The ABA monopoly in America leaves parents poor choices

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I want to know every success story 30 years later.
Doesn't matter who claims to be successful and for what actions.

There was a "Lovaas kid" here on WP about 2014-2015. This person didn't seem like she was too happy.

The outcome might have been good for showing "non-autistic" behaviors----but maybe not so good as far as happy and successful lives are concerned.

The Lovaas method can be said to be "extreme ABA." He uses "Discrete Trial Training." Lovaas felt that 40 hours a week on ABA was optimal.

I've been in a position for many years to observe people with autism, the ABA providers and parents. The more I read here on WP, the more I see the tragedy in our treatment of people with autism. For the autists who are large and violent, I can't speak to that.

But for the relatively high functioning autists, the ABA does seem to be skewed towards making them appear more "normal." And I observe high levels of anxiety and even terror in the recipients of this treatment.

For example, several of the autists I have known come up to smell me. A person will walk up and start putting his or her nose close to my neck, my face, my hair. I let him/her do this for as long as they want. I may talk softly to him/her while this is going on. The parents, on the other hand, will try to stop the person from smelling me because it is not socially acceptable.

Others don't walk and may be lying on the floor. Parents gasp when I get on the floor and slowly roll or scoot to him/her, talking softly and then the individual gets a bit interested and may interact with me.

And then their are parents who won't let me do any of that, and tell me sternly that by letting the person smell me, for example, I am destroying all the work they have put into teaching this individual to not smell people.

I think that if an autist wants to smell me, s/he should smell me. No big deal.

I dont know the effectivness of ABA therapy. There does need to be more research in this field of techniques that work.

"Floor time" seems a good one.

Dont know too much about "sonrise" program effectivness

As far as "normalising" kids, its unfortunatly sad as it is we live in a disinterested, unsympathetic unforgiving human society where kids who are "different" get horribly bullied, some committ suicide.

Autistic adults often get wrongly accused because of unusual behaviours of being sexual preditors or peadophiles, get arrested, assulted or murdered, or driven out of town.

So trying to limit some autistic behaviours is sometimes in the best interest of the child from a safety point of view.

Posting here for anyone in the future looking for real life experience.

My 8 year old son has ADHD and tried ABA therapy this year. He was basically extremely stubborn, but also seemed to have a problem knowing how to go about basic movements. If you asked him to do something he would either say nah, or say he didn't know how to do it. If you tried to show him how to do whatever it was, he just never seemed to get it. For example, my son still doesn't "get" how to hang up a jacket on a coathanger. It confuses him what goes where, but he also doesn't care about it, so he puts in no effort.

ABA is a therapy which can be used on any person and most animals, and has been, successfully. It absolutely does work. But at what cost.

The purpose of ABA is to break a person's will. They do not tell you this. The modern language of ABA is that they are finding the reason for the "behavior" and finding a replacement behavior that is not harmful. What they don't tell you is that they are forcing the patient to do it, against their will, until they do it automatically.

The ABA people would not count an exercise as being completed until my son had performed it 100% correctly so many times on so many dates. My son would complain and be rude while he performed the action, or only do it correctly say, 4/5 times. He'd just sit there and glare at the worker and not do the last time. So they would count it as incorrect and start the counter over. This meant they were essentially doing a Groundhog Day of disliked tasks.

My son found it extremely traumatic. He went downhill pretty quickly. He started hitting himself in the head, he hit the worker, he started threatening self harm. He only did six months of it and when the extreme behavior started I ended the therapy. He is still performing the things the got through. Some of it he is doing too much of. He is washing his hands so much his hands bleed. We had to take away the handsoap in the bathroom, but he's still too hard on his hands with just water. He is so fastidious about cleaning up after himself after he eats that he can't do other things until he has performed the action exactly like he was trained. It disturbs me. It is like they trained him into OCD. These were not things that were even important to me. They were just like "Would you like him to pick up after himself?" And I was like, "sure" without really thinking about it.

I hope this helps someone. I did not find many real life ABA experiences before my son tried it. Just like, really think about it. Even if this is covered for you with your insurance and all, seriously think about it before you open this door.

ABA is just individual skill training nothing more.

Those with milder autisms are less likely to have been through ABA as their autism is likely invisible and they are diagnosed at an older age.

Many ND advocates hate ABA because they think it’s about converting autistic people to NT.

It isn’t and wouldn’t work like that anyway, ABA to tie shoelaces wont make someone less autistic but might make life a little easier for both person and carer.