as an autistic person working in ABA
we cannot invalidate that there is and has been abuse in ABA. unfortunately i see people using negative contingencies and not following assent-based approaches (i report all instances i see this).
and countering that there has been abuse with "but they beat us!" (referring to physical aggression). it says in the job description you will be handling dangerous behaviors. depicting children as abusive isnt helpful.
and trust me, i get it, i was punched in the skull by a child 3x on tuesday and was kicked in the leg so bad my ankle started hurting (i broke my ankle a few months ago). i dont view it as them "being bad", but rather i view it as theyre having a hard time and experiencing communication breakdowns.
i also dont really believe in "functional play" programs. i can understand wanting to teach them different ways to play to help with rigidity, but play is play.
eye contact programs are cruel. eye contact is painful for autistic people (including myself). response to name doesnt require eye contact, and most of the time a response to name can be done by simply orienting towards the speaker.
no child needs to be in therapy for 8-9 hours a day. this is where we're seeing a lot of burnout and an increase of behaviors especially at the end of the day. it is absolutely draining to be in for that long. 6 hours is plenty and we can still get a lot done then (i had a client who only had 6 hour days).
i'll finish it off by saying we cannot simply just abolish ABA. this would leave millions of autistic kids falling through the cracks because they may not be able to do school, even special ed. other services like therapy, speech, OT etc usually only see the kids for an hour maximum.
what we need instead is ABA reform. this is already occurring, but we still need time to get there. other centers need to catch up. my company, ABC, follows the assent based model. we do not force kids to participate in therapy, avoid full physical prompting, and do not use punishment procedures. ABA should focus solely on positive reinforcement and positve behavior support.
we are therapists, our goal should be to heal not punish.
janainaart
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
jacobvanloon
