After hearing all the "ABA is abusive autistic conversion therapy" stuff, it was facinating running into two austistic ABA therapists at a party. they claimed it wasn't like that at all
They said it was about giving low-functioning autistic children who were unable to communicate, constantly self-harmed and/or lashed out violently, the tools to actually be able to communicate, and stop self-harming, etc. They encouraged stuff like stimming. Tried to give kids both non-verbal and verbal ways of communicating, like pads that could say phrases.
one of the therapists was a trans girl who wears a manta ray onesie all the time, has a house filled with stim toys, and constantly infodumped about her interests, she did not seem particularly converted.
maybe it's a case of different clinics having wildly divergent practice? They said standards have changed a lot over the years, the modern methods really only got popular circa ~2010 and a lot of the people talking about ABA online were talking about the old stuff.
I recognize that ABA and Autism Speaks are sometimes the only resources available to autistic people, their parents, and their caregivers, and that sometimes they are necessary because they are the only real option for a lot of things. I get that.
That does not make them okay. And it sure as shit doesn't make them a good thing. Necessary does not mean good or even neutral, it means people die without it. People are being forced to rely on things that want autism exterminated because they are the only available resource, if anything that makes them even worse to me. The people who hate autistic people have made themselves the only lifeline for a lot of autistic people, they have made themselves invulnerable by using the people they wish to see exterminated and if that doesn't disgust you, I don't know what to say to you.
For Autism Awareness Day, let's be aware that ABA therapy was invented by the same guy who invented gay conversion "therapy."
Look into play therapy, speech therapy, or occupational therapy instead, which see an autistic person as a person, and not just a vessel to be molded into your preferred traits. Find a provider who is "neuroaffirming."
If you can understand that introverts & extroverts unwind in different ways, or that a distance runner & a piano player are restored by their hobby but stressed by the others, then you can understand that autistic people regulate their nervous systems different than allistic people.
Any therapy should be helping autistic people self soothe and regulate, perhaps in less disruptive ways. But forcing them to pretend to be NT, does not "cure" the autism. Instead it teaches kids to ignore their bodies cues or be punished, setting them up for a higher chance of being abused, decades of mental illness and inevitable burnout.
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If you separate ABA therapy from reward and punishment, you don't have any ABA left because the entire structure of ABA is based on that.
"Ole Ivar Lovaas promised parents that they’d be able to keep their kids out of these hellish institutions, but the only way to do that was by using ABA. the irony, of course, is that he just copied everything they were doing in the institution. He just copied all of the token systems of rewards and punishment, even physical punishment, even electrocution as punishment.
You can’t really have an operant conditioning system that’s nice, or that fits in with our modern ideas of how children should be treated. There might not be physical punishments in those cases, but "planned ignoring" and withholding food as punishment/reward, removal of comfort items, strict rules around how a young kid can play - it’s psychologically destroying to have these special things be taken away from you. Autistic people need downtime, and they need comfort spaces, comfort zones.
It’s also very destroying psychologically for a small child to have to spend 35 or 40 hours a week in a therapeutic setting just being drilled on life skills in a way that’s not kind. They’re not being allowed to have a childhood. “Hands down, feet on floor, quiet voice.” Joy is postponed as a reward.
ABA compliance goes way beyond what we might do as parents or what might happen in a typical classroom. What happens is they’re never allowed to say no, and they get punished if they ever say no. Meanwhile, in our elementary school classrooms for non-autistic kids, they’re learning about consent.
If an autistic child was stimming or scripting or rocking back and forth or needing to pace, those are the kinds of things that for an autistic child that would be functional, as a stress release, while ABA sees them as "garbage behaviors" to be extinguished. It ignores the existence of autistic traits and coping methods, focusing on non-autistic priorities like "molding" or stopping autistic kids from self-soothing stimming.
You may know that ABA is a questionable therapy. But since not every parent can avoid ABA, what can those parents do to protect their kids?
We can support autistic kids in joyous, obsessive, atypical play. We can support them in play that NTs might not recognize as “play” at all. We can look at the sensorimotor, language, cognitive, emotional, and social experiences and skill building that play can provide, and we can find ways to make sure that autistic kids are getting that practice in ways that work for them. And we can back off and let autistic kids be autistic kids. -Julia Bascom
Ideally, therapies and other approaches to supporting autistic kids will be neuroaffirming, meaning working with their neurology and the ways in which that influences their sensory and social perceptions, rather than ABA’s traditional model of “normalization” through conditioned compliance.
Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in adults and children who were expo
Exposure to ABA predicted a higher rate and more severe PTSS in participants.
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I was called “unethical” by a professional colleague today. The reason may surprise you—I said “ABA is abuse”. My peer was naturally taken a
When the ANS (aka fight, flight, or freeze) is repeatedly triggered without time to regulate and return cortisol levels to a manageable level, what results is trauma-induced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
CPTSD is becoming more understood and is identified in individuals that have repeated exposure to trauma happening primarily in childhood and at the hands of a caregiver.
During ABA, the authority figure actively stands in the way of the child’s self-regulation attempts (such as pacing, stimming, asking to stop, trying to leave) and reignites the child’s fight, flight, freeze response, again, and again, and again. Meanwhile, the child’s body releases adrenaline and cortisol over, and over, and over, until their little body can’t handle anymore and then they go into meltdown.
What ABAs call “escapism” is really sensory overwhelm. But both the child’s emotional state, as well as her state of overload, are ignored in the pursuit of extinction of the student’s challenging behavior and compliance.
Can you imagine 40 hours a week being forced to ignore your innate survival responses in the pursuit of compliance? Chemically, there is only so much our bodies can handle.
Episode one of Bimbo Rights & Civil Wrongs is out, and it starts exactly where it needs to: with the body.
This podcast isn’t about hot takes or debate-for-sport. It’s about what happens when power disguises itself as care, when harm is renamed as help, and when marginalized people are told their suffering is “necessary” or “for their own good.”
I made this because I survived systems that never should have touched me, and because naming harm is the first step toward stopping it.
You don’t need credentials to speak about what was done to you.
Thoughts on ABA therapy?
Especially personal experiences I'd like to hear if anyone's comfortable
I don't actually know much about it... all I know is I went to an ABA therapy for several years and it was "fine" except for the fact I can barely remember anything from that time but I DO know (...not really remember) I would beg not to go every single day. And I also know a lot of people say it's bad. So uh
Mom says most are bad which is why it gets all the hate but not all are bad and that's why mine was "fine" But... eeeuueh idk about that anymore!! ;w;
Anyway. Yeah just asking for thoughts/experiences and stuff with ABA therapy because of uhhh the little I can remember about it
...Also unlikely but if anyone who sees this happens to have experience with/know a lot about LBC (Learning and Behavioral Center) specifically that would be really helpful
hey! *knocks on your window at 2am, waking you up from a peaceful sleep* hello! *knockknockknock* can I-*slides open your window* have you seen don't hug me I'm scared? doesn't matter, hold on, *contorts my body ungracefully through your window, smacking my head on the frame, lands in a heap on your bedroom floor* everyone talks about--stop yelling, its okay, I go here---how many easter eggs the show has, and the complex "behind-the-scenes" lore *I am now sitting criss-cross applesauce* and how its a metaphor for xyz blah blah blah and that's fine, they're not WRONG, it's just *I pull out a container of hubby bubba bubble gum, cut myself an egregiously long strip, and begin chewing* what about the AUTISM. no one talks, genuinely, about how its so autistic, aside from the "me and the bad bitch I pulled by being autistic" memes. What about yellow guy trying constantly to conform to a society with rules and norms that are contradictory and confusing? what about red guy being awkward and outcast from his family because he acted strange in family gatherings? what about the "lessons" yellow guy has to learn being basically ABA? what about every episode ending in a horrifically overwhelming way reflective of a sensory overload/meltdown? what about--
