Affirming Therapy and ABA: How My Work Differs

First, Plainly: I Do Not Provide ABA

I do not provide applied behavior analysis, and this page is not here to tell you that families who chose it made a mistake. Many parents were given ABA as the only funded option available to them, took it in good faith, and worked extremely hard on behalf of a child they love. Some autistic adults look back on it as helpful. Others describe it as harmful. Both accounts exist and I am not going to flatten either one.

What I can do is describe honestly what I offer, so you can tell whether it is what you are looking for.

Different Starting Questions

The clearest difference is not technique, it is the question each approach begins with.

A behavior-analytic approach generally starts with an observable behavior and works on increasing or decreasing it, measuring progress by whether the behavior changed. It is structured, data-driven and often delivered for many hours a week.

My work starts somewhere else: what is this person communicating, and what would make life more workable for them. Behavior is treated as information rather than as the target. If a child bolts from the classroom, the question is what the classroom is doing to them, not how to make the bolting stop. If an adult cannot answer emails, the question is what the email is demanding, not how to enforce compliance with the inbox.

Those two starting questions lead to different rooms, even when some of the surface work looks similar.

How Success Gets Measured

This is where the difference becomes practical. If progress is measured by a child appearing more typical, with quieter hands, more eye contact, fewer visible autistic traits, then the goal, whatever the intention, is a child who looks less autistic.

I do not measure that way and I would not treat it as success. Here, progress looks like a person who is regulated more often, who can communicate what they need in whatever form works, who has more capacity at the end of the day, and who is not spending their childhood or their adulthood performing. Stimming is not a target. Eye contact is not a target. A child who has learned to sit still while overwhelmed has not improved; they have learned to hide it, and that bill usually comes due later as burnout.

Skills are still taught. Regulation, communication, transitions, self-advocacy, executive function. The test I apply is whether the skill serves the person, and whether they had a say in learning it.

If Your Child Has Had ABA

You are welcome here, and you will not be asked to defend that decision or to feel guilty about it. It is worth knowing that some children carry patterns out of highly structured programs: compliance that looks like agreement, difficulty saying no, or a habit of hiding distress because distress was the thing being managed.

If that is happening, we work on it gently: rebuilding the ability to refuse, to ask, and to show discomfort safely. That is not a verdict on the past. It is just what the child in front of me needs now.

Practical Differences, and What I Cannot Offer

ABA is typically intensive, insurance-funded in many cases, and delivered in the home, clinic or school. What I offer is weekly or twice-monthly therapy in an office in Eugene or by telehealth across Oregon, private pay, often with parent sessions alongside the child's.

I do not diagnose, assess, test or evaluate for autism. If a diagnosis or a service authorization is what you need, that comes from an evaluating provider. I also do not supervise or coordinate behavior programs.

If you are unsure whether this fits, the free 30-minute call is a good place to ask direct questions. If it is not the right fit, I will say so.