Kat Williams has given us consent to re-post her article Autistics Against ABA. The original dated 2nd May 2020 can be found on her website, CerebrationofKat.
Today (2nd May 2020), I was asked to write about ABA, providing evidence as to why it should not be promoted. While I’m willing to do this, particularly because I haven’t actually written a post specifically on ABA before (I mean, let’s be honest, I’d be adding to the hundreds already out there), this does not negate the time, mental energy, and sheer frustration that comes with (yet again) a person from a marginalised group being asked to do the leg work when a simple Google search would provide all of the information.
That said, I did offer to educate and this is a more permanent form than just replying to a Facebook post. From here you can expect references to ABA, abusive practices, and suicide. Therefore, if you will find any of these topics triggering I suggest you stop reading. I do hope, however, if you’re a non-Autistic (or non-disabled in general) person, you do read this in its entirety. It’s taken a lot of hard work, and I don’t really want it to be wasted.
There’s already so much literature out there so I’ve added a list of articles where you can read about this in more depth at the end of this article. I’ve marked those which are (in my opinion) the best ones to get a full overview of why ABA is – in all its forms – abhorrent. It doesn’t matter if it’s original Lovaas ABA ‘bad ABA’, or if it’s ‘good’ ABA which doesn’t use punishment such as electric shocks, or if it’s something used on Autistic people, or (as I’ve learned today) with children who have Cerebral Palsy. It’s all bad. Period. It would not be acceptable practice with non-disabled children, and gay conversion therapy (which is based on ABA) has been declared unethical, so I cannot fathom why it’s still considered appropriate to use ABA to try to ‘normalise’ disabled children.
Very often people who don’t know much about ABA outside it being ‘controversial’ will say things like “I can’t judge another parent’s choice,” or “People can choose how they want to parent their children.” My counter argument is simple: if I were to suggest that you could smack the disability out of a child you would judge. Rightly so.
“Your character is based on the way you treat the people you’re ‘allowed’ to mistreat” – David Sedaris
So, why is ABA bad anyway?
There are a number of reasons, but I will confine my answer to the top 10. I’m going to refer to Autistic people in this article, but please know that it doesn’t mean that these issues are solely Autistic related. If you’re using ABA with a person who has Cerebral Palsy or any other disability my points still stand:
1. It teaches the person they’re ‘wrong’ They need to be fixed
Repeat after me: Autistic people are not broken non-Autistics.
We have just come out of the other side of Autism Awareness (Acceptance) Month, yet we still have to tell people this. Disability does not diminish a person’s worth. The whole premise of ABA is to make Autistic children indistinguishable from their peers. This in itself should be a ‘red flag’ as therapeutic practices are supposed to help the person being treated. Therefore, ABA’s “goal of specific beneficence is to help individual people, […] is undermined by making people into someone they’re not” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy 2020).
Well-meaning parents and professionals typically look at this (and the other arguments) and respond with “but you didn’t have ABA, so how do you know it’s abusive?” To paraphrase Chris Bonnello (Autistic Not Weird) if people can educate themselves to know that smoking is bad for you without trying it for themselves, they can educate themselves about ABA.
Another frequent argument is “you’re not Autistic like my child.” I’m not going to delve into this fallacy here, I’m going to take it at face value. Yes, I have a slightly above average IQ. Yes, I’m mainly verbal (sometimes I’m not, but I write about that in other articles). However, intellectual/learning disability and apraxia of speech are not valid arguments for ABA. Parents and professionals often claim that their Autistic child/patient ‘can’t communicate’ so needs ABA to learn how to do so. However, “it commonly turns out that “non-communicative” autists frequently communicate perfectly well—they merely communicate in ways to which people might not typically be sensitive” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020).
Parents often want to know why their child behaves in different ways to their non-Autistic peers. I’ve been there, I do understand to a certain degree. However, “researchers do not tend to study why neurotypicals don’t behave in certain ways” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020), and this approach just feeds into the premise that the Autistic way of being is wrong; it’s something to be studied, unpicked, and rebuilt. Regardless of how distressing the process of ABA is for those subjected to it, “perhaps a greater injustice is in simply treating ASD as something that merits elimination in the first place” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020). Despite the difficulties faced by Autistic people in a world not designed for them,
“we would do well to focus our energies on eliminating the basis of that burden rather than in eliminating the underlying trait.” – Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020
2. ABA addresses ‘symptoms’ not underlying causes
Behaviourism focuses on just that: behaviour. Meltdown? Behaviour. Stimming? Behaviour. Aversion to sound? Behaviour. Co-occurring conditions such as pica or ARFID? Behaviour.
The function of ABA is to eliminate these behaviours to make the Autistic person appear more ‘normal’. However, the underlying reason for said behaviours is not addressed.
Let’s take eye contact as an example. I’ve chosen this because it shows how Westernised ABA is too – eye contact is considered part of polite social interaction here, in parts of the East, it’s considered rude. Eye contact can be at best distracting, at worst physically painful for an Autistic person. Auditory processing disorder could mean it’s essential for one Autistic person to look at someone’s mouth to understand what they’re saying, and for another, looking in the opposite direction could mean they’re taking in what’s being said rather than getting lost in the multiple shades of green which fleck the hazel eyes of the person speaking to them.
This is one area in which the ABA practitioner doesn’t try to find the whys. They insist on eye contact, and the child can only have their reward when they do. This leads me onto…
3. It removes and destroys autonomy
In a world in which people are being told to ‘be themselves’ and children are being praised for not ‘following the crowd’ it seems nonsensical that Autistic children are being taught the exact opposite. Conformity above all else. No is not an option.
As ABA tightens its noose around the Autistic’s individuality by using operant conditioning and behaviourism, it begins to “alter children’s identities by preventing them from forming and pursuing their own passions;” it’s “teaching them how to blend in rather than exercise their own unique capacities” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020). A lack of sense of self is often reported by Autistic adults, and it’s easy to see why. If they’ve been subjected to ABA it’s been trained out of them, if they haven’t they’ve often forced themselves to mask to try to fit in. Very rarely do I meet an Autistic adult who can state unequivocally that they’ve been their authentic self for their entire life.
“An ABA intervention will be considered a success if and only if it results in a desired behavior, regardless of what is going on in the mental life of the child. [… T]his is done in a way that overrides the child’s natural inclinations and does so via at least moderately coercive methods. To paraphrase one person with whom we spoke, if “ABA” just involved giving praise when the child does something good, you would be able to forgo years of training in favor of a lesson that could fit on a greeting card. There might be someone somewhere who practices ABA using only positive words of encouragement, but this is simply not what past recipients of ABA have reported (Kupferstein 2018).” – Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020
4. ABA leaves people open to abuse
Once you teach a child that no means they will be punished until they say yes – either in the traditional sense in which something negative happens to them, or solely through the withholding of a wanted item – you are leaving them open to abuse.
Parents will share memes like this:
while defending (or at least not criticising) ABA. This isn’t just ironic, it’s ludicrous.
ABA is teaching an Autistic child that their body isn’t their body. They’re being taught that they must have physical contact with someone, even if they don’t want to. They’re being taught that they are not allowed to give or deny consent. The proponents are preventing that Autistic child from being able to keep themselves safe for the rest of their lives. At best they’ll be unable to spot toxic friendships until it’s too late, at worst they will be abused.
5. Many people who were subjected to ABA meet the PTSD diagnostic criteria
Scientific evidence to support this is still in its infancy. This isn’t because it’s not out there, it’s because it’s taken this long for a) the first wave of Autistic children subjected to ABA to become adults, and b) for those people to be listened to. That said, research is being conducted, and an early study “noted PTSS in nearly half of ABA-exposed participants, while non-exposed controls had a 72 percent chance of being asymptomatic” (Kupferstein, 2018). This supports anecdotal evidence from the Autistic community in which Autistic adults, both those who are speaking and those who are non-speaking, have written extensively about how they have been traumatised by ABA. I have included many of these articles in the further reading list at the end.
“Respondents of all ages who were exposed to ABA were 86 percent more likely to meet the PTSD criteria than respondents who were not exposed to ABA,” and that “Exposure to ABA predicted a higher rate and more severe PTSS in participants, but the duration of exposure did not affect satisfaction with the intervention in caregivers.” – Kupferstein, 2018
This alone should demonstrate the potential harm, yet ABA practitioners and parents vehemently try to deny the claim. This in itself is abusive as it’s (again) telling the Autistic person that their experiences are wrong and/or not real. Just like ABA in practice, in which Autistic children are taught that they don’t really detest the feel of jelly, they just need to touch it every day for several hours to get over it. Both the ABA practitioners at the time and the people denying the resulting PTSD are gaslighting the Autistic person.
6. ABA teaches masking, which is a proven suicide risk
Let’s be clear: ABA does not make an Autistic person non-Autistic. Its ‘success’ is in its ability to make an Autistic person mask their Autistic way of being (or traits). Masking is not only exhausting and a completely unauthentic way of living, it is one of the “risk markers for suicidality unique to ASC” (Cassidy et al, 2018).
Suicidal ideation and completion of suicide is already overrepresented in the Autistic community:
“In a large sample of 374 adults newly diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS; autism without language delay or intellectual disability), 66% had contemplated suicide, significantly higher than the general population (17%) and patients with psychosis (59%); 35% had planned or attempted suicide [2], higher than previous estimates of attempted suicide in general and university populations (2.5–10%).” – Cassidy et al, 2018
and as this study shows, Autistics who mask are at higher risk again. ABA is designed to force the mask on when we should be encouraging our Autistic young people (as well as the adults they become) to take the mask off and love and embrace themselves for who they are.
7. Length of time a child is in therapy
Autistic children who are in ABA are often subjected to 25-40 hours per week of intensive practice. Children start ABA as young as 2 years old. That’s 25-40 hours in which they cannot make a free choice. They’re not playing as they want to. They are having to conform to hours of operant conditioning while their non-Autistic peers are playing in sandboxes, having naps, and scribbling with crayons. They’re being robbed of their childhood, working hours which would floor most non-Autistic adults.
8. It’s not ethical
Behaviourists have to equate autism to cancer to get ABA studies past ethics boards:
“When a judge, or Dr Maurice, or any behaviourist yells cancer, any ethical consideration for autistic people obediently hurries to the nearest exit.” – Dawson, 2004
This is because they know it’ll eliminate the ethical questions of consent – “a project presuming to transform the nature of unconsenting clients through behaviour interventions must be challenged as to its ethics” (Dawson, 2004) – and ABA gone wrong, such as those Autistics “injured and killed in restraints” (Dawson, 2004). If autism is presented as equal to a disease which kills without radical, objectively harmful to the body, treatment, then the suggestion of intensive hours and removal of autonomy doesn’t seem that bad. If it ‘cures’ the Autistic child of this ‘thing’ that’s stolen their life, then ‘the ends justify the means’.
This is, of course, a strawman. Autism doesn’t kill. Autistic people often get killed too young, but it’s not being Autistic that’s done it. It’s how they’ve been treated (when they die by suicide) or the lack of support (why they die by the hands of their caregivers).
Therefore, the ethical questions need to be placed back on the table. However, when questioned about obtaining consent from Autistic people regarding being subjected to ABA, Dr Gresham, a pro-ABA doctor, “found the idea of autistics being involved or consulted in legal, research, or treatment decisions absurd–like consulting with the mentally-retarded” (Dawson, 2004). If this is the public opinion of ABA proponents, I shudder to think about what their actions are when alone with vulnerable Autistic children.
“Challenging the autism-ABA industry’s ethics requires that autistics are seen as human beings with human rights. We do not live in a society that acknowledges this. We are in a society in which autistics have rights only if and when we resemble non-autistics.” – Dawson, 2004
9. It’s not about the needs of the disabled person, but the needs of society
Something I invite the pro-ABA (or undecided) parents reading this article to ponder is this: are the things you’re trying to ‘fix’ problems for the Autistic child, or problems for you? Are they truly issues which need remedying, or are they being seen as issues because of societal norms? To the Autistics subjected to it, ABA “at least appears to have inherited its foundations’ interest in societal benefit at the expense of individual rights” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020).
A huge amount of behaviours seen as being without purpose, such as intense interests and stimming, are immensely helpful for Autistic people. Therefore, having interests withheld until the Autistic child performs a task they are either finding physically difficult or just really mentally don’t want to do is cruel. Preventing an Autistic person from stimming only serves to dysregulate them. The ABA practitioner isn’t doing anything to help the Autistic person, they’re making them more palatable to society. (Yes, I know that not all ABA practitioners stop children from stimming. Please don’t #NotAllABA me, the rest of what they/you do is awful anyway.)
Other things ABA practitioners work on are Autistic children eating appropriate foods. Performing self-care tasks in a manner society would approve of. Getting them ready for the outside world, rather than getting the outside world to at least meet the Autistic in the middle. At no point are the views of the Autistic person considered. Nobody is using their wellbeing as a unit of measurement for success. “Making decisions for patients for the sake of bettering society seems immediately suspicious from a modern perspective … as doing so places comparatively little emphasis on good of the patients themselves” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020).
“ABA places an undue burden on autistic children is by defining therapeutic success primarily in terms of autists’ ability to fit into normal societal structures.” – Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020
10. It doesn’t really work
Even with the unhelpful measures of success, ABA doesn’t work in the way it claims. Yes, it forces some Autistic people to act less Autistic, but it doesn’t ‘cure’ them of autism, how could it? You cannot change who someone inherently is, but you can force it into a dark cavern of their mind, a place they’ve learned to hide it and be ashamed of it.
A literature review of ABA effectivity studies was conducted in 2013. “Most of the literature review papers conclude[d] that the intervention programs are controversial, expensive and dependent of external variables” (Fernandes & Amato). They found that control groups were often not used – something which is essential to determine whether or not what is being tested is effective, or whether there is a placebo effect.
A more recent study shows that “conflicts of interest are prevalent but under‐reported in autism early intervention research” (Bottema‐Beutel et al, 2020). This means that there is a lack of transparency and the claim that ABA is evidence-based needs to be challenged.
“There is not enough evidence of ABA’s preponderance over other alternatives.” – Fernandes & Amato, 2013
To sum up
ABA has been described as “an extremely negative experience” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020) by a huge number of Autistic adults who have been subjected to it. Chris Bonnello (Autistic Not Weird) did a huge survey in 2018 which showed that the Autistic community is against ABA, with 34.16% of all respondents and 53.48% of Autistics saying they would not recommend its use. Please note that the vast majority of the remaining percentages weren’t pro-ABA. A large percentage of the respondents abstained from answering. Only 13.92% agreed with ABA overall, and 5.19% of Autistics.
As “the standard measures for autists’ success make very little mention of the subjective well-being of [Autistics]” (Wilkenfeld & McCarthy, 2020) it is hard to claim that any outcome is an objective success. Sure, the Autistic child may now give eye contact, eat a few more things without vomiting, and communicate by speaking, but is a lifetime of thinking that they’re inherently ‘wrong’ worth it? Is a lifetime of PTSD the price you’re willing to pay for conformity?
Reference List
Bonnello, C (2018), Autistic Not Weird (online) https://autisticnotweird.com/2018survey/
Bottema-Beutel, K, Crowley, S, Sandbank, M & Woynaroski, TG (2020) The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (online) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jcpp.13249
Cassidy, S, Bradley, L, Shaw, R & Baron-Cohen, S (2018), Molecular Autism (online) https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-018-0226-4
Dawson, M (2004), No Autistics Allowed (online) https://www.sentex.ca/~nexus23/naa_aba.html
Fernandes, FDM, & Amaton, CAH (2013) Scientific Electronic Library Online (online) https://www.scielo.br/pdf/codas/v25n3/en_16.pdf
Kupferstein, H (2018), Advances in Autism (online) https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AIA-08-2017-0016/full/html
Wilkenfeld, DA & McCarthy AM (2020) Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (online)
Further reading
https://neuroclastic.com/2019/03/27/is-aba-really-dog-training-for-children-a-professional-dog-trainer-weighs-in/amp/ If you read nothing else, read this!
https://neuroclastic.com/2019/03/28/invisible-abuse-aba-and-the-things-only-autistic-people-can-see/ – includes videos which are important to watch, but are disturbing and upsetting
https://tania.co.za/non-speaking-autistics-thoughts-on-aba/ – views of non-speaking Autistics
Does ABA harm Autistic People?