ONTABACON2022
This year I made the trek to Toronto for ONTABACON2022. As part of the committee who put it up, I felt a certain obligation but also the call to hear from others, learn from others, and step outside my own personal learning opportunities.
The biggest take-away from those two days was that ABA is moving steadily towards increased compassion. I honestly can’t say I took in one talk that wasn’t geared towards compassion. The message was repeated again and again.
Thankfully, this has been my stance for years, so it wasn’t so much an eye-opening experience as it was a pat on the back for seeing the writing on the wall way back when.
I have always encouraged my staff to make a decision about a problem behaviour in the moment. Where sometimes the response is ‘no response’ and sometimes its a very sympathetic ‘I’m so sorry you’re sad’.
I have always allowed the children to have assent. I think this piece hit me really really hard. Psychologist recommendations are often 20-30 hours per week; whereby they aren’t the one doing therapy, nor overseeing it. It makes for a pretty difficult system when that’s not something I agree with. Instead, I have always followed the child’s lead. The shortest session time I’ve ever done is one hour direct, twice a week. Sometimes, that’s all the child has the patience for. I respect that their bodies show us that. I point this out to families when they watch. The presenter who covered giving the children back assent stressed: it’s not just given when they enter the room, you have to have assent every second they’re with you. And I believe this whole-heartedly. They get to choose. Just because they have a diagnosis doesn’t mean they don’t get to choose what happens to them. Doesn’t mean we get to over-ride their wishes. They tell us very clearly whether they agree with our decisions through their actions - we have to be willing to listen.
What I appreciated the most when was when the speaker let us all in on a little secret: your productivity will go down when you make space for compassion. I wanted to clap and stand up and hoot. A lot of time in session is spent playing. A lot of time is spent cuddling. A lot of time is spent letting them having a minute to themselves - sometimes. Not always. But sometimes. Because they get to have a bad day and not be into it. And that’s okay. We’ll try a different strategy tomorrow.
I do very much intend to do a series this month on some take-aways from ONTABACON2022. I do plan to update this regularly. Because I am very invested in this field.
