ABA is very complex, but generally those that complain the loudest about it are self diagnosed lvl 1 autistic adults who never experienced it themselves. So the Yonah’s of the world. But for families with kids who can’t eat, sleep, toilet, go outside, learn, speak, etc it’s a lifeline.
I agree that it offers more potential for those kids, but there's no solid evidence basis even there. The biggest studies done have found that there's no noise in the signal as soon as you cut out the studies with the highest potential for observer bias. Doesn't matter the severity level, it looks like it doesn't actually work long-term.
I wish people would stop reflexively defending it because it's "better than nothing" when billions are spent on it (and after laws were changed requiring insurers to pay unlimited amounts for it, most of the "therapy" places are owned by private equity). Yes, many kids improve certain things with intensive ABA therapy. But no research exists indicating that these gains are maintained in the long term, and there are significant issues with prompt dependence that make it so that ABA seems to "work" better for younger kids but seems to cause negative results for the same kids as they hit the teen years.
I get that everyone really wants it to work. We all really wanted universal pre-k to help close gaps in education, too. Everyone was really well intentioned. Everyone really hoped for gains, and yes, I'm sure some kids did gain from it individually. But overall it was detrimental or, at best, neutral.
When we spend billions on programs, we are owed more than "maybe in some individual cases it's better than nothing, at least short-term, and people have spent a lot of money training to do it so we'd be putting them out of work." Advocates of these therapies will spend any amount of money to propagandize them, because every kid added to the grist mill is another quarter mil or more in their pockets.
I suspect Becky is really happy he's an ABA tech, because he will be able to help her come up with "autism symptoms" for Hannah and even jump in to talk at Disneyland about how she's totes autistic even though she's not even a year old.
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