings, or competing toys makes it easier for your child to focus.
Setting out preferred items the therapist plans to use as reinforcers, if your BCBA has asked you to. These might be specific toys, snacks, or activities your child loves and which the therapist can use to motivate learning.
What Parents Do During the Session
This is where most parents feel uncertain, and the answer genuinely depends on the goals being worked on that day. There are roughly four modes of parent involvement during a session:
Active observation
Especially in the first few weeks, watching from a comfortable distance teaches you how the therapist prompts, waits, reinforces, and redirects. You start to recognize techniques you can use later. We’ve worked with parents who told us that simply watching how an RBT handled a tantrum changed how they approached the same situation that evening.
Direct participation in specific drills
Some programs explicitly include the parent, for instance, practicing greetings, turn-taking games, or mealtime routines where the natural setup requires a family member. Your BCBA will tell you when this is part of the day’s plan.
Stepping out to let your child focus
Many children, especially younger ones, will keep checking on a parent in the room, asking for snuggles, or refusing to engage with the therapist if mom or dad is visible. In those cases, the most helpful thing you can do is be nearby but out of sight. This is not “leaving the therapist to do their job alone.” It’s giving your child space to build a working relationship with someone new.
Managing the household so the session can run
This is the unglamorous but very real work of distracting younger siblings, taking phone calls in another room, holding the dog, or keeping a delivery driver from ringing the bell mid-drill. Protecting the session’s structure is itself a meaningful contribution.
Parent Training Sessions: A Different Kind of Involvement
Separate from your child’s direct therapy hours, most ABA providers in Maryland (ours included) schedule dedicated parent training sessions. These are usually led by the BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst), and they look very different from a child-focused session.
During parent training, you’re the learner. The BCBA walks you through specific strategies: how to give effective instructions, how to handle a meltdown without accidentally reinforcing it, and how to break a complex task like getting dressed into teachable steps. You might role-play scenarios, watch the BCBA model a technique with your child, and then try it yourself with coaching.
In our experience, parents often dread these sessions before their first one and then come to value them deeply. There’s a particular kind of relief that comes from having someone explain why your child does what they do, and what specifically to try instead of guessing.
What Parents Do Between Sessions
The hours between formal therapy are where progress either consolidates or quietly slips away. The good news is that “doing ABA at home” doesn’t mean turning your house into a clinic. It means weaving small, intentional moments into ordinary routines.
A few examples of what this looks like in practice:
- Prompting your child to request items using the communication method they’re working on, instead of handing things over automatically.
- Reinforcing target behaviors when you see them, a quick high-five, a “thank you for asking so nicely,” a few minutes of preferred activity.
- Keeping a short log of behaviors the BCBA has asked you to track, even just notes on a phone.
- Practicing routines like handwashing, putting on shoes, or sitting at the table using the same prompts and steps the therapist uses.
Consistency matters more than intensity here. Five small moments scattered through a day generally do more than one long, formal “practice session” that everyone dreads.
A Common Worry: “Am I Doing Enough?”
Many of the families we work with across Maryland, from busy Baltimore households to families in quieter suburban neighborhoods, share a version of the same anxiety. They wonder if they should be doing more, sitting in on every session, asking more questions, and reading more books.
Here’s what we tell them: your job isn’t to become a second therapist. Your job is to remain the parent, the safe, predictable, loving adult your child needs, while learning enough about ABA to support what’s happening in sessions. If you’re attending parent training, following through on what the BCBA recommends, and giving honest updates about what’s working and what isn’t, you’re doing the work.
Burnout is real, especially for parents juggling therapy hours with siblings, jobs, and everything else. A parent who is rested and emotionally available contributes more than one who has read every ABA textbook but has nothing left to give by 6 p.m.
How Sibling and Family Dynamics Fit In
In-home ABA happens in the middle of family life, which means siblings, grandparents, and even pets are part of the picture. Some practical patterns we’ve seen work well:
Older siblings can sometimes be included in social-skills work, turn-taking games, simple conversations, when both children are willing. Younger siblings may need a separate activity in another room during sessions. Grandparents and other regular caregivers benefit from a short briefing on a few key strategies so they don’t accidentally undo progress when they babysit.
The household doesn’t need to revolve around therapy, but a little coordination prevents the rest of the family from feeling sidelined.
Tracking Progress Together
One of the most underrated things parents do during in-home ABA is provide longitudinal context. The BCBA sees your child for limited hours each week; you see how those skills hold up at the grocery store, at grandma’s house, on a rainy Saturday when nothing is going right. That information shapes the program.
Most families share updates informally at the start of sessions, but some keep a short shared note or a simple log. Even a sentence or two, “He used his words for water twice yesterday without prompting” or “Bedtime fell apart Tuesday, lots of screaming”, gives the clinical team something concrete to work with at the next program review.
Conclusion
In-home ABA therapy is not something done to your child while you watch from the sidelines, and it’s not something you’re expected to run on your own. It’s a structured partnership where the therapist brings clinical expertise into your home, and you bring the daily context, the relationships, and the follow-through that turn isolated skills into real change. Before sessions, you set the stage. During sessions, you observe, participate, or step back as the plan calls for. Between sessions, you reinforce in small, ordinary moments. And in parent training, you build the toolkit that makes all of it sustainable.
If you’re new to in-home ABA in Maryland, give yourself a few weeks to find your rhythm. Ask your BCBA questions. Be honest when something isn’t working. Children make their best progress when therapists and parents are pulling in the same direction, and finding that direction together is the whole point.
Ready to Start In-Home ABA Therapy for Your Child?
Admire ABA provides in-home ABA therapy, parent training, and early intervention services for families across Maryland, including Baltimore, Rockville, and Frederick. If you’d like to talk through what therapy could look like for your child, our team is happy to answer questions, walk you through the intake process, and help you understand your insurance and Medicaid options.
Take the next step toward a plan that works for your family. Contact us today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Should parents stay in the room during in-home ABA therapy?
It depends on the child and the goal being worked on. Some children focus better when a parent is nearby, while others get distracted, seek constant comfort, or refuse to engage with the therapist when mom or dad is visible, and those children benefit when a parent steps out of sight. Your BCBA will guide you on what’s most helpful at each stage, and the answer often changes as your child grows more comfortable with the therapist.
How many hours a week should parents spend on ABA at home outside of sessions?
There’s no fixed number, and the goal isn’t long, formal practice sessions. Most BCBAs encourage parents to embed short, consistent moments, prompts, reinforcement, and practiced routines, throughout the day. Five to ten brief moments daily, plus follow-through on whatever your BCBA assigns, is generally more effective than scheduled hour-long drills that exhaust both parent and child.
Can parents do ABA therapy themselves without a therapist?
Parents cannot replace a trained therapist, but they can absolutely use ABA-informed strategies at home, that’s the entire point of parent training. Effective ABA requires assessment, individualized programming, and ongoing data review from a BCBA. Once parents are trained on the specific techniques their child needs, however, they become powerful co-implementers who extend therapy gains far beyond formal session hours.
SOURCES:
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/25197-applied-behavior-analysis
- https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-applied-behavior-analysis
- https://online.regiscollege.edu/blog/aba-therapy-examples
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9458805/
- https://www.healthline.com/health/aba-therapy
