If you want to upset a self-described Autism Mom, all you have to do is tell her that ABA is abusive.
This argument breaks out on social media so many times every single day.
Autism is an unusual condition because the community is so sharply divided.
On one side you have the neurotypical parents and families of autistic children, and on the other you have the online community of adult autistic people, many of whom are parents to autistic children.
The two sides disagree on virtually everything, but arguably the most contentious subject is Applied Behaviour Analysis Therapy.
ABA Therapists and many families of autistic people hail it as the most effective, most scientifically proven way to help autistic children develop life skills such as speech, potty training, and going to the grocery store without going into full meltdown mode.
Autistic adults– many of whom have been through ABA as children– say that it is abuse.
You can imagine how that statement sounds to loving parents whose children adore their ABA therapist and who would never knowingly abuse their beloved child.
You can imagine how it feels to be told that the gold-standard treatment which is bleeding your finances dry so that you can help your child is actually abuse.
The difficulty is that when people hear the word “abuse,” they think of pain and violence.
ABA has a big history of those things, too. Its founder, O. Ivar Lovaas, used electric shocks to stop children from engaging in their obsessive, repetitive behaviours. He systematically trained them with equal combinations of love and pain to behave more like non-autistic children.
He thought he was saving them, turning a raw bundle of nerve endings into something resembling a human being.
One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is you have to construct a person. You have the raw materials but you have to build the person.
-Lovaas
Whenever ABA comes up, so does Lovaas. Autists point out that he used these same techniques to pioneer gay conversion therapy, which, like ABA, has also been proven to be deeply harmful to the human psyche. They also point out that while fewer ABA therapists use things like electric shock, it is still used and considered important by several institutions.
“But ABA has changed,” people argue. “My ABA therapist never uses punishment. It’s all positive and reward-based.”
That is very true for many people. Most ABA therapists don’t set out to hurt children. And yet, despite making ABA therapy fun and positive, the underlying goals of ABA have not changed.
And it is these goals that, like gay conversion therapy, do long-term damage to the human psyche.
The reason parents and ABA therapists can’t see it as abusive is because they can’t see it from an autistic point of view.
Let’s take a moment to look at some ABA in progress.
So? Did you see any child abuse?
Probably not.
How about here?
Or here?
Sure, the child was unhappy in the first video but the teacher was patient and she recovered, right?
And in the second video, they’re trying to teach children not to be disruptive, but they aren’t punishing the child or anything.
In all of these videos the children are never yelled at, scolded, shamed, or injured. They are praised and rewarded when they get things right, and often the kids seem to be enjoying the games.
No electric shocks, no aversive, nothing to make the experience traumatic, right?
Wrong.
Allistic people can’t see it, because they don’t understand how it feels to be autistic.
Let’s go back to that first video.
While they do not address it in the voice-over, if you watched it again you would notice how often the therapists take the children’s hands and fold them into the children’s lap.
You would also notice how often the child’s feelings are ignored.
In the first video, several of the children begin rubbing their eyes and looking tired, but they do not address this.
In the video with the girl in the supermarket, an autistic person can spot that she was getting overstimulated, exhausted, and was increasingly desperate to escape this environment.
In the video with the crying child, an autistic person wonders why she is so unhappy. Is she exhausted? Overtired? Overwhelmed? And when she stops fussing and goes back to doing the work, we can see the resignation on her face.
She isn’t happier. She’s just accepted that her feelings don’t matter and the fastest way to escape the situation is by complying.
In the last, you can see that ABA therapists deliberately ignore attempts to communicate or produce behaviours that have not been demanded by the therapist.
The child wants his mother’s attention. Would I ignore my child while trying to listen to what his doctor was telling me? Probably. But I would “shhh” or pat his arm to let him know that he was heard, and I would be with him in a minute.
Notice that ABA doesn’t tell you to go back to the child after and find out what they needed or wanted.
And that is the problem with ABA.
Not the rewards, not the silly imitation games. The problem with ABA is that it addresses the child’s behaviours, not the child’s needs.
Think of those happy little children in that first video.
Now understand that sessions like this are not a couple of hours a week. ABA therapists recommend that small children between 2 and 5 go through 40 hours a week of this type of learning.
40 hours a week.
No WONDER those kids are rubbing their eyes.
My allistic eight year old doesn’t do 40 hours a week of school. He goes to school from nine to three and gets a half hour recess and a half hour lunch. That’s 5 hours a day five days a week. 25 hours of active learning. And much of his class time is actually quiet reading, playing with learning materials, gym, or talking in a circle with his peers. So make it less than 20 hours a week of being actively taught.
Imagine asking double that for a preschooler.
Now consider that ABA is designed to ignore any protests the child might make.
ABA is not designed to consider the child’s feelings or emotional needs.
I’m not making a jump when I say that. You can go to any ABA website and read what they say and you’ll see that there will be no discussion of the child’s emotional welfare or happiness, only behaviours.
To ABA, behaviour is the only thing that matters. ABA considers autistic children as unbalanced kids who need to be balanced out, and if you balance their behaviour, they are fixed.
“…what you need to do is reduce those excesses like the self stimulatory behavior, repetitive behaviors, and increase the skills. And then what will happen is after the child really learns a set of foundational skills; then they will start relating more to other people.”
— Deborah Fein PhD
As you can see from the above video, “self-stimulation”, one of the “excesses” of autism behaviours, is considered a kind of boredom fidget– something useless that replaces real learning and interaction.
When they are erased and replaced with “life skills,” then this is celebrated as a success.
Any autistic person will tell you is that this is NOT what stimming is.
Stimming isn’t just like doodling when you’re bored, or throwing a basketball.
Stimming is a comforting self-soothing behaviour which helps us reduce stress, feel more comfortable in uncomfortable environments, and regulate our emotions.
Many of us feel that our stims are a form of communication – just as a smile or a frown communicates something about our internal states, so do our stims, if you would just pay attention. Moreso, in fact, since many autistic people smile when they are anxious or frown when they are perfectly content. Studies show that non-autistic people are terrible at interpreting our facial expressions.
If my husband sees me stimming more than usual in the middle of the day, he frowns and asks if my day is going okay. But many times he mistakes my emotions based on my facial expressions. My stims are better at translating my emotions than my face is, unless I’m actively animating my face in an allistic way for the benefit of my allistic audience.
Which is exhausting, by the way.
40 hours a week is too much for me so I can’t imagine how a small child manages it.
Grabbing my hands when I stim the way ABA recommends would NOT help my day go better.
It would be an excellent way to piss me off and make me feel frustrated and anxious, though.
It’s one thing to stop a child from hurting themselves by banging their head. It’s another to stop a harmless stim like hand flapping. You’re causing the child emotional discomfort just because the behaviour strikes you as weird.
Go back and watch some of those videos again, noting how often the autistic children are interrupted from hand-waving, making noise, crying, or otherwise trying to express and relieve their emotions.
Notice how often they get the child to make eye contact. Many autistic people find eye contact extremely uncomfortable. The way the children’s bodies are touched and manipulated so frequently, in corrective redirection, is upsetting the children. Their faces reflect confusion and sometimes distress.
But learning to tolerate discomfort is what ABA is all about.
Watch that child enter the grocery store. See how she looks all around? The noise and the lights are stressful and distracting. She wants to please her family and get the cookie pieces so she goes along with the act of putting food in the cart, but after a while she is worn out and can’t stand it anymore.
The mother comments that if they relented at this point and took the child out of the store, her daughter would be rewarded for behaving this way.
That is probably true. If you are in pain, and you scream “Ouch!” and someone comes running and relieves your pain, you’ll probably yell “Ouch” again the next time something hurts you.
Is that… bad?
The parents say the ABA really helped their daughter.
Did it really help the child, though? Or the parents?
The grocery store isn’t any less noisy or bright or overwhelming. And the child obviously still finds it difficult to go in. Instead, she has learned to keep her feelings to herself, to try and focus on pleasing her family, and bottle up her stress inside until she can’t take it any more.
That’s a healthy thing to teach a child, right?
With time she may become excellent at this. She may be able to go to the store, put items in the cart, and go home without a meltdown.
But the meltdown WILL come.
It will come over something minor, some silly thing that seems like nothing and pushes her over the edge where she was already teetering. And they will wonder where it came from. They’ll talk about how unpredictable her meltdowns can be.
It isn’t unpredictable to us.
We can see it coming. We can see that her autism hasn’t been treated to improve her life so much as to improve her family’s life. And while that is important too, wouldn’t it be better to find a solution that works for everyone?
Did they try ear defenders, and dark glasses?
Did they try encouraging her to stim if stressed?
Did they teach her a polite way to let them know when she has had enough and needs to leave the situation?
I don’t know. I don’t know them. I don’t know their child.
But I do know what autism feels like.
I know that ear defenders are not part of standard ABA protocols. Instead of teaching them to understand their sensory needs and self-advocate for having their needs met, they are taught to ignore them.
I know that ABA demands the child’s attention but refuses to give attention back when the child demands it.
I know that ABA aims to be positive and rewarding for the child, but doesn’t allow the child to tap out whenever they need to.
I know that ABA considers vital emotional regulation tools to be problems that must be extinguished.
I know that neurotypical pre-schoolers are not usually expected to learn for 40 hours a week.
I know that neurotypical children are encouraged to express their emotions, not smother them.
I know that ABA believes in removing a child’s language tool like the iPad when they are naughty. I notice that the ABA therapist working with the 8-year-old boy only handed him his communication tool in between “discrete trials.”
I know from activists like Cal Montgomery that even adult autistic people have their communication tools routinely taken away from them if they don’t “comply” to the demands of their therapists and caregivers.
I know that if I ask someone if they think it is abusive to remove a child’s only way of contacting their parents, or to ignore a child in distress, or to force a child into a situation that they find uncomfortable/painful, or refuse to help a child when they are suffering and overwhelmed, they will say yes.
As long as I don’t mention that the child is autistic, anyway.
Autistic kids are different, apparently.
Whenever autistic people protest ABA, we are told that we don’t understand, that we don’t know how hard autistic children are to live with. They talk about improving the child’s independence and argue that it isn’t cruel to teach a child to write or play with toys.
They don’t see how weird it is to try to systematically shape a child’s behaviour to teach them to play with a toy the “right” way.
They don’t see that 40 hours a week of brainwashing a child to put up with stress and discomfort without expressing their feelings might be a bad idea in the long run.
They don’t see how wrong it is to teach a child that their way of feeling comfortable and soothed is wrong and that ignoring your feelings and physical needs is good and gets you approval from your teachers and parents.
They don’t see that it is abusive to ignore a child’s attempts to communicate because they aren’t “complying” with a demand that makes them uncomfortable.
They don’t see how dangerous it is to teach a child to do whatever they are ordered to do, no questions asked, and to never object or say “no.”
They don’t think about the fact that 70% of people with ASD have experienced sexual abuse by the time they are college age.
They don’t think about how this person will learn to stand up for themselves or advocate for their needs when they were systematically trained in preschool never to disagree, speak up, or disobey.
Do what I say.
Put your hands in your lap.
Don’t cry. Don’t complain.
Listen to me.
I won’t listen to you.
This is not abuse.
…But, you know, the kid gets bubbles and tickles so it’s obviously safe and totally okay.
What do we know?
Our feelings don’t matter anyway.
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493 Responses
OK. The very very real and big problem here is WHAT constitutes Äutism?
Let’s stop diagnosing “autism” from a grab-bag of different behaviours.
Diagnosing Autism and then treating it from a set prescribed treatment, is as silly as diagnosing lameness, and then treating all lame people similarly.
Autism is merely a description of behaviour, It has many many different causes and all need different approaches,
Most of us Asperger’s people don’t consider we NEED help. We think all you so called ‘neurotypical people are boring, and uninteresting.
People who cannot live alone and need help need help — but for their own particular problem.
A: Nobody says what constitutes Autism because of the fact it’s a spectrum, so even if they say it, someone could miss being properly diagnosed because they don’t fall under that category. Which they already do often by the way, because all of the DSM entries focus on the presentation of Autism in AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) individuals, not AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) individuals. In fact, the DSM doesn’t even go on to generalize so both AMAB and AFAB people are diagnosed properly. A lot of sites still say that Autism is “4 times more likely” in boys (AMAB people) than in girls (AFAB people). It’s the same concept here.
B: Asperger’s has fallen out of favor with the Autistic community for a long time, and even has been out of the DSM for a long time, it’s time that people stop using it. Autistic people are Autistic, using Asperger’s contributes to the idea that there is a “milder” or “not as bad” form of autism, and in fact contributes to the stigma that Autism diagnoses often end up saddled with, because it’s horrible if a person is diagnosed as Autistic, but oh, someone who was diagnosed with Asperger’s is just “quirky” so it’s fine. And that’s not mentioning its origins laying with Nazi Germany, specifically Hans Asperger, who used the diagnosis to find the “useful” autistic people, and anyone who wasn’t was sent into the death camps.
C: It’s true that Autistic people are not all the same and so need different methods and approaches, however these aren’t and shouldn’t be considered treatment. As treatment implies eventually it will go away. It won’t, your autistic child, autistic teen, and/or autistic adult will always be autistic, they may not always present that way as they’ll learn better copes, or they may mask really well, but that doesn’t remove the fact that they’re still autistic at the end of the day and always will be.
D: For those will argue for ABA “therapy” and defend it, here’s some alternatives that’ll help your autistic child just as well, and won’t demand 40 hours out of a small child every week. OT or Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy (for those who have trouble speaking, or may go nonverbal at times, or are nonverbal), and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). All of these would help just as well, if not better, than ABA “therapy”. As they will take your child’s needs into account, they won’t be doing 40 hours a week, and on top of that, they don’t have basis in Gay Conversion “Therapy” or Compliance Training. Not to mention are far more humane. As just to get the point across, not even professional dog trainers would use ABA on their dogs. So why are you using it on your kids?
Don’t forget DIR/Floortime, SCERTS, TEACCH, and Mendability as alternatives to ABA.
You hardly need another comment, but I want to thank you for writing this — especially about the grocery store, my lifelong nemesis to this day at age 44 (the music, and the motion-activated talking ads in the aisles, and the announcements, and the detergent aisle…). This has been a source of great shame because the grocery store is almost emblematic of “normal” American life, not least because consumption is so normalized.
What always strikes me about these kinds of videos is that we expect of children what we would never ask adults to tolerate, or accept without question. Let’s take the grocery store. Today, one doed not have to physically go into a store to obtain food, in many parts of the U.S. anyway. There is grocery delivery of every kind in most metropolitan areas; there is ordering online and curbside pick up with almost no interpersonal interaction. There are food subscription boxes galore, in which one can receive the same things every week, or different things, or a combination. Indeed, for adults this is praised as simplification, automation, reducing mental overhead. There are neighborhood bodegas and farmers markets that can be far easier to manage and comprehend, spatially and size wise.
All a long way of saying: There is less *real need* than ever before to force a child to suffer the abundant miseries of unbridled capitalism as presented in a large grocery store. Why is this “skill’ still being so forced on them? Why not teach going to the grocery store as a sort of emergency measure one may need to do if necessary, while also teaching kids the many far easier, pleasant, and even automated ways to get food — which are the same as “all of the ways we assume adults know of”?
I am currently working as an interventionist in ABA…I am getting my masters in early childhood, and nothing I am doing agrees with what I already know about children. When I am in session and a child is crying, I want to hold them and hug them, tell them it will be okay, and ask them what is bothering them, some may not understand but that should be the type of goals we are working on. Not making them look us in the eyes, or tell us who is doing what in the picture for an hour and a half 4 days a week. This is not the way ABA is, you cannot give a reaction or you will reinforce “bad” behaviors. You cannot give any type of anything but praise, or a preferred item unless they do the behavior you want. Some kids try so hard and give their best effort, they can’t give anymore, and they do not get the preferred item or reinforcement. “Sorry kid, you gave it your best shot but you did not do it exactly as I asked so you’ll have to try harder and wait till next time” is legitimately what ABA does to a child. I cannot get down with this, not every child is the same, and making a child wait for reinforcement, praise, or a toy for an entire session is going to be too long for some kids.
I can sit there and tell a child is acting out because they’re either over stimulated by devices, TVs, all the noises or overstimulation from the environment around them, tired, or don’t feel well. They burn through so many bachelors holding individuals because nothing the interventionist does is ever right, or good…Or a child acting out is always there fault. I sit and witness parents screaming in their small children’s faces and want to cry. I know why these kids are struggling, or they say..”It’s attention seeking behavior.” When I watch one sibling get constant praise because he’s the baby and soooo cute, and precious and I watch the child I’m with act out, throw things, revert to babyish behavior, or scream…I can see he just wants to be as “good” as everyone thinks his little brother is, and as cute and everyone says Little Brother is. The only time my kid gets attention is if he’s acting out. I got bit because a child was exhausted and my manager had the audacity to blame me for being bit. I was there thinking I was helping kids, but it goes against every fiber of my being when I know a child needs to be heard, taught to understand their feelings, and emotions, rather than repeatedly going over topics that will not help them develop mentally, or emotionally. Speech is one thing, but all of this other stuff I can see is doing more harm than good for most of these precious kids.
This isn’t what I signed up for, and most of these places barely train you, and just throw you out there and reprimand you for every single thing you do, when they haven’t bothered to teach you anything. I see a lot of schools and teachers hate ABA and don’t want it in the school, I agree with them.
Hmm… I would love to hear what program is teaching you those things. Those responses are not behavior analytic in nature, and frankly incorrect. As an analyst, if a child is engaging with any academic stimuli, direction, or activity, you are going to provide high levels of reinforcement. Correct responding is what earns preferred items or activities. I would also like to respond to the comment regarding having children wait for an entire session to receive these things. In actuality, most children are receiving continuous reinforcement. This means after EVERY response they will get access to a preferred item, social praise, a break, or whatever else is desired by the learner. I am all about questioning the implementation of ABA and acknowledgment of lived experiences from autistics, but please make sure you are educated on the topic prior to sharing misinformation.
“Those responses are not behavior analytic in nature, and frankly incorrect.”
No. Those are pretty run of the mill for ABA as a practice as its done based on its origins and who created the practice (Lovaas).
“Correct responding is what earns preferred items or activities.”
Congrats, you have just admitted that you treat a human being as someone who can use a reward and punishment system like a dog, and not even in a manner that a professional dog trainer has stated would allow them to keep their license if they did it as the trainer stated their licensure programs wluld consider ABA as a practice inhumane.
“I am all about questioning the implementation of ABA and acknowledgment of lived experiences from autistics, but”
I’m going to give this it’s own little section. If you have to put “but” after saying you will acknowledge questions about implementing ABA and the experiences of autistic people. You are not actually all for it. It’s considered “conditional” to you based on your own biases and preconceived notions of what you’ve been taught and had put to your mind is what ABA “is” in order to keep your job.
“please make sure you are educated on the topic prior to sharing misinformation.”
I know this is 2 years old or more by this point, but I am so…so tired of seeing this tacked onto nearly every single response defending ABA as a practice. Just knock if off already. Stop using an attempt to make use of DARVO or even gaslight people into the belief that any instances or lived experiences where these statements of abusive practices are true and absolutely correct. Stop trying to hide behind the idea od it being misinformation that ABA is harmful. Just…quit. We all in the community already know why you’re doing it. And it’s not because you actually believe it. It’s because it allows you to keep your job and get clients and also works as a way to get people to disbelieve accounts of abuse while in ABA or delegitimize them with the idea that the abuse is the exception rather than the rule.
It’s disingenuous, and quite frankly nonproductive and completely unhelpful to actually autistic people trying to advocate for ourselves and get rid of this practice so that people looking to help will actually take a look at a practice that wasn’t created by a man who didn’t think of us as human and didn’t use tenets of compliance training and conversion therapy.
And before you go on the whole “how dare you I’m not doing that it is actually (continuing whatever argument used to defend ABA as not abuse)”. I’m a 24 year old Autistic adult who went through ABA and came out with trauma, intense emotional repression, and difficulties with enforcing my boundaries irl to the point my natural trauma response as my first go-to before anything else is to fawn and allow people to say whatever they want about me and say why I did something for me even if its wrong, because I was taught that the actual reasons themselves didn’t matter and neither did how I felt and that I should not enforce any boundaries with others because all they’re doing is trying to “help” me.
Perhaps you should consider alternatives like OT, SLP, DIR/Floortime, SCERTS, TEACCH, or Mendability.
I work in ABA and totally agree with this article to a certain extent. The good thing about the company I work for is that we do address the child’s needs and we don’t have rigid techniques like other companies. So all companies are not the same. I have seen other companies work with children where children get trained like dogs. And I never agreed with this or liked it. The main problem I run into is the teachers, they don’t understand how to deal with the child’s behavior and that’s why I am there but they always try to intervene which makes me crazy. I had a kid who would walk back and forth and do the hand flapping and I allowed him to do this as long as it was a time he wasn’t he was interrupting others like circle. His teacher didn’t like it but I saw it as no problem if he did it during playtime. I noticed how it calmed him down and how he had less meltdowns if he was allowed to do this. Of course realistically he could not do it all day because there were times he needed to learn and not be disruptive to other kids. I believe in addressing the child’s needs but I also believe the child needs to learn to respect others. This does not mean it’s abusive to teach a child how to behave. I have seen kids improve dramatically with aba when it comes with interacting with others such as not hitting throwing things at other kids cursing etc. I understand the point of the article but all aba is not like this and some techniques do help a child function in society which is very important because we don’t want these kids to grow up and get into trouble or mess their lives up. The focus should be we want to address the child’s need’s but we also want to teach them how to function in society.
ABA doesn’t teach any skills that can’t be taught in other non-abusive ways. The foundations of ABA (as a “therapy”) are abusive themselves, meaning that if it has changed to a point that it’s not abuse, then it’s no longer ABA.
Have you ever tried to find -why- this child is stimming? “Allowing” him to stim sometimes but not others isn’t addressing his needs. If he’s stimming due to distress or overwhelm, then figure out why he’s distressed and overwhelmed and eliminate those sources. If he’s stimming to process what’s going on (including processing and taking in new information that comes from learning times) then you’re doing him a serious disservice stopping him.
Did you problem solve with him to see if there were other stims that he could utilize to regulate during times like circle time? Was he -actually- not learning while pacing and stimming? Was his walking and flapping really that distracting and keeping everyone from learning?
Millions and millions of people learn how to “function in society” sans ABA. Nothing about being Autistic means that we need ABA to learn how to do this.
– an Autistic adult, who’s functioning fine in society, while flapping and pacing.
A good book for just about everybody is
Passing for Normal is Amy’s emotionally charged account of her lifelong struggle with these often misunderstood disorders. A powerful witness to her own …
The question IS WHAT is normal. Many of learn how to behave on public. Or how many people that ARE considered normal have their own private quirks and coping methods which they try to keel private.
I just generally rock — when I start flapping, I know it is time for me to work on ‘calming down’.
The important thing is for oneself to recognise when I time out is need, and for other people to recognise this
I am also a Behavior Support Specialist that utilizes ABA in our field. First of all I agree with much of what you said. I’ve been using ABA for 7 years and I’ve learned that it can not be successful in the long run unless that individuals needs are met and their emotions validated. That said, ABA is a science, science changes all the time, that’s the entire point. When we learn new information we change our understanding of what it is we are studying. Science is fluid not solid. Math has changed dramatically in just the last 100 years, but it’s still math. ABA is the same, we change it as we discover new information.
Part of ABA is examining the Function of behavior and the antecedents that cause behavioral reactions. I think too many people in our field ignore the significance of these factors. We cannot influence a behavior or even decide if a behavior SHOULD be influenced without understanding why the person does what they do. This is where I super agree with what you said about “Did you problem solve with him to see if there were other stims that he could utilize to regulate during times like circle time? ” and “Have you ever tried to find -why- this child is stimming? “, because these are both fundamentals of ABA that are often ignored.
In the case that Carol and you discussed, the behavior of interest is not “Self Stimulation” it should be “Disruption”. Because the person self stimulating is not an issue as you’ve said, the issue is how it effects other children in the classroom. So the solution is not to stop the stimm, but to allow him to go outside the classroom when he needs to self stimm, and to recognize the antecedents to his self stimulation so that the teacher can prompt them to take breaks before it gets to a point the child is over whelmed.
ABA isn’t a ‘science’, any more than Mengele’s experiments were. It’s simple behavioural modification, using the same techniques that have been in use for thousands of years, from slave markets to brothels. Punish non compliance, reward compliance, extinguish the individual in order to please the group.
I’m guessing you’re allistic, as only an NT person would say ‘the issue is how it effects other children in the classroom’. If you want to talk science, then empirically speaking the ACTUAL issue is the ‘classroom’, the generic ‘learning’ environment aimed wholly at engendering social compliance.
The actual solution is to tailor life experiences for what helps each and every person, not just provide ones that brutalise children – allistic and autistic – into becoming good little consumers.
Outrageous to compare ABA to Mengele. This is incredibly ignorant.
I will be very brief here because I think that your sum is very well done. Misuse of ABA i do not accept, where I mean when it is used to teach ASD children to behave neurotypically because, I agree with the writer of this article that they’re not and that there is no problem with that. However, I have worked with late teens with ASD who, as you say, have little language, struggle to wear clothes, attack their peers at a moments notice, and will not be able to function without supervision for the rest of their lives. I often wonder, if their parents had access to modern ABA therapies would they be able to live more independent lives? Would they be able to better express to those around them what their interests or thoughts are?
Most neurotypical teaching methods also include the conditioning principles of ABA therapy, right or wrong. Until our society becomes more accepting and open to the disruption of difference, unfortunately it’s how we will be.
– someone forever learning how to teach, listen & behave better herself.
Gonna put it down here, but if you wanna learn how to listen and behave better yourself. ABA “therapy” is not the way to go, a better idea would be to put Autistic kids who “have little language” (Aka: are nonverbal and so need other methods of speaking/communicating) into speech therapy and even Occupational therapy. Same with the kids who “attack their peers at a moments notice”, because they’re “attacking” for a reason, that being overstimulated, being generally overwhelmed, or the peers otherwise provoked them in some fashion. It’s never without a reason. End of. No behavior has no reason behind it. Also, I assume by supervision you mean a caregiver, guess what, some NT people do too. The modern world holds Independence as some sort of goal and gold standard, but you can live just as well and healthily in interdependence as well. Independence shouldn’t be the only goal, making sure the person is happy and healthy should be.
For everyone. NT and ND people. Nobody is excluded from this statement, everyone deserves a happy and healthy life, but because we’re all human, that’s gonna look different for everyone.
I understand that every child with and without autism is different, but what are some other options out there that people have tried. We are trying to stay away form ABA and have been trying to learn about speech therapy, play therapy, RDI, occupational therapy, and a few others.
As an adult i learned breathing techniques to calm myself down. I found that this work marvellously. I gto mine from Paul Owens “Complete Breahting”. He is a dog trainer and these help calm our dogs too. Many yoga breathing techniques are similar,
I would expect that these techniques would help you cam your child as well.
Remain calm yourself, and listen to your child
As someone who has worked with Adults with developmental delay for 7 years. I’d recommend trying everything you can, including ABA, and finding what fits your child the best. Like you said, every child is different. As someone that utilizes ABA, I do not agree with using it for anything other than dangerous behaviors.
No. Do not use ABA. At all. There’s a reason us in the autistic community call it abuse. It might have short term benefits for you, but it will have long term detriments and harm to your kid. Stop defending ABA. That’s it. Just stop. There should be no situation where you use ABA. Ever. If you want dangerous behaviors to stop, CBT and OT do that just god damn fine. There is no need for ABA. You are defending a practice that was founded by a man who did not even consider Autistic people to be human. He said you had to build us into being human beings. A Professional dog trainer has stated that they would not use ABA on the dogs they train, because it is inhumane to the dog. Let that sink in: Modern ABA as it is now, is considered inhumane to dogs, so why the hell would you recommend it for humans? Occupational Therapy helps with stims that are harmful to you or the person themselves. CBT would do the same thing. ABA has not taken into account a child’s needs and never will. Because the basis is to make us look “normal” and indistinguishable from our peers. The goal is not to help reduce or eliminate and redirect children with dangerous behaviors into safer ones. It is and always has been to make us mask more. To never take that mask off. To teach us that our feelings don’t matter if we can’t express them in an NT way, that our behaviors are horrible because they’re not what NT people do or are “disruptive” to NT people. The goal of ABA has always been to force the Autistic child into a more Neurotypical behavior for other NT people’s comfort.
If your practice does not do these things, it is not ABA. End of. You may write is as ABA on paper and put the label ABA to it so that insurances will cover for it, but it is not ABA. Because it takes away ABA’s main goal. To stop the behavior by whatever is deemed necessary, regardless of the needs of the child, and to prioritize the comfort and needs of other NT people over your Autistic Adult/Kid/Teenager.
The fact you have not realized this despite how long you’ve worked with developmentally disabled adults to us, it speaks volumes. Because it means you did not listen to the communities you are claiming to care for.
I feel certain that the problem is NOT so much Applied Behaviour Analysis, so much as the way it is used by people who really do NOT understand what it is.
Going back to Skinner (must we? yes, probably) his theories said nothing about usefulness or kindness or solving behaviour problems.
He was a theoretical Psychologist and discovered certain rules of learning that affected behaviour.
Now one can use his theories to reinforce a behaviour that you desire in an animal, You can use Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement , Positive Punishment or Negative Punishment. (see Skinner’s theories).
But we can only tell what quartile our intervention was in, AFTER we have seen the results. But even this tells us nothing about whether the interventions we used were cruel of unking, or even if the behaviour we ‘punished’ (aka suppressed) was replace by a better or worse outcome.
Now I see here, some of the “ABAists” holding the hands of children to stop them flapping (or something).
Now ,IF this worked, was it because the child found that the therapist holding their hands was aversive?. I would guess, most likely. So the behaviour was punished. The child stopped flapping hands when the therapist was near to avoid getting their hands held.
Was the outcome positive for the child or only for the therapist (parent/teacher) who found flapping hands annoying?
Did the child become any calmer? Or did it just mean another stress response came instead? Was this different stress respond better for the child or worse????
Speaking as someone who WAS a stressed child and suffered from stress related illness, I would suspect that in a true case of ‘autism’ it was a worse outcome.
Sometimes I’m sure that the alternate behaviour was far worse for the child, but because adults viewed the child as sick it was ‘acceptable’. Blocked sinuses, asthma, indigestion, – I was always jealous of my sister who could get asthma at the drop of a hat to get her own way, while I with sinusitis and indigestion and eczema was seen as sulky ☹
Certainly teach an alternative behaviour as far as possible. I always wanted to run away and hide) which I did frequently, but if my mother found me, I was hauled out and told how horrible I was 🙁 There is nothing wrong with withdrawing from a situation which you find stressful.
We do NOT all have to like crowds and socialising. Or excess noise, or jollity.
We understand what ABA is. It is ABA that is the problem. Because that’s the entire issue with ABA, you are using a “therapy” that only addresses behavior, despite that child or adult’s needs, and then deeming them fixed when they perform as expected in the short term, without thinking of the long term effects that happen when you intentionally ignore another person’s needs.
If you want alternate behavior to a dangerous behavior, Occupational Therapy exists. As does Music Therapy, Speech therapy, play therapy, RDI, and several others.
There is no need for ABA to exist.
For fucks sake, if Autism Speaks supports the practice of it, you should be well aware that it has harmful impacts and doesn’t help us. Because all Autism Speaks wants, and was founded to do, was “cure” us. And “prevent” Autism from happening (aka Eugenics). It was never made to help give us support, no matter how much the organization says otherwise.
ABA is a set of tools scientifically proven to work, we decide how and when it is appropriate to use them. It Is the responsibility of specialist using ABA strategies to ensure that these tools are being responsibly utilized to promote the wellbeing and safety of the individual we serve.
A doctor prescribing a patient 300mg of cyanide doesn’t mean Biology or Chemistry are bad sciences, it means the doctor is a bad doctor. ABA is a tool, like every science, that can be used for good or bad depending on how it is used.
“We can use a hammer to build a house or to smash a finger; it is our responsibility to ensure the hammer is used to build the house.”
“ABA is a set of tools scientifically proven to work.”
And laudanum cough medication is scientifically proven to work as intended (stops the coughing). That doesn’t mean it should be used under any circumstances.
Your view of aba is outdated. Practices evolve e.g. dentist, psychology. There is a massive change from the way dentist used to work 30 yrs ago to now. Same for most profession. Your videos are old. The people who has had bad aba experience are probably over 20 yrs old. While their experience is valid, it is outdated. To make your argument credible, find someone who is doing aba in this day and age from a qualified professional. Someone with more than a month experience of doing the therapy.
Well if course any autistic adult will be mostly over 20 years old if they are telling you they were abused under the ABA therapist, you have to be that old to have escaped.
May I ask that as a parent who is new to these ABA services for my child with Autism, what are the main things to look for when first starting. I am trying to do my research on the pros and cons, and to better understand the outcome in the way it could help my son succeed in certain areas of his life. I am here to be a listener and take in the positive, and also the negative that people feel they could share to get the most out of ABA so I am ready with the questions, or concerns going forward. I am fully committed to my all 3 of my sons, and I want to include everyone in on his progression so we can as a unit help him succeed into a comfortable setting in society. Some information I gathered already is to be very focused on the way the therapist is relaying the techniques and make sure, that his emotional needs are met. Along with the learning to transmission some of his behavior into a more effective but comforting for his personal space way of communicating, without making it seem like it is work or forced upon. Questions a mother can give to his specialists when I feel, they are not working in a way that my son is going to see as positive influence. How to address the situation, without making it seem as if I am high jacking the activity, but gets my point across we want to stop the way of tactics, and try alternatives that will ease his mind and better his progression. Anything given will be appreciated, and I thank you in advance for giving me the advice as to better understand what will best help my son in life moving forward.
Michelle,
It is refreshing to see a parent take the perspective that you have. I am a neurodiverse ABA professional and would love to see parents questioning the reasoning behind interventions. When first starting, I would ask questions to the BCBA if they use response interruption for harmless behaviors (stimming), and most places do not. But their response to this question should give you some insight on how the company operates. I would ask questions regarding the use of punishment, and the protocols in which behavior plans are reviewed by parents prior to implementation. Setting up weekly/monthly meetings with the analyst to review data, goals, and any concerns either of you may have would be beneficial. You should also have access to all of these things on your own, but it is nice to speak with the analyst directly to walk you through goals without the jargon provided in the goals. I want to let you know that all analysts I have met in my career DO consider emotions. Most anti ABA individuals do not fully understand the science behind behavior analysis. Thoughts and emotions are widely considered in behavior analysis, and measured in objective ways. Keep in mind behavior analysis is not just for autistic people, it is for all people. Behavior analytic principles are throughout life everywhere you look, in your job, social media, marketing, ect. However, in behavior analysis, there is something happening in the individuals learning history, that behavior modifications at home are not feasible. A majority of therapists are now obtaining assent from clients throughout the session in addition to consent from parents. The more parental involvement, the better during session. Ask questions, ask for reasoning behind programs. Be involved!
“Most anti ABA individuals do not under the science behind behavior analysis”….
The large majority of people against ABA are Autistic people. As in, people in the Autistic community, as in people you are purportedly trying to help “live better lives”. We understand the “science” just god damn fine. Thoughts and emotions are NOT “widely considered” in ABA. Because then that would destroy the basis of why it exists. To make us “indistinguishable” from our peers. To make us appear Neurotypical. To make us mask our autistic traits for the comfort of others.
It’s funny how you say it’s for everyone, when there are professional dog trainers out there who state that they wouldn’t use this on the animals they train, because it would be considered inhumane and they would be liable to lose their license…yet it’s ok when it’s humans? It’s ok when it’s kids?
Please reconsider what job you’re getting into, and how much you are ignoring and speaking over and condescending the very people you claim to want to help in your job. Because the autistic community would not have spoken up about how this is harmful if it didn’t cause lasting long term harm. If it wasn’t actually harmful. There would not have been a peep from us.
The Autistic community is against ABA. The Autism self advocacy network (ASAN) is against ABA. Most major Autistic organizations that actually help Autistic individuals and are not made or founded to research into prevention and “curing” Autism are against ABA. If there is a pattern, don’t bury your head in the sand and pretend there’s not. Look at the pattern, see it for what it is, and take steps to better yourself.
The only places that support ABA are linked with Autism Speaks, an agency with a vast history of ableism towards the very people it claims to want to “support” and uses the name of to fund itself. An organization that the vast majority of, you guessed it, the Autistic Community does not support and in fact actively hates because of the stigma that it perpetuates and increases upon those in the Autistic community.
Think on that for a while and a while more, and reconsider calling those against ABA people who simply “don’t understand” the science of it.
That’s not true for all therapy . And for every autistic person who sadly had a very bad experience there is one who had a good experience.
We stand by all that are abused and it was not right and shame on people who did it wrong.
There is more than one way to do ABA and sometimes a therapist gets it right. And now parents can see it. No one makes my son do anything, he needs a break they take a break, he wants to play he is allowed to play, they play with him.
Something not working ok so we don’t do that anymore. Need to spin you can spin. Need to run back and forth you can do that.
You can meltdown but you can’t hit, or hurt anyone. Same as any other kid but with extra if there is a sensory issue we see that and make it work for us not work against it. Wear glasses, cover ears, get a chew toy etc.
I find it funny how you focus on the aspects of my comment that aren’t about what orgs support ABA. It’s very telling. Incredibly so, that you pointedly ignored my point about ASAN (Autism Self Advocacy Network) does not support ABA, but Autism Speaks, that has a history of ableism against our community and speaking directly over us in order to continue to stigmatize us and make money off of us, very much supports ABA.
I also find it funny how you do not address the part of my comment where I state that the majority of people against ABA are apart of the Autistic community. I.e: Autistic people are against ABA. Not because they don’t understand the science, but because of the direct experiences of those who have been through ABA themselves as kids or teens or even as adults, and the pattern of who has and hasn’t been supporting it.
If an organization like Autism Speaks, with a founder who on a documentary said if it weren’t for her also having an NT daughter would have driven her Autistic daughter off a cliff while the autistic daughter was right there able to hear her words. The same Autism Speaks that continues to purport the lkng debunked myth that Autism is caused by vaccines. That same organization where less than 2% of their funds go to actually helping Autistic people and their families and more goes towards further fundraisers, entertainment payroll, and “research” into Autism for “prevention” and to “find a cure”. The same organization that doesn not have a single autistic person on its board of directors, and who’s board frequently speaks over and openly derides and allows/encourages the harassment of autistic people who speak up against them. The same organization that tells parents in their 100 day kit that they should go through the 5 stages of grief for their child that is very much still alive simply because they were diagnosed as autistic. The same organization that still says that boys are “4 times more likely” to be autistic and furthers the bias towards AMAB diagnosis and ignores the under diagnosis of AFAB people because the DSM only includes criteria for presentation in AMAB people.
It is honestly f*cking disgusting, the level of contempt you have for autistic people and the willful ignorance you choose to keep participating in.
WE ARE HERE SCREAMING OUT THAT IT IS ABUSE and you just go right on f*cking ignoring it like the god damned monster that you are. You disgust me.
I would suggest finding another type of therapy for your Autistic children (the autistic community as a whole prefers Identity first language, not person first). There are going to be plenty of people suggesting ABA because it’s “changed”. However, the main goal of ABA is going to remain the same, and so long as it does, ABA is not the place where you should be putting your children.
A recommendation worth looking into if you want to help your kids and make sure they’re having their emotional needs met while also redirecting possible dangerous behaviors and making sure they have the coping mechanisms and things they need to help them live happy and healthy would be to Occupational Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and/or even Speech therapy if your autistic child or children are nonverbal or have trouble with speaking when they’re not nonverbal.
A great place I’d suggest looking for resources would be Autism Self Advocacy Network’s (ASAN’s) website. They provide plenty of resources and ways to help your autistic children without ignoring their emotional needs and any other specific needs they may have.
-signed, a 23 year old Autistic Adult
As someone that has been working in the field for 10 years I find this whole article to be a gross overstatement of what ABA CAN BE. The foundation of ABA is dark and shameful. Find me any science that didn’t start out that way. ABA is a tool, how you decide to use it will determine if it is good or not. Were kids abused in the past? Absolutely. But you know what’s changed since then? The people working in the ABA field. The newest generation of ABA practitioners is nothing like those of the past. Go read online all the posts about how therapists today try so hard to be more in-tuned with their clients. We don’t just demand compliance and block all behaviors because they aren’t “functional.” You want to take a break during therapy because you’re tired? Here are 5 different ways you can tell me that. I’ll take a break with you. You want to run around and stim? Go for it, get it out. I need to get up and move too. You don’t want to do something and can tell me in some type of way? Cool, we don’t have to do it. But if you’re going to have a tantrum because you don’t like something? Chances are I am not going to coddle you and make you feel better. Just like I wouldn’t coddle a neurotypical child who tantrums because they don’t like something.
To any parents that read this article and are now fearful of ABA. Please do your own research, seek out therapies/therapists that you feel comfortable with. Stay involved. Talk to your child, talk to those in your community that are in therapy. Just like Autism is a spectrum, so is ABA Therapy. There is most certainly bad therapy out there where they will drill your child for 40 hours a week on the most mundane, non-functional things. But there are also those of us that just want to help you get through the day and maybe connect better with the people around you.
Based on the large number of you being patronizing and rude and attempting to silence the actually autistic voices in the comments, I’d argue that the people who work in the field haven’t changed enough. Your comments don’t sound like someone who should be allowed near children whether or not they’re neurodivergent. STOP. TALKING. OVER. AUTISTIC. PEOPLE. You know how white people don’t get to decide what’s racist, and cis men don’t get to decide what’s sexist, and straight people don’t get to decide what’s homophobic, and abled people don’t get to decide what’s ableist, and cis people don’t get to decide what’s transphobic? The same is true here. If you aren’t autistic, you don’t get to decide whether or not it’s harmful. And you don’t get to speak for or over autistic voices. Allies LISTEN. They don’t speak for the people they claim to want to help. That’s not how this works. Anyone who’s actively helping a community is doing so by listening to them. None of this “parents draw your own conclusions” nonsense. NO. Parents listen to the community your child belongs to. Whether or not your child is capable of communicating their experience in a way you understand, many autistic people are. And they’re saying ABA is harmful. Your job as a supposed ally is to sit down, shut up, and listen to the people who are every bit as capable as advocating for themselves as anyone else. Your comments are disgustingly disrespectful. If you can’t respect the community, you certainly have no business working with them.
Thank you for writing this article. I worked as a Behavior Therapist for 4.5 years. I never liked ABA therapy–I said I felt like I was training dogs instead of helping children–but I could never really put my finger on WHY. Not as articulately as you have. It wasn’t until I left the company (thanks, COVID!) that I found out autistic people consider ABA therapy to be abusive. And I immediately felt terrible. The company I worked for was not as rigid as some therapy centers, but there was still that sense of aloofness, and it felt like all we cared about was changing the kids and making life easier for their parents.
I tried really hard to be a good therapist. I often did things my own way and responded to the kids how I would my own. I have two autistic children and an autistic younger sister I was often responsible for when I was younger, so I felt like I was well-equipped to be able to help my clients. I saw some really good things, saw children make really important strides in their therapy. Now I’m questioning the whole thing.
I will say this: Good training is SO important. Where I worked, we were not trained very well, and I saw many people come and go who were just awful therapists. But on the other hand, there were a few really great ones, people who saw the children as more than their diagnoses.
I hope, as more and more people speak out about ABA, things change.
I was attempting to read a story to my group at the end of the day. My little autist sat at the back singing Christmas songs at the top of her voice. I asked the children if they could hear the story. “Nooo!!!” They chimed. So I put down the book and we all sang Christmas songs. Happy New Year!
This is so not the case while my son has done ABA. Matter of fact it is very child centered. We watched a video Mom kept talking to Dad while her kid yelled then turned to the child and talked to them.
And we were also told to tell our kids that we will pat there hand that was a signal to wait and we will talk after we are done.
They are allowed to Stim never seen one that was not and they are allowed to meltdown. No one holds hands down or even holds them they are allowed to melt down.
They are not forced to make eye contact and if uncomfortable the therapist stops.
They realize all autistic kids or people are different and one size does not fit all. And they tailor to each kid what they do.
Would you like to tell me why you are telling an autistic adult is wrong about something and you are now speaking over them? Just because they aren’t using obvious aversives doesn’t mean its not abusive. The key idea is still compliance. The key idea is still to make your autistic son “indistinguishable from his peers”. The key idea is still to make him mask. That has not changed. It’s just now not as obviously done so you’ll defend the practice. If a majority of the community is informing you that this is harmful and abusive, you might want to take a second and listen rather than continue to defend the practice. As I notice you don’t deny that they still make a child do double their own schooling hours a week. That’s still not good. That’s still abusive. A child needs rest. A child should not be doing what is the average work week. Especially that young. Even as a teen, that’s still too much.
Also, just because you have not SEEN it does not mean that it doesn’t happen. That’s ignorant on your part.
“Stimming is a comforting self-soothing behaviour which helps us reduce stress, feel more comfortable in uncomfortable environments, and regulate our emotions.”
You forgot “Method of improving our ability to concentrate.
“One way to look at the job of helping ABA practitioners is you have to construct a person. You have to put in the empathy in order to build the person.”
-NotLovaas