What I Witnessed in One Week at an ABA Centre — and Why I Resigned
My first experience working with autistic children was in 2017, at a summer camp here in Canada run by an ABA centre. Because it was a recreational setting — taking kids to different places around the city — the context felt freer, and my impression of the approach wasn't particularly negative at the time. What began to shift that was something simpler: listening. The more I sought out the voices of autistic people themselves, the more my understanding changed. That process accelerated sharply when I took a position as a Behavioural Therapist at an ABA/IBI centre. The format was as follows: On my first day of training, I walked into two rooms, each with four to six therapists seated alongside a child at a desk. On the tables: materials, and thick folders of instructions. The format was precise. Each skill — say, responding to one's name — came with a standardized code, a list of mastery criteria (the child had to demonstrate the skill in over 80% of trials, including on the fir...