Thread by @ekverstania

I want to comment on this thread and why I agree with it, even though the purveyors of some of these methods will argue that they are very different, to be able to pitch the benefits against each other.

Gimme a few days.

https://twitter.com/AutisticsUnited/status/1300595714309853184

Let's start by saying that all of these approaches are designed to modify behaviour.

This thread illustrates why that's just plain weird.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1439283231917019139

Autism is an umbrella term for a whole cluster of neurodevelopmental endophenotypes. Or maybe we should say that for many autistic people, the things they have in common with most other autistic people may not even be their most disabling things. mdpi.com/2075-4426/11/1…

But all of these behavioural approaches (ABA, EIBI, PBS, RDI, blablabla fishpaste) claim to be 'the solution' to this cornucopia of struggles—struggles which may include maaaajor SENSORY and MOVEMENT issues and various health problems.

And some things wouldn't even be struggles, they'd be mere differences, even beneficial traits in the right context, if people didn't pathologise every last difference.

Lemme quote from that paper above:

"Despite these caveats explicitly stated on their manuals, children with profound and highly visible motor, kinesthetic sensing and vestibular issues go on to receive the Autism diagnosis that places them on a behavioral modification therapeutic pipeline... (cont'd)

"...that does not consider the brain-body physiology. Clearly, there is a contradiction between the somatic-sensory-motor medical-physiological criteria and the social-appropriateness behavioral-psychological criteria explicitly denying the former. (cont'd)

"Which one is it? And why are these important medical-physiological factors deemed secondary or co-morbid, when they are at the core of the basic building blocks necessary to develop and maintain social behaviors?"

Riiiiiiiight. So lemme start working through this list. I'll probably get bored at some point and start skipping things, because really, it's all just torture, or at the very least, just useless.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1466368004640358403

Sooo (deep breath) here's the first segment.

https://twitter.com/AutisticsUnited/status/1300595715773612033

"Play-based" sounds so innocent. Fun, fun, fun!

I'll just dump this here, 'cos I'm getting lazy already. realsocialskills.tumblr.com/post/124333076…

Next:

ABA + Relationship-based therapy (ABA in conjunction with DIRFloortime, SCERTS, Hanen, etc.)

This one needs a bit of unpacking, because it's the combining of these things that's the problem rather than those methods in isolation.

It's possible, for example, to do DIRFloortime in an anti-ableist way.

It's also possible to do it in an ableist way, with or without ABA.

But it's practically impossible to do ABA in an anti-ableist way, because it's built on such a solidly ableist foundation.

In South Africa, these vegetable stew approaches to therapy are quite propular in private special needs schools. They generally advertise them as child-centred, and adapting to the needs of the child.

Now, that may sound good, but in practice, if one of the methods they say they may draw upon (depending on the needs of the child) is ABA, then you can be sure they have an ableist attitude to ALL the children, and the only reason why they're not ABAing the lot of them is...

...that the ones not getting ABA are either already behaving well to their liking, or they're paralysed.

SCERTS was actually designed with a whole bunch of assumptions which are incompatible with the core foundations of ABA.

But there seems to be an if-by-whiskey type fallacy that plays itself out when these people advertise their services, like they wanna hit all the Google therapy keywords so that the parent who's heard of one of them feels reassured that they've blended that one in.

Hanen is a very specific therapy for a specific subset of disabled clients; it's not a one-size-fits-all; and you need to be trained and certified to offer that. It works OK in certain contexts if you don't mess it up with ABA.

Now, the "new" ABA. I've spoken to a lot of "new" ABA people who really want to do ABA more nicely. Some get themselves into knots trying to figure it out, and when they realise it's impossible, they leave the profession.

But most don't leave.

They just get back onto their ableist high horse and comfort themselves with their liturgical chant: "Evidence-based! Evidence-based!" (even though the 'evidence' is a moth-eaten maggot-infested pile of octopus tentacles).

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1464641665373724678

Next! Verbal Behaviour Therapy and VB-MAPP.

This is all ableist oralist ABA nonsense based on not wanting to understand anything about why so many autistic people struggle with speech.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1333815289092378628

Next: The Lovaas Approach. Well, Lovaas was basically the archvillain in all of this, and everyone else built on his abusive foundation. You can read the two links to what he said in this article if you like real life horror documentaries. autisticstrategies.net/nonspeaking-au…

The dude tortured other children too, along with his friends. None of them are in prison yet.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1465076124371894274

Did I mention that this really IS torture? I mean, I know I am being flippant here, but it
really
is
torture.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1466371388491587593

Here's a survivor of that particular brand of torture. timetolisten.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-ty…

Next! Pivotal Response Treatment® (PRT). The home base for this ableist claptrap is an Ivy League university.

They claim that a high percentage of their victims will attain their oralist goals at an early age. Please use the search term

abusive speech therapy

here in Twitter to understand why this is not necessarily a good thing at all.

OK, next batch of branded torture options. Whyyy did I start this infernal thread? I think it was a compulsive thing. I wanna break now.

https://twitter.com/AutisticsUnited/status/1300595718382432256