Autism, ABA and treatment of children
Today I spoke to some special educators working in a Kindergarten criticizing ABA and the work we are doing on EIBI with a child, because it was in conflict with their ethic code as special educators. This makes me both sad and somewhat angry. This is obviously based on lack of knowledge on what ABA is, both the fundamental views, principles and the application. Their critic was that we did not treat children as independent human beings when we did the ABA-program.
And this can only come about if you do not understand ABA. Behavior analysis is all about teaching integrity and independence, and the primary goal is to arrange the learning environment to make each child make use of their strengths to maximize their potential and learn as many independent skills as possible. The ABA program focuses on the child learning as he or she has a great time, laughing a lot, and focuses on teaching the child to make choices, influence their environment and be independent, so the need for extra support is minimized.
I´m next week going to attend one of their staff meetings, and hope we can sort most of the misconceptions out… I really hope we some time in the future get past these discussions based on ideology and misunderstandings, and can focus on giving each child the best treatment and education possible!
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Ignorance is the worst enemy of mankind