As We Enter Autism Acceptance Month, I’m Going To Sincerely Ask You To Please, Please Read This Article.

Invisible Abuse: ABA and the things only autistic people can see

One of the most hotly-contended points of division between the adult autistic community and the neurotypical parents of autistic children: explained.

As we enter Autism Acceptance month, I’m going to sincerely ask you to please, please read this article. Even if you’re not autistic and don’t know anyone who is, someday you might have autistic child, or know someone who does, and you need to hear the truth of ABA therapy from actual autistics.

I’m incredibly fortunate to be a self-diagnosed adult who never had to face ABA therapy, because just watching the videos in this article and reading the guidelines has me in actual tears and sick with rage. Maybe you can’t see it if you’re not autistic, but they treat these children in a way I would never even treat a dog. They treat them like things, like inconvenient problems to be solved, not human beings.

Why do they do that? Because the founder of ABA therapy said, “One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is you have to construct a person. You have the raw materials but you have to build the person.“

ABA therapy is founded on the belief that autistics are not human beings. That our needs and our feelings don’t matter, the only thing that matters is forcing us into the shape of a “real” person, no matter what kind of damage or trauma it causes. 

Please understand that autistic people behave the way we do for a reason. Because we’re overwhelmed, or upset, or in pain, or tired, or confused. Forcing the behavior to change doesn’t change the feelings, it just teaches a child that their feelings don’t matter and they have to suppress them in order to be good. Please value an autistic person’s needs over the appearance of normalcy. Please treat autistic children like human beings.

Oh, and if you needed any more incentive? The founder of ABA, O. Ivar Lovaas, was also instrumental in creating gay conversion therapy. 

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