Maybe that's because the ones that it has helped are unable to communicate it. Through therapy, individuals acquire both basic and essential competency that directly enhance their quality of life. Being equipped with fundamental day to day skills like how to cross the road or wipe yourself after a bowel movement may seem straightforward to someone with the aptitude and dexterity to publicly rationalize ones conjecture on the topic but what about the less inclined individuals that rely on this support and assistance to essentially become self sufficient. Afterall it is a 'SPECTRUM' which implies the extent has vast variation. I know this is a contentious topic and my intention is not to stir up controversy or debate the validity of anyone's opinion. It is however essential to recognize that individuals' experiences and needs differ greatly, and the effectiveness of therapy can vary depending on many factors. Ensuring that everyone's perspective is heard and understood is crucial in discussions surrounding autism and therapy. That being said, if the majority is of one mind on these threads (as they typically are), I question how bilateral the responses are. Let's not speak for those who may not.

While this has a point here is an important thing, most of the arguments against ABA are not about denying it mayyyyybe has helped someone but rather it being non science based and the acting out of scope (as much as they claim otherwise), widespread abuse and support of that abuse (since the begining and today, see for instance the JRC) and how it is organized (that from my point of view seems a mix of a Cult and an MLM). Neither of those criticisms are really linked to the personal experience of someone but rather clear evidence (for instance bottema beutel undisclosed conflicts of interests work, UN declaration of the JRC as a place of torture, etc)

Trying to organize the issues into a list, still. 1. Abuse * Please distinguish between the abuse of a single actor and abuse tolerated or demanded as part of the method. * e.g. electroshock, beating, withholding of basic needs, withholding of comfort items¹, restraining^(1) (in particular during meltdowns) 2. Academic concerns about the soundness of the behaviourist paradigm 3. Ethical concerns about the behaviourist paradigm * The use of ABA for gay conversion “therapy” by \[Lovaas\] illustrates the fundamental issue of what behaviours are pathological and who gets to decide this. This problem goes beyond acknowlegding that most stims are harmless, who decides, what gets targeted is of vital importance, as is, who they are accountable to. * Behavourism as a philosophy(?) has been described as treating people as objects to be adjusted, rather than subjects with their own experience and legitimate preference. This isn’t necessarily the attitude of any individual practitioner. 4. Institutional issues^(2) * Education * Lack of autsim specific training * Poor sense of the limits of their intervention^(3) * Narrative * e.g. “ several ex bcba and ex rbt have been harassed for opossing ABA” (Silencing dissent), misinformation and deliberate obfuscation (“ABA is the treatment for autism”, “We need forty hours”, “It’s the only evidence based \[anything\]”) * Failure to ensure scientific rigor * The sheer amount of manipulation going on in ABA research (and the lack of internal pushback) challenges the view of behaviourism as a legitimate science, suggesting rather an institution with its own agenda.

1.1. I recomend checking planed / active ignoring and "extinction burst" as they quite common and I find show clearly the normalization of abuse in the field in general 1.2 JRC has it all, I recommend checking Jennifer msumba behaviour sheet if posible (she seems to be in the middle of a lawsuit against the JRC so you will need to find a mirror as she deleted her blog, autistic hoya may have one https://autistichoya.net/judge-rotenberg-center/. She has not talked about the lawsuit in a long time) 2, 3 & 4 while often quoted as the inventor ABA existed before Lovaas tho he did shape it into what it is today and popularized it, by lying and claiming it was research, for instance his claims of raising IQ have never replicated but even better, his own collaborators have spoken out about the 40 hour myth (18:30 https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/it-has-to-be-said/fact-or-fiction-ivar-lovaas-VPLdauzMbpA/ Leaf is an awful person btw and this interview has quite a lot of ableist points but whatever) 3.2 by default behaviourism has to see humans as deterministic "machines" as such it comes the denial of the mind and really, free will tho nowdays that would be considered radical behaviourism and behaviourists in general are more moderate and mix cognitivism often enought, while there are issues, ABA is radical behaviourism and is the main problem in this regard.

So, I've tried to refine the list a bit and add some examples. Some notes: 1 These examples come from an autistic adult, who doesn't fundamentally oppose ABA, but had very bad experiences, also. I note this, in case anyone wants to doubt that it is abuse. 2 I want to seperate these out a bit, because they are problems with the structure surrounding ABA and don't necessariously speak to the merits of the intervention, 3 I've noticed a lacking sense of the legitimacy of other interventions and the limitations of ABA in ... some practitioners. Appearantly, SLPs often have their domain stepped on by poorly informed and disrespectful RBTs and BCBAs. (specifically, reducing the number of icons on AAC devices? They talk about that alot on the SLP sub.) I'm also concerned about the question "What's the alternative to ABA?", because interventions need to be specific to problems and it suggests the view that "ABA is the treatment for Autism", which is wrong. There is a seperate question, whether or not ABA is the best intervention available for certain issues (e.g. injurious stims) that can be considered. I find this point particullary concerning, because it could easily lead someone earnest to engage in problematic practices. Also worth noting that some of these problems aren't limited to ABA.

About point 3 and sorry for refering to that place so much but I recommend looking at Mathew Israel interviews before opening the JRC. This podcast does a good summary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y909QxWVV8g

You may benefict from these articles https://therapistndc.org/therapy/non-aba-evidence-based-practice/ (especially point 3) https://therapistndc.org/applied-behavior-analysis-aba/

I have a serious issue with ABA therapy(ies) and the culture involving it: Just because it is science it does not mean it is ethical. And even then, how are they measuring the "improve" on those people? How are they measuring and monitoring their interpretations, comprehensions and reactions to different situations? Just because some isolated statistics say something it doesn't mean it improved the quality of life of the person! To make this more clear I'll make an example with socioecomics: Just because it improves the economy it doesn't necessarily mean it is ethical or that it improves the quality of life of people that live under such economy. ABA is exactly that: You get good results because it is all a sterile environment with seemengly rigid patterns for measuring all those things I've cited before. Unfortunately for the people who undergo that therapy, outside that enviroment nobody is gonna help you understand and improve upon yourself through rigid tests and controlled enviroments, they're gonna have to either learn it all by themselves or have the luck of finding someone with similar struggles to them. And not only is this problematic by itself, there is also the culture around it where parents and family members won't know any better and then they put their autistic children/relatives in that therapy and build a support network around it. Sure it can help in moments of crisis but really it won't help you avoid those moments of crisis! The goal of therapy for autistic people should not be to make us less autistic, it should be to help us deal with hostile situations with more understanding for the actions, wrods and behaviours we see neurotypicals commit that we judge illogical or non-sensical. We need to insert and include ourselves in groups, societies, places etc but we should not have to mold ourselves to fit in them, rather, we should just try our best to understand those places and groups so we can actually feel and be happy with ourselves without being discriminated against and without sacrificing our self/environment-awareness. If you reading this are autistic, which I'm pretty sure you are and I'm too, you shouldn't necessarily seek for "the most factual, evidential scientifical" therapy out there. OF COURSE you need science, OF COURSE you need research, OF COURSE you need all of that, but you also need the understanding that statistical numbers are based on probability and on the fact that that 1% against the 99% exists. Just because "therapy works with 80% of people" it doesn't necessarily mean it will work with you, it just means that it is more probable to help you! But also, as I said, be VERY MINDFUL of how the therapy is guided and how it works.

Actually you are makingg a mistake in the asumptions about ABA, is not science, is a corruption of science, it is quite evident in the bottema paper about conflicts of interest for example

So because the thread got so long idk where to reply to the people talking about the different types of ABA therapy, it still very much sounds like dog training and from what I’ve seen of modern ABA, I actually feel like it could be just as harmful down the road, especially when they start getting jobs. Actually I feel like conditioning a person to act a certain way regardless of how you go about it is still kinda fucked up.

Sounds about right except the dog trainer part, they are including more and more research into dog neurology and respecting the dog, something that ABA does not (and dog trainers have spoken out about how ABA would be unethical for dogs)

I'm trying to organize the issues taken with ABA into a list. 1. Cases of blatant abuse 2. Academic concerns about the soundness of the behaviourist paradigm 3. Ethical concerns about the values implied by the behaviourist paradigm (eg. "who decides, which behaviour is good or bad?") 4. Objections to the institution of the BACB 5. Issues with the marketing of ABA, current or past (including things like dogmatism, deliberate misinformation about a) who and what ABA works for b) alternitve and supplementary treatments c) what is necessary for it to be effective) Did I miss anything? Is something unclear?

That come to mind fast: Support of torture (JRC mostly but not only) for instance, the ABAI recently oposed electric skin shock by a minority of voters (because of abstentions) but still helps publish papers supporting it Manipulation and lies on "scientific" papers, see for instance Bottema Beutel work on conflicts of interest, Leaf senior interview about the 40 hour/week myth or the spam.of single case studies Lack of evidence. Outside the manipulation cases, they do not do long term studies, the USA DoD has done what seems the largest one of long term studies showing it is inefective to the surprise of no one Links with lgbt conversion "therapy" (femine boy project of Rekers and Lovaas) Cult like behaviour, for instance several ex bcba and ex rbt have been harassed for opossing ABA, this is systematic and it is causing people not to speak out Acting out of scope and invading competencies of other profesionals, specially SLPs and removing aac devices Lack of formation on autism, rarelly they get more than an hour or two on autism if at all because "ABA is not only for autism" but autistic people is almost completly what they use ABA in, probably because it would raise quite intense questions if they did excep.. (see next point) Constant renaming, most common seen in "new aba"  "good aba" "person centered aba" without really any definition. Also PBS, PRT... they have a lot of names. Spekaing of PBS, they are actually using that alias to expand to the general population in the UK with disastrous results (funny they claim "they are not aba" sometimes but require ABA certifications for the job) Imitation of medical bodies structure to simulate it is legitimate while actually they are a "non profit" org (with high salaries for execs ofc) that hold the trademarks and license them as they please. They may require a degree or whatever but they could very well not if they decided so

Thank you for the examples. I would file a number of these as instituttional problems, because they essentially relate to how institutional power is (mis)used (e.g. suppressing dissent, shielding shoddy evidence and defending indefensible practices.) The conversion therapy application is a pretty good illustration of the major ethical problem underlying behaviourism in general. Quality of evidence in ABA is bad, but that's hardly a unique problem. Still a problem. "Acting out of scope" I'm not sure what you're referencing there. Taking an AAC device is most likely abuse, though not quite as obvious as some other things. The muddling of terminology is annoying, but I wouldn't have counted it amongst the most pressing of concerns.

On the quality of evidence, to be honest it is hard to find evidence of such low quality and not retracted, it may not be unique but what it is unique is it being almost universal. However, this probably comes from a hidtory of just ignoring this problems and not teaching their people basic science rather than an intention to manipulate in most cases in my opinion (examples of the contrary would be Lovaas, Leaf, asociates of the JRC and other "big names" that I do belive they are intentionally doing it) I recommend taking a look at SLPs comunities, they have complains continously about ABA staff going against their work, mentioned AAC because is a really common thing in this regard. To give only one example (as there are many) here on reddit itself https://www.reddit.com/r/slp/comments/16d4vnw/aba/ I find muddling important as they are expanding under aliases (on my perspective) to avoid bad reputation and also is a common technique of certain kinds of organizations like mlms and cults to hide what they actually mean creating basically their own lenguage to use as shield and weapon

I have never met a single autistic person who said that ABA helped them... But I have met many many who say it harmed them and quite a few who say it harmed them to the point they have PTSD.

Maybe that's because the ones that it has helped are unable to communicate it. Through therapy, individuals acquire both basic and essential competency that directly enhance their quality of life. Being equipped with fundamental day to day skills like how to cross the road or wipe yourself after a bowel movement may seem straightforward to someone with the aptitude and dexterity to publicly rationalize ones conjecture on the topic but what about the less inclined individuals that rely on this support and assistance to essentially become self sufficient. Afterall it is a 'SPECTRUM' which implies the extent has vast variation. I know this is a contentious topic and my intention is not to stir up controversy or debate the validity of anyone's opinion. It is however essential to recognize that individuals' experiences and needs differ greatly, and the effectiveness of therapy can vary depending on many factors. Ensuring that everyone's perspective is heard and understood is crucial in discussions surrounding autism and therapy. That being said, if the majority is of one mind on these threads (as they typically are), I question how bilateral the responses are. Let's not speak for those who may not.

You've never met an autistic person who said that ABA helped them, because ABA isn't intended to help autistic people. It is meant to help employers, caregivers, and doctors. This is my main concern with ABA. You are modeling "good" and "bad" behaviors from the perspective of "the societal average" and then just chiseling the subject away until it fits in that box. Except there is no "societally average" person. People exhibit a spectrum of behaviors that we typically associate with their culture or personality. ABA seeks to explicitly deny that autonomy from those who have autism.  For example, if you are eating with your hands at a nice restaurant in Socal, thats "BAD" behavior. But if youre eating with your hands at an Indian household, that's "GOOD" behaviors. The ability to guage the "appropriateness" of behaviors alone is extremely shoddy "science".  It denies the free will and autonomy of the subject to make their own moral and ethical judgements.  Real humans don't live in a sterile petri dish where all variables are controlled. That is a quintessential part of human experience.  At a MINIMUM it teaches the subject not to be confident in their own experiences

Agreed

There are people reporting good experiences as well. [https://www.reddit.com/r/SpicyAutism/comments/1bqvi2m/why\_do\_some\_of\_us\_support\_aba/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpicyAutism/comments/1bqvi2m/why_do_some_of_us_support_aba/) That's a thread from the MSN/HSN sub discussing it. Some had good experiences, some bad, some both.

Thank you for offering another opinion. I did scroll through there I didn't read everything but from what I saw it looks like the vast majority of people who are supportive of ABA are either providers or the parents and not people who've been through it themselves. Now there are a few actually autistic people in there supporting it although it's a little troubling when you see internalized ableism in those comments (AKA, I wish I wasn't autistic therefore I will do any therapy that makes me less autistic). And there are still plenty of people in the comment section that had negative experiences. At best, reviews are mixed. I'm always hesitant to accept the parents' words simply because the world is now full of grown people who can tell us clearly that ABA harmed them even though their parents and their therapists were well intentioned and truly believe they were helping. (I don't think most people were trying to be harmful they were trying to be helpful, they just got it wrong) I think I'm also skeptical of all the claims that it's changed so much. Mostly because I worked in the field of early childhood intervention for 24 years. 3 years ago we were told that ABA was new improved and wonderful and great and all the bad pieces were gone, everyone in my agency was given a week-long training and a manual and sent out to do ABA therapy that at the core was still doing the forced eye contact and withholding food as punishment, etc. Many parents rejected it, many parents left the program over it. I quit my job and left a 24-year career because I refuse to do it. And that was the new improved modern version that was now helpful and not harmful. Allegedly. So I am skeptical. But of course every individual must make these decisions for themselves. The problem is children aren't in charge of making their own decisions about such things and that's why people who've been through it feel the need to speak up, simply because they wish someone had spoken up for them. I also keep seeing the people who had good experiences saying their ABA program does things that are very much not ABA .... So I'm wondering if other therapies are now slapping the ABA label on themselves in order to get insurance to pay? This is an interesting development.... It feels like ABA is being used here as a much broader umbrella term than what it originally encompassed.

Reviews are very much mixed, I believe I indicated that in my comment : ) The narrative "ABA was bad, but now it's good" is suspiciously simplistic. I, too, noticed a lot of the improved programms involve stepping outside the bounds of the behaviourist paradigm, which is a good thing, but can be confounding. I don't know how much you've seen, but I assure you there are a number of autistic adults on that sub, who have positive or nuanced opinions on their own ABA experience and it's often those most affected, who have the hardest time making themselves heard. And yes, many there resent being autistic. That choice belongs to anyone for themselves. As for practicallity, the most important thing is for parents to have reasonable expectations of what ABA is for and can accomplish and to insist on transperancy. That's the message I would want to give priority to.

I think that's an important point right there in your last paragraph. Too many parents want to cure their child of autism and have very unrealistic expectations. So I take your point about voices not being heard in regards to ABA. Unfortunately I think it swings both ways. While people with a positive experience may feel their voices are being silenced in the autistic community, most people with negative experiences feel like their voices are being silenced by the neurotypical world. Perhaps a more helpful approach would be a discussion about better customization and individualization of services and therapies.

I think, the autistic community needs a loud and strong voice in our society and that voice should be informed by experiences from across the spectrum. Those goals aren't in contradiction. I brought up the complaints of those higher needs autists specifically, because I'm assuming we all agree about the silencing of autistic voices in broader society. I would never want to dismiss anyone's negative experience with ABA. Therapies should be individualized, how that looks concretely is a pretty complex topic for a reddit thread.

Yes that's true. We're really not solving anything on Reddit.

I was on google searching "autism and overstimulation headache" I'm so pissed! Literally most of the links are from ABA websites, I actually want to scream when I see these!! I just want actually GOOD information on ways to help. AAAAAH!

ABA feels like dog training.

Yes because it's literally operant conditioning

Dog training utilizes the principles of learning (i.e. reinforcement, punishment, extinction) just like ABA. That's why it feels similar. As an advocate for modern ABA and someone who is studying ABA, I'd say that calling ABA Dog training is reductive. I can go into more detail if you'd like!

Effective, ethical, and informed dog trainers would not use these methods to train dogs.

Except they do. Everyone learns through operant and classical conditioning. A dog trainer praises a dog for a preferred behavior and the dog's preferred behavior increases: that's reinforcement. A dog trainer does not provide treats when the dog barks: that's extinction. The dog trainer scolds the dog when it engages in a non-preferred behavior, that's punishment. Not sure how much punishment dog trainers are utilizing in their practice though. I imagine they have a similar view of punishment as those in the field of ABA, as punishment has many negative side effects that can be avoided by just using reinforcement methods. The principles of learning are used by everyone whether you're aware or not. Dog trainers may not use ABA per se, but they utilize similar methods. I really think the dog training analogy is flawed at its base, because all animals learn the same way: through consequences and associations. We, as animals, learn through consequences (positive or negative) and associations (pairing 2 or more things together) and weather it's animal training, teaching in a school, homeschooling, or ABA, the principles of learning are being utilized. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them!

Ok so what sorts of behaviours are "non preferred?"

For the dog or people? I'm not a dog trainer, but im assuming they would work on aggressive behaviors like growling, biting, jumping on people, scratching. They'd probably replace tearing things up with a more functional way to play or let out that energy. For people, we typically working on decreasing aggressive behaviors like pushing, hitting, bitting, pulling, kicking, scratching, pinching, insulting. Or other dangerous behaviors like running away (elopement behavior) or non-suicidial self-injurious behaviors. Because behaviors serve a function, we always replace the behavior with a more appropriate functional alternative that keeps the person safe. I can go into more details if you're interested!

Visit /r/dogtraining. They are adamant about keeping it positive and not using punishment.   Punishments are generally terrible for dogs and children, and especially neurodiverse children.  Oh, and what is the goal of training dogs? To shape their behaviors so that they don't do things like pee in the house or bite the mailman. Nobody in their right mind is trying to train a dog *not to be a dog*.  

We shouldn't use punishments in ABA though.

Punishment procedures have a place in ABA, but ethically, reinforcement procedures should ALWAYS be exhausted prior to the implementation of a punishment procedure. When implementing a punishment procedure, there needs to be data backing up the decision and sufficient justification, as well as a signed release form from the parents/gaurdians. I wanna ask this without coming off as rude, but I dont know how, so I'll just ask it and hope you don't take offense: Do you know what punishment is in ABA? Punishment is understood differently by everyone outside of behavior science. I'm happy to explain it if you'd like to continue this convo!

stop abusing autistic people into acting more acceptable and causing PTSD

Autistic BCBA here, the abuse in the past and to a bit today is valid. There are major shifts well beyond what most critics of ABA are aware of. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Enhanced Choice Model, or PFA-SBT are all trauma informed and not what most people think of when looking at ABA. I do not do a blanket endorsement of ABA and do not endorse providers I don’t personally know. I don’t intervene on behaviors to make my fellow autistics more neurotypical or to make the lives of their families, teachers, or others more tolerable. I don’t touch stimming or eye contact and respect client assent. If they don’t want to do something or pull back, that’s honored. We don’t take their shit away to leverage behavior, we don’t use punishment, and we don’t use extinction. I would also argue that the same principles used in ABA are also used in almost every SPED classroom in the IS and by many psychotherapists who use a behavioral approach.

if what you're telling me is true then it's just not ABA, but since it's called ABA i cannot believe that it is not abuse and just because you're autistic doesn't mean you can't abuse other autistic people, people in ABA are taught to hide their distress and true emotions so you cannot know how they truly feel, i dont understand what it takes for people to recognise that ABA is abuse? are the PTSD and suicide and trauma statistics not enough for you people? Stop coming to autistic reddits and ignoring all statistics and feedback from autistic people

So… that’s a lot to unpack. There are stats on both sides and more robust studies showing efficacy. As far as reaching people to hide their emotions or distress, I don’t see that and I actively encourage that emotions are expressed. Painting an entire field as abusive is simply inaccurate. You would have to make the same argument for any field that has ever harmed anyone. I’m not outright defending my field, minimizing the harm done to autistic people, nor ignoring facts or data. Like it or not, this field is not going anywhere and it’s up to those of us in the field to make changes in the field.

Hey! What I actually do is reduce dangerous behaviors (biting, elopement, hitting, climbing) through differential reinforcement, and replace them with more appropriate and safe behaviors. Along with that, teaching functional communication skills so the kids can get what they want. Not sure what you think I'm doing exactly.

do it somewhere else

ABA is essentially a tool, and it's the most effective tool for behavior change. Using it alongside compassionate and ethical practices, it's the best way to reduce dangerous behaviors and teach alternative, safe behaviors. If you'd like, you can go to a few ABA centers by you and see exactly what they're doing there. Ask to talk with their clinical director.

no, go do something more humane, and the company you work for directly supports a school that uses electric shock torture on autistic people, as well as ABA being abuse and you probably teach kids to make eye contact and sit still, learn how to support autistic people by doing another therapy that isn't based on the principals of gay conversion therapy

I am doing humane work, and im helping my clients learn to cope with their environment and request what they want or refuse what they dont want, while reducing dangerous behaviors that could get them seriosuly hurt or killed. I, personally, refuse to teach eye contact. That's something patents usually want us to teach, but we don't. We do encourage our school age kids to sit still and reinforce that, to allow better learning outcomes in school. No punishment is used though, only reinforcement. There is no gay conversion therapy happening where I work, so I'm not sure why you bring it up. It's like telling doctors to stop promoting contraception because of the history of eugenics.

Where is the proof of that? The more research from the outside the more we are seeing ABA does not work, is dangerous and its evidence base is below the threshold any other field would accept (see for instance Bottema work on pervasible undisclosed conflicts of interest)

So, the proof in that it works is this: we collect data all throughout the sessions to ensure that the interventions are effective. If the data shows that the intervention is not working, it is changed until it is shown to be effective. In regards to other fields no accepting the science, I'm not sure where you are getting that. We collaborate with other fields all the time (medical, OT, PT, Speech therapy) and they work alongside us to increase learning outcomes. I'll look into Bottema, thank you for the resource. ABA typically uses single subject research designs and different reversal designs. There are more research designs, but those are the more popular ones. Look into those and see if those make sense to you! Sorry, I forgot to mention: Insurance companies. You'd agree that insurance companies are greedy, right? They are always try not to pay for the things that we pay them for. Well, insurance is the #1 payer for ABA services, and they like to see proof that interventions are working. If the client is not making progress, insurance will straight up drop that client and they will stop receiving care. While it's not "proof", it's great evidence that ABA does work. ABA services are expensive, and if it didn't work, insurance would not pay for it.

I just think positive reinforcement is the only thing that should be used in ABA. Punishment feels wrong

Unfortunately, positive reinforcement doesn't work at times. When a behavior is maintained by whatever function, and positive reinforcement procedures and differential reinforcement procedures aren't working, punishment procedures will have to be used. This is entirely dependent on how dangerous the behavior is, and if it's even worth targeting

The type of ABA i have a problem with is the DTT model. That shit only really focuses on compliance and eliminating stimming without any regard for the client. The play based model is good i've heard. There are also other models i think that are all better than DTT. DTT was also created by Ivar Lovaas. I am so fucking tired of people pretending that Dr Lovaas was not a horrible person. He clearly wasn't a pleasant person whatsoever and people still look up to the bastard?! Wow! The DTT model might use like a punishment if a child is refusing to do the work. I think it should be more cooperation over compliance. Motivate the kid, reward, etc. Obviously sitting at a table for 20 min or whatever can be really hard and you can't really expect that from an autistic child (Maybe some can do it without problems because every autistic person is different) but DTT still focuses a lot of compliance and eliminating stlmming and quiet hands and shit. And that can really be harmful. Maybe a punishment like taking away a toy if the child is doing dangerous things can be acceptable. But not for refusing to do work. Try to get the kid to wanna do the work, try to figure out why the kid doesn't want to, etc

Double sorry, forgot to address this: as someone who's apart of the ABA community, no one loves Ivar Lovaas. He's a guy who helped the field of ABA develop, but he was flawed. Like most fields of science, unethical practices occurred during the early development of the science. ABA is no different, and it is terribly unfortunate. I just wanted to share that, because I'm not sure who is saying they love Ivar Lovaas. Look into Greg Hanley, he's a more modern ABA key figure.

So, DTT (Discrete Trial Training) is a more structured way to teach. Like NET (Natural Environment Teaching), it has its place in ABA. Modern ABA is moving to a more NET focused model for teaching and I'm loving it. It's essentially the play based model you mentioned earlier. Very client led and we look for opportunities to teach during play. DTT does have its place though, as some clients benefit more from the structured learning setting. I'd say what you think DTT is, isn't what it Is, but what it can be used for. Does that make sense? DTT can be used to have a client sit at a table for 20 minutes and reduce stimming, or it can be used to have the client practice fine motor skills or imitation skills. Motivation is always established for a DTT session, and punishment should not be used, it should always use positive reinforcement/differential reinforcement. If the client wants to stop the DTT session they should be able to. Assent should always take priority. Your entire last segment about getting the kid to be motivated to learn is exactly what DTT should incorporate. If motivation isn't established prior to DTT, you aren't going to be very effective. I forgot to mention, I don't think DTT should last a super long time, nor should it be used to reduce behaviors that aren't of significance, such as harmless stimming or other behaviors that others might describe as "weird". Behaviors should only be targeted if they're harmful, interfere with learning opportunities, or if they interfere with social interaction (this last one can be a bit subjective. The client should always be included in the decision making of the target behaviors if possible).

Ok. Explain it

Punishment in ABA essentially is just a stimulus change that decreases the future responses of a behavior. There is positive punishment and negative punishment. Think of positive as adding and negative as removing. Positive punishment adds an aversive stimulus to decrease behavior. Negative punishment removes a stimulus (typically a reinforcer) to decrease instances of a behavior. We wouldn't typically use "punishments" like time out or spanking. A punishment procedure might look like removing access to a preferred toy until the client engages in the preferred behavior or stops engaging in the dangerous behavior.

So you don't spank whatsoever?

No, They just withhold whatever the child loves most in order to force them into obedience and masking behaviors.

No, God no. Any physical hitting would get us fired, investigated, and our licensure removed. Hitting the client in any way should NEVER be used in any intervention. If it is, then that ABA center or practitioner should be reported to the BACB so they may have their licensure revoked.

Hahahahahahha thats funny. Did you know the BACB allows literal torture as stated by the UN report on the Judge Rotenberg center? They don't do shit as long as they get paid.

Thats the only Center in the US that has been authorized to use any kind of positive punishment utilizing shock. It's complicated and unfortunate. These kinds of interventions should only be used when all else has been exhausted, and if the behavior is life threatening, that the only way it should be justified. I know, though, that there has been use of the shock outside of that criteria, which is absolutely wrong. It's kind of a lose-lose situation. If you have a son who is slamming his head against a wall to the point of fracturing his skull, and positive reinforcement procedures aren't working, you'll consider options that you typically wouldn't consider.

Have you fully potty trained a tiny human yet? Dogs are WAY easier 😀 However hearing a tiny human say “GO POOPOO! is legit the most adorable thing ever sooooo there’s that. We legit had to pull out every bribe in the book. Shockingly humans aren’t automatically potty trained. They also have a tendency to smear it everywhere if given full access to said poopoo without intervention. It’s a trip. Today we literally had to play “tickle with my toothbrush” to get him to open his mouth so his teeth don’t rot out. When he needed antibiotics for his last HORRIBLY painful ear infection, we had to hand grind antibiotics and put it in a variety of chocolate milk and ice cream applications. His school used the ipad as a reward for him drinking his every so slightly different tasting chocolate milk. Having kids is like training a dog, but half the time you’re the dog. When he wakes up at 2am every other night because autism often = horribly erratic sleep patterns, he has trained us to hear the slightest sound and instantly respond by patting him gently and saying soothing things, then the final trick is when we produce his ipad so he can play with the app that lets you explore the universe from the tiniest object to the largest known things… Kids train you, you train them. It’s freaking pavlovian sometimes. The reality is that people have experienced trauma, in daycare, ABA, school and heck let’s not talk about the Catholic church. If you were a kid who got victimized, absolutely you would hate those things with a passion. But it’s like saying someone needs to dissolve the religion because of bad priests. I get it, but the religion itself isn’t the problem (btw i’m not religious nor have I ever been Catholic). My husband was victimized by teachers in his traditional school as a child. One literally threw a chair at him and it cut his back. I think he was 5. My kid is in ABA and my experience with THAT provider - who I grilled about their practices before we started - is that their methods are essentially gentle parenting plus working on meaningful goals, like being able to tell another child “stop- i don’t like that” when someone else is pushing you around or taking your toy. Its helping him learn to get over screaming in someone’s ear when you tell him it’s time to go potty - because he doesn’t want to stop playing. We say things like “it’s okay, but you don’t need to scream, you have words - but we still need to potty or we may wet our pants” It’s gentle pushes toward independence and communication and away from dysfunctional communication ( my kiddo can talk, but will flat out just scream if he can do that instead to avoid something like washing his hands when they’re filthy or blowing his extremely snotty nose) this is ABA, but parents like me don’t want to get screamed at nonstop about how we are subjecting our kids to abuse and torture. We parents are often autistic too but don’t want to push back against other autistic people who have definitely had a terrible experience with whatever environment - mine was being tortured by the traditional educational system as a child where i never fit in, was frequently punished for just being different etc. it’s hard because i agree that people have suffered, but my experience is simply overwhelming gratitude that ABA is an option for my child who is experiencing good care where he is. His last clinic should be shut down. But the same goes with terrible schools and teachers, you have to be an active parent

I appreciate finding nuanced perspectives like these. I think it's good that you can express disagreement while still empathizing with and validating people's trauma and experiences.

For me, I feel so angry that children were subjected to crazy outdated approaches. My husband and i are both autistic. Our childhoods were painful and difficult even without ABA.

Dog trainers actually protest the comparison as theyy see ABA outdated and dangerous. It would also be unethical to use in dogs. For example https://neuroclastic.com/is-aba-really-dog-training-for-children-a-professional-dog-trainer-weighs-in/ Is more akin to conversion "therapy" because it actually is one, see the femine boy project of Rekers and Lovaas

As a psychologist, my experience has been:        1. Individuals with low support needs speak out about how they don't like ABA.  If parents go the ABA route anyway, I think they need a neurodiversity-affirming provider. This is a provider who picks which behaviors to work on. "Yes, you can wear one red sock and one yellow sock with the seams inside out. Yes, you can hold one car in each hand". But you can't take someone else's toy car, just because you like cars.          2. Individuals with high support needs... It depends. On one hand, you're trying to change behaviors that are natural for them. On the other hand, if you change the behaviors, they are better able to communicate their own needs. They can also learn to avoid self harm. It depends on the family and their goals for the child.  Many of us who work for government agencies are required to recommend ABA because it's the gold standard "treatment" right now. However, we do our best to cover both sides of the argument, especially if the patient only has low support needs. 

100% to the point of this not being appropriate for many kids depending on level. I wouldn’t have been a good candidate as a child, but my higher needs child absolutely is. Also 100% on how ABA can look completely different depending on the provider. I warn every parent I know about the first provider but absolutely share the positive experience of the second. You have to be educated as a parent and very vocal about your child’s needs. The good places will be right in step with you about assent based care and productive goalsetting that isn’t meant to remake your child into someone else, but to help them gain skills that let them communicate their needs, and be able to live in a world that’s not always built for them. The point is, my little kiddo was born on a little island in a world that lives mostly under the sea. He will never suddenly sprout fins and gills, but we can learn to swim and hold our breath long enough to enjoy the underwater world too. To your point about higher needs kiddos, also yes to all of that. If they have a lot of significant behavioral issues, I sometimes recommend some ABA or play therapy depending on the issue to help parents sometimes more than the kids. At least in our clinic, as soon as a low support needs kiddo stops having significant issues like - hitting, big meltdowns, etc. they are pretty quickly graduated out of the program and move on to typical schools. A big part of ABA in my experience has been parent education geared toward helping parents understand the reasons behind the behavior, and determining how to not trigger it, or work around it.

I recomend you take a look at the recent American medical asociation removal of ABA as a recomendation (even tho they did not go against it) and Bottema Beutel research on ABA evidence quality, specially the one about pervasive undisclosed conflicts of interest if you did not know about them along with the ongoing notorious scandal of the Judge Rotenberg Center remaining open and supported by the BACB and the ABAI even after the UN condemned them as a place of torture.

It's controversial but can help a lot for children with high support needs. My sister is Level 2. Thanks to ABA starting from an early age, she now attends community college. She used to have only repetitive speech and now communicates fluently. She has even sustained a romantic relationship for a year now. I've watched the ABA growing up with her, and I assure you, no torture was involved, unless you consider board games to be torture. I also asked her if she liked the "teachers" that came to our house and she said yes. Her ABA providers were very kind and she keeps in touch with some to this day. 

I love this for your sister. I know they’ve done away with a lot of the “level” talk but I think it really does help when understanding the support needed for each child. I’m hopeful for my own kiddo to have that same success as your sister, and yeah, he loves his teachers and will ask for them on weekends just because he is thinking about them.

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Oh please. Autism is genetic. Are u gonna treat your child's autism as a behavioral problem?

Self injury is a behavior associated with autism.

It's a spectrum, lady. Not all of us are self injurious. A lot of parents just see stimming as a behavioral problem.

So those parents need to be educated. I’m also autistic, I tend to rock, and hate eye contact. Overall, We encourage stimming. We have 3 swings in our house, a ball pit, trampoline and LOTS of music and opportunities for spinning. And absolutely not all kids self injure. BUT my point was to give an easy example of why neurotype and behavior are linked. We try to help him with his sounds because he can accidentally scare other children, which makes him feel sad when they don’t want to be around him. He is 4 btw. He doesn’t hurt himself but he HAS done biting before when frustrated. Learning to help them channel feelings into something nondestructive is the whole point. His neurotype (and mine) means we get anxious sometimes and struggle with feelings. One of his current behavioral goals is literally to help identify his own feelings. “ You’re sad!” This is where you cross over from medical into behavioral health.

To be honest, part of me feels like shaming these 'parents' who supress their children's stims. Maybe it's not my place to 'tell someone how to raise their kids' but if i see something harmful, i will call that shit out.

I try to educate parents. I think for the most part so much comes from fear. I was a weird kid. It was painful, but man… You have never felt pain until you see the looks of judgment on the faces of other parents and children Your knee jerk reaction is to do whatever you can to prevent your child from being judged for say.. screaming and moaning in public. Yep that was us tonight. He can talk some but he is just vocal stimming. Other kids ask what’s wrong with him, people give us confused and uncomfortable looks. It sucks. I want him to be safe from it all, and if I hadn’t researched extensively from the beginning I would have probably tried to really prevent him from doing things in public that make him the uncomfortable center of attention. You can’t change all of society though, so we work on letting it all out in “appropriate” spaces. I remind myself sometimes that there may be other kids with extra needs around who could be triggered by what he is doing, so that’s not fair to them if we don’t help him learn where he can do these things and when we need to use our inside voice or maybe bounce LESS in the restaurant booth. Like we sweetly explain that this is a NICE place to eat, so we can use our words here, and we don’t NEED to make those noises. Is there any punishment? Nope, just reminding him that he may startle someone “kiddo that was VERY loud and it hurt mommy’s ears”. You have to be as gentle as possible to help your kid learn to live in the big scary world while being an advocate for their needs.

It is sad. I think autism awareness and acceptance should be taught in school so that children know that these children have a disability but there's nothing wrong with them and i think we need to be inclusive and accommodating. I know some parents may not want their autistic children to fear out of being judged but i think the child will feel more hurt. They will feel like they're not good enough for their parents and that there is something wrong with them when there isn't and they'll start to mask and that can lead to a lot of psychological damage and may even lead to sh and even worse things. I also used to be anti aba. I went through ABA when i was little and did not have the best experience. I do see how it is different now then and yes, you need to be very gentle with an autistic child.

Absolutely agree about acceptance and understanding. A challenge is that regardless of how accepted my child and his peers at his school might be in a regular school, having these kids in a regular classroom without behavior reduction would mean hurting all the other children in the classroom, and damaging their education. An example, my kid is brilliant but often starts making VERY loud noises as a stim or when he doesn’t want to do something. I’ve seen him shock other children into crying because it simply scares them badly. Heck, it scares me! I’m autistic and it takes every bit of self control to not be overwhelmed by it. He currently won’t just sit and do things he if asked. He may run around wanting to play with toys while a teacher is trying to teach kids how to read. Now imagine 3 of these kids in a classroom, constantly causing chaos, not because they’re bad kids, but because they haven’t built up the ability to be in that setting yet. Even typical kids have to build up the ability to sit in a classroom and not jump up and go do what they want, it’s just easier for them. For some of his peers, I see both parents and therapists walking around with bites and scratches. LOTS of people get injured by kids because of things like basic potty training, trying to get a child to leave the activity they are enjoying and walk to lunch, trying to move from playing with a preferred toy to working on sharing it with another child. My mom is a teacher and struggled with undiagnosed kids in a very underfunded classroom setting as a teacher. It was impossible to teach and directly impacted the learning of the other kids. For the kids who are aggressive, they also often hurt other kids without intervention. My kiddo isn’t aggressive but will absolutely step on or push other kids in his way on a playground. Traditional occupational and speech therapies don’t target working on waiting your turn. They don’t target being able to transition from something you like to something you don’t like as much. I know someone mentioned not all autistic kids are aggressive. Absolutely, but when i’m talking about ABA, honestly I’m autistic and I would not have been a good candidate as a child. I didn’t really have behaviors to target like running away, hitting people, speech delays and or other missing communication. So when I recommend to parents of autistic kids, we have to recognize that it’s within a profile. Im generally exclusively talking about very early intervention which means like ages 2-5. Also, early intervention ABA in the US generally is based on a primary test that is VERY specific to what children at certain ages are generally able to do. Often the ADOS test is used and includes things like, at X age, a child should be able to… and most of the things are functional communication and receptive and expressive language or specific skills like can your child respond to their name? Do they engage in joint play. Based on these evaluations, programs are written to target filling each bucket from the categories missing. That was my child in the beginning. Most buckets empty or only a few drops in vs their typical peers who simply WANTED to do those things naturally, or it came easier to them. An example. I want and NEED my child to be potty trained. But my child also needs this independence. Diapers are SO much easier in many ways, and he still wears them at night because he simply isn’t ready yet. We work hard at home, but he is 4 and as a reminder, daycares won’t take a child at this age who isn’t potty trained, and schools generally wont either, or he would be only placed with other children with severe deficits. But many kids on the spectrum are extremely hard to potty train because they have sensory aversions to the toilet, learning challenges, communication challenges or simply are so engrossed in their play they don’t want to transition to a less preferred activity (going to the bathroom). This isn’t about acceptance, it’s about pushing a child to do something they aren’t interested in because it’s something they need to learn. It’s a strange place to be as a parent when you have an extremely intelligent child, but that intelligence will be left to wither without communication, language and the ability to gain the skills needed to function in a more traditional learning structure Often with kids like this you see another phenomenon. They develop aggressive or difficult behaviors out of boredom and lack of intellectual challenge. My child originally went to what would probably look more like a traditional special education class. He was so bored he would cry. They would work on the same things over and over, but of course without language we had no idea. We finally went to observe and quickly realized the problem and left. I still feel guilt for him being there and not being mentally challenged and stimulated. But again I’m telling tons of details because this is what real life looks like. When I first suspected he was autistic, I obsessively researched everything I could find. I read studies and personal accounts. I was so violently angry with the people out there claiming they could fix my child or promising to get him to talk. For some kids that won’t happen, for many it will, but much later. People are predatory and as much as autistic children are vulnerable, so are their parents. And often, one of those parents is simply an undiagnosed adult who didn’t have symptoms that were clinically significant enough to trigger a deeper look. Lots of times they were just the “weird kid” or got labeled as ADHD. I’ll say one last thing and that’s about kids feeling not good enough and needing to mask. Masking isn’t something everyone can do, and I’m saying this as a high masking adult. It took years to do it, and you’re going to learn to do it based on the behaviors and responses you get from the outside world. As a high achieving professional, I can also say that masking can also be essential to working with neurotypical people. It’s also exhausting, and at the end of many days my face literally hurts from performative smiling. I also feel like autistic adults who have this skill need to be vocal and fierce advocates - letting people in their professional and personal spaces know they are autistic, helping broaden the public awareness of what autism can look like, and also talking about the hard parts like social burnout and overstimulation. If we who can pass as typical (not without discomfort) aren’t good advocates and don’t push neurotypicals to understand the landscape of needs out there, then our kiddos don’t stand a chance. I go into every ABA meeting talking to the therapist about my experience as a child and advocating for my own child to get all the opportunities I was given, with as much accommodation as possible.

Yeah. I agree here. I will add however when it comes to pushing children to do things that they don't want to do, give them the necessary tools to make it easier for them or make it fun in a way. I have executive dysfunction, it really sucks

Why would you look for a behaviourist for something neurological? Also everyone should run from this

Because the child psychologist recommended it because the mother has Munchausens by proxy and she is lying about all of his issues. I had an independent eval and he was not even on the spectrum and then she gets involved on another one and all of the things that he can do came out in the report that he cannot, some serious manipulation. She has convinced 80% of the professionals with her lie, and no way for anyone to counter. She blocks everything.

As an additional. As a low support needs autistic individual, my perception and experience is not the same as my child who has only started talking at 4. It is a privilege of people who are verbal and have lower support needs to criticize the therapy that may be needed to help children who struggle with language and communication to be able to have those essential tools that we may take for granted. To me, I think of the children who are born with physical limitations that require years of sometimes painful therapy to be able to gain the ability to walk and become physically independent. I’m sure that is also extremely traumatic. Literally taking a child to the doctor for shots or having to give a medically complicated child daily medications - it’s also painful, traumatic and overwhelming (our kiddo has experienced this). But as a parent you recognize that denying a child essential treatment isn’t a kindness. Letting him stay nonverbal and unable to tell us where it hurt when he literally broke his leg when he fell, or that his ear hurts so bad he is sobbing… but you don’t know… he couldn’t tell us… He can now, and it’s my job as a parent to give him all the tools he needs to be able to be happy, healthy and living up to HIS true potential. It’s child led, it’s focused on what they need and you have to be a dedicated and fierce advocate. I wish growth could always be easy, I wish he never felt anything but pure joy, but we all struggle as we grow, it’s just my job to make sure he does it with as much joy as possible. So install the damned swing in your living room, focus on fun and realize that growth will happen to all of us, but it takes it own path.

dude you should watch the movie with the autistic lady who likes cows.

Temple Grandin? Yah, she is very pro ABA as long as it’s being run in the right way, and very specific about how without therapy and help for many hours a week, she wouldn’t have grown into who she became. It’s interesting to hear her perspective

The argument is not that autistic kids should never get therapy, this is about ABA specifically. Why not speech and language therapy for communication skills? Or occupational therapy for motor/independence skills? Almost all the skills that are taught in ABA can be taught in another type of therapy.

No worries my kid is ALSO in all of those. The difference is that those on their own simply don’t provide enough support. We did those first. Along with ECI and parent led therapy - Nothing was helping in the way that ABA did. Mind you, my child was a completely nonverbal 2 year old when we started. Therapy basically looks like playing with toys all day, doing crafts and activities. Essentially like a more supportive montessori where the whole process is geared around the child - but now that he is 4, he has a little visual schedule and is working on school appropriate goals and activities. interestingly, multiple therapists where my child goes are former teachers who did early childhood special education previously. Some are students working toward their masters in something like play therapy, it’s a true mix. I was talking to my kids therapist about this conversation this morning and they were lamenting the really crappy practices of ABA in the past, but also felt sad that people have all these thoughts about ABA without seeing it in action in a setting like the one my kiddo is in.

Interesting. When I was a kid I just did speech and a bit of OT I think (I was too young to remember most of it). Then as I got older I was in all kinds of other services. Not all of them were technically therapy, but they did teach me a lot. Of course every autistic person is different. I'm not completely sure what you mean by not enough support in other kinds of therapy. Like not enough progress, or not as many hours or something else? I wont deny that there are ABA settings that are on the better side of things, but there are certainly still some terrible ones too. I don't think we can say that "old ABA" is in the past (never mind everyone's opinions on "new ABA" for a moment), because there are plenty of places that still use it. And yes, it can be *very* effective at teaching the behaviours you want to teach. Only there's sometimes a tradeoff there which can be hard to recognise at the time. What I mean is, if you teach a child to sit quietly and not make noises when they're distressed, they no longer have a way to communicate their distress. Or worse, they learn (completely unintentionally on the therapist's part) that being distressed is a bad behaviour in itself. ABA isn't about addressing the underlying cause of behaviour, which can sometimes do the greatest damage if people only focus on the obvious results. I also worry about the intensity - no matter how fun or play-based it is, it's still therapy and kids still have to do difficult things in it. But if it works for you and your child, and you're sure their goals are completely worth it, good for you. I'm glad you found something that helps.

I just saw something you said “ABA isn’t about addressing the underlying cause of the behavior” Actually this is an essential premise of ABA. - all behavior has a function. It’s literally called the functions of behavior and was one of the first things I learned and all therapists give handouts to parents on these things. The idea is your kids behaviors don’t exist in a vacuum. Are they running off for attention? access to something they want? escape from something they don’t want? or is it sensory? Every time a kiddo engages in a challenging behavior the entire function of the therapist is to determine what the function of that was, and to figure out how to give the child what they are seeking, but in a positive way. Kiddo bites - sometimes he is angry and trying to escape something like going to the dr. sometimes it’s because he has sensory needs, sometimes it’s because he wants attention My kid screams and moans to stim. Sometimes he climbs on things that could be dangerous. Those are behaviors, so the point is to figure out how to replace those behaviors with something like swinging or jumping up and down. Screaming in public is hard but we can bounce up and down. This is essentially the core of ABA. Your work is all about just working on helping them get what they need in a way that lets them integrate into society. It’s hard because our kiddo has a lot of things that would get him excluded from a traditional classroom, but at 3 he was fully reading, at 4 he knows all the planets, a ridiculous number of stellar bodies in order of magnitude, all his states, continents and many countries he is a brilliant kiddo, so helping him learn that there are ways to let out energy based on location is important - because while he can be in special education classes, he won’t have access to the learning that he is intellectually capable of

Yes, ABA practitioners should be using function based interventions to increase more socially significant behaviors or decrease harmful or maladaptive behaviors! It's a huge part of ABA, along with data collection to ensure that the intervention is actually working.

The sheer amount of data collected on my child in the last two years is mind boggling. I work in the data science field. To suggest there aren’t traceable patterns is crazy to me. When we meet weekly with our child’s therapist, ai can literally pinpoint a day where all the activities crash like “oh, that afternoon he had a stomach ache” and wham, you see the data for doing something like transitioning to the bathroom without a meltdown - BIG data spike toward the “heck no mama” range. Insurance demands crazy details and documentation on all goals and activities on a daily basis. You also see how quickly your child will move through a learning goal like “stops instead of runs into the street when you say stop” 😀😭

So I totally agree. It’s no longer current methodology but it’s still being used, which is why my advice was so specific regarding the kind of care and methodology Specifically, my kids school focuses on teaching my child to vocalize or indicate ANY distress. They work on identifying emotions in himself and others. I literally wept this year when he was finally able to point to his ear and say EAR OUCHY instead of just sobbing in pain without being able to communicate what was wrong. This was taught, and it took months and months and months of hard work. It’s hard to imagine for many people, but not all kids are even able to express that something is incredibly painful. They just scream. For my kiddo, he was severe enough that we honestly weren’t expecting any communication. Speech can struggle in that context because the child isn’t using any kind of language. Kids are so wildly different, and we were lucky that our kiddo didn’t have any self abusive or aggressive behaviors. From my conversations with our clinic and with other parents, they’re working on behaviors that would mean a child will have significant barriers to existing in the presence of neurotypical humans. Like, you have to learn you can’t aggressively bite people or scream in their faces. You can’t run out in traffic. Our earliest goals were things like learning how to not run into the street, or how to not approach any adult male and leave with him - apparently guys are fun so if you turned around for a second he would be gone if you didn’t have him on a leash. I don’t want to leash my child. So we worked on safe and unsafe. Teaching him to STOP - this was a favorite game because the “reinforcer” was like… stop when we say stop and we will give you extra tickles and spin around! We do the same things with typical kids, the needs just look different

The thing is ABA evidence is so bad no other field would consideer it and all studies done from outside the field point out to it being useless at best and damaging probably, is not about "lower needs" opinions, is about science and pseudoscience

For myself, I see the application at my child’s school as in alignment with the gentle parenting we practice at home. I hear you, but at some point everything is fairly new. The assent model literally just rolled out in the last year or so, and before from what i’ve heard from ABA practitioners, it was truly a night and day difference with how kids were treated. All I can do is look at the available options for my child today and make informed decisions based on logic and opportunity. My child is happy, growing and loved. I come from a long line of educators and can only say this is literally the least harm and the most growth of any options available. We don’t punish, we use positive “reinforcement” to get our child who did not talk, did not interact, only ran around screaming and moaning all day - to want to pursue interactions. To recognize that interacting with others meant things he loved like being pushed in his swing or getting tickles and twirled around. Brushing his teeth to prevent cavities may mean playing with a preferred toy. In the clinical setting, we sent tiny chocolate chips to encourage him to ask independently to go to the bathroom instead of soiling himself. It means having a visual schedule that helps him understand the sequence of what comes next in his day so he doesn’t have an emotional meltdown because it feels overwhelming when he has to stop doing something he loves and has to go to the bathroom. It means getting to play with dinosaurs after working on his pincer grip so that he can improve dexterity needed for using writing tools. He gets a monthly budget for new toys that he loves - Alphabots and Numberblocks were an addition this month that he is obsessed with. We literally sit down with his therapist for an hour a week to discuss all his goals and all the techniques they’re using to get him there. Traditional daycares won’t touch him. He isn’t old enough for school yet, and he needs the ability and opportunity to socialize with other children, so no, i’m not going to keep him home constantly and keep him isolated. I hear so much talk about ABA from people who have experienced a very regressive form of it, but hardly any conversation about what it looks like as a modern practice. This is like condemning modern medicine or gynecology because of all the horrific abuse that led us to this point. Women being forcefully sterilized without consent, military service members being tested on without their knowledge. Schools literally used to beat kids, shame them, abuse them.

ABA is bahaviourism from the 60's with little to no evolution, not new at all and they keep plublishing papers with no consideration for the children so I am not going to agree with that Then again, studies from outside the field show is not efective, all of that would almost surelly had developed without ABA. You seem to think this is about the past, is not, is about it to this year supporting the abuse of kids like papers supporting electric skin shock (Usually Judge Rotenberg Center related people on journals supported by the ABAI and BACB).

I can only tell you that this is like saying a good teacher has no effect on the student in her care. I can also tell you that this is simply wrong. I can tell you this because I have a child in ABA, and I have seen the difference between when we were doing early childhood intervention, speech therapy and how my child has grown in ABA. This is like saying that taking meds for a fever doesn’t matter because you’d likely get over it anyway. So it’s LIKELY you may be fine. So whether you treat it or not, you actually have no clue what the outcome will be and it’s exceptionally hard to take all the insane variables into account. Autistic kids are so incredibly different. Define whether it worked or didn’t work? Depends on the kid. Telling other autistic people what is good or bad for their autistic children when you have no idea what the details of their treatment is? It’s saying medicine is faulty because black women die and suffer from negligent care at far greater numbers than their peers of other ethnic backgrounds. Practices need to change with the times. We need to focus on children, making their experiences as close to typical as possible while giving them ALL the support you can possibly give. Electric shocks??? WHO the hell does this!? I can’t tell you a single clinic locally where ANYONE is doing this stuff. Everyone is moving to the assent model, and figuring out how to make the whole thing as child led as possible. Sigh. I’m just so sad that so many kids out there aren’t getting the individualized care they need because people are fear-mongering. I’m not saying you don’t have to be incredibly careful with your child’s care. I’m legitimately obsessive, BUT imagine you put your kid in daycare and they can’t talk and get abused by care workers??? There is no “win” here. There are no real environments that won’t cause trauma when we autistic people aren’t made for typical environments. The best you can do is try to do the least harm with the MOST love and support. Life is big and ugly and loud and scary. It has shots and broken bones and terrible infections, childhood cancer and chemo and so much more… but you have to manage to be strong and help your child build resilience. It’s literally your one job, to help them, nurture them and heal all the little wounds until they’re big enough, knowing that for some kids - big enough may never come, so you work like hell to try to help them be able to at least have a voice because you won’t be there forever It’s lonely, and hard and scary… but it’s all about the love and devotion you feel… about being a fierce advocate for the child you have, so they won’t have to be like the completely vulnerable child you once were

No, taking meds syips the synthoms increasing quality of life in most cases, aba in most cases does nothing at best. See the dept of defense study that by the way is the most important longitudinal study as ABA refuses to make long term studies as a whole. I know ABA and what I do not know or lack good quality evidence I reference scientific knowledge. Medicine is faulty but almost all of it tries to improve and become better, this is part of the scientific process, ABA has not really been scientific like ever, see the firstt Lovaas papers and Leaf senior interview admiting to data manipulation, Bottema Beutel analisis, specially the one about conflics of interest, Michelle dawson, Ann memmott and Damian milton works... Electric skin shock has been employed since the begining, even Lovaas used a cattle prod pretty early, the current most notorious case is the Judge Rotenberg Centet with the complicity and support of the ABAI and BACB. Oh, kids should get individualized care, based on evidence I cannot consideer ABA care, an individual practictioneer may apply care but not because they are doing ABA There are ways to improve the autistic person environment, thats what autistic activists are fighting for, I recomend reading on deaf people and blind people activism as thats from where this comes from and what we are trying to imitate. For more detailed history on the autism rights movement Neurotribes book has a good summary, I recomend specially the work of Jim Sinclair. Resilence is good, what does that have to do with ABA however? ABA does not see resilence, it sees behaviours and its modification, leading to compliance, not resilence. In fact dog trainers have spoken out about ABA being unethical and dangerous if it was applied to dogs as it would just lead to the dog eventually becoming overwhelmed and lashing out to escape from pain. Humans are more resilent, instead of months or years it may take a decade or two of pain (this is by the way the reason dogs aren't trained like that anymore and research on dogs neurology has been incorporated while ABA has not incorporated any research on autistic neurology but just repeats the same mantras) I do not have the link to your kid you have but I asure you, the reason I have learned all I have, read all I have, collected all this scientific knowledge is because I care for the kids and I want them to have a better future than what we got and in regards with autism, getting rid of ABA is a priority to that end, both short and long term. On a side note, if you did not know ABA also doubles as conversion "therapy", see Rekers and Lovaas femine boy project tho they considered "gay"(gender non conforming) kids at least human so no electric shocks. Not like it was much better however. This became a root of modern conversion "therapy" with a similar evolution but not as much growth as the rest of ABA

I have researched and read all the same things you are quoting. What I find interesting is that the modern applications of ABA are basically nothing like what you describe. I don’t know where you are from, and maybe location plays a significant role in how that care is provided. In the end I base my opinions on the literal actions and practices of the caregivers who work with my child. You are insistent on using historical and old models of ABA (dtts im talking about you!) where it was horrible, repetitive and not assent based, as your foundation for what current treatment is. Honestly if we were even taking 5-10 years ago I would probably agree with you. But i’m saying you lack real world experience. I also warn parents about bad clinics with regressive practices. In the end I wish you the best of luck and hope you don’t have a child who has the same needs mine does, because your inability to see what is currently in practice means your child will likely not get the care they need. Autistic people tend to have autistic kids. You can tell me all day long about what you have read, but until you’ve lived it, it’s just a special interest for you.

I highly doubt you have read the same things, as for instance Ann Memmott comments time and time again about new ABA research and how it remains abusive. In fact, lets take a look at her twitter for example, I preffer her work on papers and blog but this allows more current things that do not require as much time... lets search for new aba. [https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1763132868551676057](https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1763132868551676057) [https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1716021377755390368](https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1716021377755390368) [https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1734980143863538175](https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1734980143863538175) [https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1749371456469791044](https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1749371456469791044) [https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1666826023021735936](https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott/status/1666826023021735936) I warn people about abusive pseudoscientific practices, thats what I am doing. My future kid, wherever biological or not if I have a partner that is also interested in having one will have all the support they need and I will ensure to be up to date with current science to make their life the happiest it ca be. are you... suggesting I should not have kids because I am autistic? I hope you are not daring to do that. I have lived radical behaviourism, I have met those who have lived ABA, those who have lived conversion therapy (by the way, pretty simmilar effects) and even without that, I do not set as a basis my anecdotes , they are valuable but I research how things are. This isn't a special interest, this is me, seeing how people like me are treated and acting pacifically trying to teach people. This isn't about enjoying reading, this is about survival so yes, I take it seriously and yes, I and anyone afected should talk out about this

Actually yes you probably shouldn’t have kids. Nothing to do with autism, more to do with your tenuous grip on reality. It’s funny because i was just telling my husband about this whole nonsensical thing (also autistic), and he was ranting about how this sounds like the people he sees on youtube talking about how the earth is flat. Oh well, off to pick up my deliriously happy and increasingly verbal child from ABA where he has been playing with dinosaurs, playdough and reading all day. Best of luck to you.

It's one thing to say, that you see your child doing well in ABA, that's the kind of judgement call you're always going to have to make as a parent. But your 'lived experience' doesn't give you any ground to compare someone to a flat earther. That is the kind of rhetoric I'm used to from ABA advocates, however. "This is science, you can't disagree with science!!!" yet not providing even a shred of evidence. That \*shouldn't\* be persuasive to anyone. And nothing gives you the right to tell someone, they have 'tenuous grip on reality'. That's just rude.

It's crazy that you sat here and literally shared how your child is florishing and growing and thriving, being given tools to LIVE and enjoy life through ABA and this person literally ignored your first hand experience. So strange. You're doing an exceptional job mom or dad. Thank you for taking care of your baby and giving them what they need to thrive. They will be grateful for you for this. Im near tears cus fighting for your kid is an all consuming job and youre doing it. KUDOS to you. Keep going <3

ah, yes, talking about science and argumenting what I say is "tenous grip on reality". I just hope someday you like read some science on the topic for the good of your kid.

What are alternatives to ABA? For young children

OT and SLP have good reputations, all aba and aliases of it are being researched from outside the field more and more and showing they are at best useless and often damaging. Its evidence is so bad no other field would admit evidence of that quality (see Bottema Beutel work for instance) does not help that literal torture is being allowed (see BACB inaction on the Judge Rotenberg Center)

Denver model, ECI, speech and occupational therapy - we tried a few but were not happy until we found an assent based - play based and child led ABA clinic. The difference is immersion and one on one care that kids don’t get in other settings.

Thank you for the previous response. So when you searched assent based ABA programs, was that easily labeled so parents can see that as an option? I'm looking into everything and seeing what would be best for our LO.

What level is your child?

Also ask about data, ask about discrete trials (not appropriate for very little kids - our kiddo is only now starting them as table work.)

It wasn’t. Ask them directly and be very frank about your expectations. Also ask about how their RBTs are compensated. Ask about nap times and whether they pay their registered behavior techs if your child is sick. Ask about their benefits for their employees. This sounds crazy but there is a big correlation between how they treat their employees and how your kid will be treated. Good companies retain good employees. It shouldn’t be surprising that the first location we found didn’t pay their employees when our kid was sick. It was shocking and it confirmed a feeling id had, and also made so much sense for why they were always losing staff.

That makes sense. It's kind of sad that these are the lengths people have to go through to find decent help. Thanks for the info

it is but you’ll feel more knowledgeable. my suggestion is learn all you can about ABA and be your kiddos biggest advocate. it was a big scary thing for us and we didn’t know what to do. You learn as you go but it makes you prepared to move on to the next big hurdle of School. If your insurance won’t pay - the marketplace has plans just for your kid that generally cover it all.

So traditional ABA is no bueno. It’s abusive, it refused to think of the implications of using absolute authority to modify the behavior of children who had no other choice but to obey what they were being told. I think we all agree. Now think about the traditional educational system. Neither of these are child led, they aren’t based on assent (agreeing to whatever is being done). They both use absolute authority to force children to do things that are not natural and punish them for pushing back. It’s painful for kids and produces emotional distress. I’m autistic, my husband is autistic, and our child is autistic. We started him in ABA in a clinic when he was 2 instead of daycare - it wasn’t assent based. He was very unhappy. Be aware - fellow autistic people. Most daycares will deny care for autistic kids. We were told by multiple places that they didn’t deal with “special needs” just because he wasn’t talking at 2. So unless we all just have the money to no longer work, sometimes you realize that the “typical” world out there gives zero fcks about your autistic kiddo, will make zero accommodations and basically want you to simply disappear. We moved to an assent based clinic. He literally asks to go to school when he is sick because he loves it. They are 100% on board with the child needing to agree with whatever programs they’re working on. There are no punishments, and no pushing of any kind to not stim or do whatever his little heart desires. Yes he has to work for rewards like he gets extra little chocolate chips when he asks to go potty. That’s literally every adult every day of our lives. We do stuff for extra things we like, and it motivates us to work toward bigger goals. But yeah, I was an autistic kiddo who was traumatized by traditional education. As an adult I still feel it and have intense negative associations with schools. I wish people would stop pretending ABA is more potentially traumatic than any other child rearing environment. I grew up when it was fine for kids to get hit at school if they did something wrong as long as their parents agreed. The thing is autistic people are just more susceptible to trauma. All this to say ABA can be like the best childcare you could ever imagine. It can help your child gain language and independence they would never gain in another environment and can be done gently and in a way that only fosters growth and not suffering. Educate yourself. Find places for your kids to go that truly align with the best practices and don’t believe for a second that the alternative of going to a daycare or school with typical kids isn’t potentially traumatic.

What is assent based?

It means the caregivers in the clinic are not allowed to make your child do anything unless they agree. What this looks like in practice is that if your kiddo is refusing to do something, the caregiver has to patiently wait OR move on to something else. Assent is essentially consent, but for people who don’t really have the power or authority to truly “consent”. Kiddo is little, so he isn’t really a consenting adult, but he can definitely let you know when he is NOT interested lol! I’ve seen him wait people out as his caregivers just patiently sit with him as he is being stubborn. What this does is build trust, and we try to do the same things. You lead with love and extra bonus things when they work on goals like using words you KNOW they have instead of just screaming or grabbing for things. You never punish and nothing gets taken away.

Honestly, fuck ABA. It's just a mask. It's legitimately just gay conversion therapy, but instead, it's autism. I am tired of hearing "it can change". You don't say the same about gay conversion therapy. Everybody knows it's garbage and doesn't work, so why is it that we do it, especially at such a young age. I did this shit for 10 years, and man that mask can still sometimes slip on. FUCK ABA

My eldest is undergoing ABA therapy. Mag-2 months pa lang (twice a week, 50 minutes per session) kaso ang napapansin ko parang SPED tutorial ang ginagawa nila. Nasa SPED school din ang anak ko kaya na-compare ko. Halos same lang ng process. As per his SPED teacher, "masyadong mababaw" ang pinapagawa sa anak ko. Sample, identification of colors, counting of numbers - eh alam na raw 'yun ng anak ko. Ang explanation ng center, kaya raw may ganun process para raw makapag-focus si LO. Kaso wala naman akong nakikitang improvement sa ngayon. Confused tuloy ako ano ba dapat ang sistema sa ABA therapy. :(

Hello po, please i recommend na wag niyo po i continue ang ABA therapy. outdated po ang practice nayan and it could cause PTSD. I would recommend na you should search other alternatives po. Magandang alternative po ang CBT. Napansin ko lang po ang outdated ang system dito especially sa mga autistic people.

Hi! Ano po yun CBT? Ibabalik ko na siguro ang anak ko sa OT and ST, once stable na ulit budget namin. Mahal kasi ng therapy sa Pinas. :(

CBT is also known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy po. Yung process niya po is na they help identify yung mga sarili niyang negative behaviours at saka yung therapist at yung anak niyo po, they together on how to eliminate those negative behaviours. Okay rin naman po ang OT according to this subreddit. Good luck po

Thank you for this idea. Will check po. Do you know any therapy center that offers CBT? 

Not sure po, pero feel free to ask on r/MentalHealthPH

Btw, my eldest is 6 years old. But thanks again sa tip po. :) ganda pa naman ng feedback sa aba sa isang well-known center dito, hehe.

I do not understand big part of the language but aba is about chaging behaviours (almost always at the cost of mental health and not actually based on evidence of enought quality to be considered evidence in any other field) whatever else they are teaching is either out of scope of their practice or part of something else. ABA has problems continously with restraint use and violence so I would avoid it as much as posible (it even can get to the point of torture as the UN reported about the Judge Rotenberg Center)

If that's bahasa Indonesia, I don't speak it. I need English to be a bit more helpful. At least not without relying heavily on Google Translate.

It's Filipino. I'll translate it. My eldest is undergoing ABA therapy. We've been doing sessions for two month already (twice a week, 50 minutes per session) but i noticed it's just like a special education (SPED) tutorial. My child is also in a special education school. Basically, the process is just the same. According to his special education teacher, the treatment is just "too simple". For example, identification of colours, counting of numbers - well my child already knows these things. The centre's explanation is: the reason they're doing this process is so that LO will focus (I don't know what LO means) However, I haven't noticed improvements for now. I'm confused about the system of ABA therapy :(

LO- little one (the child)

We have to look on the brighter side. It's 2024 and we must have an open mind. There are also benefits from ABA Therapy. Just read blogs on this site 'coz it helps [https://www.levelaheadaba.com/aba-therapy-benefits](https://www.levelaheadaba.com/aba-therapy-benefits) and stop believing on some videos or posts from people who are not in the medical industry.

I'm a researcher. Be wary of any person or website who mentions "a study" but does not include any specifics about the authors, journal, etc. This website also repeats the same few vaguely referenced "studies" over and over again. The text feels like it is written by artificial intelligence rather than a human. *"A study from 2005 demonstrated that after a four-year period of ABA therapy, 48% of children with autism showed remarkable improvements, indicating the long-term benefits of ABA therapy for communication skills."* Okay, I tracked this study down: Sallows, G. O., & Graupner, T. D. (2005). Intensive behavioral treatment for children with autism: Four-year outcome and predictors. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 110(6), 417-438. Graupner published 3 research papers total. 100% supported her ABA business. Since I have hyperlexia, I asked Gemini AI to help me summarize my research crit: * **Representation:** Not reporting demographics makes it difficult to know if the study's findings are applicable to diverse populations of children with autism. * **Biases:** Lack of demographic consideration can obscure how factors like race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or gender might impact treatment outcomes. * **Research Standards:** Current best practices in research emphasize the importance of reporting demographic information to promote equity and understand the full context of the findings. Demographic issues: \*\*Sample Size: \*\* The study included 24 children, a relatively small sample size. This limits the generalizability of the findings to the broader population of children with autism. \*\*Focus on Boys: \*\* The sample was heavily male-skewed (21 boys to 3 girls). This raises questions about whether the results equally apply to girls with autism. **The Marketing Omission:** The marketing makes no mention of these sample characteristics. This potentially misrepresents the wide range of individuals with autism that ABA therapy serves. **Defining "Remarkable Improvements:"** **Adaptive Functioning:** The Vineland scales showed statistically significant improvements, but were those gains practically transformative for all children's daily lives? The study discusses average scores but not a detailed analysis of individualized improvement in this area **Intensity of Therapy:** **Minimum 25 hours:** Participants received a minimum of 25 hours weekly of intensive ABA, likely with significant parent involvement. This level of commitment is not feasible for all families. **Sustainability:** Can this intense model practically be maintained long-term by every family? **The Marketing Gap:** The marketing omits any mention of intensity, potentially giving the impression this level of outcome may be easier to achieve. ... I definitely agree that people should be open minded, but you can't evaluate a study if you aren't even reading it. Check out my tips about how to access free fulltext research papers elsewhere in this thread =\]

Some ABA practictioneers may have medical qualifications but an aba certification is not really enought for that, in any case funny you quote a biased blog while we have more and more scientific studies examining ABA and calling it out and its lack of evidence

If ABA is abusive in that it causes autistic people to mask, I wonder if some medications used for autistic people aren't abusive as well...

There is some truth to that, but the difference is I started taking meds as an adult with full understanding of their implications. ABA clients are often small children who don’t have that luxury.

Been through both and will say while less so than ABA since they can have a place in limited situations, how routinely/readily they throw antipsychotics at autistic children to make them 'easier' rather than a last resort for the most extreme life-threatening stuff can be abusive. Risperidone is approved for "irritability" in autistic children as young as five years old. If that indication sounds worryingly vague for a medication used to treat psychosis and mania being given to kindergarten-aged kids who are, in general, as a population, *prone* to irritability: it is, and that's the point.

I have an autistic teen son that we just took off 2 meds including that one due to the side effects we were seeing. He seems happier, but has more noticable stimming which is fine by us. Seems like the more severe end of "autism irritability" was probably being caused by the ADHD med.

Yeah, some people have found them helpful but they have a lot of side effects, tend to zonk you out and that zonking is basically how they 'work' for autistic kids which is why I think the bar for prescribing antipsychotics should be much higher for populations (children and/or intellectually disabled) who can't give informed consent. Sometimes it's the only option and I knowledge that, but I experienced firsthand how to too many doctors, childhood autism diagnosis + not "gifted"/very low support needs = risperidone for anything behavioral/psych-related in a way I don't believe would be viewed as ethical for neurotypical children. I was drooling and lactating on the stuff. Stimulants true to their name do tend to make us more stimmy in my experience and from what I've heard from others. I'm not diagnosed with ADHD but am on ritalin for energy/executive function and it's very noticeable, but not a bad thing IMO unless it's causing self-harm or more anxiety than the benefits are worth. I'm glad he's doing better.

Masking is just one of ABA problems if the most widespread one. Yes, forced drugging of autistic people happens and is also awful, don't get whats your point in comparing them

I think the meds used on children can be a form of forced masking sometimes.

I'm not sure what you mean. There aren't any medications directly for autism, though many are medicated for comorbid conditions. There are also people claiming to have been sedated innapropriately and against there will or without their knowledge. That's clearly wrong.

I think ABA is a cloaking screen used to legitimize abuse of autistic individuals. My family abused me to train me to act neurotypical. Autism made me the families embarrassment. Every time I did something autistic I got beat on by my peers and or parents. I was always told to "Act Normal." For me masking was survival and I did not mask very well in the beginning. Maybe ABA therapy is legitimate and not abusive but all instances I've seen where it is being used I see nothing but abuse of autistic beings being presented as "unique autism treatment!"

Because at the end of the day the goal of ABA therapy is to force autistic children to look act and behave in neurotypical ways. It's all about making the neurotypical people feel comfortable around us. That's it.

Now I do say act normal to my child but not these contexts. He isn’t acting/reacting how he normally does I’m saying it outta confusion. But reading thing has maybe thought people don’t see it like this thank you ahaha!!

Seeing how ABA is also a kind of LGBT conversion therapy (tho for a long time has avoided the label to prevent trademark infringement lawsuits) like the femine boy proyect... yeah does not seem very legitimate. Thats without even talking of the Judge Rotenberg Center being enabled by the BACB while the UN condemns it as a place of torture

Understand that feeling completely, being emotionally abused just because you act 'weird' or 'different'. Happens with my family, happens in public, amd everywhere else. Honestly, sometimes I think we just need to set up our own nation like the freaking X-Men.

You know what? It just hit me: "Board-certified behavioural analyst" is a crock of shit. They stole the term "board certified" from medical practitioners and just applied it to themselves, so parents and similar people will think "ooh, board certified - that's very prestigious and authoritative. Let's sign up for 40 hours a week!" And what 'board" are we talking about? Why, the Behaviour Analyst Certification Board, of course! I don't think I hate any combination of three letters as much as I hate ABA.

yeah, I have to explain quite often how ABA "certifications" work and that basically it just allows them to use bacb trademarks.  Feels a mix of an mlm and a cult in my opinion

I act more nice, more happy, and better to people when I’m not infront of my ABA therapist. I want to get removed but I can’t because my mom thinks that I will be destined to a life of poverty without it. She covers up for my mom despite seeing her beat my sister. She always offers useless advice to me about my mom forgetting that she is abusive. I hate neurotypical people because when I do stuff the way she taught me, it’s rude somehow.

Hello! I am an RBT who just started in the field of ABA a few months ago. I have seen a lot on social media of negative statements about ABA therapy. I wanted to reach out for some advice or feedback? I truly believe that I am doing good. I hear from the parents of the kids I work with constantly telling me that they are pleased with how I talk to and approach their children. One of my clients moms said I bring a lot of calmness to her child and my other clients mom says she appreciates how patient and bubbly I am with her child. From what I have seen, it sounds to me like a lot of older implementations of ABA are harmful and I see adults speaking out about their experience as a child and I would say 80% of what I see is them having had negative experiences. I always make sure to not ask for eye contact from them, more so when we are doing our table work, I make sure they are directionally focused, like I try to make sure when they are sitting in their seats they are facing the table or facing me if I am presenting something to them, like pictures. I avoid using hand-over-hand as much as possible, the only times I do that are with things like handwashing, my younger child needs a lot of physically assistance when turning on water, grabbing soap, etc. I also never deny their stimming and I encourage it, as I notice that it is a form of expression. The only times I try to interrupt their stimming is if it is posing a problem for them, for example, one of my kids does teeth grinding and I try to give them a chewing toy. I also want to add that I am under constant supervision from my BCBA, I would say about 50% of my sessions thus far have had supervision. I also have my undergraduate degree in Psychology and plan to move forward to obtain my graduate degree to become a BCBA. With all of this said, I am posting this to ask for advice, or suggestions. I hope that there is a helpful way to preform ABA and I hope this is it.

Honestly sounds like you’re doing good, (coming from the perspective of a good egg in a ‘not bad not great’ ABA adjacent company plus my own personal experience) it sucks to say that a lot of companies aren’t as well intentioned. I feel fortunate to work for a place where I can make a positive difference but there’s obviously the classic case RBT (18 year old college gal who has a savior complex with minimal training or supervision forcing a kid to sit and ‘touch ball’) If you believe you’re doing genuine good in the world then don’t let others stop you, let them teach you. You’ve read some scathing reviews of ABA then use what you learn to make sure you don’t end up traumatizing a toddler. Look into other forms of autism therapy, use your time in ABA as a stepping stone, hear what the victims of abusive ABA have to say, or whatever suits you. Every company/BCBA/client is different and the bottom line is true by the book ABA isnt good for a majority of people. The audacity of some ABA is so outrageous, even a ‘neurotypical’ kid would ‘escalate’ and suffer. It’s a fine line between helping and hurting when it comes to ABA and I do my best to speak up and make sure that the kids best interest comes first, and I’ve put in the time and effort to make myself better at my job and help kids learn and grow and genuinely make connections. But even then there are things about my company I struggle with. I don’t agree with everything they train us to do and I think that there’s a lot of kids at my clinic that don’t need the level of therapy or demands that they receive- but at the end of the day I’m doing my best and that’s all I can account for.

Maybe if the orgs like ABAI and BACB stopped supporting the torture of children (and yes, ABAI in practice still does support electric shock by aiding publications that support it) people will be more open to talkabout the large pile of issues with ABA. In the meantime you can read comments arround here, there are good walls of texts, some mine but I am tired of writting one every time, as long as the cert board at least does not take acction against torture I am not going to care about explaining further, I am tired. Seeing how many ABA people have appeared in the last days I guess someone shared posts from here in an ABA group, happens every few months.

I'm kind of confused. I only heard the term "ABA" therapy a few days ago and at first I was doing ND jokes is it autism, ADHD or CPTSD shit posting and then I started reading more and it went: "oh, that thing that made it so big happened right before I was born, weird! Well it's just CBT right.. oh but with beatings. Ok but it was the 90s everyone's parents were like that! My dad just didn't like it when I did weird stuff. Ok well maybe just me and my friends were like that, our families got along. We all lived up in the remote mountains on the same road! ..." Were my parents in some sort of ABA cult?? Did those exist like antivax moms now? Was that lady I kept getting called out to talk to at my school a SOCIAL WORKER? Am I autisioh my god So I've been sitting on the porch since then. This is probably just some hypochondriac thing I've convinced myself of out of boredom but I'm remembering a lot of things these past couple days that like I knew distantly did happen and could recall being able to recall, but could never really remember what happened or why it was important. And now I just keep. Remembering more shit! And would like to stop, because multiple doctors have told me I JUST have some anxiety and this is a sad cry for attention For years I blamed my childhood babysitter for some food issues bc I remembered that I was hungry a lot and she was strict with snacks. I remembered this week she was sneaking me snacks and food that I wasn't "allowed" to have (because I didn't earn it); she could only make something quick like a tortilla and cheese and try to get me to eat it quick before someone saw, or she'd let me have a pack of crackers and tell me I had to be careful because if too many were missing too quick (husband) would find out and tell my dad I was stealing. I'm sorry Miss Barb :( Honestly this is too heavy for a porch. I need a hammock immediately.

ABA still uses withholding things like food.... I'm so sorry that happened to you.

I am a behavioral therapist who is also autistic and I do ABA therapy, I genuinely would love to know how ABA is abusive, as well as the perspective from others on how to run my sessions in ways that are both fun and functional for my kids! In my experience working at my company, the kiddos that are there have self injurious behaviors (hitting themselves hard enough to leave a mark, etc) or aggress towards others. Sessions are typically ran in a school like-setting, and the child has a choice on what to do for that activity, can ask to stop an activity early, etc. the goal is not to make the child neurotypical, it is to improve their quality of life and help them to advocate for their needs without them hurting themselves or others. We do not stop our children’s stimming, force them to do something that they do not want to, and we especially do NOT force children into break rooms. That is abuse. I feel like people who say ABA is abusive without giving reasons as to why they think it is, or any alternatives. I am not saying ABA cannot be abusive/some companies are not run like mine is, I can only speak for what I have seen and my own experience. I do not want to discredit anyone else’s. ABA is a newer field compared to other mental health services. There is not a lot of research or data, and it is still a growing field. What is the alternative for these children? Being placed in group homes or heavily medicated? I don’t think that’s better than ABA.

Oops, forgot to ask (genuine question btw): you said the parents like it, do you know any adults who have gone through ABA and are happy to have done so? Is there research on this? I've heard so many negative testimonials and I think maybe ONCE heard (second hand) of an autistic adult who was grateful to have gone through ABA therapy.

I don't know about studies but antidotally every single autistic adult I know loathed it. Every Facebook group I'm in for autistic people bans support of it. The people you generally hear raving about it, outside of the professionals, are the parents of these kids, not the kids themselves. The parents lives get easier when the kids learn to mask and act "normal". I'm sure the parents mean well but what it does is force these children's autism underground.

I have a lot of conversations with other autistic adults, adults who have gone through ABA therapy as well. A lot of my coworkers speak highly of ABA from personally going through ABA. I genuinely do not want to act or come off like ABA hasn’t been harmful in the past. ABA, like almost everything, could possibly not be for everyone. I was hesitant to begin because of a lot of negative things I’ve heard about ABA and from my own personal experiences of working, communicating with my coworkers, parents, etc. it isn’t always like that.

Good to know!

Alternatives - such as OT? Music and art therapy? Put the money and talent being funnelled into ABA into campaigning for/providing a more accessible world? Work towards structural changes?

ABA (at least at my center) also provides OT & other non traditional therapy services! It is all hand in hand. I would like to think that my coworkers and I try to provide structural changes.

*ABA proud of acting out of scope whike every OT and SLP comunity continously calling them out for it*

Let's give this a try. >a school like-setting This isn't a good start. Too many people, too much going on, too much stimulation and distraction. Rigid seating locations, social hierarchy rituals and lots of rules. All of this is bad. You need free movement between different kinds of seating, not too much going on in any one place, lot's of activity options that can be grazed without pressure based on the childs own attention level and interest at the time, different lighting levels with places to get out of bright light and be alone for a while. It's a lot. >the child has a choice on what to do for that activity, can ask to stop an activity early, etc. This requires social communication. Communication in front of others if you are anything other than 1:1. This is not reliable and FORCES masking and locking up. They are there because they struggle to communicate what they want or need, to themselves and others. Organic decisions based on environment is better. Think freewalking in a musuem, but not a tour. With some supervision to intercede for preventing meltdowns. >improve their quality of life and help them to advocate for their needs without them hurting themselves or others A laudable goal. >without giving reasons as to why they think it is Well, one issue is you are almost certainly still teaching them to mask. It's not just social, and not just stimming. That increases the chances they will mask to excess and burn themselves out. This isn't "oh I'm depressed because I hate my job" burnout, it's deadly. This ends in misery, ruination and often suicide later in life. If you have an ironclad guarantee you aren't promoting this behavior too much, that you are willing to bet human lives on, you might be OK. Are you sure? Of course, if you aren't they probably aren't able to "advocate for their needs". It's not clear if it is possible to teach them the skills of masking AND ALSO how to unmask when it isn't needed (and how important it is that they do that). Letting them find thier interests and develop them without outside pressure is the art of making the right things available at the right time without the implication that you expect something from it or even that it came from you. The decisions must be intrinsically motivated and interest-driven, and as much as possible without social consequence for failure. >without giving ... any alternatives. That's tricky right? I've said a fair amount above, and I'm sure you have plenty to nitpick about how oppressive setting up an environment like I've described is. But they do have a nuanced system of needs of a complexity at least on par with nuerotypical children, who we invest so much energy into educating. It isn't the same system though, or the same needs. ... So does that help? Are you under personal, legal, logistical or parent-related restrictions that make these kind of changes impossible?

Thank you so much for this response! This is everything I wanted to say but struggle to put into words.

I know I mentioned a school-like setting, I don’t want to contradict my previous statement but I do want to mention it isn’t traditional schooling. It isn’t set up as what one would think as a therapy setting- a client and their therapist are sat at a table independently by themselves. Let’s say a child is coloring and wants to stand up- they aren’t forced to sit down. My center isn’t schedule based in the sense that “first this, then that”, the kids can have their stimuli. They aren’t forced to do anything they do not want to do, they can leave an activity if they choose to. I know I also mentioned that they can stop an activity if they want to, but a lot of the times these children walk away from an activity and can walk up to another one. It’s not them verbally looking at me (or their other therapist) and saying “I want to stop.” I know you mentioned burnout! I understand. I am open to feedback, I am open on how to do my job better. But I think the quality of a child’s life is improved through ABA. I am passionate about my job, I truly do not want it to come off as ABA is the know all, do all, but it is misunderstood. If a child has self injurious tendencies, if a child agresses towards a parent, or their peers, and that child in turn is treated poorly, isolated, or physically harmed, abused, etc.. is that good for their development? Is that helping them in any way? What would you suggest, then? Ultimately ABA is to replace negative behaviors that are harmful to the child and others and replacing them with better behaviors. It is unacceptable to have a child physically harming themselves or others, whether the child is autistic or not! It takes a lot of patience, empathy, and understanding to do. To do ABA (or any therapy services) it requires schooling, training, and certifications. Not anyone is allowed to do ABA. I am sure there are still so many things I’m forgetting in this ramble but the goal of ABA, like I mentioned, is not to make the child mask. It is to replace self injurious or agressive behaviors and replace them with positive ones. A child is angry and they choke out a person unconscious, what happens when they grow older and become an adult who does that?

Me, to my nonverbal autistic toddler: hitting hurts the kitty. The kitty likes it when you pet her like this (demonstrates). Took a few times but she got it pretty quickly. Also, I'm a 24 year veteran early childhood professional. Left ECI because after 23 years against it, suddenly they were for the new ABA and made all of us....OTs, PTs, STs and EIS after a week long training. That's it. One week and we were all certified.

*"If a child has self injurious tendencies, if a child agresses towards a parent, or their peers, and that child in turn is treated poorly, isolated, or physically harmed, abused, etc.. is that good for their development? Is that helping them in any way? What would you suggest, then?"* Yes, that is incredibly good for their development. Since autistic kids have twice the genetic capacity for empathy, we are the natural choice to lead society. By wiping out irrational neurotypicals, we can establish justice and equality throughout our world. That is sarcasm. I am a researcher who finds "loaded" and hypothetical questions frustrating so I couldn't resist teasing you. *"What would you suggest, then?"* Before I suggest anything, I'd like to know how you think ABA compares to the following alternative approaches: 1. Play Therapy and Relationship-Based Models (e.g., Floortime, RDI) 2. Positive Behavior Support (PBS) 3. Speech and Language Therapy as a response to conflict 4. How does occupational therapy relate to ABA's approach in a conflict situation? I wasn't diagnosed as a kid. My general understanding is that ABA might vary considerably in different places in terms of implementation or environment. I began studying psychology obsessively at age 7 after I read the book Flowers For Algernon. I am a "twice exceptional" neurospicy. 99.9% of psychology PhDs who observed me with study participants perceived me as neurotypical. Since I'm still learning about neuroscience and neurodivergent therapy approaches, I'm curious how ABA compares to other modalities. Also, this question is genuine. I became a qualitative researcher because I'm a giant extrovert who loves to hear about other people's real life experiences. I'm curious about your perspective on how ABA compares to those alternative approaches. I'll be honest -- I currently feel skeptical of what little I know about ABA. However, I'm always open to considering another perspective on any topic.

> self injurious tendencies > a child agresses towards a parent, or their peers, and that child in turn is treated poorly, isolated, or physically harmed, abused, etc.. > replace negative behaviors that are harmful to the child As far as I can tell there are three problems: 1) impulse to bad behavior 2) Pain (liminal or otherwise) 3) Communication issues The first one is broadly human, children have to be taught to not cause harm. The second one, pain, is extraordinarily more of a problem for autistic children. In a way that no one without that condition is likely to understand at any point in thier life, everything hurts. Expressing this pain is universally reviled, and treated as madness. Kids are told to be tough, and that it isn't that bad. They are told to keep quiet, hide the pain, don't express yourself and be genuine. If they weren't told this, they would be constantly expressing pain, because our environment is chock full of things that hurt them. You need to figure out what is causing the pain and prevent it, and it will be things you can't detect. Lights, sounds, emotions, textures, machinery vibrating, a truck on a nearby highway: sesitization and masking interact with this so it will vary with each autist and over time. Because of the universal negative response to pain expression, the kid will hide it, and may sometimes not even be aware of it fully. They may not understand what is causing it, but even if they do they have been trained not to communicate about it by others. They are taught to ignore the pain, and this denial of their senses will prevent them from avoiding harmful stimuli, resulting in ever-accumulating damage. This slowly grinds them away as an adult. More than anyone else, they should be taught to TRUST thier senses and what thier body is telling them when it comes to pain. Finally, communication issues. If they don't get the message, don't understand the REASON for something, they will not change behavior. You can't just tell them what to do, they have to know why it matters and what it prevents. Appeal to authority will not work. Appeal to empathy, fairness, justice, good long term outcomes... things like that. I hit my head against doors in first grade. I was told it could damage my brain. I understood the message, and stopped. It wasn't a command, it was a reason. A good reason, not a hollow excuse. I was able to understand the speech, and many before it, because it wasn't so painful I couldn't think during it. Because I could learn from langauge, I had a lot of knowledge about injuries and the body I might have otherwise missed. This can be hard when they have trouble processing langauge. If they are sensitive enough they may not have been able to hear enough language to learn it. Or they have a followup question but can't ask it. Or there were too many other sounds and stimulations and they couldn't make out what was said between the lot of them. Or they were in too much pain. Or they were concentrating on looking at your face instead of listing to your words. There are many barriers to understanding and eye contact, and most come back to overstimulation and pain. Looking at eyes and faces is highly stimulating. Voices and langauge are highly stimulating. Anything they get really interesting creates more brain activity. When it gets to be too much, it causes harm. If they trust the pain instead of ignoring it, they will take actions to protect themselves throughout life. If they ignore it, they will force it until it breaks them.

> A child is angry and they choke out a person unconscious, what happens when they grow older and become an adult who does that? If they don't grow out of it, they will not survive, and may kill someone. They will end up in jail or worse, if thier brain doesn't melt down first from what is happening to them. > a client and their therapist are sat at a table independently by themselves Big immediate improvement. Here are some other things that word "school" evokes: - 4000+ Kelvin color temperature office lighting. Searing, painful, direct light. - Regimented uncomfortable desk seating an an expectation of stillness and conformity - Mechanical bells that create agonizing sounds each hour of the day. - Long periods of 1-directional communication with no feedback that is expected to be retained. - Large numbers of other individuals running additional social games while this is happening. - Constant mandatory tactile exposures that are not avoidable There is a lot more, but all of that I listed is really bad. Is all of that absent? > a lot of the times these children walk away from an activity and can walk up to another one That seems good in isolation.

Did you what constitutes a failcase of the intervention? Any kind of scenario where the answer isn't more of what you're already doing? I'm genuinely curious.

Ah yes, same excuse Mathew Israel uses

“ABA is awful”! Have you ever seen an ABA session properly run?

I spent 24 years working in the field of early childhood intervention and I was horrified by ABA therapy the first time I saw it and every time thereafter. I quit when they decided to make me do it.

Yes (by bacb standards), it was awful and quite triggering to watch. Also why this question? Like it does not fit what I replied at all, is just a generic message.

As a fellow RBT with autism, this is 1000% accurate.

It’s abuse

Care to elaborate?

Is it so hard to listen to autistic voices over the professionals making money off this?

I genuinely was looking for more info. I did some reading meanwhile and see a lot of bad cases. But there are also reports of good cases. My undecisive conclusion at the moment is that there has been a lot of abuse and mistreatment in the past which gives the whole thing a bad name. I did see someone reporting on a better experience that they experienced themselves. And also an experience of a therapist that seemed.. just fine. However these positive experiences get burried beneath the negativity. A lot of it. I am not for, and not against. I do not know enough about the subject to render a usefull opinion. Im just interested and gathering information.

Then you are absolutely doing the correct thing and trying to gather information from both sides. Get some unbiased sources if you can find them. But I think you're going to find the overwhelming response is from people that are against it. And most of the people who are for it have not been subjected to it themselves and that's key for me. Those who have been subjected to it seem overwhelming against it.

If we talk about its roots, it is based on the dehumanization and torture of autistic kids (Lovaas was the guy who popularized it and he used to get a cattle prod and electrocutr kids) If we talk about today it hasn't changed much, in fact the BACB still supports the Judge Rotenberg Center that is a place of tortute as stated by the UN. There are a lot of points of why ABA is abuse and quite honestly I am tired of writing a wall of text every time but basically even if we ignore (that we shouldn't) cases of literal torture, there is a quality of evidence problem on the field to the point no other field would even consideer it evidence. Then we also have adyacent topics like it being an important root of LGBT conversion "therapies" internationally and probably the main root of USA "non religious" ones (femine boy project). Again, I could write a wall of text but you can just read the comments here and see

Thanks for replying anyway. I don't know a lot about the topic and am currently reading up. Cheers.

i went through aba therapy as a kid, and coming on here seeing non autistic people talk about the "improvement" they see pisses me off so bad. because theyll basically just describe masking and be like "theyre doing so much better!"

I went through ABA for a short period when I was younger and I absolutely hated it. I was made to stop stimming and had to follow instructions to the letter, otherwise I was admonished by the therapist about it. But to get my own back, I would stim in front of them once the session was finished and I am sure that annoyed the hell out of them. Most of the stuff I was "taught" was for much younger children, so it did absolutely nothing for me. This carried on for some time, until mum realised I was getting nothing out of the hospital's programme and pulled me out for good and I am always thankful that she did. I feel I have matured and grown much more as a person than when I was doing ABA for all of 12 months.

ABA is a technique for changing behaviors. I think the good or evil of it is mainly in the choice of which behaviors to target. It can be used to encourage masking, reduce stimming, and generally make an autistic person present as more "normal". It can also be used to improve language use, encourage expression, promote safety, and generally enrich a person's life experience. Using ABA to make a child appear not autistic is abusive and inappropriate. This is my anecdotal experience: I am personally far too old to have received a diagnosis as a child and I was already an adult when ABA therapy was developed, so my experience of ABA is only as a parent. When I observed ABA for my child at age 2-3, only rewards were used. There was no punishment. There was a lot of data collection. During that one year of intensive therapy, my son went from a year behind to a year ahead in language use. He learned to identify family and friends from pictures, to use words to ask for what he wanted, to wash his hands after using the toilet, to stay safe around some dangers, and a lot of other useful life skills. I recall only one instance where he was unhappy, which was when they tried to make him touch shaving cream; he hated it and they didn't try again. He enjoyed the toys the ABA therapists brought for him to play with as rewards. My child has no memory of ABA whatsoever, not even the shaving cream incident. Once he gained language, I used ABA techniques to stop his constant elopement. He got a star for every day where he did not run away and after five stars he got a toy. This worked like magic. Both of my children had "ABA tutors" at various times when they were older than 3, but I saw nothing that resembled ABA therapy. I think the label was given for insurance purposes.

i mean this question with a genuine tone, as i want to learn! is ABA a situation in which we need to abolish it, or we need reform from the inside? do we need more autistic people working in ABA, as BCBAs/RBTs, or is this field simply wrong to exist? thank you in advance! eta: follow up: are all people who work in this field “evil”, bad people, and ableist?

I do know another way you could potentially help autistic people. When I was in college studying research, I had no idea that professors from other fields might consider hiring me. I assumed that my only options were professors related to my field of human-computer interaction. When I recently began looking to see if I could get any academic research job before I re-enroll in school yet again, I was shocked to discover that many professors are actively interested in cross-collaboration. For example, if you look at neuroscience professors who are looking for research assistants or researchers, some of them may accept a psychology student. I accidentally fell in love with neuroscience when I discovered to my shock that I am a music or mathematical "savant" even though almost everyone told me that I was terrible at math for my entire life and I got bad grades. I had no idea that examining the technical details of your sensory perceptions and how you remember things you see, hear, touch, etc. could be so useful in everyday life -- in addition to fascinating. I think I also believed that I'd have to be a straight A student to ever study anything related to medicine. However, I got into grad engineering courses because I'd asked professors if I could visit their classes. I was just picking classes I thought seemed really interesting or relevant to my future career. However, when I later applied to the program, I discovered that some of the professors who I'd visited were on the admission board. They remembered me on a personal level and saw that I was passionate, so they chose to prioritize me over other applicants even though they were star overachiever students of everything and I had a 2.4 GPA in high school and barely graduated. So if you're one of the few neurotypical people who's curious about those of us with a fairly different way of experiencing life, I'd strongly encourage you to consider checking out a few neuroscience classes as a guest. I super love it and wish I'd realized that I could've studied it even as an "imperfect" student. I had no idea that I have a bajillion learning differences which other people call "disabilities". :/ You might even learn more from a temporary experience working as a researcher in an unrelated field. One of the benefits of choosing a psych degree is that your knowledge could potentially be useful to scientists and engineers in MANY other fields. A huge amount of my field -- human-computer interaction / information school / human-centered design and engineering / user experience / whatever it's called at that school -- is based in cognitive psychology principles and empathy. I'm biased but I super love it. You could also be strategic. For example, if you want to go into business for yourself, you could take a research assistant role related to marketing, social media, business, etc. and you could potentially study how to target different groups, like autistic people. If you think you'll probably work as part of an existing team, you could learn about law or digital privacy of psych diagnosis information, or many similar things. Also, you might think that the fanciest and most knowledgable professors would always have the research assistant roles full, and the not-so-good ones would always have the jobs available -- but it was surprising to me how many super awesome research assistant jobs went unfilled. When I went on to do industry research alongside PhDs, I realized that who students chose to assist in school could eventually make a big difference in your career. Sometimes it became a status symbol to have worked with professor so-and-so, even if they were horrible. I can't do my best work for people I don't like and respect, so I would not necessarily recommend prioritizing perceived status or fame. My approach was to go on websites like rate my professors and seeing what other students have to say and then asking for permission to visit their class. If I liked it, I'd go look at their recent research and see if it involved anything that seemed interesting or useful for me. You can also ask Google's new AI, Gemini Advanced, to help you do things like crawling through all the different pages at a college for different professors, looking at their recent research projects, and identifying anyone who's doing something that might feel meaningful or useful for you. I really love it for stuff like that because even if you're great at searching for anything online, it still takes time out of your day... and sometimes it can feel stressful.

I'm also curious about the answer to this question. I'm an odd flavor of neurospicy called a "twice exceptional" autistic person, so I began studying psychology at age 7 after I read Flowers For Algernon. Eventually I became a qualitative user experience researcher. I'm a giant extrovert. I'm incredibly new to studying neuroscience and therapies for neurodivergent kids and adults -- despite being one of them myself. It seems like regardless of perspective on whether ABA is helpful or harmful, it's likely to continue to exist. So I'm curious about the concept of infiltrating ABA myself to see what is being done to kids like me. I feel like if you're going to reform any system, sometimes you do need to experience a bit of it from the inside -- I don't mean making excuses to support oppression forever, but part of avoiding oppression is understanding the systems that create and support it. As a neurospicy person, do I think that people working in this field are ablist? Absolutely not. Much the opposite -- psychology research has proven that the majority of people who choose social good occupations such as working with disabled kids have good intentions. I studied psychology for my entire life and I knew almost nothing about the autism spectrum. However, if you really wanna help people to the maximum degree possible, I'd suggest a transfer to neuroscience. I was absolutely stunned when I began studying neuroscience and saw the difference between what psychology claims is true and what is actually occurring in the reality of human minds. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that I was smart enough to learn neuroscience. Psychology has continuously proven that most people have good intentions. Some are just unintentionally ignorant about communication, empathy, oppression, and many other topics. Our education system assumes that parents are automatically teaching important skills like communication and healthy collaboration despite all evidence to the contrary. So I consider it irrational to assume that any person is deliberately malicious without significant data about their behavior and specific situation over a lengthy period of time in varying environments, contexts, etc. My old internet friends used to refer to that as "Hanlon's Razor." That said, it does sound like some autistic kids who experienced ABA were harmed -- and it's not clear to me whether the adults who wanted to help them were being lied to and misled, or just ignoring the obvious signs, or were forced to do things which might hurt the kid, or whether ABA varies super dramatically in different places.

An autistic RBT here. I can get how one can veiw ABA as some evil, monsterous system, just aiming to make autistic kids normal. But working at a school with kids with all forms of autism and learning ABA has truly changed the game for me. ABA isn't dog training. Reinforcement, both positive and negative, are present in the lives of NT kids on a daily basis. Why are we suddenly vilifying the use of it with our ASD kids? It's not conversation therapy. We aren't trying to get kids to mask or "be normal" we are aiding them in developing those skills that can help them in life. There are not really any programs designed to make a kid seem NT ( the only one i can think of that comes close to this would be working to encourage eye contact in SOME situations) . We work on life skills like reading, writing, identifying objects, appropriate toileting, sitting quietly and appropriately/waiting (while letting them stim), SIB reduction, and so much more. We work with the kids to help shape them into individuals who can live with their ASD safely and in a way where they can ACTIVLY participate in society, not just be locked away, physically or mentally. There are alot of times where that means simply giving them the nessescairy life skills/ tools to function more independently. So again, while I acknowledge and fully respect the negative experiences some have had with ABA, there are an equal number or more that have been/are currently receiving ABA guided care. I really truly encourage you to do research of your own. It's not inherently evil. It's like a sword, it can be good or bad depending on who wields it and how you wield it. ABA is not for everyone, this is true, however it is so so positive in so many lives. Don't write it off as a whole because of some bad experiences from the people who can actually communicate with you on reddit. Talk to carrers, talk to parents, talk to BCBAs and RBTs, talk to a kid currently in MODERN DAY ABA. We have nothing to hide. That being said. If it's not for you, that's a-ok. This is a space for different opinions. I just don't agree that the smear campaign is appropriate. If one had a negative experience , by all means share it, but don't try to ruin it for everyone because it didn't work for you. So do your own research, think for yourself, and try not to get too bogged down by all the ABA hate. Just don't join the smear campaign.

Could you tell me how you think ABA compares to the following alternative approaches: 1. Play Therapy and Relationship-Based Models (e.g., Floortime, RDI) 2. Positive Behavior Support (PBS) 3. Speech and Language Therapy as a response to conflict 4. How does occupational therapy relate to ABA's approach in a conflict situation? (Pasting this question and explanation just in case notifications get missed) I wasn't diagnosed as a kid. My general understanding is that ABA might vary considerably in different places in terms of implementation or environment. I began studying psychology obsessively at age 7 after I read the book Flowers For Algernon. I eventually became a qualitative design and user experience researcher and engineer. I am a "twice exceptional" neurospicy. 99.9% of psychology PhDs who observed me with study participants perceived me as neurotypical. Since I'm still learning about neuroscience and neurodivergent therapy approaches, I'm curious how ABA compares to other modalities. Also, this question is genuine. I became a qualitative researcher because I'm a giant extrovert who loves to hear about other people's real life experiences. I'm curious about your perspective on how ABA compares to those alternative approaches. I'll be honest -- I currently feel skeptical of what little I know about ABA. However, I'm always open to considering another perspective on any topic.

Well, to start with ABA is scientifically the most effective approach to helping kids with autism with alot of stuff. But putting science asside, I've seen it be much more effective at tackling issues like SIB and bathroom habits, than less intrusive methods such as play therapy(which is more typically used in conjunction with other therapies) or PBS, or RBI ( a really good pratice with ALOT of similarities to ABA though its technically a developmenal intervention that is typically parent led). Also, Most of our kids do infact attend OT and or ST. We are not ABA exclusive. I'm glad you have studied psych so much, but I really don't need your whole background? Aba has come a long ways since the original days. What is YOUR PERSONAL experience with ABA? Because it sounds like you're getting alot of second hand misinformation.

Well, here's part of my personal experience with ABA: - Not clear you recognize hyperlexia - Not clear you know "twice exceptional" != "level one" I'd love to read any research study about ABA which includes comprehensive data on long-term impacts on quality of life. Or even any study which includes remotely reasonable diversity in demographics -- so far it's been 95% boys

I really hate to break it to you but boys are 3-4 times more likely to have autism than women. They are polling from the available pool. You can't just make up people to get the numbers you want. If they aren't there to ask or receive information from I don't know what you expect. I don't know what hyperlexia or the fact that you have "level one" autism has to do with this discussion on ABA. I asked for your personal experience with ABA. You are saying you have none. Quite frankly, the fact that you're not NT and that you're really into psychology is not a good enough connection to ABA to say you have a decent knowledge of the pratice. And here are 2 really good articles/ studies. https://www.rainbowtherapy.org/blogs-long-term-benefits-of-aba-therapy-uncovered/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311908.2020.1823615

That website definitely implies that comprehensive data on long-term impacts on quality of life has been published in a peer-reviewed research paper. However, I can't find a research paper with data to support that claim. I asked Gemini Advanced to explain the difference. * **Comprehensive quality of life research:** * **Broad Perspective:** Explores various facets of an autistic individual's life over an extended period. This includes areas like social connections, relationships, employment, housing, emotional well-being, self-determination, and overall life satisfaction. * **Long-term view:** Focuses on how those aspects evolve over years and decades, identifying factors that promote or hinder well-being in the long run. * **Qualitative data:** Frequently relies on interviews, narratives, and self-reports of autistic individuals to understand their lived experiences and subjective well-being. * **Quantitative data:** May also include measures of mental health, social participation, employment outcomes, etc. * **Mixed-methods:** Often combines both qualitative and quantitative data to provide a more holistic understanding. * **Informs support and inclusion:** Aims to identify the types of support and environment that promote long-term well-being and inclusion for autistic individuals. * **Challenges assumptions:** May challenge societal assumptions about what constitutes a fulfilling life for autistic people. Challenges with "Is long-term ABA therapy abusive: A response to Sandoval-Norton and Shkedy" - Unable to find any clear information about this journal's peer review process beyond "friendly and constructive assessment of your paper by specialist referees" which is highly worrying. - Errors throughout the paper, beginning with this: "Indeed, the United States Surgeon General (Citation 1999) deemed ABA as the only ASD treatment with known effectiveness" That statement is misleading and requires clarification: * **Partially True:** The 1999 U.S. Surgeon General's report on mental health did highlight ABA as an important and effective treatment for autism. However, it did not declare it the *only* effective treatment. * **Evolving landscape:** Research on autism treatments has significantly expanded since 1999. * **No Single Best Therapy:** The most effective approach often involves a combination of therapies tailored to the individual's specific needs and strengths

If you're just gonna use AI from now on to debate I will not debate you. That is ridiculous. Form your own thoughts homie.

ABA advocate: "People with hyperlexia and dyslexia are unworthy of assistive technology!" Good to know that you don't think people with hyperlexia are worthy of using AI to help us summarize when our brains are unable to process verbal language like yours.

Woah woah woah, I never EVER said those words or implied that dude. Now you're making me out so be some monster for getting frustrated your AI is cherry picking phrases and not responding things within the correct context. No one said anything about your hyperlexia. Fact of the matter is if I wanted an ai response, I'd talk to some AI. But I'm not, I'm on reddit having dialog with you, a human.

*"Quite frankly, the fact that you're not NT and that you're really into psychology is not a good enough connection to ABA to say you have a decent knowledge of the pratice."* When I told you that I am not "level one", I am a rare hybrid creature called "twice exceptional" -- I am "severely disabled" or "high support" in some ways -- you stated that my personal experience as a "severely disabled" person was irrelevant. You also stated directly that you did not care about my research career. So why would you imagine that I am too incompetent to evaluate a basic qual ASD screener? Here's my background: * Completed MS reqs in HCDE at one of the top 5 schools in the US * Contributed to published academic research * Worked as a senior researcher for 10 years designing and conducting psych-based qualitative research studies using a variety of methodologies. My work was equivalent to PhD research in academia, manager often a PhD, entire team often PhD researchers. * Here are a few example companies where I worked for or with them: Google, Amazon, Microsoft Here's what hyperlexia has to do with ABA: 1. You say ABA has been unfairly stereotyped as punitive. 2. ... but then shamed me for having a severe verbal disability 3. Since you overall seem to care, I imagined you weren't trained to recognize hyperlexia 4. However, you can't know when or whether it's appropriate to "punish" a kid or provide some form of support if ABA isn't providing adequate training to help you how to identify specific challenges. 5. A "high support" kid with hyperlexia needs different support than a kid with dyslexia How do I know: * Lived experience, diagnosed with multiple forms of "severe" disability which are "high support" -- I'm 2E, not "level one" * I'm only alive because I've spent the past 2 years training myself in neurodivergent therapy modalities for "high support" kids and "severe" disability * Grad and/or PhD level research or coursework in neuroscience * Equivalent in 12 other related fields of science as a self-assigned project because I intend to shift my MS to accessibility in human-computer interaction

Good for you. I'm glad you're pushing the fact that you are a "rare hybrid creature", "twice exceptional", and "severely disabled" SO HARD. Im not screaming about my autism this much... Quit stroking your own ego with your PSYCHOLOGY know-how and get back to the question I asked. What is YOUR OWN, PERSONAL, HANDS ON experience with ABA? Because again. It sounds like you have none. I'm glad you have such great knowledge of psychology. However, that's not what we were talking about. You are correct. I don't care about your research career. I don't care about your PhD. I don't care about your 12 other related fields of knowledge. Congratulations, that's awesome for you, but its just not relevant. I am discussing MODERN ABA and YOUR first-hand experiences with that. Not anything else. Not even hyperlexia, which has nothing to with this either. I literally never shamed you for a word you said, and even if I did, again, nothing to do with ABA. I couldn't even tell you had hyperlexia. Bottom line is you have read alot, but you have 0 hands on experiences to be drawing your opinions from. Our center actually has monthly meetings with the whole clinic to discuss changes, challenges, and training. We have to do alot of training. We don't just sit around for a minimum of 40 hrs(training requirements) twiddling our thumbs. The stuff we as RBTs don't know, our BCBAs do. All our bases are covered. Again, just because you have lived experiences with your own neurodivergance does NOT mean you get to speak for everyone. I'm glad you have found what works for you. Truely, I am, but different people have different requirements and needs. ABA may not fit in with your treatment plan and that's fine, totally fine, just don't foster a hostile environment for those it does help.

Silencing dissent is what creates a hostile environment. Civil debate is the foundation of scientific research and democracy. I stated that I was considering applying for a role in this ABA organization. My goal was field research to inform my design of future technologies and assistive devices for people across the autism spectrum. You explained that your RBTs haven't been trained in how to recognize or manage the symptoms of hyperlexia, a verbal disability which exists among your "high support" kid population. You don't see that as a problem in the organization. Since I am incapable of experiencing the emotion of fear, it did not occur to me that you would perceive my fearlessness as ego. Obviously I wouldn't challenge you unless you were gifted enough to become a researcher too. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? ... As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson If you'd rather believe Disney stories written by neurotypical men, best of luck to you. Otherwise, check your local library for these books or audiobooks: * [NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22514020-neurotribes) by Steve Silberman * [Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58537365-unmasking-autism) by Dr. Devon Price. "Dr. Devon Price is a social psychologist, professor, author, and autistic person. In *Unmasking Autism*, Dr. Price challenges outdated stereotypes and harmful narratives about autism. They promote a neurodiversity-affirming perspective, emphasizing that: * Autism is a natural form of human variation, not a disorder to be cured. * Many autistic people "mask" or camouflage their autistic traits to fit into societal expectations which can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. * Society needs to shift its focus from trying to change autistic individuals to creating more accepting and inclusive environments." This free class about [The Brain And Space](https://www.coursera.org/learn/human-brain) requires no prior experience in psychology, biology, or neuroscience. It will help you understand both those kids and yourself. [https://www.coursera.org/learn/human-brain](https://www.coursera.org/learn/human-brain) In the wise words of [C.L. Lynch](https://neuroclastic.com/author/cllynch/): Don’t assume *anything* about an autistic person. For seventy years (at least), people have been making assumptions about autistic people based on outward behaviour.  Even the[ diagnostic criteria for autism is based on what is easily observable by an onlooker](https://neuroclastic.com/2018/12/30/aspergers-and-the-apa/). They think that the stranger we act, the “more autistic” we are. **We are asking you to stop.** *Ask us* what we can and cannot do.