You did the hard part.
You spent weeks — maybe months — researching programs, asking questions at IEP meetings, calling numbers that went to voicemail, and finally landing on a program that felt right. You made the call. You filled out the intake form. You said yes.
And then someone told you there’s a waitlist.
If you’ve been here, you know what that moment feels like. It’s not just frustration. It’s that specific exhaustion of a parent who has been fighting to get their child the right support, finally finding it, and then being told to wait. Again.
We built ABA Jumpstart because of that moment.
What Is ABA Jumpstart?
ABA Jumpstart is a two-week intensive program designed specifically for families who are waiting for full ABA enrollment to begin.
It is not a watered-down version of ABA. It is not a placeholder. It is not a way for us to keep you busy while the calendar catches up.
It is two weeks of real work — a comprehensive assessment, direct therapy sessions, and parent collaboration that gives you tools you can use tonight, before the full program ever starts.
By the time you finish Jumpstart, three things will have happened:
- Your child will have a completed ABA assessment. We’ll know their current skill profile, their priorities, and what a full program should target. When the full program starts, your BCBA isn’t beginning from scratch — they’re building on real data.
- You will have started parent collaboration. Not a one-hour orientation. Actual working sessions where you learn the specific strategies your child’s program will use — how to prompt, how to respond to behavior, how to build skills into routines that already exist in your day.
- Your child will have received direct therapy. Two weeks of sessions with a trained behavior technician under BCBA supervision. That’s not nothing. For a child who has been waiting, that’s a head start.
Why Waiting Is Actually Costing Something
Here’s the part nobody says out loud: the waitlist period isn’t neutral.
Every week a child spends without structured support is a week where skills that could be building aren’t. Behaviors that could be addressed aren’t. Strategies that could be helping the whole family aren’t being used.
We’re not saying this to scare anyone. We’re saying it because families deserve to know that the waitlist isn’t just an inconvenience — it has a cost. And Jumpstart is a way to reduce that cost without waiting for the paperwork to clear.
The research on ABA dosage is clear: intensity matters. Earlier is better. The window of early intervention is real. None of that stops being true because there’s a scheduling gap.
What Parent Collaboration Actually Looks Like
Parents are the most important people in any ABA program. Not because that’s a nice thing to say. Because the data says so.
Children who have caregivers implementing ABA strategies consistently at home — not perfectly, just consistently — make faster progress and maintain skills better than children who receive clinic-only services. The research on this is not subtle.
In ABA Jumpstart, parent collaboration meetings happen twice. They are working sessions, not updates. You will leave knowing:
- The specific prompting strategy your child’s BCBA is using and why
- How to respond when your child does the behavior you’re trying to reduce — because how you respond in the moment matters more than almost anything else
- Where in your existing daily routines to practice the skills your child is working on
- What to track, and how to tell us what you’re seeing at home
You don’t need a clinical background. You need to show up, ask questions, and be willing to try things that might feel different from what you’ve done before.
That’s it.
“But My Child Has Never Done ABA Before”
That’s fine. Jumpstart is built for that.
The assessment phase at the beginning of Jumpstart isn’t just paperwork. It’s how we actually learn how your child communicates, what motivates them, how they respond to instruction, and where the most important skill gaps are right now. That information is valuable regardless of whether your child has had ABA before.
If anything, families who are new to ABA often get more out of Jumpstart than anyone — because the parent collaboration sessions establish the foundation that makes everything that comes after easier.
“We’ve Done ABA Before and Stopped — Do We Need Jumpstart?”
If your child is returning to ABA after a gap, Jumpstart is a re-calibration.
Kids change. Skills generalize or they don’t. New behaviors emerge. A program that was right eighteen months ago may need significant updating before it makes sense to resume. Jumpstart lets us do that re-assessment efficiently so your child isn’t spending the first weeks of a new program in programming that no longer fits.
How to Get Started
ABA Jumpstart is available now at ExcelLearning’s Champaign and Bloomington locations — and doesn’t require full program enrollment to access. It’s available to families who are on our waitlist and to families who simply want to start the assessment process before committing to a full program.
It runs as a flat-rate two-week package. Contact us to ask about current availability and pricing.
And if you’re reading this because someone put you on a waitlist and you’re trying to figure out what to do next — that’s exactly why we wrote it.
The Short Version
You don’t have to wait passively. Two weeks of focused, well-supervised work can give your child real data, real skills, and a real head start. It can give you the tools to make a difference before the official start date arrives.
The waitlist is real. The gap is real. What you do with it is up to you.
ExcelLearning offers ABA therapy, speech-language therapy, and occupational therapy for children ages 0–15 in Champaign and Bloomington, Illinois, and across our national network. ABA Jumpstart is available for families currently awaiting full ABA enrollment.
Questions? Email us at admissions@excelprepschools.org