Anca Dumitrescu

Anca has had her specialization in Applied Behavior Analysis since 2010, and has been certified as the first BCBA behavior analyst in Romania. She is one of the most important national trainers, being involved both in the development of short-term training courses for psychologists and ABA therapists, and within Clemson-Romania – Verified Course Sequence program in applied behavior analysis, initiated in 2016.

Anca founded Autism VOICE with Claudia Matei and Oliviana Giura, the organization through which she managed to develop the first quality standards in Romania in the therapy of children with ASD and the first specialist training projects at the national level. She is involved in coordinating programs within the two Autism Voice centers, in actions to regulate the status of behavior analysis in Romania, in awareness campaigns, lobby & advocacy and especially in projects that support families of children with ASD, development disorders and their therapy. Anca is also the Scientific Coordinator of Bucharest ABA International Conference and President of ABA Romania Institute.

In 16 years of experience and active involvement in the field, she made possible not only the development of behavior analysis in our country and services for children, but also the consolidation of the status of specialists, offering them an ethical guide for practice and all the academic information necessary for practice.

Presentation: Development of personal management skills in children

Abstract:

Personal management is, or should be, the ultimate goal of education.

A person without self-control falls prey to all stimuli with an immediate character, even those stimuli which bring with them a delayed punishment:

• If he sees a cake, he eats it;
• If he is given a cigarette, he smokes it;
• Even if she makes plans, she does not have the ability to carry them out, because she is totally dependent on immediate events;
• It's like a boat on the water - floating uncontrollably off shore.

At the other extreme is a highly skilled self-manager.

• He sets his goals, and he achieves them;
• He has the necessary skills to bypass dangerous stimuli;
• He identifies the conditions that affect behavior and modifies them to suit him;
• He temporarily considers certain distant possibilities when setting his priorities;
• The wind blows, but it is he who sets the direction of the boat and steers towards that direction.

These two people are profoundly different. The first one is controlled by the immediate events from the environment. The second leads its own life.

The one who lacks self-control feels pressure from the environment and believes that the rules are made to confine him. He may believe in free will, and that he chooses to do what he wants, but his whole life is out of control.

On the other hand, the person with self-control feels in control of his own life, and he actually has more control over his own life than the one who is characterized by impulsivity.

The personal management is, or should be, the ultimate goal of education, and to get there it is necessary to work with our children on developing this skill from the earliest possible age, because over time it will be more and more difficult for them to accept the behavioral and emotional remodeling.

The development of personal management skills is a topic that concerns me, both professionally, in the activity of almost 20 years working with children with developmental disorders, as well as in my personal life - both personally and in raising my children who they are currently ages 7 and 11.