ABA therapy

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Anyone here not hate it?

How would someone
NOT
Hate it?

It's literally gay conversion therapy, just for disabled people.

I don't know what it is.

Anyone who has actually had it not hate it?

I'm glad I didn't have to go though that 40 hours of abuse a week as a child. I would have hated it.

I'll ask my niece when she's older. She went through it and just finished recently. Her parents say it helped a lot because they feel it was the only reason she was able to mainstream into regular school classes. Personally, I felt bad for her when I would see her and she would communicate in her own way and her parents would interrupt her and repeatedly tell her: "eye contact! Eye contact!" She's old enough now where I think I will tell her that she can communicate with me any way SHE feels comfortable with.

A form of behavioural training...I mean therapy.

It's happening all over the world, its called Socialisation when it's for healthy Neurotypicals.

Short story: I had it in school. I've got PTSD now and am in therapy now to undo it and re-learn to self-regulate and self-soothe.

I'm not sure what the difference is between aba and the occupational therapy I've gotten.

The closest thing to official ABA therapy I've had is sensory therapy, but ABA is pretty popular in my area for autistic kids so I'm familiar with its practices. I see nothing wrong with it. I've only known young therapists, though, so maybe the older generation is still using outdated and harmful practices. My only experience with that kind of thing is dentists asking my parents if they could get a few hygienists to physically hold me down so they could do their work without me flailing and crying. My parents refused and eventually stopped taking me to dentists altogether because of the methods they wanted to use on me. People like that exist in all professions.

I DO know that it's pretty awful for autism parents to deal with all this flack from high functioning autistics for using it to help their kids. Everyone with autism is different, and all therapists are different. Some behaviors need to be reduced, communication improved, and independence should always be encouraged. I feel like the high functioning crowd is crying victim on behalf of everyone because of a few terrible experiences when the bigger picture is that many kids' lives are made easier by ABA. No one's defending abusive ABA, but there are aspects of autism that are objectively harmful and make the person's life more difficult than it needs to be, and good ABA helps with that. I mean, should we do away with psych wards in hospitals because of their history of corruption? Absolutely not. They serve an important role for many people and have improved in recent years.

In an unofficial capacity, my own parents came up with ABA-like therapies for me when I was growing up. The tasks were very similar to what I've seen done by therapists. I 100% benefited from it, and yes, it did make me seem "less autistic," but it has also helped me. My pragmatic skills and executive function are leaps and bounds better than they were when I was young.