Prompting is another extremely effective strategy for shaping behavior. Prompts are various cues, reminders, and/or help to guide your child to the correct response. As mentioned earlier, helping your child be successful and rewarding their efforts helps them learn and feel proud of their accomplishments, helping them become more independent. 

In ABA there is something called ERRORLESS LEARNING, and it goes hand and hand with prompting. Just like it sounds, you’ll help your child perform a task without allowing them to make errors. Why? Don’t we learn from our mistakes? Sometimes. But kids with autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders learn differently, and one of the primary symptoms of autism is restrictive and/or repetitive behaviors. So, your child may accidentally learn that these errors are part of the process to complete the task. And, because they may respond negatively to change, it makes it much harder to break the “mistake” pattern and re-teach the correct one.