ABA therapy changes lives for kids diagnosed with autism

One in 59 kids in the United States has autism, with boys being four times more likely to be diagnosed than girls.

[toby]

Hi, actual autistic person here. If you put your autistic child through this, please know you are hurting them and this will only harm them in the long run.

[LeoDamascusVG]

1:47 "Going to the grocery store, if I said, 'William, stop, ' or 'Evan, stop, ' they stopped, whereas before they'd never have done that."

You ever wonder why they didn't stop before? It's because the grocery store is a cacophony of noises that a neurotypical brain filters out, but due to an abnormally functioning temporal lobe, the autistic brain does not. It makes the autistic kid feel like they're entering a warzone on every grocery trip. And rather than find treatment or strategies to help the kid not feel like that, ABA teaches the kid to suppress their normal reactions to that kind of trauma.

It's gonna bottle up and explode at some point in their life, and it won't be pretty. It's also going to teach them to bottle up things that would be traumatic to a neurotypical brain, too, which makes them easier targets for victimization.

A better solution is probably CBT style slow increases to the noise around them, so they can get used to it and stop having it be a traumatic experience (OT may help with this), and until that works relying on online ordering and in store pick-up to reduce your kids' exposure to the grocery store until they can handle it.

[MyPathSupport]

Not sure why this was considered new therapy. Has been nationally accepted for 20+ years.

[socaloutdoors]

Ummm, I'm an 80's kid...this was probably 90% kids I grew up with. Kids will be wild asf...If you have a mellow, well behaved kid you're probably 1 outta of a million parent...

[ujustgotpwned]

As an autistic person: the moment I saw the puzzle pieces on the opening graphic I knew this was going to be bad

[haannguyen]

I never had ABA and graduated high school magna cum laude