Parenthood – And the Perils of ABA

Image by Effendi from Pixabay

by Nanny Aut

I am going to start this post with saying that I don’t believe in the narrative of ‘ABA is abuse’. It’s a catchy slogan that entirely fails to connect with the people who need to be informed about ABA the most.

ABA IS harmful – that isn’t a personal opinion – that is a hard fact. There is a very significant body of research to show this – especially the long-term damage of being in ABA. There is no ‘good’ ABA because the core mechanisms that ABA use are harmful.

The issue is that the majority of those who promote ABA aren’t aware of this. They don’t understand the nuance of the operant conditioning of ABA – they usually don’t even realise it IS operant conditioning. They aren’t abusers, they are good people trying to help – just with terrible information. 

Yes, there ARE abusers out there – the man who created ABA WAS an abuser – a self-documented sadist who records his visceral pleasure at hitting children in his research notes. The parents who listened to him didn’t know that – most people who follow his teachings didn’t know that. Just like they don’t know he wasn’t even a qualified psychologist – just an opportunistic charlatan cashing in on the desperation of parents seeking help.

All they see is that ABA works – apply incentive or aversive here – change behaviour there. And they usually have little to no understanding of what is happening underneath.

And they truly believe that you need to be exactly like everyone else in this world to survive – and that is what they are helping autistics to do. If that is what you have been taught all your life – why wouldn’t you believe that?

And it’s not like there isn’t evidence for this – autistics shot for the crime of being autistic, barred from the workplace, denied autonomy and basic human respect.

The only thing is – the issue doesn’t lie with the autistics – it lies with the majority and the innate hostility they have to difference. That is what needs to be addressed.

Which brings me to Parenthood – a program based on the ups and downs of being a parent. In this program, one of the children is diagnosed as autistic (spoiler – there is more than one autistic in this family – it’s just the others are missed).

Parenthood doesn’t take an openly anti-ABA stance – I’m not even sure that they were aware that what they wrote WAS anti-ABA. However, if you pay attention you are shown clearly over and over why ABA is not a good thing.

The parents aren’t unkind people, they genuinely love their son, Max, they want the best for him. They know nothing about autism and are forced to rely on the professionals. They see Max struggling in school and having tantrums over nothing (like I said, they know nothing about autism) and want to fix the problem. And to them the problem is the autism. They do learn and grow throughout the series – not as much as I would like them to (the problems of not having autistic writers on the team) – but they do start to realise that the issue is not their son but how others treat him.

In the early days they employ a BCBA – a lovely girl who genuinely cares for her clients – but oversteps because that is what she is trained to do. She claims to be Max’s friend in order to establish a trust bond – and Max – not having a metric for friendship believes her. And when later on she leaves – he is devastated – his friend has abandoned him and he assumes it’s his fault. 

Why wouldn’t he? That therapist told him over and over that the burden of friendship was on his shoulders – that he needed to change the way he was in order to gain friends. It is never taught that friendship is a two-way street and that rejection doesn’t always happen because of you.

In the series we see a strong focus on establishing neurotypical social behaviour through bribery. If you maintain eye contact – you get a candy – if you don’t talk about the things that interest you – you get two candies – if you are nice to the person who is mean to you – you get three candies.

What you see Max learn isn’t how to interact with others – but that relationships are purely transactional. When he gets a crush on a girl he is devastated and confused because he brings her gifts – and this means – according to the rules he has been taught – she must be nice to him.

He is also destroyed at high school because he follows all the social rules he’s been taught – and promised will gain him acceptance – and is still bullied and ostracised and the teachers completely fail to support or protect him. He comes to the conclusion that his BCBA unwittingly taught him – that he is an awful unacceptable person. And he is also angry and confused – because the rules given to him aren’t true and aren’t followed by others.

And candy becomes deeply intertwined with the loss of autonomy. Finding out that there is a vending machine is Max’s happiest day. Not because of access to candy – but because finally HE can control his access to candy. He no longer has to perform tricks for it.

What should have happened – what would have helped – is teaching a guidebook. These are the ways you are different and that’s ok – but it iS going to confuse and upset some people – in the same way they confuse and upset you. You may need to explain why you don’t like eye contact and why you won’t be doing it. Not everyone connects through their deep interests – some people connect through superficial small talk. If you want to connect with them you need to explain the way you connect and meet them halfway.

And nowhere is Max’s tantrums addressed – even at the end of the series, he is unable to manage his meltdowns because he doesn’t know what they are, why they are happening or what to do to change things. 

And that is because in their 40 hours of training BCBAs aren’t taught about autistic neurology, or even to look for cause beyond simplistic explanations like ‘attention seeking’. Attention seeking isn’t a cause, it’s an outcome. Why is this young person feeling so unsafe that they need the attention of a protector? It’s THAT threat that is the real cause.

Max and his family have no idea about overloads in processing, the need for predictability to feel safe, the overloads from a spiky sensory system, the high energy demands from processing vast amounts of information all the time. Because his therapist didn’t either.

It is rare to find a BCBA therapist who truly understands what is going on in their ‘therapy’. That people WILL do things that hurt them in order to maintain connection with people. That their friendship that they are encouraged to form with their young person is, in fact, the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. That the threat of losing that friendship is a huge aversive.

They don’t understand that exposure therapy doesn’t reduce the high sensory input. That they have taught the limbic system to switch from fight to freeze – switching off all sensory signals to protect itself. It hasn’t improved anything – the autistic simply dissociates and becomes numb because nothing they do is going to stop this sensory assault. That the sensory system is still taking damage every time even though the alarm has been muted. Damage that emerges from early teens to mid-twenties in the form of severe anxiety and depression and a focus on a permanent exit. 

They don’t know this because research done to promote ABA deliberately avoids longitudinal research. In the same way they avoid research that compares those in ABA to those not in ABA. (Spoiler, research HAS been done on this by several independent bodies and all show that ABA not only provides no additional benefit – it often sets young people back from their autistic peers who had no ABA intervention).

They don’t know that their efforts to get autistics to fit in – 

a) don’t work long term – however hard we mask, that innate difference IS going to be picked up – and often the level of hostility increases the better we are at masking.

b) is telling the person they are supporting that even someone who says they are their friend doesn’t like them. That they need you to be someone else in order to be acceptable.

c) sets autistics up for humiliation, shame, failure, exhaustion, destruction of self-esteem, even a complete deletion of who they are.

d) sets autistics up for genuine abuse – because this is how we’ve seen ‘friendships’ modelled. Do something that hurts you in order to keep our friendship. I will even reward and praise you for hurting yourself. (They don’t even realise that what they are asking the autistic to do IS hurting them).

They don’t understand about apraxia or dyspraxia, EDS, PDA or even about executive function. All critical knowledge when it comes to working with autistics.

It’s like getting someone who ‘knows a bit about pipes’ to work on a Formula 1 Ferrari.

So as I said before – those who are in the ABA Industry and parents who endorse ABA aren’t abusers. They are just ignorant of most of the knowledge they need to genuinely support autistics.

And ignorance can be addressed – once you finally recognise that you don’t know what you don’t know – and start trying to learn more. Ideally from adult autistics who’ve had the time to combine their knowledge of their lived experience with acquired knowledge about neurology, child development – and specifically autistic neurology.

There is zero point in removing ABA and leaving a vacuum – parents need help and support and education. We need to replace ABA instead – using support designed with autistic neurology in mind. The knowledge is there – time to access it and put it into practice.