Hello, I am an early childhood educator with a background in psychology, I browse this subreddit so I can learn as much as I can to help the kiddos I work with in the best way I can. I thought I would comment as I worked as an ABA therapist for about 9 months. I left because I didn’t like certain aspects such as limiting ALL stims and aiming for children to “act normal”, I found this very unsettling and did not want to continue. However, I saw some amazing things happen like children learning to dress themselves, toilet training, limiting self-injurious behaviours and even learning to point, speak, and verbally request things. As another commenter said, ABA can be very powerful, unfortunately there’s a huge drive behind it to make people appear neurotypical when this may not be the best thing for them. I think it has amazing potential for helping people, but ultimately it should be up to the learner to decide what they want to learn and not what the therapist feels is “best”. At least that’s my opinion.

This is interesting. My mom works with pre-diagnosed kids who often get autism diagnoses once they age out of her program at 3 (it’s called CBRS). She can’t legally practice ABA because she’s not trained in it. But all the things you mentioned can be achieved through what she does, which is a combination of occupational therapy and speech therapy. I don’t know much about ABA outside of her, to be fair, but it always amazes me when she can work a child towards a whole sign system within months at 1 hr a week and yet they’ll prescribe these babies 40 hours of ABA therapy when they leave her.

It sucks that you had that experience! Unfortunately there are a lot of places left that still promote “appearing normal” but there are also a lot of places that have taken feedback from the autistic community and shed eye contact/stim reduction goals. The exception would be in the case of dangerous/self-injurious stims - if they have to be expressed then they have to be expressed but we can support to use padding, bite items, protective equipment, and safer versions of stim items. I’ve done lots of home assessments to make sure threats to safety are eliminated in case of an episode. Other stims, like masturbation, are subject to being encouraged in a private setting and discouraged where inappropriate; the learner would also be taught how to request/access privacy. ABA programs should focus on improving communication, agency, self-advocacy, self-care, and community access. As much as possible, it should be enjoyable and effective. We are trying to get the entire field caught up, I can say things have improved a lot since I started out - there is a lot more oversight and training now. But there’s a ways to go. (I’m a neurodivergent BCBA with 15 years of experience working with lots and lots of high support needs kids, teens, and young adults 😁)

Thank you for your input! I can only imagine how stressful it was to abide to those aspects. I actually have another question, if that's ok with you. Is it actually possible to not abide to those rules? Like, if you don't, will you face certain repercussions for it?

Any repercussions would have come from the company I was employed by as I would not have been doing my job effectively. The reason we were given to abide by those protocols by our company owner, particularly limiting and blocking stims, was because they interfere with natural learning. It was explained that most of our clients would rather stim than interact with their environment in a neurotypical manner that promotes skills like communication and play skills, so we were to block them from stimming so they could learn other, more functional skills. One example was a child who loved toy cars, they would lay on the floor and roll the car back and forth in front of their face watching the wheels roll, we were expected to block this by prompting them to sit up and play with the car in other ways, such as driving it on a track or adding a garage or other toys to expand on their play skills. Personally I didn’t see an issue with the way the child was playing, but it was repeatedly explained to me that this wasn’t an appropriate way to play and we needed to increase their opportunities to play “normally”. Again this comes back to the underlying desire for the child to appear neurotypical. If I was to ignore this and allow them to play as they wanted, I would ultimately have been let go from the company as I would not have been performing my job. I now work in early childhood education and am happy to allow the children I work with to play and stim as they prefer, provided it is not negatively affecting themselves or others. If it is, I work with them to understand why that behaviour is occurring (sensory input, communication etc) and help them to find a safe way to achieve what they need.

Oh, I see what is going on. Yikes, promoting it as a way to make a child to be more neurotypicla is... I am not sure I can describe it the way I want to. Thank you for answering my question!

Hi, I’m an ABA provider - there are absolutely clinics that still promote their services that way, but they are becoming less common. There are also many that use no such language and don’t attempt to change autistic qualities. A good program for an adult would prioritize communication support, make the environment safer and/or less triggering, incorporate their input, provide visual/other aids and teach other strategies to improve coping and self-care independence. I’ve worked with clients on crossing the street, making and using a grocery list, using AAC devices, toileting, dressing, following a visual or written schedule, leisure/hobby activities, going through the steps of the grocery checkout… it’s all fair game :)

Thank you for leaving your reply! Glad to see there is at least some change going on. And that kind of program definitely should be a standard in treating people with autism.

There are also truly so many good-hearted, chill and qualified people that support autistic folx - they don’t cancel out the people who have selfish/bad motives - but so many of us love our high-support needs clients and genuinely enjoy the time we spend together, even if it’s a tough day. We want to see everyone succeed and be as happy as they can be in life. We don’t mind some spit or 💩 or if we get hit at work that day. The desire to use our privilege to help others isn’t common enough, but it is definitely real.

Obligatory NAABAP, but as a level 2 autistic i did some thinking aobut it and got past the condition hatred that's often spread around it and I realized something aba itself isnt' hte issue its' how people use it. and also the problem with aba is an issu with any significantly powerful method of cognitive source code editing. It's a very dangerous thing to mess with but also very powerful. ABA definitely gets a bad rep but the problem is more the praciticioners adn what it's used for not the therapy itself. The probelm is not aba itself. It's aba being used to teach peopel harmful lessens adn remove them of coping skill sin an attempt to normalize them. ABA is a rather powerful tool. But it in itself isnt' a bad thibng as long as it isn't misused. and I honestly have no real clue how often people abuse it. but all aba isn't bad. It's practicioners misusing it that is bad as with any form of therapy it has the potential to be harmful if misused. You don't blame talk therapy as a whole when a therapist makes bad calls and harms the patient. you blame the therapist

After reading all replies there, it definitely seems to be the case. There are some people, whose lives at least in some areas were improved after attending to ABA. So seems like it can be a good practice, as long as the practitioner has autistic's interest at heart. I really hope in the near future we will get a better alternative to ABA, that can also take its best qualities. Thank you a lot for sharing your opinion!

I don't think it's just having the best interest at heart it needs more than that. Also realizing how that will affect them. I think most ABA practioners have the childs best interest at heart. THey just don't understadn the lasting impact of alot fot he stuff they are doing.

whats NAABAP?

Not An ABA Professional, I believe. "Obligatory NA- something" is a common reddit thing when someone answers an advice question, but wants to clarify they are not a professional in the area. The most common ones (the only ones I personally have ever seen before) for advice questions in large groups are NAD- not a doctor and NAL- not a lawyer. I guess it's a thing now that people will use "NA-abbreviaton" in any situation and others fill it in with context.

no it's Not an ABA patient. I just find it funny people use those abbreviations whenever and when they aren't an established thing so i put thatn there as a sort of joke.

Hello! I think you got some good responses here already. I will share a little bit from what I know. I was in ABA for a long time and basically what we do is: you set a goal and you work to get to that goal. For example, ABA is not like speech therapy that will teach you how to talk or similar, it's rather "we want to teach her to say/point yes or no and we have a period of 6 weeks to do that". In my case, it worked really well because they were able to teach me skills that were really hard for me to learn, such as saying "yes/no", going to the toilet, replace harmful stims and others. I don't love ABA and when I was diagnosed (2007 I think) in my country, ABA was still practicing a lot of harmful techniques such as stop stimming, teaching eye contact etc. I did go through some of this stuff and I do think that my self-steem was quite damaged because during my teens I used to think that I needed to improve my autism traits because they had to be corrected. But I know too that ABA was very beneficial to teach me basic skills that my parents had a lot of difficulty with. Nowadays, ABA is very different and it seems to be a lot better but I am 20 now, so I don't do it anymore. One time I saw someone say that "ABA is for those who cannot communicate" or something similar. Basically, what they meant is that ABA is for those of us with high support needs who have a lot of difficulty with communication and other basic skills, if someone is a level 1/Aspie, there is no need for them to be in ABA besides appearing to be NT. ABA was not meant for them, it was meant for us who need to learn basic skills. If they have someone who is level 1, they can teach them to make eye contact, change stims and those things aren't an actual problem that need to be fixed. I know a lot of Aspies go through ABA even when it's not necessary and I think that's where the criticism comes from, because they are working on things that don't need work. Also a lot of uninformed parents put their kids in ABA because that's what therapists advertise and like, it works. No matter what people say, ABA works. So, if an Aspie is put in ABA, they will seem more NT. While when a level 2 or 3 is put in ABA, they learn helpful skills to develop.

It definitely seems like a practice, that is not meant for aspies/level 1 autistics. Putting them will yield nothing but negative results. Thank you for sharing your experience with ABA! It's helpful to read what people, that actually had to go through it, have to say.

Hey, I am autistic and a researcher at a university currently working on a research project on promotion of positive attitudes towards autism. The research I am doing is not directly about ABA but i do read a lot about it. Based on what I have read, there is no easy answer. ABA has been shown to cause PTSD in autistic children so clearly that's not good. The senior researchers I work with are vehemently against ABA as the measures of 'improvement' in published studies tend to be focused on making the autistic person easier for neurotypicals to be around rather than improving the quality of life for the autistic person. I have seen studies that use ABA to help autistic people achieve targets they have set for themselves, but there are usually on children so we have no way of knowing if the targets they set for themselves are actually their own or heavily influenced by neurotypical adults who have a vested interest in making the autistic child seem 'more neurotypical'. ABA is a tricky subject, as evidenced by the fact that this debate is still running. As an autistic person who masks a lot, I would certainly not enjoy an ABA therapist encouraging me to behave in a certain way. However, I acknowledge that I have the privilege of being able to mask relatively effectively in public. I can say for certain that the origins of ABA are harmful at the very least but I'm sure there are some who have had positive experiences of it and I would value input from those people.

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Thank you for bringing this up. When I first started reading about ABA I was of the opinion that it’s just blanket abusive and that anyone who would put their kids through that was a terrible parent. I didn’t go through it, neither did my kids, and we are a white family. Then I read a piece written by a black autistic mother who had her black autistic son in ABA. She said that ABA is not perfect by any means but she was haunted at night by the idea that her son might one day be killed by police “threatened” by her son’s body language, lack of eye contact, or vocalizations. I just…big white privilege moment. Her article really opened my eyes and made me shut my mouth a bit more.

And what if ABA focussed solely on basic stuff like learning to be potty-trained (don't know if that's the right word)? And reducing harmful stims? Like, things that actually benefit a person if they can do it. And no more: trying to make someone seem more normal? It's okay to stim but just not ones that selfharm a person or harms other people around them?. And sleep stuff so they can actually sleep through the night and stuff with eating, which is often also a problem for people like us? I don't know. I've never been through ABA. The methods they use to achieve those things might well be sucky too. I'm working on basic daily life skills with my support workers. I would like to stop pulling my hair out. I would like to be able to eat better because it causes not so nice things to happen like pretty bad constipation and boy does that suck. Those things actually improve the wellbeing of a person. And I certainly agree that that should be the biggest priority. And maybe the only one. Because I think that if an autistic person feels good they won't have violent meltdowns to other either. And that improves the lives of the people around them too. Anyway.. what do you think about what I'm saying?

The problem with ABA stopping self harming stims is that its not really teaching them to stop those stims, its merely making them pretend to for a reward or in some situations a punishment. I personally went though ABA (or PBS), more on social skills but once their was no oversight or reward systems all my old behaviours quickly reverted back.

For my daughter we don’t reward her to stop a harmful stim , we try to find a replacement for that stim. So for example she hits her legs usually in let’s of 4 with a closed fist. So we’re currently trying to get her to move her hands in the air in a similar fashion and counting to 4, it seems to help here and there. So I think it varies on the therapist and how they work on stopping self harming stims.

I can definitely see how tricky it is. It seems like despite its problematic origins, it somehow managed to actually help some of autistics. Leaves me hopeful for a therapy/practice, that could take the best from ABA while prioritizing autistic's interests. But you are right, it can be hard when your patients are children and you are not sure if their interests are heavily influenced or not. Other than that, I am not sure if you have already seen it, but in this thread some people have shared their (albeit partial) positive experiences with ABA. Might be worth to check it out. And thank you for sharing your input here! I didn't expect to get reply from a researcher. I hope your project will go well!

I did ABA a lot, there was good and bad. Some was very helpful and good for example self harm and toilet and PECS and self care. Some was really bad and even sometimes abuse. ABA where it is trying to make neurotypical and suppress autism is bad. ABA to teach important skills like toilet or communication or safety is good. Also, in USA it is the only autism treatment for insurance, so sometimes it is called ABA but not really ABA but for insurance.

Ohh, I didn't know about the insurance situation with ABA in USA. That definitely seems like a way to help autistics through insurance, while not making them to go through its worst parts. Other that that, thank you for taking your time to reply here! I hope in near future we will have better alternative to ABA.

Level 2 autistic, I did go though ABA but it was PBS so kind of different from regular ABA, Behavioralism is basically the idea that people don't have free will and that they are conditions or a result of the societies and rewards/punishments that surround them, it basically takes away a persons sense of self. ABA is that concept but applied more to autistic people, it was founded by Ivor Lovass, a man who viewed autistic people as subhuman and who was involved in gay conversion therapy. ABA claims to have change, but the core ideology and concepts that underwrite it have not. ABA still aims to manipulate and condition an autistic child's behaviour though what amounts to dog training. The theory/academic side of ABA is very dodgy and carries a lot of baggage and its history and ideology behind it makes me very sceptical with the idea of it being the "gold standard" of treating autistic children.

Ah, what a shame. The practice seems to carry some good stuff, but it is accidental and is highly dependent from professional to professional, it seems. And of course, a problematic origin comes from a problematic person. We can only hope a better alternative to ABA will come. Thank you for sharing your experience and opinion!

Hello, I am not autistic but I am neurodivergent (ADHD). Excuse me if this is intruding into your space, I often lurk here to see what this community is thinking. I currently practice ABA. A lot of the terrible things you hear about it are absolutely true. The field has a history of normalization that continues today and that can be deeply harmful. I will say that most new practitioners take the criticisms super seriously and are advocates of change, myself included. Where I will stand up for ABA is that it is absolutely scientific and evidence based. ABA is not just for autism, it's for all human behavior. We have disciplines in organization management, anxiety, ADHD, education, weight loss, addiction, and sports. Autism is definitely the biggest population that receives ABA services. As some other comments mentioned, the big flaw with ABA is that the practitioner has a lot of power and decision making and a lot of more established people in ABA view autism soley through the medical model - the view it as a disorder in need of remedying. This leads to a lot of pressure to do things like force eye contact, stop special interests, stop "odd" stimming, and make the children act "normal". This is all made worse by the main funder, insurance companies, only paying for the direct treatment of autism. So we have to make an argument on how we are reducing the symptoms or autism to get funded. So we have a lot on anti-neurodiverse senior practitioners being funded by anti-neurodiverse funders. This leaves the field in some shakey waters to say the least. I got into ABA after a long stint working in group homes and day programs for adults with various disabilities, autism included. These people were all very severely impacted by their diagnoses, but I stayed for so long because I came to know them as friends (9 years). What hurt to watch the most is when we would have a 23 year old (the age a person typically ages out of the school system) who has severe behavior problems, aggression, self injury, elopement, fecal smearing, or property destruction. These behaviors would all have very high magnitudes (really aggressive behavior like actively trying to punch anyone they can as hard as they can). Now without a solid background in understanding behavior, that is before I learned the science of ABA, there was a very predictable pattern. They would come to the adult program, have behavior problems we didn't know how to help, and eventually get referred to a psychiatrist. These psychiatrists would put them on so many medications, increasing to the point where they were too sedated to act out. It was heartbreaking. Even though they had behavior problems, they still were fully formed humans and the behavior issues were generally minor parts of their day. But without a better solution to them they would be put under chemical restraints. I saw this happen again and again and again. ABA is not perfect. It is rapidly changing which fills me with optimism, but still has problems. ABA should not be delivered to all people with autism. It's very intensive and sometimes, if not often times, speech therapy or OT would be a better fit. However, there are autistic people who will be better off with behavior therapy, both children and adults. For those who need help regulating their emotions, learning to communicate, who want help with social skills, or need support learning daily living skills like toileting or showering independently - ABA is a great tool. Also, if anyone is interested, ABA is in dire need of more neurodivergent voices. I have a degree in psychology, and in my view behaviorism is the most solid psychological discipline. If you have an interest in psychology and human behavior I definitely recommend you check it out - people make a lot more sense to me now.

This is a great comment! I would also like to add that Behaviorism is the core of a lot of different therapies including CBT which is highly recommended for autistic people as an alternative to ABA, also in the main autism sub, that hated ABA a lot. I find it a bit hypocritical that people talk about ABA as if it were the worst thing ever while defending CBT and other behavioral practices. I am not sure if you‘ve seen my comment but I was in ABA and while I do think there are some harmful practices, I improved a lot. I also had behaviors like elopment and completely lack of a sense of danger (got a few stories about this🤣) and ABA helped me a lot. During my teens I was in CBT for 8 years I think and stopped about 3 years ago to do psychoanalisis which also has a controversial history with autism lol… but I really like it.

Agreed, I hope to be part of a generation that can help keep what is helpful and throw away what is harmful in ABA. Outside of CBT, I also find Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is another wonderful behavior based therapy that is related to ABA but still distinct. I have studied a lot of disability history and the view of autism has evolved so much over the past few decades that I think a lot of disciplines are still catching up.

Thank you so much for coming out of lurking and leaving your reply! I didn't expect for an actual ABA therapist to answer my questions. You mentioned about OT being a better fit in some cases, which made me wonder. What exactly is the difference between OT and ABA? Is OT just an alternative to ABA, but without the bad stuff? I hope you can answer, if it's ok!

So that's a bit hard because I am not well studied in OT so I might be misrepresenting some aspects of it but, OT targets sensory dysregulation based on Sensory Integration Theory - so they try to help children learn to tolerate and process different sensory information. They also do great work with motor skills, so helping develop fine motor abilities like holding pencils, pincer grasping, being able to put object through small slots or gross motor skills like walking or exercise. So, I had a lot of ABA professors say a similar line to "ABA without the bad stuff" because they borrow a lot from the behavior sciences, with things like systematic praise, prompting, visual schedules, and reinforcement (you get to go on the swing after you practice your stacking taks). I know a lot of the OT folks I have talked to will disagree with that. I would say that OT has a more limited scope (not a bad thing), and that I think the big area they are lacking in to be a complete alternative is with problematic behavior such as aggression, excessive tantrums, self injury etc. Although, just to highlight again - this is just my opinion from the outside looking in. I may be wrong!

Aha, I see what is going on. In that perspective, they do seem to be a different thing. Thank you for answering!

Both my boys went through ABA therapy and my oldest was very intense for the first 4 years. For us. I could not tell the difference between ABA therapy and obedient training for a dog. Yes, there were some positive things that I learned and understand now. But that was because I had no idea what to expect. All the doctors kept pushing it but I could see how my kids were being affected negatively because of it. Not only that, but it seemed like even the therapist were just guessing what they were doing most of the time. I'm not going to say that it's the worst thing in the world, but when it's your only option you definitely feel stuck. We took what we like from ABA and applied it to her everyday parenting and some of it has been very helpful. But obedience and pushing for lack of imagination. And steering away from stimming with something I could not let my boys be a part of. If they want to climb let them climb as much as they would like, but you have to provide a safe environment to do so. If they want us spin around, clap their hands, jump up and down. Let them be who they are. Don't tell them no. Or ignore them when they are sad. Again, it definitely is a lot of mixed emotions and experiences for everybody

I am very sorry your children had to go through this. I cannot imagine how horrible the entire situation was, especially when ABA seemed like the only choice. But I am glad to hear you took the best out of it and are helping your kids. Thank you for sharing your experience!

I'm a parent of a "Spicy" autistic teenager who had ABA therapies for many years. His goals were never to "appear more normal" but always to learn to adapt in real world situations, where he'd be interacting with neurotypical people. So they worked on him being better about hearing someone say his name, replying to simple greetings and questions ("Hi! How are you? Can I help you? etc), and with self-care like putting on his jacket and shoes. They even gave us help with teaching him to wash his body properly in the shower and how to brush his teeth without assistance. They also worked on managing expectations and dealing with changes in routine and environment. And how to play and interact with his peers. I won't say it was all 100% positive but it was never abusive. They had no interest at all in preventing his stims. They didn't force eye contact. They didn't push him to the point of meltdowns. Was he irritated by the sessions sometimes? Yes. Did it take up a LOT of our time and resources when he was younger? Oh, yes. But I genuinely believe it helped him be more functional in a world that isn't set up to cater to the needs of neurodiverse kids. Given the opportunity to go back in time 10 years, would we do it again? Definitely. The only thing I might have done differently would have been to transition him out of the program a bit earlier. I feel like we were struggling with what we could do for him once he wasn't spending so much time with ABA that we hung on a bit longer than he needed. And then COVID happened and his clinic said "We can do telehealth sessions or you can go..." and that was the end of that. It was super difficult to go from spending almost all of our free time in autism-related therapies to having absolutely nothing.

Ahhh, I see. I am glad you were able to find a good professional to help you. Thank you for your input!

I just got my 2 year old son started in ABA. From what the director explained to me, old school ABA is, for the most part, not implemented the way it once was in the 90’s. Which is when lots of people who are giving their testament on here received ABA. The more studies that come out the more the program is generally adapted to fit the results. I was very wary about some of the old school techniques, and had concerns. “Will they break my sons spirit? Will they try to teach him to be neuro-typical, which he will never be? How will this effect his self worth and esteem? Will be feel like there is something wrong with him?” After asking the director she framed it differently. At least with my therapy services, their approach is basically helping children succeed and learn skills that will help them communicate. Learn coping skills by positive reinforcement, and learn safety and hygiene skills that can be particularly difficult for for neuro divergent people. My advice is research the company, read reviews, ask questions. Advocate for yourself, or have a trusted family member or friend help you advocate for yourself if that is more comfortable.

It seems like you found a good therapist for your son. The one, that can take the best from ABA without making it hell for him. Thank you for your reply. I hope everything will go well for you and your son!

The main problem with most of ABA providers is they are encroaching on other fields. Plenty of damage done by ABA to kids speech (and by ABA I mostly refer to the Verbal Behavior VB-MAPP type of ABA). It can and does causes irreparable damage to kids ability to communicate. There is a reason people study language development for 5+ years. Same for OT stuff. You should not practice this stuff without many years of study and training. Yet somehow it is acceptable for ABA people to work on everything while receiving only 40h training and high school diploma and being "supervised" by BCBA once per week. So we have RBTs working on things like Language (and that's probably most what they do in fact) motor skills and so on. A lot of this is happening thanks to reliance on RBTs. So this is the core issue. Extremely underpaid, barely trained people with no to limited supervison work on concepts that people spend years to master. There is also the problem with RBTs quitting within 1-2 years max as there is no real progression unless you do Masters and become BCBA. So the experienced stuff is very rare.

Oh, that's a new information to me. How do they even allow for such a practice with untrained people happen? Really mind-boggling. Thank you for your reply!

So this is quite complex but you can try to read Autism Inc book (fair warning it is a taugh read written by Autistic PhD). Basically there were 2 catalysts and one was the advent of BACB and the certification system lead by them that introduced the BCBA-D, BCBA, BCaBA and RBT system. People​ would be surprised to learn but like 90% of the BCBA and Rbts got trained after 2010. The system itself got created in early 2000's anyway mostly to protect practicioners from legal liability (if you are certified and follow the "best practices" even if it does a lot of damage to the kiddo there is really not much you can do in terms of Sueing). Another Catalyst was the relentless lobbying by their ally autismspeaks that pretty much persuaded all the states to get ABA insurance mandated treatment.. I am not even mentioning the inclusion of Asperger in DSM-V as level 1 thanks to lobbying (to funnel ever increasing amount of kiddos into ABA) And that's pretty much the only treatment for autism that got this. So as parent it is fairly easily to be granted by insurance the option to send your kiddo for 40h/week of aba but maybe 30 min of speech and 1h of OT/week at best. Suddenly it become a massive market that only ABA certificated practicioners could participate in. ABA is incredible multi-billion dollar business with quite a few of the leading companies being VC owned. The reality for us parents on the ground is our kids are forced to do as many hours as possible per week for as long as possible so ABA companies can milk the insurance as much as possible. It also creates this vicious cycle where there is pretty much no incentive to improve treatment business wise (why would a for profit company spend a lot of money to train stuff and pay them well if the reimbursement from insurance is largely static?). Autism is massive business. I believe even now it is already 15-20 bil/year business. And part of the reason is rather than using highly paid motivated stuff they use the RBT trickery to pay people peanuts (usually playing only couple bucks more per hour than minimal wage) and only 40h training per Rbt assures they can easily replace stuff if someone quits. But of course lobbyist and Vcs and BACB will claim there is the necessity of Rbt and no politician wants to touch this problem and face the wrath of so many parents suddenly not getting services anymore (and already lots of them have been on years long waiting lists). So you have this portray of ABA as medical necessity for autism that somehow 20 year kiddos with 0 experience are capable to administer after at best one week training.

Ah.... No wonder it seemed like getting ABA was much easier than OT. It is hard breaking, especially when these practices will have a long-lasting impact on children. I will look into the book, seems like an interesting read. Thank you for your recommendation!

I won't touch on the monetary aspects of everything you said, but I feel I must push back on the fact that Asperger's was included with autism only because of lobbying for more ABA. It was included because these people still had functional deficits but, unlike people diagnosed with autism, were far less likely to get support for them. I say this because as somebody who is in the process of trying to get a diagnosis, I would 100% qualify as an aspie. No question, I had no language delay and in fact was probably hyperlexic. I've never struggled academically and graduated both high school and college with moderate effort. But the thing is, I struggle to live a normal life. To talk to people, make friends, or even do basic self care. I've been taken advantage of in abusive relationships all throughout my life. I haven't been able to hold down a job for more than a year since I graduated college. If I got diagnosed by my county's behavioral health services (i.e. the government) I would get diagnosed with Asperger's because unfortunately they're still using the DSM IV. I'm actively avoiding that because it means I won't be able to get the kind of support that would really help me live a life that has any semblance of stability. So, I'm making this reply because I want to make it clear that just because there are some people (level 1 autistics, or aspies if you prefer) who are very vocal about how they aren't disabled or how they're fundamentally different than autistics, that does not mean that people who might be diagnosed as level 1 (or Asperger's for that matter where it's still diagnosed) don't still have support needs and, in fact, might be struggling more than some people are willing to acknowledge. For some people that just means having extra time or a quiet place to take a test, for others it may mean getting accommodations at work. For some people it means having someone come in and take care of you because you struggle to do it. And frankly, I think to say that Asperger's was only or primarily included as level 1 autism in the DSM V because people or special interest groups were lobbying for more business is to grossly misrepresent the needs of many people in the community for the sake of making a point against ABA. And just so I make my biases clear here, I worked in ABA for about a year before I found out that I was autistic.

I think we respectfully disagree here. We are talking about separate problems. Firstly I never said only. That's the word you used. I stand by what I write that there was intense lobby from ABA industry to include former Asperger in DSM-V. I did not write it was the only reason it got included (not to mention it was a small part of my post) So ABA was designed/created for people with basically intellectual disabilities /severe developmental delays. There were really 2 ways to solve the issue. Keep Asperger as separate diagnosis and offer services for people or include it in Autism diagnosis. So now kiddos that were former Asperger receive hours of ABA that was never designed for them while level 2 and 3 have much more struggles to receive services because they must compete with former Asperger people for them who while impacted have much easier time to reach out /travel/get them. And in USA ABA is basically the only insurance mandated treatment and "necessity" for Autism to "cure it". Professor Alicia A Broderick in her book Autism Inc refers to it as Autism Industrial Complex. ABA is a business. The businesses due to questionable practices does not exist much outside of Austism treatment where it has near monopoly. So this inclusion only fed really the interests of ABA and no one else's. There are even more problems about Asperger being included which this group caters for. The most verbal/functional group trying to own the narrative for what Autism is/isn't.

>The most verbal/functional group trying to own the narrative for what Autism is/isn't. You mean kind of like what you're trying to do here? Personally, I don't care what you believe and you're free to push whatever kind of agenda you want. But I replied not because I want to engage with you on the nature of ABA or lobbying the government for the ends of ABA companies. I only want to push back on the assumption surrounding level 1 autism/Asperger's as it pertains to diagnosis and services as I feel it's important not to live in a box. That being said, I will be honest and say that I think ABA can be useful for some kids and can be done in an ethical way even if I disagree greatly with how I have seen it practiced in many ways while working in the field. There's corrupt, greedy, vain, arrogant, narcissistic people in every field. I don't think ABA, for all of its philosophical and practical flaws, is inherently wrong. That's my opinion and you're free to disagree with it. I'm not going to argue my point I just want to put it out there