The break card worked. A four year old in Santa Fe who used to throw materials off the table learned to hand over a small laminated card, and within a few months he was handing it over reliably. His mother was pleased for about six weeks. Then she noticed he was asking for a break roughly every four minutes, including during the parts of the afternoon he had always enjoyed.
Nothing had gone wrong. A skill had been taught well, the child had understood exactly what it was for, and the goal as written had been met. What the goal no longer matched was the situation it had created, and that is one of the more common reasons to reopen a plan that appears, on paper, to be succeeding.
Success is a reason to look again
Parents assume reassessment is for programs that are stuck. Plenty of it happens for the opposite reason. A mastered skill changes the environment, and the environment is what the next set of goals has to fit.
In the break card example the honest next step is not to withdraw the card, which would teach the child that a request only counts sometimes. It is to build tolerance for a short delay, teach a second option alongside the break, and look hard at what is being asked during those four minute stretches. A request appearing that often is information about the demand, not the child.
The same applies to a child who learns to ask for help then asks before attempting anything. The skill is real, and the context around it needs adjusting.
The quieter reasons a goal stops earning its place
Some goals stop being relevant because the family's life moved. A sibling arrives, a parent changes shift, a household moves across town, a child starts a new school. A goal written for a household that no longer exists in that form is not wrong so much as beside the point.
Others were never the family's priority in the first place. It is easy, in a long intake, for a parent to mention something once and find it near the top of the plan while the thing that actually shapes their week sits lower. Saying so is not a complaint. Families working with Elite Steps ABA, New Mexico can ask for the goal order to be revisited at any point rather than waiting for the scheduled review. The position that a parent is the expert on their own child only means something if it gets used.
Then there is flat data. A target that has not moved in several weeks is not usually a sign the child cannot do it. More often the step size is wrong, the prompting is fading too fast or too slowly, or the reinforcement has stopped being worth the effort.
What reassessment involves
It is rarely a full repeat of the intake. Usually it means fresh probes on the affected targets, a conversation with the caregivers, and an updated section of the plan rather than a new document. Where a child's profile has shifted a lot, a standardised measure may be rerun. Supervision and review requirements are set by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, worth knowing before asking why a plan has gone unreviewed.
Reassessment is also the moment to check that goals still reflect what the child wants any part of. Goals built around a child's own interests hold up under pressure; goals built around adult convenience need constant propping up.
One thing worth saying plainly: no analyst can tell a parent what a particular child will achieve, or when. What a good practice can be held to is how quickly it notices something has stopped working, and what it does in the fortnight after. That is visible, checkable, and a fairer test than any prediction.
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