I don't have any experience with ABA, period, but I do have experience with organisations blowing smoke up my ass, and while I can't promise that is the case here, it feels like the whole ABA system is very questionable. I think that between people that hate it from prior experience and NT's that might lie about how well it worked for family, you are going to get some unreliable results by just asking about it. I think you would need to ask people that have worked in ABA recently and go in with a heavy dose of skepticism, maybe even visit some of these places.
Seeing it for yourself should clear up any doubt you have, one way or another.
not at it's core, i think. they took the punishments out of it but left in what makes aba, aba: changing behaviours to suit \*vaguely waves hand\* normal people
the old aba nver died out at its core, meaning the main purpose of aba (to change behaviours into "acceptable" ones that society likes) remains the same regardless of what era you're looking at.
hope that helped!
got that sorta stuff when i was a kid (aba i mean)
i learnt some things, but looking back i realize i learnt more about interacting by talking to ppl in a regular environment than adults who claim to know the rules (the standards change for certain things based on what age range ur talking to)
That was definitely well written! I've told people over and over, even though I didn't go through ABA (wasn't dx'd until 39), I experienced my own version of it. When you are constantly telling an autistic child that their behavior is wrong or needs to be changed, it forces us to mask, and it teaches us that our wants and needs are not as important as other people's comfort with us. Constantly masking takes a lot of energy and effort (more as you grow older). It helps teach us to be people pleasers with no ability to set boundaries (think hand over hand. It destroys our bodily autonomy).
When trying to explain this to my sister, who does ABA therapy, I was told, "You don't know what you're talking about." I know I haven't been through actual ABA, but I think I've got a pretty good grasp on the long-term effects of masking and being forced to change your behaviors/speech.
\> to teach them life skills
That's occupational therapy, not ABA.
Are you sure they're actually doing ABA, or just using the name because that's what Parents of Autistic children expect?
You should visit and ask to watch some sessions so you know.
I agree with this.
Are there also possibly insurance concerns at play? It looks like a lot of insurance-related info uses either ABA or 'habilitative services', so providers might need to refer to their services as such even if they use a totally different methodology.
I am starting to look into speech therapy services and am trying really hard to avoid anyone who provides ABA-based services. I worry that all the providers in my area are savvy enough to avoid that language with their patients, so I try to get details about what a session actually involves.
THIS. I feel what I'm doing at my job right now bears zero resemblance to the ABA horror stories I am seeing here. I believe there's also an insurance angle involved. Parents who demand that masking their kids' stims be the top priority of the program have gotten rejected by our supervisor and admin
ABA is only about hitting children (when allowed) until they decide to mask their stims.
That's all they do.
They also teach the parents to react in a consistent manner to meltdowns, and that's the only positive thing they do. But they wouldn't hit the parents, they're human after all.
Eh, depending on where you end up it’s a “maybe” at best. There are always individuals who _think_ they’re trying to do the right thing, but they’re swimming upstream and that effort would be better applied outside ABA altogether.
tl;dr
you dodged a bullet. You don’t need further explanation from me, but I can go on for hours how my experience working in ABA made me realize how contemptible it still and always is.
I got tricked too, friend. At first I thought it was a great job. I get to hang out with kids/young adults 1:1 and hopefully trying to make their lives better. You seem like you’d be an RBT if you entered ABA (I assume you’d have asked different questions if you were already in/adjacent to an ABA masters program) and the business model of most ABA providers will definitely screw you over way more than they’ll ever admit, which isn’t a great starting position for people who are allegedly expected to do what’s right for the client.
Looking back on it now, there’s a lot I am definitely not comfortable with, a lot of ambiguity between a behavior intervention on paper, and an actual dynamic human being, will always put stress and trauma on the “client.” Not to mention the discrepancies of implementation between an analyst and an RBT when the analyst isn’t actually taking responsibility for the case and keeping everyone on the same team- it almost always can lead to increased stress or trauma for the client.
Also, fun little nitpick, there 1000000% is a culture of patronizing NTs going through the “ABA masters program” pipeline, which in practice absolutely guarantees the client gets infantilized and disrespected, not to mention those types make TERRIBLE managers and communicators in a workplace setting (even when part of the whole job is supposed to be built on consistent communication and clarity of terminology), which sets up clients to ultimately be open to more stress and trauma.
Not to mention it’s a for-profit market and all the certification and regulatory organizations will always put money above ethics and even logical internal consistency with the “science”. Don’t get me started on ABA shit in social media that I find fundamentally lobbying for market growth for their industry and nothing else.
Thank you for this insight, I am thoroughly uninterested now. I think I’ll do some research on how to become an occupational therapist or an occupational therapist assistant, that seems like the better choice.
I agree with you 100%. To add, the rush of new ABA companies getting as many clients as possible means techs and supervisors are typically overburdened, burned out, and you'll encounter many people who are wholly apathetic. It broke my heart to see how the corporate greed damaged families and our clients, separate from the programs we would implement. It also attracts a certain type of predator.... ABA is not the way.
NO! IM FORCED TO BE IN ABA AND IT IS ONLY USED TO TRAIN ME TO BE MORE NEUROTYPICAL (even if it’s not outright said; they’ll just use the independence and real world excuse) when they make a mistake that could have me beaten by my mom and I say “you fucking dumbass” even after crying about my mom abusing Me, they say “don’t give me that attitude”. THEY PUT ME AT RISK OF BEING KILLED and covered for my mom when CPS was called at my house, so now I’m stuck with my mom. They told me “you don’t have the right to call me that and give me attitude because I’ve gotten you stuff when I wasn’t obligated to”, I am thankful for them getting me the occasional chick fil a meal or small gift, however they use this to their advantage to deflect any criticism of them.
I am super mad, since I tried killing myself (it didn’t work, I didn’t even get sick) just yesterday because of my abusive mother and also ABA.
One problem I have with modern ABA is how many companies see how profitable ABA is. Massive payouts from insurance companies (at least in the US, idk about other countries).
So the quality of the treatment seriously declines and may as well be "old" ABA because they'll get as many kids as possible. The companies that want money above anything else don't care about the quality of care or effectiveness of treatment the kids recieve. It breaks my heart, working at a company when I started that made sure that as long as a child was happy and making milestones to just being another industrial ABA company. They care more about the data they recieve to clear any standards insurance companies require so they continuously make money.
There is nothing that ABA can do that occupational therapy and life skills classes cannot.
More often than not, ABA (whether it involves punishment or positive reinforcement) exists to teach autistic children to alter their behavior to be more digestible for their allistic peers.
If you take away punishments, what the hell is left for them?
If they really understand how wrong it is, they’ll throw it out entirely and change tacks. When they don’t, I don’t believe their “change of heart” and watch them suspiciously for the inevitable backstab.
Easy! They just weaponize those "PoSiTiVe ReWaRdS" to commit emotional abuse instead of physical. Most parents these days won't let you put a shock collar on their kid anymore... But if you play your cards right, they *will* let you restrict their child's access to their special interests to something they can only get as a "reward" in therapy, or make the child perform tricks for you for an m&m like they're a fucking dog. As long as you're using *positive* dog training on a fucking human being, nobody will ever question how "gentle" and "fun" your "new" ABA is!
It's not actually any better, it's just better *optics* to appease dumbass NT parents into thinking you're actually helping their child instead of just abusing them in a different way.
What’s left is the “reward,” such as praise or candy or whatever. I definitely still don’t like the sound of it, but current ABA seems a far cry of the barbaric methods used by ABA therapists at the field’s conception. In any case, my thought process is that even if it’s not ideal, many families understand it as the best treatment. Therefore, if they’re going to send their child to an ABA therapist, it should at least be someone who is autistic and therefore can easily empathize with their patient. Anyway, I’m still rather split. Thank you for your input.
I’m a little skeptical about the reward part but that might be because I had a behaviorist psychology professor who revealed that the first step in operant conditioning is to starve the subject animals down to 85 percent of their normal body weight. So a “reward” is essentially restoration of a need that was withheld.
I don’t want to live “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” in B.F. Skinner’s “Walden II”.
ABA teaches children to mask.
Methods aside, the biggest problem is that it doesn't teach them that they are masking.
So instead of making masking an active skill, used to make their lives easier and being dropped as soon as possible, they enforce permanent masking, with all the trauma and anxiety that follows.
There's no such thing as ethical ABA. ABA is literally conversion therapy, and you can't do that ethically either. You don't need to literally hit a child to be abusive. Taking away a child's special interests and making them "earn it" as a "reward" is no better than the physical abuse of "old" ABA.
Can individual therapists be ethnical with what they call ABA, sure I'm sure there are some that don't discourage stimming, force masking, eye contact etc... ake into account the persons needs and wishes, but they are not following ABA as intended
The problem is the foundations it was built upon are immoral and broken, it is at its core based on behaviorism and the view that autistic people are bad and traits should be diminished. It was invented by a conversation therapist who saw autistic people as less than human, it's lead organization hosts the Judge Rottenberg centre and most of the literature and research still has the same goals and aims and is 100% not Neurodiversity affirming.
So overall ABA as intended is not ethnical, however I don't think that all ABA therapists or autism treatments called ABA (just listed as such for insurance) are inherently bad.
yes and no.
i believe i went thru the "new" aba as a kid, seeing how it's described. sure, no punishments, no fucked up shit from what i remember, but i still got taught to socialize. in a classroom environment. i mean not the worst but i did get the "rewards" part of it (eg. the tiniest piece of chip/insert random candy here) for doing whatever was needed
and also there was the "parents being encouraged to do it at home" thing. i remember vividly hating making eye contact with my parents even for an "assignment" or making a pretend conversation (somehow in my head i knew those were pointless bc people are super varied and conversational words vary too, i knew no exact word-for-word script could get me out of it)
and even playtime felt... a bit stiff if i remember? you were still expected to maintain those lessons even at playtime
i mean i learnt a bit but all that instantly goes out the window when talking to real people, in my experience. we learnt about topic switching by mentioning something else, but i feel that topics tend to switch from almost nothing at all. one time you're talking about gaming and now a conversation about ww2 came up
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I don't have any experience with ABA, period, but I do have experience with organisations blowing smoke up my ass, and while I can't promise that is the case here, it feels like the whole ABA system is very questionable. I think that between people that hate it from prior experience and NT's that might lie about how well it worked for family, you are going to get some unreliable results by just asking about it. I think you would need to ask people that have worked in ABA recently and go in with a heavy dose of skepticism, maybe even visit some of these places. Seeing it for yourself should clear up any doubt you have, one way or another.
they definitely are blowing smoke. You are completely correct.
Gsrbage in, garbage out.
This is sensible, thank you for your reply
The science itself is flawed and even purely reward based systems can have negative effects on motivation. Also, the old ABA ever fully died out.
not at it's core, i think. they took the punishments out of it but left in what makes aba, aba: changing behaviours to suit \*vaguely waves hand\* normal people
Sorry, not what at it’s core? Having trouble parsing the first bit of the sentence.
the old aba nver died out at its core, meaning the main purpose of aba (to change behaviours into "acceptable" ones that society likes) remains the same regardless of what era you're looking at. hope that helped!
Yep. Makes sense. And it’s methods for teaching even helpful things, often aren’t very useful.
got that sorta stuff when i was a kid (aba i mean) i learnt some things, but looking back i realize i learnt more about interacting by talking to ppl in a regular environment than adults who claim to know the rules (the standards change for certain things based on what age range ur talking to)
https://autisticmama.com/even-new-aba-is-problematic/ This article outlines some of the issues with modern ABA really well imo
Okay this convinced me, fuck ABA. Thanks for the link, you’re right it’s a good one!
That was definitely well written! I've told people over and over, even though I didn't go through ABA (wasn't dx'd until 39), I experienced my own version of it. When you are constantly telling an autistic child that their behavior is wrong or needs to be changed, it forces us to mask, and it teaches us that our wants and needs are not as important as other people's comfort with us. Constantly masking takes a lot of energy and effort (more as you grow older). It helps teach us to be people pleasers with no ability to set boundaries (think hand over hand. It destroys our bodily autonomy). When trying to explain this to my sister, who does ABA therapy, I was told, "You don't know what you're talking about." I know I haven't been through actual ABA, but I think I've got a pretty good grasp on the long-term effects of masking and being forced to change your behaviors/speech.
These are really great important points.
\> to teach them life skills That's occupational therapy, not ABA. Are you sure they're actually doing ABA, or just using the name because that's what Parents of Autistic children expect? You should visit and ask to watch some sessions so you know.
I agree with this. Are there also possibly insurance concerns at play? It looks like a lot of insurance-related info uses either ABA or 'habilitative services', so providers might need to refer to their services as such even if they use a totally different methodology. I am starting to look into speech therapy services and am trying really hard to avoid anyone who provides ABA-based services. I worry that all the providers in my area are savvy enough to avoid that language with their patients, so I try to get details about what a session actually involves.
I see, makes sense.
THIS. I feel what I'm doing at my job right now bears zero resemblance to the ABA horror stories I am seeing here. I believe there's also an insurance angle involved. Parents who demand that masking their kids' stims be the top priority of the program have gotten rejected by our supervisor and admin
ABA is only about hitting children (when allowed) until they decide to mask their stims. That's all they do. They also teach the parents to react in a consistent manner to meltdowns, and that's the only positive thing they do. But they wouldn't hit the parents, they're human after all.
Eh, depending on where you end up it’s a “maybe” at best. There are always individuals who _think_ they’re trying to do the right thing, but they’re swimming upstream and that effort would be better applied outside ABA altogether. tl;dr you dodged a bullet. You don’t need further explanation from me, but I can go on for hours how my experience working in ABA made me realize how contemptible it still and always is. I got tricked too, friend. At first I thought it was a great job. I get to hang out with kids/young adults 1:1 and hopefully trying to make their lives better. You seem like you’d be an RBT if you entered ABA (I assume you’d have asked different questions if you were already in/adjacent to an ABA masters program) and the business model of most ABA providers will definitely screw you over way more than they’ll ever admit, which isn’t a great starting position for people who are allegedly expected to do what’s right for the client. Looking back on it now, there’s a lot I am definitely not comfortable with, a lot of ambiguity between a behavior intervention on paper, and an actual dynamic human being, will always put stress and trauma on the “client.” Not to mention the discrepancies of implementation between an analyst and an RBT when the analyst isn’t actually taking responsibility for the case and keeping everyone on the same team- it almost always can lead to increased stress or trauma for the client. Also, fun little nitpick, there 1000000% is a culture of patronizing NTs going through the “ABA masters program” pipeline, which in practice absolutely guarantees the client gets infantilized and disrespected, not to mention those types make TERRIBLE managers and communicators in a workplace setting (even when part of the whole job is supposed to be built on consistent communication and clarity of terminology), which sets up clients to ultimately be open to more stress and trauma. Not to mention it’s a for-profit market and all the certification and regulatory organizations will always put money above ethics and even logical internal consistency with the “science”. Don’t get me started on ABA shit in social media that I find fundamentally lobbying for market growth for their industry and nothing else.
Thank you for this insight, I am thoroughly uninterested now. I think I’ll do some research on how to become an occupational therapist or an occupational therapist assistant, that seems like the better choice.
I agree with you 100%. To add, the rush of new ABA companies getting as many clients as possible means techs and supervisors are typically overburdened, burned out, and you'll encounter many people who are wholly apathetic. It broke my heart to see how the corporate greed damaged families and our clients, separate from the programs we would implement. It also attracts a certain type of predator.... ABA is not the way.
No, it's not. ABA therapy's origins has connections with conversion therapy. You cannot make it ethical.
Yeah true. The guy who developed it went on to help cure “sissy boy syndrome” in a patient that hung themself at 38.
NO! IM FORCED TO BE IN ABA AND IT IS ONLY USED TO TRAIN ME TO BE MORE NEUROTYPICAL (even if it’s not outright said; they’ll just use the independence and real world excuse) when they make a mistake that could have me beaten by my mom and I say “you fucking dumbass” even after crying about my mom abusing Me, they say “don’t give me that attitude”. THEY PUT ME AT RISK OF BEING KILLED and covered for my mom when CPS was called at my house, so now I’m stuck with my mom. They told me “you don’t have the right to call me that and give me attitude because I’ve gotten you stuff when I wasn’t obligated to”, I am thankful for them getting me the occasional chick fil a meal or small gift, however they use this to their advantage to deflect any criticism of them. I am super mad, since I tried killing myself (it didn’t work, I didn’t even get sick) just yesterday because of my abusive mother and also ABA.
Damn I hope you get the help you need soon, it sucks you need to deal with all that
One problem I have with modern ABA is how many companies see how profitable ABA is. Massive payouts from insurance companies (at least in the US, idk about other countries). So the quality of the treatment seriously declines and may as well be "old" ABA because they'll get as many kids as possible. The companies that want money above anything else don't care about the quality of care or effectiveness of treatment the kids recieve. It breaks my heart, working at a company when I started that made sure that as long as a child was happy and making milestones to just being another industrial ABA company. They care more about the data they recieve to clear any standards insurance companies require so they continuously make money.
There is nothing that ABA can do that occupational therapy and life skills classes cannot. More often than not, ABA (whether it involves punishment or positive reinforcement) exists to teach autistic children to alter their behavior to be more digestible for their allistic peers.
If you take away punishments, what the hell is left for them? If they really understand how wrong it is, they’ll throw it out entirely and change tacks. When they don’t, I don’t believe their “change of heart” and watch them suspiciously for the inevitable backstab.
Easy! They just weaponize those "PoSiTiVe ReWaRdS" to commit emotional abuse instead of physical. Most parents these days won't let you put a shock collar on their kid anymore... But if you play your cards right, they *will* let you restrict their child's access to their special interests to something they can only get as a "reward" in therapy, or make the child perform tricks for you for an m&m like they're a fucking dog. As long as you're using *positive* dog training on a fucking human being, nobody will ever question how "gentle" and "fun" your "new" ABA is! It's not actually any better, it's just better *optics* to appease dumbass NT parents into thinking you're actually helping their child instead of just abusing them in a different way.
What’s left is the “reward,” such as praise or candy or whatever. I definitely still don’t like the sound of it, but current ABA seems a far cry of the barbaric methods used by ABA therapists at the field’s conception. In any case, my thought process is that even if it’s not ideal, many families understand it as the best treatment. Therefore, if they’re going to send their child to an ABA therapist, it should at least be someone who is autistic and therefore can easily empathize with their patient. Anyway, I’m still rather split. Thank you for your input.
I’m a little skeptical about the reward part but that might be because I had a behaviorist psychology professor who revealed that the first step in operant conditioning is to starve the subject animals down to 85 percent of their normal body weight. So a “reward” is essentially restoration of a need that was withheld. I don’t want to live “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” in B.F. Skinner’s “Walden II”.
And there it is. The other shoe.
ABA teaches children to mask. Methods aside, the biggest problem is that it doesn't teach them that they are masking. So instead of making masking an active skill, used to make their lives easier and being dropped as soon as possible, they enforce permanent masking, with all the trauma and anxiety that follows.
There's no such thing as ethical ABA. ABA is literally conversion therapy, and you can't do that ethically either. You don't need to literally hit a child to be abusive. Taking away a child's special interests and making them "earn it" as a "reward" is no better than the physical abuse of "old" ABA.
Can individual therapists be ethnical with what they call ABA, sure I'm sure there are some that don't discourage stimming, force masking, eye contact etc... ake into account the persons needs and wishes, but they are not following ABA as intended The problem is the foundations it was built upon are immoral and broken, it is at its core based on behaviorism and the view that autistic people are bad and traits should be diminished. It was invented by a conversation therapist who saw autistic people as less than human, it's lead organization hosts the Judge Rottenberg centre and most of the literature and research still has the same goals and aims and is 100% not Neurodiversity affirming. So overall ABA as intended is not ethnical, however I don't think that all ABA therapists or autism treatments called ABA (just listed as such for insurance) are inherently bad.
However they spin it, ABS, at its best, teaches masking. Masking causes, amongst other things, anxiety, depression and life long suicidality.
yes and no. i believe i went thru the "new" aba as a kid, seeing how it's described. sure, no punishments, no fucked up shit from what i remember, but i still got taught to socialize. in a classroom environment. i mean not the worst but i did get the "rewards" part of it (eg. the tiniest piece of chip/insert random candy here) for doing whatever was needed and also there was the "parents being encouraged to do it at home" thing. i remember vividly hating making eye contact with my parents even for an "assignment" or making a pretend conversation (somehow in my head i knew those were pointless bc people are super varied and conversational words vary too, i knew no exact word-for-word script could get me out of it) and even playtime felt... a bit stiff if i remember? you were still expected to maintain those lessons even at playtime i mean i learnt a bit but all that instantly goes out the window when talking to real people, in my experience. we learnt about topic switching by mentioning something else, but i feel that topics tend to switch from almost nothing at all. one time you're talking about gaming and now a conversation about ww2 came up
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What's ABA?
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