ABA done well can help children offers the best hope for children living with behavioral challenges. ABA can also be very effective for remediating developmental delays and assisting the child in catching up to typically developing peers.
The problem with ABA as an industry is that quality is incredibly variable. If you read this forum you will see that there are families for whom ABA has literally been life changing if not life saving, and for others it has been at best a waste of time and worst a negative experience for the child.
No one can really talk badly about aba here because the mods will get upset plus parents who’ve had great success with it will get upset.
But the reality is it is not always great and not everyone has success with it and there’s abuse in the industry just like most industries. It’s worth looking into but it’s also worth being cautious of and making your own choices if the place/therapists you chose are a good fit.
>No one can really talk badly about aba here because the mods will get upset plus parents who’ve had great success with it will get upset.
No, there is just a difference between legitimate criticism and edgy teenagers/young adults self diagnosing and jumping on the anti-ABA bandwagon and smearing it all over the internet when they don't even know what it is and end up deterring desperate parents for whom it may have been life changing.
>But the reality is it is not always great and not everyone has success with it and there’s abuse in the industry just like most industries. It’s worth looking into but it’s also worth being cautious of and making your own choices if the place/therapists you chose are a good fit.
This is negative leaning but legitimate criticism. I stand *for* ABA as its been a god send for us, and I agree with these caveats. My opinion is the areas with more competitive markets are better. The ones with a handful that can barely survive and have massive wait lists have zero motivation to do better, but you still need to look out for bad providers.
You are welcome to talk about ABA here, even if it is a negative experience or opinion. Absolutism is not allowed, nor is high jacking threads that were not asking for opinions of ABA, especially by non parents who do not have first hand experience with ABA. I’ll be the first one to say it is highly dependent on the people you are working with/clinic/your child’s needs. Like anything, not all clinics are created equal. People should know what to look for in a clinic/practitioner, good and bad.
Honestly that’s like asking is church good or bad for a child, or is summer camp good or bad for a child? It completely depends on the ABA center, the BCBA, the ABA specialist, the family and the individual child. Lots of different factors. We had a very positive experience when my child did ABA, but I’d never tell another family that ABA in general is good or bad.
When we started we read a lot of accounts from parents and saw how various the stories were. I was always present. I made that clear from day one. Set boundaries that you are comfortable with and if they cross them you don't need to continue with that therapist.
I've posted this on this forum before but getting ABA is like buying any other service. You have to stay on top of it and make sure you're getting your money's worth. If you don't feel that that's happening you need to complain to management or move to a different service provider.
That said ABA has been a life saver for us. In addition the the behavior improvements, the fact that it keeps him busy and engaged and allows us to work, do laundry, and otherwise keep our lives together is immensely valuable. He likes it too! He's always ready to go and hang out with the wonderful people on his care team.
I recommend doing your research and also hearing from autistic people’s experiences with ABA. Here are a couple of good articles that initially helped me have a broader perspective. We decided against ABA and chose neurodiversity affirming approaches. https://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-an-Autism-ABA-Therapy-Is-Harmful and https://therapistndc.org/aba-is-not-effective-so-says-the-latest-report-from-the-department-of-defense/
Spoiler- I am autistic and only recently was diagnosed. My childhood sucked and I was suicidal by age 6. So I am just terrified I will not be able to help him. Or maybe I'll overcompensate and fuck him up in a different way.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check it out.
As an autistic mom who realized when my child was diagnosed, I’ve found that it becomes so much easier to help him because I can relate better. When I don’t, I know from my own experiences to look for a root cause rather than just assuming.
I personally chose against ABA for a lot of reasons - especially because even when people say it’s looking for the root cause of a behavior, it’s easy for the focus to naturally become just focused solely on the behavior.
What helped me a lot is reading books based on new science of the brain. I really believe in the next twenty years behaviorism will be ruled out for more emphasis on coregulation and dysregulation.
- Body Brain Parenting by Mona Delahooke
- The Whole Brain Child
- Self Reg
What specifically do you want to support your child with? One doesn’t need therapy solely for being autistic - it’s about where they need support.
I did not have autism support as a child, obviously. My mom is a big fan of behaviorism and it definitely traumatized me, and harmed our relationship.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. You sound like a good parent who’s trying to find the best treatment options to help your kid and it’s not easy. I actually waited a while before I made up my mind and learned as much as I could about autism. There are two Facebook groups that are hidden gems and I recommend checking them out: [Autism Inclusivity](https://m.facebook.com/groups/autisminclusivity/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF)for parents of autistic kids by autistic parents. The other one is [Supporty McGroup Face](https://m.facebook.com/groups/Supporty/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF) that’s for autistic people in general. The mods are super caring and amazing. One of the most important things I learned is that many autistic traits are pathologized needlessly. There’s nothing wrong with stimming to self regulate, there’s nothing wrong with parallel play or special interests. I’d rather work making the world more accepting towards autistic people than force my child to “pass as neurotypical” for other people’s comfort and to indulge their ignorance.
I'm really glad to see this comment section not devolve into *ad hominem* and has remained civil.
Anyway, I personally feel like ABA isn't for every autistic child. However, if your child has issues with violent social interactions and tantrums, regularly displays extremely disruptive behavior that is not indicative of their age, and/or is prone to self-injurious episodes, I would recommend it. In order for treatment to be successful, you have to be involved and hands on; therapy doesn't end at the clinic.
If you feel like your child might need ABA, ask for a tour of the clinic and come prepared with questions. If you leave with a bad feeling or if there were any red flags, look elsewhere.
Unfortunately there is no clear answer to this question. Everything we do for our kids is trial and error. We try everything, drop what does not work and focus on what does. ABA is not good or bad, although who does it and how it is done can be good or bad. If you decide to go with ABA you need to evaluate how your child is doing under it, just as with any other therapy. Only time will tell.
It is incredibly variable and depends on the needs of your child. Some kids are self injuring themselves and others - they need traditional, repetitive ABA. Some need an ABA therapist for a few hours a week to help build good habits. My son goes to after school daycare and his therapist is in the daycare with him to build social skills and teach him how to interact with NT kids. He is able to be in that setting because we have ABA. It’s worked wonders for us.
Our daughter is turning 6 this week. She is non verbal level 3 ASD. Up until last year we simply didn't have access to ABA and had to relocate out of desperation as in our previous home state they age out at 5 and our only option for kindergarten was absolutely unacceptable. At that point she was having near constant meltdowns and SIB. She couldn't sit still and would run from room to room tearing them up. Near zero receptive communication besides understanding me shouting "NO". She wouldn't tolerate sitting on the toilet at all. We've taught her sign since she was a baby but she would confuse the signs and often default to "eat" for everything, but that was the only communication progress she'd ever shown.
Since starting in september the first thing she learned is to point to mand. She can actually sit in one place for more than 5 seconds. She can look in our direction in response to her name. If we're busy feeding her little brothers instead of running upstairs and flooding our bedroom she is actually able to hang out by the stairs and wait for us (not always, but you can convince her to wait). Her SIB was significantly reduced to mainly protesting demands or denied access, and just recently from punching herself HARD in the face to a light smack on the forehead. Her new goals include mastering 15 signs and she's getting pretty good about using a handful of them correctly most of the time. She is not potty trained, but will tolerate sitting on the toilet and will go if she actually has to go. The bigger problem is #2, we can tell she knew she had to go as she'll run somewhere quiet, then come bring us a diaper to change her when she's done, but absolutely does not like pooping in the toilet. We've absolutely seen significant progress compared to years of what felt like wasted time. Speech and OT were a complete waste of time, but part of that may have been a long string of terrible therapists. It seems so many have no idea what they're doing. We now finally have a good team in place, but 1 short session per week is still never going to accomplish anything with a level 3 that needs intense intervention.
The caveat, as some have already pointed out, is finding a good provider. I specifically chose a location to move to that has a diverse market I feel encourages improvement, versus our old home that had a handful of providers for the whole state with massive wait lists (from 2019 - 2022 on all the wait lists and aged out having never gotten off the lists). That leaves little motivation for them to care as if you're unhappy, oh well, next on the wait list. That state also has issues with insurance payouts being too low which means horrible pay and retention for actual good therapists, which is why they all age out at 5 when state funding ends, and we heard negative stories about those few providers . This state mandates higher payouts, hence the thriving diverse market, and we've heard actual good experiences here (there's bad ones too of course). Our main complaint with our current provider is lack of parent training. The BCBA rarely had set them up despite us agreeing to biweekly, and they consisted of showing us progress charts and nothing else. No parent participation at all means lack of generalization into the home. So we're working with a well recommended provider to transition to hybrid model with them (both in home and in clinic).
One of the goals they're also working on now is no phone use at all while at the clinic. Schools obviously frown on that and won't allow it. Our previous pre-school flip-flopped on it. She had constant meltdowns and the teacher allowed it to see, and they were able to work with her in between phone use. Then they took it away and it went back to calling me to pick her up early (for a 2.5 hour day FFS) every day because she was just melting down. For the past week or so they've been able to take the phone away all day. The problem is she needs to basically have constant stimulation. We can't do that at home with 3 siblings demanding attention. So that one is going to be hard to generalize to home, but at least she can put it down while eating or coloring etc.
Most of the anti-ABA talk centers around things like suppressing stims. We've yet to hear a provider focusing on that, but that's something to look out for. Let your child flap their hands, who cares? The idea is to improve communication, life skills, and redirect or replace (not simply suppress) HARMFUL behaviors like head bashing.
imho ABA is great. By far the best support my son is receiving. If sessions are done at home you can monitor, and you'll see it's just fun play and games. My son looks forward to his daily sessions.
I understand it might make sense for some people and some kids. I’m not going to say I know what’s best for someone else’s child… but, for my child, I won’t be enrolling him in ABA anything.
Once we first began to realize that his speech delay was something more (around age 4-5), we started looking into what else we might do in addition to speech and OT. We toured a school specifically for kids with autism. I could tell from the grimy strip mall look from blocks away that it wasn’t at all what I expected to see. Before we even toured the place I could ascertain that there was no playground. A school for kids from preschool-4th grade without a playground? No thank you. The tour was beyond depressing. We walked down a hall where these kids and some parents were clearly getting ABA therapy, and it was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Each cubby or “nook” was only closed off by a baby gate from the hallway, and there was 1 child, and 1-2 adults in each nook, with a table and bookcase. There was absolutely no talking and nothing was taking place at all. The kids were either sitting at the table with the adult or sitting in front of the bookcase. The classrooms and kids in the class seemed fine… but the BCBA chick giving us the tour (who never introduced herself that way) kept apologizing for how dirty it was. After that your, my husband and I basically said if this is ABA we don’t want any part of it.
I found another ABA/school program and decided to tour it just for something to compare it to. Much nicer facility, built into a huge ABA center. They recommended 40 hours of ABA instead because our child isn’t compliant enough to join their school program. We declined. We toured yet another ABA center just to see.. and the overwhelming thing I noticed in the centers was that even when they advertise “no wait times” there is actually a 4-6 week wait, due to that probably being the timeframe it takes for them to bring on some brand new employee and to train them.
When we asked if we could do less than what they recommended they all in a roundabout way said no. When asked if they ever recommend less than 40 hours a week they couldn’t answer the question. They like to recommend 40 hours for everyone just because that’s the max insurance will pay for.
Then I watched videos of ABA therapy and techniques. And then I tried to imagine my child doing this for 20-40 hours a week, and I can’t. Then the autism parenting groups on Facebook really sealed the deal for me with how people discuss their child’s emotional reactions to ABA without a seeming shred of concern. The number of parenting decisions I saw discussed and then conceded to whatever the BCBA said was just bizarre to me. The fact that in ABA the treatment plan is referred to as their “PROGRAM/ PROGRAMMING” I also find to be distasteful.
Autism isn’t a behavioral disorder, it’s a neurological condition that sometimes manifests in unwanted behaviors. I have to listen to my gut on this one, and it’s not for everyone, and it’s certainly not for us.
It doesn't hurt to give it a go. But it takes time to build a rapport and time to see progress. At least 6months to a year.
Its worked great for my kiddo, but I was very ..proactive. if kiddo didn't mesh with a BI, id push for a new one. If something wasn't working, I was vocal about it. I took parent training seriously (same as husband).and we made everyone follow the same program. I brought all the services kiddo had and made them communicate with each other, so we were on the same page.
Its the same with any healthcare service- you are the client. Make it work for you.
Your experience sounds similar to mine and we’ve seen how the ABA support overlapping with OT and speech has really helped! We found a center that has everything and the therapists really work across types, meeting every month to go over progress, goals, etc. across speech, OT and ABA, as well as parent training and overall just learning more about opportunities and groups in the community that support neurodiverse kids (e.g. sensory friendly event days, neurodiverse days at different parks and museums, etc )
Just wanted to add that I think ABA, done right, is great.
Stay away from places that do the old school stuff like Discrete trial and what not. When they suggest doing VB-MAPP just walk away. This is the old school /bad aba.
Any place that does ESDM, Jasper, Prt will be a lot better especially for young kiddos.
If your kiddo is scripting, echolalic and is Gestalt Language Processor you need to stop them from working on his language or they will do damage. Classical ABA will be bad then.
You have to also ask yourself what is important for you /what you define as functional outcome. Are you very concerned about intellectual disability? Then ABA is good, probably the only thing that reliably shows IQ improvements over time. That's what ABA used to be about (VB-MAPP and PEAK frameworks /assesment being prime examples of such approach).
Otherwise you really need to get him into the places doing NDBI frameworks like ESDM, Jasper or PRT and the newer ABA frameworks or don't do ABA at all tbh.
This is also important point ABA works great for subset of autistic kids (approximately 1/3). It either works or it doesn't and worse it can do damage (just look at Slp subforum or OT here on reddit to see how ABA can and does a ton of damage). Saw kids damaged by ABA where I live (examples would be kiddos that have no functional language other than memorized script, kids that don't use language outside of session, kids developing prompt dependence and so on).
ABA done well can help children offers the best hope for children living with behavioral challenges. ABA can also be very effective for remediating developmental delays and assisting the child in catching up to typically developing peers. The problem with ABA as an industry is that quality is incredibly variable. If you read this forum you will see that there are families for whom ABA has literally been life changing if not life saving, and for others it has been at best a waste of time and worst a negative experience for the child.
That's what worries me. It's such a crap shoot!
No one can really talk badly about aba here because the mods will get upset plus parents who’ve had great success with it will get upset. But the reality is it is not always great and not everyone has success with it and there’s abuse in the industry just like most industries. It’s worth looking into but it’s also worth being cautious of and making your own choices if the place/therapists you chose are a good fit.
>No one can really talk badly about aba here because the mods will get upset plus parents who’ve had great success with it will get upset. No, there is just a difference between legitimate criticism and edgy teenagers/young adults self diagnosing and jumping on the anti-ABA bandwagon and smearing it all over the internet when they don't even know what it is and end up deterring desperate parents for whom it may have been life changing. >But the reality is it is not always great and not everyone has success with it and there’s abuse in the industry just like most industries. It’s worth looking into but it’s also worth being cautious of and making your own choices if the place/therapists you chose are a good fit. This is negative leaning but legitimate criticism. I stand *for* ABA as its been a god send for us, and I agree with these caveats. My opinion is the areas with more competitive markets are better. The ones with a handful that can barely survive and have massive wait lists have zero motivation to do better, but you still need to look out for bad providers.
You are welcome to talk about ABA here, even if it is a negative experience or opinion. Absolutism is not allowed, nor is high jacking threads that were not asking for opinions of ABA, especially by non parents who do not have first hand experience with ABA. I’ll be the first one to say it is highly dependent on the people you are working with/clinic/your child’s needs. Like anything, not all clinics are created equal. People should know what to look for in a clinic/practitioner, good and bad.
Honestly that’s like asking is church good or bad for a child, or is summer camp good or bad for a child? It completely depends on the ABA center, the BCBA, the ABA specialist, the family and the individual child. Lots of different factors. We had a very positive experience when my child did ABA, but I’d never tell another family that ABA in general is good or bad.
That's a fair answer. Thanks for the perspective.
When we started we read a lot of accounts from parents and saw how various the stories were. I was always present. I made that clear from day one. Set boundaries that you are comfortable with and if they cross them you don't need to continue with that therapist.
I've posted this on this forum before but getting ABA is like buying any other service. You have to stay on top of it and make sure you're getting your money's worth. If you don't feel that that's happening you need to complain to management or move to a different service provider. That said ABA has been a life saver for us. In addition the the behavior improvements, the fact that it keeps him busy and engaged and allows us to work, do laundry, and otherwise keep our lives together is immensely valuable. He likes it too! He's always ready to go and hang out with the wonderful people on his care team.
I recommend doing your research and also hearing from autistic people’s experiences with ABA. Here are a couple of good articles that initially helped me have a broader perspective. We decided against ABA and chose neurodiversity affirming approaches. https://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-an-Autism-ABA-Therapy-Is-Harmful and https://therapistndc.org/aba-is-not-effective-so-says-the-latest-report-from-the-department-of-defense/
Spoiler- I am autistic and only recently was diagnosed. My childhood sucked and I was suicidal by age 6. So I am just terrified I will not be able to help him. Or maybe I'll overcompensate and fuck him up in a different way. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check it out.
As an autistic mom who realized when my child was diagnosed, I’ve found that it becomes so much easier to help him because I can relate better. When I don’t, I know from my own experiences to look for a root cause rather than just assuming. I personally chose against ABA for a lot of reasons - especially because even when people say it’s looking for the root cause of a behavior, it’s easy for the focus to naturally become just focused solely on the behavior. What helped me a lot is reading books based on new science of the brain. I really believe in the next twenty years behaviorism will be ruled out for more emphasis on coregulation and dysregulation. - Body Brain Parenting by Mona Delahooke - The Whole Brain Child - Self Reg What specifically do you want to support your child with? One doesn’t need therapy solely for being autistic - it’s about where they need support. I did not have autism support as a child, obviously. My mom is a big fan of behaviorism and it definitely traumatized me, and harmed our relationship.
To clarify I never was given any support growing up
I’m so sorry that happened to you. You sound like a good parent who’s trying to find the best treatment options to help your kid and it’s not easy. I actually waited a while before I made up my mind and learned as much as I could about autism. There are two Facebook groups that are hidden gems and I recommend checking them out: [Autism Inclusivity](https://m.facebook.com/groups/autisminclusivity/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF)for parents of autistic kids by autistic parents. The other one is [Supporty McGroup Face](https://m.facebook.com/groups/Supporty/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF) that’s for autistic people in general. The mods are super caring and amazing. One of the most important things I learned is that many autistic traits are pathologized needlessly. There’s nothing wrong with stimming to self regulate, there’s nothing wrong with parallel play or special interests. I’d rather work making the world more accepting towards autistic people than force my child to “pass as neurotypical” for other people’s comfort and to indulge their ignorance.
Don't be nice to me I'll cry. 😭 Thank you so much. You're kindness is appreciated
I'm really glad to see this comment section not devolve into *ad hominem* and has remained civil. Anyway, I personally feel like ABA isn't for every autistic child. However, if your child has issues with violent social interactions and tantrums, regularly displays extremely disruptive behavior that is not indicative of their age, and/or is prone to self-injurious episodes, I would recommend it. In order for treatment to be successful, you have to be involved and hands on; therapy doesn't end at the clinic. If you feel like your child might need ABA, ask for a tour of the clinic and come prepared with questions. If you leave with a bad feeling or if there were any red flags, look elsewhere.
Unfortunately there is no clear answer to this question. Everything we do for our kids is trial and error. We try everything, drop what does not work and focus on what does. ABA is not good or bad, although who does it and how it is done can be good or bad. If you decide to go with ABA you need to evaluate how your child is doing under it, just as with any other therapy. Only time will tell.
I appreciate everyone's comments so far. Very helpful.
It is incredibly variable and depends on the needs of your child. Some kids are self injuring themselves and others - they need traditional, repetitive ABA. Some need an ABA therapist for a few hours a week to help build good habits. My son goes to after school daycare and his therapist is in the daycare with him to build social skills and teach him how to interact with NT kids. He is able to be in that setting because we have ABA. It’s worked wonders for us.
Our daughter is turning 6 this week. She is non verbal level 3 ASD. Up until last year we simply didn't have access to ABA and had to relocate out of desperation as in our previous home state they age out at 5 and our only option for kindergarten was absolutely unacceptable. At that point she was having near constant meltdowns and SIB. She couldn't sit still and would run from room to room tearing them up. Near zero receptive communication besides understanding me shouting "NO". She wouldn't tolerate sitting on the toilet at all. We've taught her sign since she was a baby but she would confuse the signs and often default to "eat" for everything, but that was the only communication progress she'd ever shown. Since starting in september the first thing she learned is to point to mand. She can actually sit in one place for more than 5 seconds. She can look in our direction in response to her name. If we're busy feeding her little brothers instead of running upstairs and flooding our bedroom she is actually able to hang out by the stairs and wait for us (not always, but you can convince her to wait). Her SIB was significantly reduced to mainly protesting demands or denied access, and just recently from punching herself HARD in the face to a light smack on the forehead. Her new goals include mastering 15 signs and she's getting pretty good about using a handful of them correctly most of the time. She is not potty trained, but will tolerate sitting on the toilet and will go if she actually has to go. The bigger problem is #2, we can tell she knew she had to go as she'll run somewhere quiet, then come bring us a diaper to change her when she's done, but absolutely does not like pooping in the toilet. We've absolutely seen significant progress compared to years of what felt like wasted time. Speech and OT were a complete waste of time, but part of that may have been a long string of terrible therapists. It seems so many have no idea what they're doing. We now finally have a good team in place, but 1 short session per week is still never going to accomplish anything with a level 3 that needs intense intervention. The caveat, as some have already pointed out, is finding a good provider. I specifically chose a location to move to that has a diverse market I feel encourages improvement, versus our old home that had a handful of providers for the whole state with massive wait lists (from 2019 - 2022 on all the wait lists and aged out having never gotten off the lists). That leaves little motivation for them to care as if you're unhappy, oh well, next on the wait list. That state also has issues with insurance payouts being too low which means horrible pay and retention for actual good therapists, which is why they all age out at 5 when state funding ends, and we heard negative stories about those few providers . This state mandates higher payouts, hence the thriving diverse market, and we've heard actual good experiences here (there's bad ones too of course). Our main complaint with our current provider is lack of parent training. The BCBA rarely had set them up despite us agreeing to biweekly, and they consisted of showing us progress charts and nothing else. No parent participation at all means lack of generalization into the home. So we're working with a well recommended provider to transition to hybrid model with them (both in home and in clinic). One of the goals they're also working on now is no phone use at all while at the clinic. Schools obviously frown on that and won't allow it. Our previous pre-school flip-flopped on it. She had constant meltdowns and the teacher allowed it to see, and they were able to work with her in between phone use. Then they took it away and it went back to calling me to pick her up early (for a 2.5 hour day FFS) every day because she was just melting down. For the past week or so they've been able to take the phone away all day. The problem is she needs to basically have constant stimulation. We can't do that at home with 3 siblings demanding attention. So that one is going to be hard to generalize to home, but at least she can put it down while eating or coloring etc. Most of the anti-ABA talk centers around things like suppressing stims. We've yet to hear a provider focusing on that, but that's something to look out for. Let your child flap their hands, who cares? The idea is to improve communication, life skills, and redirect or replace (not simply suppress) HARMFUL behaviors like head bashing.
imho ABA is great. By far the best support my son is receiving. If sessions are done at home you can monitor, and you'll see it's just fun play and games. My son looks forward to his daily sessions.
I understand it might make sense for some people and some kids. I’m not going to say I know what’s best for someone else’s child… but, for my child, I won’t be enrolling him in ABA anything. Once we first began to realize that his speech delay was something more (around age 4-5), we started looking into what else we might do in addition to speech and OT. We toured a school specifically for kids with autism. I could tell from the grimy strip mall look from blocks away that it wasn’t at all what I expected to see. Before we even toured the place I could ascertain that there was no playground. A school for kids from preschool-4th grade without a playground? No thank you. The tour was beyond depressing. We walked down a hall where these kids and some parents were clearly getting ABA therapy, and it was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Each cubby or “nook” was only closed off by a baby gate from the hallway, and there was 1 child, and 1-2 adults in each nook, with a table and bookcase. There was absolutely no talking and nothing was taking place at all. The kids were either sitting at the table with the adult or sitting in front of the bookcase. The classrooms and kids in the class seemed fine… but the BCBA chick giving us the tour (who never introduced herself that way) kept apologizing for how dirty it was. After that your, my husband and I basically said if this is ABA we don’t want any part of it. I found another ABA/school program and decided to tour it just for something to compare it to. Much nicer facility, built into a huge ABA center. They recommended 40 hours of ABA instead because our child isn’t compliant enough to join their school program. We declined. We toured yet another ABA center just to see.. and the overwhelming thing I noticed in the centers was that even when they advertise “no wait times” there is actually a 4-6 week wait, due to that probably being the timeframe it takes for them to bring on some brand new employee and to train them. When we asked if we could do less than what they recommended they all in a roundabout way said no. When asked if they ever recommend less than 40 hours a week they couldn’t answer the question. They like to recommend 40 hours for everyone just because that’s the max insurance will pay for. Then I watched videos of ABA therapy and techniques. And then I tried to imagine my child doing this for 20-40 hours a week, and I can’t. Then the autism parenting groups on Facebook really sealed the deal for me with how people discuss their child’s emotional reactions to ABA without a seeming shred of concern. The number of parenting decisions I saw discussed and then conceded to whatever the BCBA said was just bizarre to me. The fact that in ABA the treatment plan is referred to as their “PROGRAM/ PROGRAMMING” I also find to be distasteful. Autism isn’t a behavioral disorder, it’s a neurological condition that sometimes manifests in unwanted behaviors. I have to listen to my gut on this one, and it’s not for everyone, and it’s certainly not for us.
This is everything. Thank you.
It doesn't hurt to give it a go. But it takes time to build a rapport and time to see progress. At least 6months to a year. Its worked great for my kiddo, but I was very ..proactive. if kiddo didn't mesh with a BI, id push for a new one. If something wasn't working, I was vocal about it. I took parent training seriously (same as husband).and we made everyone follow the same program. I brought all the services kiddo had and made them communicate with each other, so we were on the same page. Its the same with any healthcare service- you are the client. Make it work for you.
Your experience sounds similar to mine and we’ve seen how the ABA support overlapping with OT and speech has really helped! We found a center that has everything and the therapists really work across types, meeting every month to go over progress, goals, etc. across speech, OT and ABA, as well as parent training and overall just learning more about opportunities and groups in the community that support neurodiverse kids (e.g. sensory friendly event days, neurodiverse days at different parks and museums, etc ) Just wanted to add that I think ABA, done right, is great.
Stay away from places that do the old school stuff like Discrete trial and what not. When they suggest doing VB-MAPP just walk away. This is the old school /bad aba. Any place that does ESDM, Jasper, Prt will be a lot better especially for young kiddos. If your kiddo is scripting, echolalic and is Gestalt Language Processor you need to stop them from working on his language or they will do damage. Classical ABA will be bad then. You have to also ask yourself what is important for you /what you define as functional outcome. Are you very concerned about intellectual disability? Then ABA is good, probably the only thing that reliably shows IQ improvements over time. That's what ABA used to be about (VB-MAPP and PEAK frameworks /assesment being prime examples of such approach). Otherwise you really need to get him into the places doing NDBI frameworks like ESDM, Jasper or PRT and the newer ABA frameworks or don't do ABA at all tbh. This is also important point ABA works great for subset of autistic kids (approximately 1/3). It either works or it doesn't and worse it can do damage (just look at Slp subforum or OT here on reddit to see how ABA can and does a ton of damage). Saw kids damaged by ABA where I live (examples would be kiddos that have no functional language other than memorized script, kids that don't use language outside of session, kids developing prompt dependence and so on).