I’ve come across many people who work for Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) but none of them take things seriously.
I’m actually thinking they’re not actually qualified to help people on The Autism Spectrum, during their training they’re not taught about autism, they have no neuro-scientific knowledge, and they actually neglect the fact an autistic brain functions differently.
I informed them they must never take an autistic person away from their special area of interest because it’s part of their well-being and helps them calm down, soothes, comforts and helps them make sense of the world, they just laughed.
They told me a meltdown is no different to a tantrum, I’d say that shows they certainly don’t know what a meltdown is. I told them meltdowns are not tantrums or immediate reactions, that they happen when someone just can’t cope any longer and makes them shutdown and they wouldn’t take it seriously.
I think autism advocates and workers of ABA need to have a meeting and design a training program that involves teaching them at least the basic needs of people on The Autism Spectrum. It really hurts me that I keep seeing videos of parents putting their autistic children in pain and distress that can be avoided, to me using autistic children to make YouTube videos at the cost of hurting a child is taking it too far. The comment section has lots of autistic people pointing out how painful it is to be held in a shopping centre with too many lights and loud noises with echoes while hypersensitive to light and sound. Then the other half of commenters are people who work for ABA congratulating the parents for sustaining their nonverbal daughter in overstimulation for nearly half an hour, and they couldn’t understand why she had a meltdown after that.
I really think better courses and training programs for those planning to become practitioners have to be made, the present ones are clearly not teaching them what they need to know in order not to hurt autistic clients.