Reply to too much ABA therapy?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As an autistic adult active in the autistic community I strongly recommend reading up on ABA before you decide to do it at all. Don't talk to adults of autistic children, talk to autistic people about it. Hear how they felt as children subjected to ABA practices. Look out for red flags when screening for good therapists. Too many hours are a horrible strain and stress on children's systems. 40 hours a week for example is a full days work for a very small child. Stay away from anyone using food as positive reinforcement. Stay away from anyone using "quiet hands" techniques that prohibit or even punish for stimming. Stay away from anyone enforcing eye contact. At the very least. Who can seriously think that is healthy? Generally ethics of real ABA techniques are doubtful at best. What one would consider "good ABA" is often not real ABA at all so don't confuse the two.

Parents often do not realize how exhausting and often inhumane ABA is. They just see results. But results don't equal good for your child. If you punish for unwanted behavior often enough and reward for wanted behavior often enough of course you get results. But you also disrespect a child's personal right to deny another person's request. ABA so often trains children to follow orders at total disregard for their own free will.

ABA is highly controversial. And since it is not you who is subjected to the therapy but your child - for your child's sake research a lot before you use ABA. There are countless other therapies out there that are less abusive, controversial, controlling, potentially harmful and traumatizing etc.

The very core of ABA is the same as how you would train an animal (and no you cannot say this in any kinder words) so finding more respectful and loving alternatives is always the best way to go. Anything achieved through ABA can be achieved through less invasive forms of therapy.[/quote]

Thank you for posting!  We don't hear from actual autistic adults nearly often enough around here.

I'd just like to add to those cautions one about anyone who tries to use ABA to extinguish echolalia or other forms of supposedly "non-functional" speech.  I've read accounts from autistic adults who say that echolalia was how they found their way to speech--not a detour, but the path.  And of course many of us read that amazing story last year about the kid who learned to speak through imitating characters in his favorite Disney movies.  Even apart from the potentially cruel methodologies, I worry that ABA is too often directed at trying to modify things that cannot or should not be modified.  Back when ABA was first developed they still thought autism was a learned behavior (caused by "refrigerator mothers"!) and so deploying behaviorist methods against it seemed like a promising avenue for treatment.  It didn't work, unsurprisingly--because autism is a neurological difference, not a set of behaviors.  And there are reasons, rooted in that neurology, for things like stimming, eye contact differences, different ways of communicating, etc..  Trying to stamp them out may well be depriving your kid of the best adaptations he or she has come up with.  More typical-seeming may not, in other words, be more functional.[/quote]

Good points! Often too "experts" like school personnel or even uninformed SLPs well tell you your child has echolalia (which is meaningless parroting) when the child is actually using scripting, which can be a precursor to a language burst. [/quote]

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