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Writer's pictureBarb Avila

Speaking out against ABA

I must make my stance against Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) clear and concise. I am particularly and categorically against the compliance training, discrete trials, and expectations to meet societal "norms" that are inherent in the ABA methodology.


Rewarding a child, teen, or adult for masking their true nature is at best ridiculous and for most, downright traumatic. Withholding items that are soothing until a person complies is cruel.


I have a long history of standing against ABA. When I was just 19 years old, I was working with two families in Santa Cruz, California. I was their in-home provider using a new approach called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) with their two young children with autism. I was new to the world of autism, intrigued, learning, and growing my sense of what was right. I was studying Child and Family Psychology (the closest I could get at the time to study autism) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I met with each family, fell in love with their children, and decided to give it a go to learn from them.


I learned that the children were engaging and fabulous. I learned that ABA was compliance training and I hated every second that I had to provide a cue, rush a child to say or do something exactly a certain way, then reward them with a small candy. I felt that they were just tolerating me and my antics when we were doing trials and our true learning and engagement happened in between and outside of said trials. I remember vividly when one of the children had gotten the trial "correct" and as I administered the candy to their mouth, he bit down hard on my fingers to express his true feelings about the trials I was offering. I vocalized my frustration with the approach, begging to be more playful, to the parents for whom I was working. One mom quickly moved to more a naturalistic and developmental approach where the child thrived. The other remained steadfast with the ABA discrete trials and I left in protest.


Later in my teaching career, I became exceedingly frustrated at the lack of supports for the things that truly mattered: sensory overwhelm and social challenges. We had tools for teaching compliance but that wasn't what autistic students needed. Soon thereafter, the Board Certified Behavior Analyst certification (BCBA) became available. However, I could not stomach going that direction to work with autistic individuals. I chose to leave the school district in search of better ways. I entered training to become a Relationship Based Interventionist (RDI) instead. Through RDI, I was able to go into private practice and offer support and guidance to individuals and families in a much more respectful, collaborative, and individualized manner.


Over the last 20 years in private practice, I have been able to meet autistic children, teens, adults, and families where they are in understanding the experience of their own or child's autism. I stand beside them to fight ableism, recognize masking and camouflaging, manage their own energy levels and/or guide someone else's regulation when they are struggling to do so on their own. I train workplaces, schools, support agencies, friends, and relatives to understand the autistic experience so they can engage in ways that are respectful, ensure dignity, and are personalized.


I do provide supports as a Behavior Professional through my state of Oregon. I proudly do this to ensure that autistic individuals who are referred to me can have supports that are respectful and created to ensure their best selves. I do seek the "why" behind behaviors but never would I ever determine that a person is just "avoiding a non-preferred task" or engaging in a behavior to "get attention" and we should ignore them. Neither of those make any sense to me yet BCBAs use both of these to explain challenging behaviors. Someone avoiding a task or trying to gain attention in a particular manner is doing so for a reason. They may be overwhelmed, overstimulated, underwhelmed, or under-stimulated for example. All can be addressed with accommodations.


ABA continues to grow and be at the forefront of interventions due to the simple fact that it is covered by insurance. It has grown to be a monopoly in the autism field which exacerbates the notion that autistic behaviors are wrong and must be fixed while utterly confusing parents who are desperate to help their children. I, in no way, wish to be confused with nor associated with ABA providers. I am proudly an autism coach, trainer, and consultant guiding people to value, understand, and respect the autistic experience.



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