Why Don’t We Offer ABA Services?
Parents often ask us a thoughtful question: "Why don't you offer ABA?" It's a fair question. ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) is one of the most widely recommended autism interventions in the United States, and many families come to us after being told it's the "gold standard."
Our answer isn't about criticizing parents who have chosen ABA. Every parent wants what's best for their child, and many families pursue ABA because they were told it was the only evidence-based option available.
Our decision is based on something different: our understanding of child development, our ethical commitments as therapists, and our belief that therapy should help autistic children become more fully themselves—not better at pretending to be someone else.
We Believe the Goal of Therapy Is a Better Life—Not a More "Typical" Child
When I think about whether a therapy is effective, I don't start with a research study.
I start with a different question:
Who is benefiting from this intervention?
Is the child becoming more confident?
Do they feel safer in their own body?
Can they communicate their needs more effectively?
Are they building meaningful relationships?
Do they have greater autonomy over their own lives?
Those are the outcomes that matter to me.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) asks these same questions in its white paper For Whose Benefit?, arguing that autism interventions should ultimately be evaluated by whether they improve the lives of autistic people—not simply whether they reduce visible autistic behaviors.
That distinction changes everything.
Why We Don't Focus on Making Children Look Less Autistic
Many autism interventions—including traditional ABA—have historically measured success by whether children become more "indistinguishable from their peers."
That might include goals like:
Making more eye contact
Reducing stimming
Speaking in more neurotypical ways
Sitting still longer
Appearing more compliant
At first glance, those goals may sound reasonable.
But I always come back to another question:
Why?
Is eye contact actually helping this child connect?
Or are we teaching them that their natural way of communicating is wrong?
Is reducing stimming improving quality of life?
Or are we removing one of the child's primary ways of regulating their nervous system?
Research increasingly suggests that masking autistic traits—learning to hide one's authentic autistic way of being—is associated with poorer mental health outcomes, including increased anxiety, depression, and suicidality in autistic adults. The ASAN paper discusses these concerns extensively and argues that reducing autistic traits should not automatically be treated as evidence of success.
For me, therapy should never ask a child to trade authenticity for acceptance.
Behavior Is Communication
One of the biggest differences between our philosophy and behavioral approaches is this:
We don't ask, "How do we stop this behavior?"
We ask,
"What is this child trying to tell us?"
Every behavior has a story.
Perhaps a child is overwhelmed.
Perhaps they're anxious.
Perhaps they're confused.
Perhaps they're communicating in the only way their nervous system currently allows.
If a child covers their ears, paces, flaps, cries, refuses, or melts down, our first response isn't to eliminate the behavior.
It's curiosity.
What happened?
What does their nervous system need?
What environment would allow them to succeed?
The ASAN white paper makes a similar argument, noting that behaviors often communicate unmet needs, pain, distress, or sensory overload. Simply suppressing behaviors without understanding their cause risks silencing important communication.
Children deserve understanding before intervention.
Consent Isn't Optional
One of the values that guides every therapy session in our practice is respect for autonomy.
Even very young children deserve to experience that their bodies belong to them.
That doesn't mean children always get to avoid hard things.
Growth is uncomfortable sometimes.
But there is a profound difference between supporting a child through challenge and teaching them that adults always have the right to override their "no."
The ASAN report identifies respect for consent and bodily autonomy as one of the central ethical questions for autism interventions. It argues that approaches centered on compliance can unintentionally undermine self-advocacy and personal safety—skills that become increasingly important as children grow older.
One of my greatest hopes for autistic children is not simply that they learn to listen to adults.
It's that they also learn when not to.
Relationships Create Development
Development doesn't happen because someone rewards the "right" behavior.
It happens inside relationships.
Children develop flexible thinking because someone delights in them.
They develop emotional regulation because someone helps regulate alongside them.
They develop communication because someone genuinely wants to understand them.
They develop resilience because someone believes their inner experience matters.
This is one of the reasons I'm drawn to developmental, relationship-based approaches like DIR/Floortime. They begin with the assumption that emotional connection is not separate from development—it is the foundation of development.
When children feel safe, understood, and accepted, they naturally become more curious, more engaged, and more capable of learning.
What We Do Instead
Parents sometimes hear "we don't offer ABA" and wonder what that means in practice.
It doesn't mean we have lower expectations.
Quite the opposite.
We absolutely want children to:
communicate effectively
build friendships
develop emotional regulation
become more flexible thinkers
increase independence
solve problems
tolerate frustration
advocate for themselves
Those goals matter deeply.
The difference is how we help children get there.
Instead of asking,
"How do we make this behavior stop?"
we ask,
"What developmental skill is missing, and how can we build it through connection?"
Instead of compliance, we build competence.
Instead of extinguishing behaviors, we increase understanding.
Instead of rewarding children for appearing neurotypical, we help them develop the skills they need to thrive as autistic people.
Supporting Families, Not Judging Them
If your child currently receives ABA, this article is not meant to make you feel guilty.
You made the best decision you could with the information you had.
Many wonderful therapists working within behavioral systems genuinely care about children.
Likewise, no therapy model is automatically ethical simply because it carries a particular label. The ASAN white paper emphasizes that ethical concerns can arise across many different intervention models, not only ABA, and encourages families and professionals to evaluate therapies by the values they embody rather than their name alone.
The question isn't,
"Is this ABA?"
The better question is,
"Does this therapy respect my child's humanity?"
Does it increase autonomy?
Does it honor communication?
Does it build joy?
Does it help my child understand themselves?
Does my child feel emotionally safe?
Those are the questions I hope every family feels empowered to ask.
Every Child Deserves to Be Understood
Autistic children do not need to become less autistic to deserve belonging.
They deserve relationships that honor who they already are while helping them grow into who they can become.
At our practice, we believe therapy should increase confidence rather than compliance, connection rather than camouflage, and self-understanding rather than self-suppression.
Because our goal has never been to create children who look more typical.
Our goal is to help autistic children build meaningful, connected, joyful lives—exactly as themselves.
