You are not necessarily stuck in the house (unless your therapy needs are such that you need to have ABA indoors). We did a lot of ABA outdoors with the therapist reinforcing appropriate behavior on community outings to the playground, library, zoo etc. My kid needed that just as much as the indoors part.

Cut back on the ABA. As you are seeing, it's more intrusive than helpful.

Is 20 hrs a recommendation from the neuropsych evaluation, or a clinical psychologist outside of this ABA practice?
In ABA clinics always want to have lots of hours, it's good to understand why this much is recommended.

At some point we did as little as 4 hrs weekly, for a high functioning child. They were open to sessions at home or in a local park.

Why 20 hours a week? That seems very high, and if this is your first time for a 9 year old, its assumed that their symptoms may not be that severe. Typically they recommend a high amount for more serious cases of ASD or other symptoms, or that the ABA firm (typically) has a minimum they provide because $$$ and insurance purposes.

We have a preschooler with a fantastic BCBA - NO RBTs - we avoid those because you get assigned lack luster therapist and they bounce from one kid to another - not idea. Our BCBA, comes to our house and to the school - and only 2 hours a week - they also take walks and go to the park, etc., so you can suggest outdoor time if your BCBA is flexible.

We did ABA when our child was preschool age and even then it took over our lives.

You have to have super strong boundaries to make this work—and I did not. That’s one of the reasons it didn’t work out for us.

It’s very important that you integrate it into your life, not the other way around. This is is really hard. Don’t try to keep the other kids away from the RBT. They are part of your child’s life. Definitely don’t avoid regular activities to stay home every day—that’s a miserable existence. Eventually, the RBT fades into the background and they’re no longer new and interesting to the siblings.

I wouldn’t be OK with that much ABA for the reasons you list. What are the reasons for doing that much for an older child? We are considering doing ABA for our older child but not at the expense of normal life. The goals are learning practical living skills and frustration tolerance, so they’ll be out of the house doing real-world stuff.

My child is 4 but our RBT works with an older child as well. They go to activities with the family a couple of times every week.

I recall it being a little awkward in the beginning to have someone in our space. I might have even tried to keep siblings away. But your rbt should be able to work with your son in presence of siblings and, if they are too distracting, they can go to his room, or an office etc. At least in our company, the rbt could come to the park, etc with you if the behavior was relevant.

Speak to the BCBA as they should be able to accommodate regardless of the amount of room. It might help to establish a schedule with them so you aren’t running into each other- say 1 hour at the kitchen table, an hour in the bedroom, an hour outside. You might also consider goals that just incorporate siblings- things such as turn taking, cooperative play, conversational skills, etc are good ways to work together. You might also consider family outings like grocery shopping or restaurants if they’re part of your goals. My point being that not everything needs to be done in home all the time. Don’t worry about the amount of space in general, it doesn’t take much space to do ABA, what’s important is that you communicate the boundaries in the home and you work with the BCBA to find ways to work within those boundaries.

We are trying ABA for the first time with our 9 year old and its been recommended we do 20 hours a week, which equates to everyday from 4-7pm and some time on the weekend. I know people have mixed feelings in general about aba, but we were fortunate enough to have a bcba therapist come highly recommended to us from friends who have used her before. The problem is not the practice of ABA, but that our home is small we have two younger kids. We've done 3 sessions and its been fine. But I feel like I have to get the other kids out of the house (and this can only happen when my husband is also home since one of us always have to be there while the therapist is there) or we are secluded to a small space trying to stay our of their way. It just makes it hard to have routine with the other kids and get stuff done around the house. It also means our child receiving the aba is stuck inside from 4-7. Curious how others aba has looked for an older child and how you work it with siblings. Or if I should reduce our hours?