Incidental Teaching, also known as Natural Environment Teaching is an evidence-based practice of teaching we often use in ABA Therapy. This type of teaching is naturalistic in the fact that we use the natural environment and base the learning opportunities off of what is initiated by the child’s interests at a given point. Incidental teaching is called so because it takes advantage of what we call naturally occurring “incidents” to teach those important skills your child might be working on.

For example, if your child and therapist are playing in your child's' playroom and your child is very interested in playing with colored blocks, the therapist could take this advantage to work on anything from color recognition, to math skills and much more.

By taking advantage of what your child is currently interested in helps make Incidental Teaching more effective.

Another advantage of Incidental Teaching is because it typically happens in a natural environment, it helps the child to generalize skills beyond the ABA therapy work environment.