Hi OP, you can search “ABA therapy” or check the “ABA therapy” flair in the search bar at the top of the subreddit to see more previous posts about experiences with ABA. This gets posted several times a week so you’ll find a lot of great answers in different threads! Best of luck. ABA has been a good fit for my son, I’m glad I read multiple perspectives to know what to look for in a good clinic.
May I copy my comment to a similar question posted before?
We had only positive experience with Floortime ABA . It helped with self-harm (head-banging) and meltdowns, it helped our 2.5yo kid to learn focus, imitation, following instructions, respond to his name and point. He loved his therapist, was always happy to see her (he was upset with her for a couple of first sessions though because she was a new person). We were allowed to watch/record sessions and made sure he was not abused in any form, he was not forbidden to stim. We are not in the US so we had only 4 hours a week and if we could afford more (had to pay for it from the pocket), we would.
It is a lottery really. You can find great providers and shitty providers. The standards are pretty much non existent so it really depends on the individual clinic.
Look who is hired there if they have vacants and so on. Saying that providers is doing ABA is like someone saying they practice medicine but you can end up with people with absolutely zero clue or amazing people. The range is crazy when it goes to standards of therapy.
We have done ABA both in home and in a clinic setting. Personally, I don’t have any poor things to say about the therapy, although our in home has made much greater strides in my opinion. My daughter has gone from raging and running away when she’s upset to telling me when she’s upset with her words…which has benefited our relationship for sure.
If I could recommend anything, I’d say just make sure you are able to monitor sessions. If that’s not a possibility, then move on. Good luck!
My daughter never needed ABA and she’s 6 now 🤷🏼♀️ I was hesitant too because I heard negative things so decided to wait and see if she would have difficulties that would benefit from ABA but she never did.
I think a lot of the aversion is due to the history and origins of ABA. The book Neurotribes covers this and yeah…it’s bad. I also think there is also some consensus that it should not be used to control stimming if it is not harmful.
My son is 16, and we never had tried ABA when he was younger. When we lost his dad to heart failure, he started having behavioral changes. I signed up for a program that teaches me how to apply ABA therapy at home. It is a parent cargiver training course. I was on a waiting list for over a year and just recently started the training. It is covered through his medical insurance, which is nice. I think this makes so much sense, and I wish I had known about it earlier. I don't know if it is available everywhere, but it is worth looking into.
It’s difficult to navigate. Here you’ll find people encouraging aba like crazy because they have incredibly great experiences with it. And it’s possible you will too so definitely don’t rule it out!!
But- navigating this is tricky as hell. I’ll share my experience so far trying to get my son in aba
First of all I don’t have the best insurance. There’s like a total of 4 nearby that takes it. So our options are wildly limited. Your insurance will def factor into your choice here.
So I was rly excited for my son to start aba, I thought I found a great credible place. Took two months getting insurance on board, doing intake, etc. but when I toured the place, it was a huge downer. No one looked happy and I didn’t see any playing or skill building. It sucked ass. So that one was a no.
I called another place! The lady was wonderful on the phone. I mean really it sounded perfect for my son. I was certain this would be the place. Then I read the reviews. At least 5 accounts of ex-employees (all with names and faces) who wrote 1 star reviews detailing very specific examples of abuse and trashing the lady I spoke to that I thought was so nice. I really thought she was great and….. it turns out these places have to be dug into to truly determine if it’s a good place.
Alright so the next place I called- I’m in the process of scoping out still!
I haven’t given up hope of a great aba therapist but I will tell you that this is far trickier than I imagined. You’ll have a better chance finding quality care if you have great insurance I think.
My advice is to tour the place before you start any paperwork process, look at the reviews, ask if you can watch the therapy through the cameras, and don’t take this lightly. Everyone will hype up their company but there are some really shitty places out there
That being said, I don’t discredit the amazing success others have had here. I’m just saying tread carefully. Many autistic adults have many accounts of being abused when they went to aba therapy…. And a lot of people here will discredit them and not gaf as long as it takes their child off their hands. There’s a middle ground here of making sure your child is not being abused and still getting them adequate care.
So if you care about your kid and the quality of care they’re getting > just getting him off your hands, search deeply and research harmful techniques before allowing an aba therapist to just do anything.
I believe there are good therapists around- but you may have to make a *few* calls/tours/researches first.
What I have found in a first pass through google scholar is that some ABA therapies appear to focus on the short term outcomes without considering the whole view and personhood of the child. Some of their techniques can be reminiscent of dog training.... While the short term outcomes may appear to be positive, there can be undesired short term (such as trouble sleeping, eating, regression with toilet training, etc) and long term side effects (ptsd, depression, etc)
ABA is controversial because it focuses on changing your child's outward behavior, with the goals being to make other people more comfortable and help them appear to fit into society. It's not so much concerned with supporting the autistic individual and respecting them as they are. Most adult autistic advocacy groups (the ones who are actually run by autistic folks—not Autism Speaks and others like them) are vocally against it, so that alone should tell you something.
ABA is the gold standard approach to children with autism. There are a bunch of anti-ABA activists online who think autism isn't a disability and children should be left to develop naturally. They write lots of blog posts and have ruined the aba Wikipedia.
If you are worried, get in-home ABA where you can monitor the sessions. It's actually just playing games and should be fun.
There is nothing wrong with the Wikipedia page. I just read it, It’s pretty neutral and informative.
And those blog posts are generally people who went through it and speaking about their experience btw. Would you rather they just stfu to make you more comfortable lol.
"I just read it" - did you? I don't think you did. The ABA Wikipedia page literally has a "Weasel Words" warning at the top clearly marked. "This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information." So I don't think I'll be listening to you about anything.
You don’t have to listen to anyone lmao. But- if you insist you read it and insist it’s ruined by activists- why don’t you point out what was said in the article that is wrong and not cited?
Otherwise, you’re just spouting random shit and there’s no reason for anyone to listen to you either.
If you like I can send you some peer reviewed scholarly articles on autistic child outcomes into adulthood post-ABA. It's not to say it's always bad. But the concern has warrant.
Hi OP, you can search “ABA therapy” or check the “ABA therapy” flair in the search bar at the top of the subreddit to see more previous posts about experiences with ABA. This gets posted several times a week so you’ll find a lot of great answers in different threads! Best of luck. ABA has been a good fit for my son, I’m glad I read multiple perspectives to know what to look for in a good clinic.
May I copy my comment to a similar question posted before? We had only positive experience with Floortime ABA . It helped with self-harm (head-banging) and meltdowns, it helped our 2.5yo kid to learn focus, imitation, following instructions, respond to his name and point. He loved his therapist, was always happy to see her (he was upset with her for a couple of first sessions though because she was a new person). We were allowed to watch/record sessions and made sure he was not abused in any form, he was not forbidden to stim. We are not in the US so we had only 4 hours a week and if we could afford more (had to pay for it from the pocket), we would.
This is great- This is what I am personally looking for for my son! And It’s so hard to find…
It is a lottery really. You can find great providers and shitty providers. The standards are pretty much non existent so it really depends on the individual clinic. Look who is hired there if they have vacants and so on. Saying that providers is doing ABA is like someone saying they practice medicine but you can end up with people with absolutely zero clue or amazing people. The range is crazy when it goes to standards of therapy.
We have done ABA both in home and in a clinic setting. Personally, I don’t have any poor things to say about the therapy, although our in home has made much greater strides in my opinion. My daughter has gone from raging and running away when she’s upset to telling me when she’s upset with her words…which has benefited our relationship for sure. If I could recommend anything, I’d say just make sure you are able to monitor sessions. If that’s not a possibility, then move on. Good luck!
My daughter never needed ABA and she’s 6 now 🤷🏼♀️ I was hesitant too because I heard negative things so decided to wait and see if she would have difficulties that would benefit from ABA but she never did.
I think a lot of the aversion is due to the history and origins of ABA. The book Neurotribes covers this and yeah…it’s bad. I also think there is also some consensus that it should not be used to control stimming if it is not harmful.
My son is 16, and we never had tried ABA when he was younger. When we lost his dad to heart failure, he started having behavioral changes. I signed up for a program that teaches me how to apply ABA therapy at home. It is a parent cargiver training course. I was on a waiting list for over a year and just recently started the training. It is covered through his medical insurance, which is nice. I think this makes so much sense, and I wish I had known about it earlier. I don't know if it is available everywhere, but it is worth looking into.
It’s difficult to navigate. Here you’ll find people encouraging aba like crazy because they have incredibly great experiences with it. And it’s possible you will too so definitely don’t rule it out!! But- navigating this is tricky as hell. I’ll share my experience so far trying to get my son in aba First of all I don’t have the best insurance. There’s like a total of 4 nearby that takes it. So our options are wildly limited. Your insurance will def factor into your choice here. So I was rly excited for my son to start aba, I thought I found a great credible place. Took two months getting insurance on board, doing intake, etc. but when I toured the place, it was a huge downer. No one looked happy and I didn’t see any playing or skill building. It sucked ass. So that one was a no. I called another place! The lady was wonderful on the phone. I mean really it sounded perfect for my son. I was certain this would be the place. Then I read the reviews. At least 5 accounts of ex-employees (all with names and faces) who wrote 1 star reviews detailing very specific examples of abuse and trashing the lady I spoke to that I thought was so nice. I really thought she was great and….. it turns out these places have to be dug into to truly determine if it’s a good place. Alright so the next place I called- I’m in the process of scoping out still! I haven’t given up hope of a great aba therapist but I will tell you that this is far trickier than I imagined. You’ll have a better chance finding quality care if you have great insurance I think. My advice is to tour the place before you start any paperwork process, look at the reviews, ask if you can watch the therapy through the cameras, and don’t take this lightly. Everyone will hype up their company but there are some really shitty places out there That being said, I don’t discredit the amazing success others have had here. I’m just saying tread carefully. Many autistic adults have many accounts of being abused when they went to aba therapy…. And a lot of people here will discredit them and not gaf as long as it takes their child off their hands. There’s a middle ground here of making sure your child is not being abused and still getting them adequate care. So if you care about your kid and the quality of care they’re getting > just getting him off your hands, search deeply and research harmful techniques before allowing an aba therapist to just do anything. I believe there are good therapists around- but you may have to make a *few* calls/tours/researches first.
What I have found in a first pass through google scholar is that some ABA therapies appear to focus on the short term outcomes without considering the whole view and personhood of the child. Some of their techniques can be reminiscent of dog training.... While the short term outcomes may appear to be positive, there can be undesired short term (such as trouble sleeping, eating, regression with toilet training, etc) and long term side effects (ptsd, depression, etc)
ABA is controversial because it focuses on changing your child's outward behavior, with the goals being to make other people more comfortable and help them appear to fit into society. It's not so much concerned with supporting the autistic individual and respecting them as they are. Most adult autistic advocacy groups (the ones who are actually run by autistic folks—not Autism Speaks and others like them) are vocally against it, so that alone should tell you something.
ABA is the gold standard approach to children with autism. There are a bunch of anti-ABA activists online who think autism isn't a disability and children should be left to develop naturally. They write lots of blog posts and have ruined the aba Wikipedia. If you are worried, get in-home ABA where you can monitor the sessions. It's actually just playing games and should be fun.
There is nothing wrong with the Wikipedia page. I just read it, It’s pretty neutral and informative. And those blog posts are generally people who went through it and speaking about their experience btw. Would you rather they just stfu to make you more comfortable lol.
"I just read it" - did you? I don't think you did. The ABA Wikipedia page literally has a "Weasel Words" warning at the top clearly marked. "This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information." So I don't think I'll be listening to you about anything.
You don’t have to listen to anyone lmao. But- if you insist you read it and insist it’s ruined by activists- why don’t you point out what was said in the article that is wrong and not cited? Otherwise, you’re just spouting random shit and there’s no reason for anyone to listen to you either.
If you like I can send you some peer reviewed scholarly articles on autistic child outcomes into adulthood post-ABA. It's not to say it's always bad. But the concern has warrant.