This is a complex topic, making it challenging to concisely and accurately summarize. It's hard to find a good way to start, but let's dive in and do our best.
Several years ago PBT founder, Heather, started to learn about the anti-ABA movement and strong criticisms of ABA from Autistic adults. While this movement was new to her, it is not new historically. Many Autistic adults and allied providers have criticized ABA for harsh, traumatic approaches and practices. Some of these techniques include: extreme planned ignoring and removing all attention or support during meltdowns or other challenging behavior, forcing eye contact, suppressing non-harmful self-stimulatory behaviors, intentionally evoking intense challenging behaviors, and heavily relying on extinction bursts to "change" behavior, in which preferred items, activities, attention, and/or breaks (i.e., reinforcers) are denied or withheld until a direction is followed or a task completed. There are other criticisms as well, but these are some specific examples.
In this case, a common assertion is that ABA supports ableist views that either outright or insidiously assume Autistic people are "broken" or inferior. Similarly, critics say that ABA clinicians do not embrace or even fully understand neurodiversity and they attempt to make Autistics appear more neurotypical or "normal."
