ABA and ND Affirming Practices

It’s time. 

I’m going to talk about something everyone wants to hear about but nobody wants to talk about. 

I’m going to talk about behavioral therapy. 

And let me start by saying that this is a no shame, no blame zone. 

Because you may not know this about me, but I used to be a behavioral therapist. 

When I was in grad school, I was hired as a 1:1 behavioral support therapist for a little girl in a private school.

And my job was to keep her behaviors to a minimum in the classroom so that she didn’t distract her peers.

If you have read my book Ready Set Connect you might be familiar with this story because I talk about it in my book. 

But I was trained to be this girl’s 1:1 therapist in just 2 days. Yep, that’s it. Just 2 days. 

I was given this giant binder by her BCBA of concepts she was working on (and had been working on for YEARS) and I was trained to ask her various questions during the day about the weather, what she was doing, etc. 

And I was supposed to ask her each question three times so she had three chances to get it right. 

And I’ll be honest, this was a really hard job for me. It just never felt right. 

So during her recess time, I would go ROGUE. I would focus on building a connection with her and engaging her and that’s when she would really shine.

When I was just trying to keep all of her behaviors to a minimum, neither of us was happy. 

So that leads me into what I’m here to talk about today which is ABA therapy. 

Let me start by telling you what ABA therapy is. 

ABA therapy, or Applied Behavior Analysis, is a therapy designed to help kids learn and change their behavior. It uses rewards, like praise or treats, to teach what it deems as “good” behaviors and skills. 

And it’s based on the principles of operant conditioning. So essentially, ABA focuses heavily on positive reinforcement. 

The thing is, what we know about positive reinforcement is that while it works in the short term, it’s not always effective in the long term. 

It’s easy to see why ABA therapy focuses on behavior because the behaviors it is addressing are observable. 

But what we know about the autistic experience is that the observable behavior we are seeing is often the result of being dysregulated. 

So when we write goals for behavior and only focus on reducing or diminishing behaviors we are seeing, we are asking ourselves the wrong question. 

Instead of asking “how can I get the kid to stop biting?” and providing him/her a reward chart every time they don’t bite, we should be asking “why are they biting?”.

I’ve talked about this before but this is a great time to bring up the behavior iceberg again. 

If we view behavior as an iceberg, where only a small portion is visible above the waterline, then the behaviors we are seeing are merely the surface manifestations of deeper, underlying issues. 

When we only address the behavior, we are not getting to the root cause of what is causing the behavior to occur. 

Once we start looking beneath the surface and we know why the behavior is occurring, we can start using strategies to address what we are seeing. 

And those strategies could be sensory, emotional regulation, etc. 

Let me again say that this is a no shame, no blame zone.

I understand the appeal of ABA therapy. 

My mindset on ABA changed completely when an autistic colleague told me that it was a privilege to not do ABA. 

And I had never thought about it before but it’s true.  

Funding is usually easier for ABA than speech or OT. 

Insurance usually pays for way more hours of ABA therapy vs speech or OT (at least that’s true where I live!) 

And parents who have full time jobs might not be able to take their child to multiple therapies throughout the week. 

It’s a privilege to choose not to do ABA. 

And any therapy, whether that be ABA, speech, or OT whose goal is to change the autistic individual instead of supporting them is something I would be wary of. 

So instead of asking yourself “well if I don’t do ABA, what should I do instead??”... Consider asking yourself “what supports does my child need?”. 

More therapy is not always better. 

Our goal in therapy should be to provide accommodations, support, and to get to the root of the underlying issue. Not to merely try to extinguish observable behaviors that we deem as “bad”. 

And if you are sitting here ready to learn more about becoming neurodiversity affirming and providing the right type of supports that our kids need, make sure to check out The Neurodiversity Therapy Academy. 

The ND Affirming Therapy Academy is your one-stop-shop for everything you need to know to be the most effective, impactful neurodiversity-affirming therapist. 

This online library is a collection of trainings, resources, and handouts and we are constantly adding new information to it! 

We decided to extend our Founding Member pricing of just $97/year because our mission is to make nd affirming education accessible and affordable to everyone. 

>> Click here to learn more about becoming a member of the Neurodiversity Affirming Therapy Academy

And if you want to hear more about my thoughts on ABA, check out this episode of my live show that I recorded with partner Chris: ABA and Neurodiversity Affirming Practices, Making the Shift, Episode 75