What's wrong with ABA?

Post Reply New Topic

Okay so I'm one of the first students in my autism studies class who is autistic and we're learning about ABA, but I've heard a lot of people talk about how it just trains kids like we train dogs.
I've never had ABA but I've been through lots of other sessions on social skills est.

What would you change about ABA therapy?

What would good social skills lessons look like?

I have been working with autistic people using ABA methods, And found them very useful.
Personally, I think the effectiveness should be the most important component.

I do find myself speaking with a lot of parents about the issue that you mentioned, And these are my thoughts:
Psychology shows us, That we are all being conditioned to learn new cognitive, emotional, and social skills all the time. When we're young, We learn using methods similar to ABA, And when we're older, We are still being conditioned with rewards/punishments, But these rewards/punishments are a lot more subtle.
I often think That parents dislike these methods because the might want to see their children as "normal", And ABA methods make that harder.

It's true. Parents use techniques at least somewhat similar to ABA on "normal" children in order to get them to "behave." Before ABA became prominent, my mother used ABA-like methods on me which "knocked the autism out of me."

I think of ABA as a more extreme version of normal conditioning methodology as practiced by parents on all children.

from someone who has had it for many years and still has it as part of behavioral management plans, there is nothing wrong with ABA as it helps us to become more functional and develop a better quality of life.
what is wrong is using extreme ABA,think it is called behaviorism where punishment such as not letting someone go outside for the next few days because of autistic behavior in reaction to stressors out of their control or throwing someone to the floor and pinning them down roughly because they dont agree to do something; is used-am very much against that type because of having experienced it for four months whilst detained in a intelectual disability secure hospital,suffered a severe chronic spinal nerve injury [sciatica] as a result.

I echo KOR's sentiments pertaining to "extreme" ABA. There's no place for it in a progressive society.

There are many critics out there of ABA therapy. If you are interested in reading up on it, you can look here, for example: http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html

My personal opinion: many people who strongly object to ABA therapy object to methods that--for the most part--are no longer employed. I have met people who still suffer negative psychological effects from deplorable ABA practices from their childhood. From my experience, however, the ABA therapists that they describe are nothing like the therapists my daughter worked with. That being said, I was not your typical "ABA parent." My daughter's therapists were not allowed to force eye contact (they were allowed to request it, and if she didn't comply, they were to move on to something else), nor were they allowed to try to extinguish her stims. I had no goal of making her "indistinguishable from her peers." My goal was to help her learn to communicate effectively. So, getting rid of stims, forcing eye contact, insisting on "quiet hands" and all of that stuff was not part of our goals. On the contrary, one of her therapists used a form of "stim time" as a reinforcer. She loved to jump and spin and she was allowed to do this after she accomplished her "work." The therapist even joined in and made up a silly song. My daughter loved it. Her therapists were also not allowed to do things like "force" her to sit until she melted down and a variety of other things that I know some kids are subjected to. My daughter's therapy focused mainly on VB and I would say it was very effective and helpful.

I think that therapy needs to be grounded in a deep respect for the person on the receiving end, coupled with an understanding the the goal should never be to make the person "normal," but instead to remove some of the barriers that negatively impact the person on the receiving end. The goals should also not be to alleviate the parents' discomfort with autistic behaviors or to make the parent feel like they are some kind of "warrior" rescuing their child from the "horror" of autism. It needs to be all about the kid, the kid's well-being, and the kid's happiness. If you focus on that, I don't think you can go wrong.

never heard of ABA until just now, don't know what the letters stand for or what it entails, but the "extreme ABA" mentioned above sounds like abuse, not ANY sort of therapy. those who would do such things to another are the ones in need of therapy, IMO.

I've found most people who do ABA primarily don't think about what the child (or adult, but its primarily used with children) is thinking. The reasoning behind the behavior isn't taken into account enough, just the fact that there ARE behaviors that are wanted or not wanted. This ends up with things like a child who has been taught they can only reply answers to specific prompted questions, no generalization, and taught to only speak in specific scripts - specifically by their therapy, not because of their communication impairments.

On the other hand, ABA being added in, to supplement other work, I've seen work really well. Using it as a tool, can help a lot in managing behaviors that someone wants to manage but struggles with, learn how to do new things, and so on. It needs to be done carefully though, and being done carefully is something I rarely see done.

What usually seems to happen when its done poorly is that what someone needs gets neglected for ABA all the time, instead of it supplementing and being used as a tool integrated in with everything else. I don't know how frequently its done well or poorly, I try to force people into the doing it well state, but I know of a lot of cases where people won't bother to teach their children and teachers won't pay attention rather than sitting there taking notes all day about how someone will only be on a computer programming and how much of a problem this is. I only work with kids where its being done well though, so its hard for me to tell the ratio between the two.

(There has also been a lot of abuse in the name of "therapy" being called ABA, but from my knowledge that seems to have been going down, and is luckily less frequent now.)

Attempted to delete my own duplicate of my post.

Maybe there are some people who have been on the receiving end of ABA who did not like it. Maybe it is too traumatizing to think about it and write about it.

I am asking those who received ABA who didn't like it to please write about it and say what happened.