We offer Registered Behavior Technician training and Courses to people who are wanting to pursue the certificate of an RBT, which is a certificate provided by the BACB. The certificate allows people to be more knowledgeable and successful in the Behavioral Heath field, especially when associated with Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy techniques.

Read this. ABA is damaging. http://loveexplosions.net/resources-compliance-aba-social-skills-indistinguishability-whole-body-listening/

this is a link to a PDF about the connection between ABA and PTSD in the autistic population. At least 80%, this study suggests, fits the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis, with others showing PTSS (the study is published in the journal Advances in Autism, btw)

ABA is abuse.  ABA is TRAUMA

Honestly, the very concept of ABA is bad, not just its execution, but it’s also ridiculous. Trying to completely change autistic people’s basic behaviour so that we act neurotypicals is like me going to a horse and trying to train it to act like a cat because I understand cat behaviour better, instead of just learning about horses.

In which Reddit gets it right.

I wish behaviorists understood

That every time you use DTT, and every time you make someone do something that’s arbitrary from their perspective — you reinforce compliance and prompt-responsiveness.

Even if the goals are good. Having good goals and meeting them doesn’t somehow eliminate side effects or render them irrelevant.

I think probably even if the therapy is consensual.

And the effect is cumulative.

my name is christine and i work with children with autism

i the first time i hurt a child my boss tells me i am good at my job the second time i hurt a child my boss tells me i am good at my job the third time i hurt a child my boss tells me i am good at my job i like my job i am good at my job positive reinforcement ii my boyfriend hates picking me up after work he says its the sterile environment schools shouldn’t look like a hospital, he says i feel exhausted as i reflect on the sterile, clinical building then i  remember that this isn’t a school this is a treatment center iii i’m so sorry but that is not earning your token stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down iv he asks me if i’ll do the horsie song i’m sitting in the shade and he plummets into my lap before i can respond it is a rare treat for him to speak i can’t help but indulge him, so i sing "this is how the ladies ride, up and down, side by side this is how the horsies go, yippity yi, yippity yo!” he laughs and thanks me before bolting back to the playground v i lose count of how many times i hurt children i don’t know if its the hundreth or thousanth or millionth time i hurt a child i’m holding a spray bottle of vinegar he spits it out after the third time sobbing, he tells me that he hates his life and wants to die six years old the kid sitting next to him cannot speak, and instead starts wailing i’m a bad person, i think i hesitate my boss tells me that i am not doing my job i go home and cry the next day i don’t hesitate positive punishment vi my boss calls all the classroom staff in for a meeting she tells us that we need to stop being so affectionate with the children it is unprofessional and inappropriate, she insists she warns us that we will be put on corrective action for any future offenses a week later he asks me if i will sing the horsie song so i sing him the horsie song after our sessions are over, my boss calls me into her office i am put on corrective action but that’s how you do the horsie song, i argue i warned you, she reminds me vii i am told there will be a few positions open for full time i am encouraged to apply i begin filling out the application i think about the pay raise i think about having my own classroom i think about training new staff i think about what we do i turn off the computer before i finish the application i leave the center and never come back viii my new job is much better but the center is still open less than five minutes away from my apartment hundreds of children still spend their days there stand up sit down no longer seeing it doesn’t make it any less of a material reality

stand up…

ABA therapy is amazing.

The a/Autistic community would disagree with you there.

ABA teaches kids how NOT to communicate

Therapist: “Where does grandma work?”  Little boy: “Um… she works at the house.” “No. Where does grandma work? Say ‘library’.” “Library.” “Whee! Now you get a starburst.”

This is not how you teach three year olds to communicate in language.  Communicating is not about saying what you think other people want you to say. Communicating is about connecting thoughts to words the best you can and saying them (or typing them, or pick your pleasure).  This is not how you teach a kid “the woman who gives me many cookies works in a big building full of stories, which is awesome” this is how you teach a kid “when people tell me “blah blah blah” I should say “blah blah BLEE blah”.” And this shows how, even “playful nice aversive-free” ABA is about having the kid be right, and not having the kid be a kid who mixes up “house” and “library”, or calls a library a “bookhouse”, or thinks Grandma’s “work” is baking him cookies. Don’t you want to say, “What does she do at the house?” and hear him say “Gives me cookies” and see him light up, and smile with him, or maybe he’ll tell you she stacks the books at the house and you can say “I think she does that at the library.” in a nice way, and also a way that actually teaches him something, because the way you’re doing it he just knows he’s wrong, and he doesn’t know why.  Being a little kid shouldn’t be about wrong and right. If a kid tells you he’s found a portal to fairyland, you aren’t supposed to say “No”, you’re supposed to say “Take me with you”.

What ABA is like: The point of view of a former therapist

I figure it’s high time I ‘fess up about what exactly it was I did for all those years (1999-~2005; after 2003 I was half doing play therapy, and after 2005 I was doing all respite and community access) I was working as an ABA therapist (that’s Applied Behaviour Analysis). So this post is a description of an ABA session. I’ll be talking mostly about Lovaas-style here, but the basics of how a trial is structured are the same whether you’re talking Lovaas, Carbone, Sundberg & Partington, or whatever.

A “trial” is a discrete trial. ABA’s major foundation is the idea of discrete trial teaching (DTT). There are three components to a discrete trial:

I named them Antecedent, Behaviour, Consequence here because when an ABA therapist is keeping track of behaviours (this term always means “unwanted behaviours” and often means “stimming”) they use an A-B-C sheet, and that’s the information they always keep track of (along with a few other things): what happened just before the behaviour, what the specific behaviour was, and what the student got out of the behaviour.

But I digress. I’ll be using the terms SD, R, and SR throughout the examples in this post.

I’m putting it behind a Read More because it could be triggering for some people. Also, it’s really long. But if you were ever curious about just what ABA is actually like, read this.

Read More

Can I just say, as someone who never had ABA, that that actually sounds like the most confusing and ineffectual possible method for teaching actual skills?

Totally.

Teaching verbal imitation was horrible. We did all the consonants with all the vowel sounds after them once we figured out that “t” is impossible to do without some kind of vowel sound after it. (Try it. You can’t do it. It’s annoying as fuck and it pissed me off.) “Say ‘may’” “Say ‘mah’” “Say ‘me’” “Say ‘meh’” etc.

Teaching spelling was fantastic. The kid I did that with loved letters so we made a letter board with card stock (laminated) letters Velcroed on and we’d put a word on a row of Velcro and say “Spell ‘cat’” and all they had to do was pull each letter in order and place it below the sample. Meanwhile, fine motor skills was not easy, and gross motor imitation was silly. You try hand-over-handing someone to kick a ball after you kick a ball. :P

Useful things we did as part of this: toilet training and eating messy food with a spoon or fork.

But a lot of what we did was really just compliance training. “Do what I do, do what I tell you to do, you get something neat if you do.”

Lydia Brown [link] (via twistmalchik)