Crickets.

At first I thought they just were being shy and (as is common in the spectrum) uncomfortable with either change or the transition to self-initiation. So I elaborated on my question with not only more explanation, but also options to choose from.

Crickets.

These kids had been raised on nothing but ABA. And only then did I see that ABA hadn't encouraged them to ask what they wanted out of life, but instead had gotten them to comply with what others wanted for them. The very concept that they might want something different from what the world wanted from them ("appropriate behavior") was like asking them to describe a color they'd never seen. Their polite manners had come at perhaps a high cost. And as horrifying a realization as this might seem, my kids were also regarded as the lucky ones. All were kids of color coming from economically-challenged neighborhoods, that back then rarely received any diagnostic attention.

ABA has since undergone massive scrutiny, and now what has become public knowledge are additional faults such as:

• A founder, Ivar Lovaas, who often hit children to get them to do what he wanted. ABA’s principal idea was based solely on compliance obtained through punitive, negative reinforcement. Parents had by then rebelled against Bruno Bettelheim’s “autism comes from bad parenting” ideas, and this was indeed progress. But these same parents were fine with Lovaas hitting their kids?
• ABA is the foremost therapy. not because it is widely accepted. Its lobbyists (including Autism Speaks) have done an outstanding job of making it the only well-funded or reimbursable behavioral option for families. Frankly, it’s the only behavioral strategy that has (figurative or literal) lobbyists working on states and insurance companies. ABA maintains its financial monopoly in part also because parents still want it. Overwhelmed families either frequently have no other choices, or are overjoyed to receive the often 40 hours a week of ABA therapy. Many of these families believe in ABA, but for others it is a respite for them – whether they like what it’s doing to their child or not. To many, it’s just free babysitting. Small wonder that venture capitalist firms are buying up for-profit ABA centers.4
• ABA proponents will tell you that much of this monopoly on the market is based on ABA’s being the most effective, longterm approach based on the research… But what did this research look at? Quality of life? What kinds of questions were asked? Because while they looked at legitimate markers like educational and communicative advances, I suspect they mostly asked unknowing parents “Do you like how Johnny behaves now?” and unknowing spectrumites, “Are you happy?” wherein they would say an uninformed, “yes” only because their families weren’t as angry at them anymore. This research never looked at the trauma that might have been imposed – can you imagine 40 hours a week of your hands being constricted together every few seconds?5

And because the government funds ABA, many young people go into the profession (as opposed to, say, SCERTS trainings) because

they won't have to worry about becoming employed, staying employed, and because they want to help autistics (nobody goes into this field so they can hit children). And most, it should be said, are unaware of the awful history – the certification programs to become a BCBA, the acronym for an ABA therapist, certainly aren't going to inform them.

But ABA has also adapted, which I think is why it was once so hard to pin people down to a one-paragraph description. And many – maybe even most – have shifted from negative reinforcement when the child doesn't do what they want, to positive reinforcement when the child does do what they want.

But by design, ABA teaches the autistic person that their natural way of doing things is bad, and no matter how nice and caring the practitioner they work with, there is an indisputable loss of selfesteem that comes with a “do it this way” approach lacking the context that answers “Why?” The lack of explanation creates an inarguable wound to their permanent mental health and personhood. The cases of self-injurious, or violent kids do indeed require different measures. However, I firmly believe that these cases will steadily decrease as parents learn to create environments that make their kids feel more accepted and loved. That’s not to say that parents who had autistic kids from the 1960s to the early 2000s didn’t love their kids. But I can easily hypothesize that they didn’t know how to make them feel loved, especially when all the doctors were telling them to love their kid “but hate their autism.” That, they thought, was the best way to show their love.

The studies that now look at PTSD6 and suicide rates7 in autistics are telling a new story. In the autism world, we’ve gotten things wrong.

“BY DESIGN, ABA TEACHES THE AUTISTIC PERSON THAT THEIR NATURAL WAY OF DOING THINGS IS BAD, AND THERE IS AN INDISPUTABLE LOSS OF SELF-ESTEEM THAT COMES WITH A ‘DO IT THIS WAY’ APPROACH ”

LONG-STANDING, YET LESSER-KNOWN STRATEGIES

Briefly…

• Floortime: It is as it sounds. The clinician (usually an Occupational Therapist [OT]) or parent looks to the child and their interests to lead. Then, in a play therapy context, the OT builds a relationship with the child through specific tasks.
• RDI (Relationship Development Intervention): Somewhat similar to Floortime in that it can be implemented by parents, but only after a more extensive (and often expensive) training. The program is also more geared to six specific highlights – concepts that are used to fulfill the individualized goals set forth, usually, within the training the parents receive. The six are: Emotional referencing, Social coordination, Declarative language, Flexible thinking, Relational information processing, and Foresight and hindsight. RDI (also called RDI Connect) can be an interesting component to a behavioral plan. But to be fair, I’ve never heard of a parent raving about RDI. Some of their language also maintains a dedication to framing autism within an outdated deficit-model.
• TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication in Children): Although fading somewhat these days, I always liked TEACCH because it really was the first approach to take the spectrum individual more into the