ABA: LESSONS IN LOVE & APPRECIATION

Stephanie Beatty is a high school teacher in York Region. As an educator who has worked with special needs students, she could tell her baby boy Tucker James – TJ – was not progressing quite as fast as his peers. She suspected he might be autistic.

“At around the age of 18 months we first noticed that TJ was falling short of the published schedules of development,” explains Stephanie. “He was pretty much nonverbal at that age. Our family doctor wanted us to watch and wait. He was hesitant to make any sort of referral but knowing the importance of early identification and intervention I sought out a local children’s treatment network to get a speech language assessment.

“The speech language pathologist that we met with confirmed some of the red flags that I had been noticing, which were not the very stereotypical red flags of an autistic child. TJ was able to make eye contact and he responded to his name. He sought out affection, but his meltdowns and aggression were off the charts. TJ also didn’t seem to have any play skills. He didn’t really show much interest in toys, or he used toys in very atypical ways where he was fixated on just the wheels or repetitively opening and closing parts, which didn’t trigger much concern from our pediatrician. But I knew from my research, it was on the list but further down from the more well-known signs that this was more of a red flag.”

TJ was two-and-a-half when he was officially diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Stephanie knew a little about ABA therapy owing to her previous work in special education, but she began to research it more after her son’s diagnosis.  She was eager to find ways to help deal with TJ’s aggressive behaviour.

“TJ needed help because he was quite physical. He would target myself and my daughter. She was an infant at the time, and he was a relatively hefty 2 ½-year-old. It was dangerous. I couldn’t leave them unsupervised for even two minutes to go to the bathroom without him sort of attacking her,” says Stephanie. “ABA helped us learn that a lot of his aggression was due to an unregulated and unfilled sensory system. We started to learn ways to get the sensory input that he required to feel comfortable in his body. We embarked on all kinds of sensory journeys and figuring out what worked for him and what didn’t. We discovered that water play was a big, big success for him. He will live in the water if given the opportunity. I would hesitate to show anybody our water bill, but he plays in the water nonstop as a regulatory method to control his aggressions.”

Before ABA therapy, TJ had no functional communication. It would often lead to hour-long meltdowns out of frustration. He couldn’t communicate his needs and his parents didn’t understand what he was trying to tell them. ABA gave him communication and he progressed rapidly allowing him to communicate effectively. 

“He saw the relationship between ‘oh, if I say I’m thirsty I get a drink’ and incredibly he is 100% age-level with his communication now with his receptive and his expressive skills,” explains Stephanie. “He’s pretty much up to his neurotypical peers in terms of his communication. He is a chatterbox. I never once thought that when he was younger, I would ever have to tell the child to stop talking or experience as a parent when your child has endless questions. Now I find myself saying, ‘can you give me two seconds with some quiet time’ or ‘give me a minute to catch up with all of your questions.’ 

“When we started with ABA, it was not our intention to make him talk. We started with nonverbal communication with the picture exchange system and that calmed his aggression massively. He realized that this is how I can communicate. It opened up so many doors for him to be able to have his needs met. He was able to tell us what he liked and what he didn’t like. That turning on a light was hurting him and picture exchange allowed him to communicate that to us, which is something we wouldn’t have ever known if he couldn’t tell us that ‘I don’t like that light.’ We were quite happy to stay with the picture exchange communication if that was how he was going to communicate, but he was the one who started talking. It opened-up his language and he started to speak on his own, not because he was forced to.”

As an educator, Stephanie bristles at the notion that the ABA therapy being practiced today is abusive in any way. TJ is six now and loves his therapists.

“I don’t want to dismiss people’s experiences and certainly the people who can communicate for themselves and say what they experienced was abuse,” says Stephanie.  “I think just like any profession there are good therapists and there are not so good therapists. There are ethical therapists and there are perhaps unethical therapists.

“The centre that we’ve gone through has been nothing but ethical, has done nothing but put my son’s needs and desires first. They’ve never forced him to do anything. He has never been forced to stop stimming. He has never been forced to speak. He has never been forced to make eye contact or accept touch… you know all these things that are the criticisms of ABA that forces the autistic child to comply with the neurotypical world. That has not been our experience. He loves going to ABA. He calls it his school. It has been his full-time education. He has not yet attended public school and I mean these people we’ve had them as respite workers. These therapists are fully invested in him and his joy and his development as a whole person. He loves them and they love him.”

Stephanie says one of the failings of the system is the fact that parents are left to find these services themselves.

“It’s hard to know what to look for,” says Stephanie. “I think probably there are people out there who are looking to take advantage and aren’t maybe qualified or maybe trained the way that they’re supposed to be who are practicing ABA in a harmful manner. 

“So that’s just part of something that needs to change within the Ontario government and the systems currently in place. I do wish that there was more support for parents going through this process because it largely was a system of abandonment by the government and one that we had to navigate completely on our own.  Definitely – I wish that there was more support.”