Yep. And those fears are founded.
Do y’all remember when “HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy” would have been a punchline?
Yes, well what do you expect from people who think it’s a disease that can be cured (often with quack shit like bleach)?
I understand that parents find parenting an autistic child difficult. I have a high-functioning autistic child and that is difficult enough.
But they are just giving these people false hope. Autism can’t be cured, just like many other ways people can be disabled. No one seems to be talking about curing Down’s Syndrome.
A lot of this shit comes straight from Autism Speaks, by the way.
https://neuroclastic.com/autism-speaks-and-aba-same-corrupt-methods-different-coat-of-paint/
Both of mine are AuDHD (or maybe ADHD Gold edition?) and I love them for exactly who they are, even with what a huge pain in the ass the neurodivergence can be sometimes. It frankly annoys me when people, almost always people who never had any experience raising autistic kids, send me “cures” for autism. They don’t need to be cured, fuckers, this is who they are, stop telling me to put them on juice cleanses or what the fuck ever.
I think a lot of it is down to the fact that these kids can be difficult, there’s no two ways about it. That makes people uncomfortable, and they want to solve that discomfort by helping. How do you help? Well, their autism related behaviors are what made them uncomfortable, so let’s make the autism go away. Unfortunately, there’s a huge grift industry around “helping” autistic kids.
Ah yes, there should have been more “in the sense of fairness, let us talk about the pros of torturing your child into submission”. What is journalism coming to these days, leaving out such important information?
Well you’re obviously being sarcastic but to expound on the point
ABA is a difficult thing because of consent issues, obviously. But the article portrays it solely as torture, as do you. I have worked with children who literally bash their head into the wall until they give themselves concussions. One kid did it so hard he detached a fucking retina. I have worked with people that have done so much property damage to their homes their houses are condemnable. I have worked with people that become violent when presented with stimuli that they consider aversive, like a song comes on the radio they don’t like. And when I say violent I don’t mean they are “mean”, I mean they fuck people up, they send people to the hospital.
To further confound things research shows the absolute best thing that can be done to avoid the above scenarios is early intervention to work on issues like frustration tolerance and toleration of denied access.
What do we do in these cases? Contingent reinforcement is evidenced, effective, and when applied effectively can be balanced against the cost. These people have serious quality of life issues and ABA can alleviate that when not much else, if anything, can, aside from just giving them what they want all the time and creating a sterile environment free from any stressor, which is unrealistic and foolish.
The article is presenting it in terms of “ABA is bad because people implementing it have misused it”. This is why I say it’s one sided. I should have elaborated this in my first comment probably. But so many people, you included, seem to have no interest in having a more nuanced discussion on this. It’s demonized because of practitioner misuse. This is understandable. But I will continue to make the point that all ABA is is the science of operant conditioning, nothing more, nothing less. How it is implemented is up to the practitioner. It is up to the social norms surrounding to dictate that
To that point I would argue your real beef is with capitalistic systems. These practitioners are generally well intentioned but they are misguided. They are doing what they and the parents of the individual often think is “right”, to make you “work” within such frameworks. This is where the article starts to come into play and this is where bad application of ABA comes in.
Utilizing ABA to encourage a child to stay seated, to discourage stereotypy, etc. of note is that this application is generally discouraged although to your point there is nothing strictly disallowing it. Parents and education environments ultimately have the most power here although many practitioners, myself included, will refuse to “work” on behaviors that don’t need to be worked on when they can be accommodated instead or simply just ignored, eg hand flapping doesn’t bother anyone so who cares? And getting up from their seat during class may be disruptive but can we possibly accommodate somehow, like changing seating or directing to the back of classroom so they can pace freely?
Further the article completely glosses over things like functional communication training. So never mind that utilization of ABA has led to me giving communication skills to many clients who otherwise had either none at all or very limited skills. And never mind that it’s not just contingent reinforcement in a bubble, it’s generally operant conditioning paired with functional communication.
And never mind that operant conditioning is in many ways naturalized consequences of real world conditions made safer and more artificial so that they can be practiced and learned without more serious cost
The issue I ultimately take here is that yes, there are issues with ABA. I outlined them above but will explicitly say them again: it’s in the application. Contingent reinforcement is a powerful tool and misusing it means you can attempt to shape behavior in flawed ways that are harmful. Conversion therapy is not ABA but is based in somewhat similar principles of behavior conditioning (classical vs operant conditioning), and yet I still don’t think the gross misuse by those clinicians nullifies the applicability of classical conditioning based therapies for similar reasons.
But to respond in such an obviously biased way steers people away without providing a balanced view. It reeks of tactics that anti science zealots utilize. it puts families in a position that makes the susceptible to dangerous treatment options. Etc
Yeah, can’t imagine why an autistic person who has to deal with that shit would have a “ridiculously one sided” view of it.
Much like how me, a person with trigeminal neuralgia (TN-2) would have a “ridiculously one sided” view of people trying to tell me about all sorts of “alternative medicine” bullshit that does not work.
I mean see the much more involved reply I gave to the to other person but in addition to that the difference here is that ABA does work. It’s evidenced based to do so. It is not kooky bullshit of people stealing your money with snake oil.
The issue surrounding it is one of consent, which is a very worthwhile discussion to have. This is another issue with the way the article is presented. It confounds the actual issue! Now you are conflating it with snake oil when there is an astoundingly large body of evidence in support of its efficacy. To be clear, this is not a flimsy “it works sometimes under some scenarios maybe” thing. This is decades of evidence
So when you come into my practice and say you want to change a behavior that bothers you and negatively impacts your quality of life I can present you with operant conditioning. You want to change something about yourself, which is sometimes a thing that people do. It will likely be effective if done correctly. If I present it to you clearly and you consent to it, what’s the problem? But the moment I call it ABA you are far more likely to simply reject it now. That’s your right of course, but it’s sad
Now we can discuss the ethics of treating those who cannot reliably consent, children, people who cannot reliably communicate, etc. but frankly is ABA the issue here? Again I argue your issue is with programming direction being forced upon someone who cannot advocate for themselves. This is not ABAs fault. But it is an easier thing to scapegoat
I’m am so fucking furious that Harris got 6 million less votes than Biden.
Sure, she was a terrible candidate, but how in the world did Trump not motivate people to vote for her?
Those 6 million people had to be afraid of what was coming, right? I thought Trump motivated people to vote for Biden. I sure as shit didn’t vote for him with any enthusiasm. I was personally terrified that he’d have a mental decline and hand everything back to Trump, and, well, that’s exactly what happened.
It all just blows my mind.
Maybe after the world burns down and the people of the future build the next Rome, they’ll use some examples from all of this.
I doubt it though. They’d get it perfect and some cult would spring up and shoot it to shit again. I swear it’s hard not to be a nihilist when humanity just goes in circles. For every 100 decent people there’s one monster who crushes them all because he never thinks about what other people might go through. He only thinks about himself and everyone else pays for it.
I’m also angry as shit that all of the people who stormed the capitol are just off the hook. A few days before they were pardoned my uncle was saying, “He won’t pardon them all. They’ll look at it case by case.” I said, “ok, when he pardons them all I hope that you hear what I’m saying when I say his ego is bigger than his interest in making our country better. I would bet my balls on the fact that it will be a blanket pardon.”
“We’ll, they’ve got this woman who was talking about looking case by case on Fox the other day…”
“They’re lying. He’ll pardon them all.” I said.
He and I will be working together this week. I bet he justifies it. Maybe not, but it’s too late now anyway. The damage is done, is being done, and will not stand a chance of being undone in my lifetime.
Sorry for this. My brain just hurts. I worry for all of these people who will have their lives ripped apart. It just sucks.
she was a terrible candidate, but how in the world did Trump not motivate people to vote for her?
Easy, as you said: she was a terrible candidate
They wanted to get that first woman “status quo” president again. It lost them more votes than it won. I can’t believe they didn’t even have another round of primaries.
When they shut out bernie they really fucked the party. This timeline is their fault as much as anyone else’s.
AOC would have been a better “woman” candidate
The problem was that they needed someone to the right of Biden
will not stand a chance of being undone in my lifetime
I feel that in my bones. There’s so much backward progress, that it feels like I’ll never see any fruit of what I’m fighting for; just trying to regain some ground at this point. I’ve given up on my own timeline and am simply fighting for future generations. I may never see it, but I’ll be damned if I concede
It still hurts though, seeing how much progress is being lost and feeling helpless to stop the backslide. It’s mind-numbing to think about, honestly
At the end of the day saying vote for me because the other guy’s worse is never going to inspire voters. Elections about getting people to vote for you. It’s as simple as that, you have to sell people on you. They have to vote for you. That’s an incontrovertible rule of politics that will never be overcome and the Democrats don’t fucking understand it.
Barely. The loss in 2016 and the tight race in 2020 wasn’t enough to sound the alarms. They still tried to win with Harris because she wasn’t Trump, instead of finding a worthy candidate.
Sorry, man. I despised Harris but still preferred her to win, hands down. But Democrats have only themselves to blame. Trying to blame the voters who refused to vote in Harris just because she wasn’t Trump in dishonest and anti-democratic. It’s the exact posture that will keep enabling Democrats to come forward with these crappy candidates and (unsuccessfully) blackmailing the progressist voters to vote for them.
Thus, the exact posture that allows Trump to win.
Third party voters didn’t cost Harris the election. But if it did, you’d better your ass the Democrats would take the next election seriously. And they would win.
We talked today but he didn’t bring it up.
Tuesday we’re supposed be repairing plumbing somewhere so I’ll bring it up if he don’t.
Edit: Came back to update dude only to find he deleted his comment.
I’m sure it will come as a surprise to no one that he changed the subject and talked about all of the great things he’s got done in two weeks. Oh well.
She could have got those votes if she had shown any kind of backbone on israel. Depite how the media and all of those corrupt people try to spin it. The majority of the silent majority can see that situation for what it really is. She came out the day before election day saying she would put a end to it and it was way too late.
Edit: Where in my statement did I say I didn’t vote for her? I voted for her but ignoring why a lot of people didn’t won’t help. Not acknowledging how badly she handled the situation is kinda stupid.
She showed backbone relative to the alternative, which helps you make a choice between the two.
First past the post is the worst: https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
RFK looks like he’s made from cancer
