2024 Year in Review

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find
the best recipe to brew thesmoothest, coldest, and best
tasting ABA around.
I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio,and join us on our journey as we

(00:23):
look back into the ingredientsto form the best concoction of
ABA on tap.
In this podcast, we will talkabout the history of the ABA
brew, how much to consume toachieve the optimum buzz while
not getting too drunk, and therecommended pairings to bring to
the table.

(00:43):
So without further ado, sitback, relax, and always analyze
responsibly.

SPEAKER_00 (00:56):
Right.
All right.
And welcome.
To yet another installment ofABA on Tap, Season 6.
Happy New Year.
I am your co-host, Mike Rubio,along with the ever-gracious Mr.
Daniel Lowry.
Mr.
Dan, Happy New Year, sir.
How you doing?

SPEAKER_01 (01:13):
Happy New Year.
I am...
This might be one of the mostexcited I've been for an
episode, man.
Looking to the prospects of2025.
A little bit under the weather,or my voice is at least a little
under the weather, so may not beexpressing the amount of
excitement that I'm feeling, butstoked about this and what's to
come.

SPEAKER_00 (01:30):
Right on, brother.
Right on.
You sound good.
You sound good.
I know we were a littletentative at first this morning.
We were checking in on thevoice.
It's funny how that happens,right?
I was never concerned about myvoice ever in my life, and then
we started doing ABA on tap, andsuddenly it's like, oh, I've got
a little tickle or I've got alittle sniffle and you worry
about it.
We care about you listeners outthere.

(01:50):
We want to make sure not only dowe impart good information, we
sound good.
I share your excitement and atthe same time it's interesting
because I'm so relaxed, man.
Like, We've got this.
We know how to do this.
Back in the Reptile Studio, it'skind of in shambles.
My son has been traveling forthe holidays, so he's got his
clothes everywhere, but Mr.

(02:10):
Dan's always gracious and putsup with whatever condition the
Reptile Studio is in.
Our guy Fang has a new light.
I don't know if you noticedthat.
We're happy about that.
He's stoked, getting a littlemore warmth in there.
Cold-blooded animal.
We're going to do a year inreview.
This is our 49th episodeofficially, which means This
season will hit 50.

(02:32):
We promise a huge 50th episodecelebration to thank all of you
out there who have stuck by us.
There's a lot of you out thereand we're learning more and more
with our analytics that there'smore of you than we actually
realize.
And it's super exciting.
The reason I am so relaxed is wegot to do a little bit of a.
you know, a challenge, apressured situation to try to

(02:52):
come up with good content.
And I think we've put the workin and now people have listened.
And now we've got a whole slewof potential guests lined up,
like we started seeing at theend of last season or about
midway through last season,which was the content was being
created for us.
So super excited.
We got a couple of takers lastseason, a teacher during the

(03:14):
summer asking us about out inPennsylvania.
We will allow her to remainanonymous.
But if you're out there andyou're listening, Please reach
back out.
Want to know how things went?
So we did a couple freeconsultations for some people
out there.
Again, more people startedreaching out.
We love hearing the feedback.
We didn't realize what a loyal,what a great listenership we

(03:34):
actually had until...
I mean, about halfway throughthat season, man.
Started getting the emails.
We got our own email addressnow.
So, Dan, if you want to put thatout there.

SPEAKER_01 (03:42):
ABAontap at gmail.com.
Easy to remember.

SPEAKER_00 (03:45):
ABAontap at gmail.com.
Please, please do reach out.
Send us your questions, yourcomments, your ideas, your
refutations.
We said something you didn'tagree with.
Please tell us about it.
We want to correct it.
We want to address it.
We want to bring you on to havea nice, healthy disagreement
about what we may have said thatthat you might disagree with if

(04:07):
you agree with us and you wantto give good feedback even
better reach out to us let usknow you don't have to disagree
with us to give us an idea tocome on the show we're opening
this thing up and again theguest slots are filling up
quickly so we do urge youencourage you to reach out to us
let us know you're listening letus know what you want to do if
you want to come on if you gotsomething to present just got

(04:27):
something to say we want to hearfrom you and we're super excited
at all the buzz we've got goingso yeah yeah

SPEAKER_01 (04:34):
Well, do we want to look back, look forward?
What do you want to do first?

SPEAKER_00 (04:39):
Let's look back.
Now, last year, Buzzsprout, whoare gracious hosts here for our
RSS feed, we're very happy tohave been working with them for
five years now.
So thank you to Buzzsprout.
But they sent us this coolanalytics review last year.
I don't think we got it thisyear, but that's okay.
The reason I mentioned that isthat we learned about a lot of

(05:00):
different people in differentcountries.
that are listening to us ifyou're out there you're
somewhere outside of the unitedstates please do reach out to us
So we know what's going on withyou and what it is that brings
you to this ABA on tap show herein the States.
And then we got to learn about abunch of different cities and
other analytics.
I see you scrolling through theGmail there just in case.

(05:23):
Did we get something?
Was I wrong?
No.
Okay.
Well, Buzzsprout, for whateverit's worth, if you're listening,
that was cool.
We'd love to get one of thosefrom you guys again next year or
at any point in time so weunderstand how you're seeing the
analytics.
But yeah, looking back, westarted with a couple of
articles from Jeremy Brown.
And I have to, if Jeremy'slistening, by chance, or anybody

(05:44):
that knows Jeremy, I did try toreach out to him.
I think he tried to reach back,and it's my failure to check my
LinkedIn account that might beprecluding us from connecting
with Jeremy.
So, Jeremy, if you're listeningand you'd like to come on and
present your ideas, we'vedefinitely enjoyed those two
articles.
Give us a buzz.

(06:05):
Send us a line over at abaontapat Gmail and we'll get you on,
man.

SPEAKER_01 (06:10):
Those are some of our most listened to episodes
right off the new year with abang.
So yeah, love to have Jeremy on.

SPEAKER_00 (06:16):
Yeah, I know I got to use some of that content
during different parenteducation groups that I do.
And I reached to those twoarticles online.
actually quite frequently overthe last year at the end or
during parent education sessionswhere maybe the parent had
presented their events over thelast week.
We had done the analysis andit's like, let's get into some

(06:38):
discussion.
And it's really cool how Jeremypresents his experience with his
two boys so honestly, soearnestly.
And it's not that everythingthat Jeremy says was a point of
agreement.
But maybe even better, sometimesthere was a point of
disagreement that allowed a lotof my parent groups to come up
with a slew of other ideas thatwere also more particular and

(07:01):
more helpful to their particularsituation, knowing that autism
is a very diverse condition,just like the human condition,
right?
It's a very diverse set oftraits and skills.
So what are your thoughts there,Mr.
Dan?

SPEAKER_01 (07:13):
Yeah, I agree.
We started off our year with abunch of kind of parenting
focus.
I feel like those two episodeswere pretty focused on
parenting.
The next one, Seven Things to DoWhen You Lose Patience with Your
Patient's Parenting article.
And then we had a really uniqueepisode.
On March 25th, we actually had aguest.

(07:34):
One of our first guests.
I think it was our first actuallive guest.
We had the parent's

SPEAKER_00 (07:39):
perspective.
Now, we started off the year, Iremember...
trying to with the parentingfocus.
We really kicked off nicely.
Our shout out to Jess, right,for joining us and giving us her
very honest parent perspective.
Somebody that we had known fromthe past who had actually exited

(08:02):
ABA services at that time, wasnot active in ABA services,
which was sort of a testament tothe success, to the experience
that her and her child or herchildren, I guess, it was a
dynamic systems matter righteverybody got involved and that

SPEAKER_01 (08:18):
was really cool everybody got involved with the
podcast too they were all there

SPEAKER_00 (08:21):
that's right that's right we got to listen back to
that i forgot they came on thethe kiddos came on the mic and
and talked a little bit and werebashful isn't it interesting
from a theory of mindperspective how um well maybe
they listened to it with theirmom the podcast or whatever it
was but as soon as they werelive and on that mic you know,
these young kids who you may notcredit for, for realizing what

(08:43):
is happening.
They get, they get shy, they getbashful, you know, a lot to be
said about that.
They, they must understand thatthis is going to get projected
to, to many people or understandthe idea that I don't like the
way my voice sounds on arecording.
I don't know.
I just thought it wasinteresting that we, you know, a
little nuance there that maybewe don't give a lot of our
kiddos credit for, but clearlythey understood, Hey, wait a
minute.
This is, this might be kind ofembarrassing.

(09:05):
What am I doing here?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (09:06):
Especially considering that the, um, and
the older sibling wanted to beon the mic, really wanted to,
but then was a little bitbashful.
Reminds me, I love tigers andwhen I went to Thailand, I was
able to interact with them and Iwas so excited.
And then when you get right nextto it, you're like, uh, am I
sure this is what I wanted todo?
Kind of reminded me of that.

SPEAKER_00 (09:25):
That was me with your chickens.
Excuse me, I give you so muchtrouble about those chickens,
about the girls.
And then I'm at your house and Ihave a chance to interact with
them and I'm like, I don't knowwhat to do.
I don't want to hold thatchicken.
What's it going to do to me?
It's going to peck me.
You're much

SPEAKER_01 (09:40):
more friendly on the gifts you send.

SPEAKER_00 (09:42):
Well, they do the little dances and stuff.
Yeah, that's great.
We'll have to talk more about,maybe we'll do a segment on
chicken behavior.
I don't know how much we'vetalked about the chickens out
there for you listeners, butfarmer Dan here has a coop of
chickens.

SPEAKER_01 (09:57):
Maybe we'll get them on the pod.

SPEAKER_00 (09:59):
And they express, they emit a whole bunch of
behavior.
We need to have a chickensegment on the tap, I think.
Chicken and beer.
There it is.

(10:20):
There it is.
Chicken and wings.
The chicken and wings segment.
Let's check in on the chickens.

SPEAKER_01 (10:25):
How about we call it the chicken check-in?

SPEAKER_00 (10:27):
Chicken.
The chicken.
Is your part, is Kaylee going tocome on and do the segment, the
chicken check-in?
She's going to bring one in.
Just because the name is sogood, I think we're going to
have to do something with

SPEAKER_01 (10:41):
it.
If you all can't tell, this iscompletely unscripted today.
All right.
Review of the year.
But yes, The chickens were agreat part.

SPEAKER_00 (10:51):
So...
We talked about the parentinterview early on in last
season.
Is this a good time to make ourannouncement, given the
relationship?
Not quite yet.
You want to hold on?
I think they need to end.
Let's end with a bang.
Make sure they listen to theend.
The little teaser there, we'vegot a couple big announcements.

(11:11):
One very particular to thepodcast, and then one that will
be related to the podcastongoing, but finally allows us,
well, we'll save it.
We'll save it.
Anyway, episode four what did wedo episode four

SPEAKER_01 (11:23):
well that was episode

SPEAKER_00 (11:24):
oh that was episode four perspective oh we did two
that's right because we startedoff with a two-parter on the 11
things not to do with yourautistic child is that correct

SPEAKER_01 (11:34):
okay yeah we started with the article reviews our
goal was to um make sure that aswe were having to bring all the
content we we can always riffbut we wanted to make sure that
we had some credibility and umthings to riff from so we
started with the articles um andthen yeah i guess technically it
was our fifth episode becausethe first one was the year in
review for 2023.
Oh, that's right.

(11:54):
Okay.
We brought the parent on, and welook forward.
I think most of our episodes,and we'll talk more as we go
through this, in 2025 will bemuch more similar to that,
bringing on guests.
We had lots of guests.
We had the parent.
We had 3x2.
We had Michael.
We had my boss, Kim.
We had a lot of special guestsin 2025, and we very much look

(12:18):
forward, or 2024, very much lookforward to making that a
mainstay moving into 2025.

SPEAKER_00 (12:25):
Just so that we give the adequate highlight here, the
two articles by Jeremy Brown, 11things not to do with your
autistic child.
Yep.
And then remind me the secondone, seven things...

SPEAKER_01 (12:38):
To do when you lose patience.

SPEAKER_00 (12:40):
As a parent now.
Correct.
Okay.
And I remember how valuable thatwas and how valuable it is to
consider that, something weenjoy a lot here on the podcast.
And looking at a three-partcontingency as a parent, you're
responsible for two-thirds ofthat.
And a lot of times weconceptualize this as changing
the child's behavior when, infact, you're changing your

(13:01):
behavior more than likely aroundthe antecedent and the
consequence.
And I think Jeremy's...
article on the seven things todo when you lose patience really
drove that home.
What are you going to do?
It's not about your childchanging their behavior.
What are you going to do tochange your behavior and then
expect changes accordingly?
And I can't highlight thatenough,

SPEAKER_01 (13:22):
right?
Yeah, absolutely.
How are you going to perceivethe behavior which is going to
affect how you respond to it?

SPEAKER_00 (13:28):
Right.
We like to say not reacting butresponding.
And I think that that article,again, really drives those
things home.
What are you going to do?
Are you just going to react?
Well, Jeremy doesn't have towrite the article if you're just
going to be reflexive about it.
But if you're going to stop andbe planful and create a response
that is now moving towardsbehavior modification, I think

(13:49):
that's the first step, right?
The idea that I'm changing firstand then I'm going to expect my
environment, including my child,to present changes accordingly.

SPEAKER_01 (13:58):
And that was a theme that we talked about in one of
the last episodes.
In fact, it was our last episodethat we released with Kim.
My boss at Proact was developed,you know, the crisis response
management was developed from asystematic approach.
The premise, the two premises,employees have a clear

(14:18):
understanding of their ownability to affect the behavior
of the people that they workwith.
Mike, you just talked aboutthat, but the second one is the
systematic approach.
How can we make sure that we'reall on the same page and that we
know what we're doing.
And this allows us to respondrather than react.
And whether we're talking aboutit for price specifically, but
that's so important with ABA orjust parenting, just feeling

(14:41):
like you have a plan and you canrespond rather than react to
these situations.

SPEAKER_00 (14:46):
That's key.
That's key.
Again, it's the empowermentpart, right?
So anybody could take what wesaid, and this is a theme we've
talked about here before.
Any parent could look at us andsay, well, so you're putting
this on me.
Well, yes, we are.
We're not blaming you for theundesired behavior your child's
emitting, but we're saying thatif anybody is empowered to

(15:07):
create the change, to incite thechange, it's you along with your
child, or better yet, you foryour child.
That goes a long way, and again,I can't stress that enough.
As a parent, you love your kidsunconditionally.
You might find yourself in asituation, I'm actually going
through a developmentalexplosion with my soon-to-be
four-year-old.
She'll turn four next week, andAnd, you know, from her theory

(15:30):
of mind development to just herexploration of defiance or
whatever it is.
Her

SPEAKER_01 (15:36):
ability to explain the plane delays when I walked
in today.

SPEAKER_00 (15:39):
Impressive.
Talking to you about planedelays, being on...
You know, being on vacation, andshe gets a little bit sick.
I think everybody I talk to gotsick this holiday season.
But, you know, we're traveling,and she's sick, and she's fussy,
and she's having a tantrum, or,you know, near a tantrum, and
we've got...

(16:00):
family around us and everybody'strying to help and she just
looks at us earnestly at onepoint she says i just want to be
home i just want my stuff and atthat point you realize okay i
don't like the sounds you'remaking i don't like the way
you're behaving or misbehavingas it were but i understand what
you're saying i get it i need tobe able to look at you and say

(16:21):
kiddo i believe you i know thatyou want to be home because so
do we but right now we're withfamily.
So again, taking time to beplanful, to not be reactive
because all of these things areautonomic.
And what I mean by that isautomatic in the sense, your
child is, you know, you'reprogrammed to take certain
stimuli from your kid andrespond to them, they're

(16:42):
distress calls.
So again, really important themehere that I think Jeremy Brown
reminds us of, which is you wantyour child's behavior to change
and very likely if not almostentirely starts with you as a
parent.

SPEAKER_01 (16:57):
Well, you know what?
Kim said something in that lastepisode, and we'll talk more
about it at the end.
I know I'm kind of going out oforder, but it's so relevant to
what you just said.
She had a quote that wasprobably my favorite quote of
the year that I implement allthe time in my prior trainings
when I'm talking to people.
Whose needs are we meeting with?
And I think when you were sayingyour daughter just said, I just

(17:19):
want to be home and have mystuff.
It's really easy to focus on ourown needs because a lot of times
especially younger individualsthat have less impulse control
are going to do that yelling andscreaming and crying or they're
going to do it and then we callit an outburst or a protest And
then all we focus on is our needto get that to stop.

(17:39):
And then in looking at that, welose the fact of their need of
what they're trying to, youknow, we will call it the
function of behavior, you know,in ABA.
But I always feel like thestating it as whose needs are we
meeting when even moving intothe ABA field is so much more of
a, That hits home better thansaying the function of behavior.

(18:01):
I feel like the function ofbehavior can sound very
mechanical when we're talking toparents and sound very robotic.
And it loses the interpersonalrelationship of, hey, I'm still
interacting with my kid or myclient who's...
not just my client, but that'ssomebody's son or daughter or
sister or brother.
These are people that we'reworking with.
So it just made me think aboutit when you brought up your

(18:24):
daughter's bringing that up.
And maybe as she gets older,she's able to realize if she
communicates that to you inbetter ways, she's actually able
to get her needs met better thanin other ways.

SPEAKER_00 (18:37):
Yeah, so the differential reinforcement,
right?
And what you're talking about isa much longer process.
So the idea that we often...
I'm going to say this, we mightbastardize a Premack principle
in modern ABA implementation.
It becomes this veryauthoritarian, you have to do
what I'm asking you first beforeanything happens.

(18:58):
Now, in and of itself, that'snot incorrect.
That is, in fact, the nature ofthe Premack principle.
And then there's what youdiscussed, which is, it's not
going to happen right away.
Most of the time, it's not gonnahappen after one so-called trial
or one attempt.
You're gonna have to dance.
You're gonna ask, you're gonnatell your child, this is the
contingency and if you can getthis done, then we can make this

(19:20):
available to you.
It doesn't mean they're gonnastop crying.
In fact, they might cry morebecause they realize That now
you're serious.
Now you've set a boundary.
And as parents, as caregivers,as professionals, we have to be
ready to understand that that isa consequence to our behavior.

(19:41):
If that child escalates further,it doesn't mean that what we
said or did was wrongnecessarily.
Although it should alert us togo, okay, wait a minute.
Should I have done somethingdifferent because I just
increased the distress?
Or...
to sound mechanical, did I hitthe function of the behavior?
And now how do I start soothingtoward then collaborating with
the child, knowing that I mighthave one behavior in mind, one

(20:02):
target behavior, but there'sprobably at least two, three
other differentiated replacementbehaviors that I could reinforce
in this moment toward somesuitable outcome.
But we can get really, reallymyopic and really linear if
we're not careful.
I know we talk about that a lothere, but again, this is where
in thinking about what you do asa parent, what are you gonna do

(20:24):
when you lose your patiencebecause your child has now been
crying for 45 minutes, which bythe way, is not completely out
of range, right?
We've talked about this stathere before, the idea that if
you have an 18 to 60 month or soa toddler to five years old,
you're gonna be caught in atleast one and a half minutes, 90
seconds a day on average, per alot of large studies, in some

(20:48):
sort of tantrum behavior.
That's just what kids do.
Now, in all fairness, if youfind yourself, I like my 80-20
rule, right?
If you find yourself more than20% of the time in those
uncontrollable situations whereyou're losing patients and your
child's also in distress, that'swhat people like us are here
for.
That's what people like us.

(21:09):
So again, there's a normalcy toit.
It's okay, hang tight.
try to find some grace from afriend or somebody else, another
parent.
And then if you find yourselfbeyond that 20% in that distress
feeling, please reach out tosomebody, reach out to us here
on ABA on tap.
If it's not us that can help,we'll give you other resources.

(21:29):
But there's a normalcy to theidea of tantrum, for example,
and then your quality of life isbeing affected.
Let's get you some help.

SPEAKER_01 (21:37):
You know, it's interesting that I never really
thought about, until youmentioned it right now, in the
context that I just thoughtabout it right now, is we talk
about tantrum, and we're usuallyassociating that with loud
behaviors, you know, yelling,screaming, falling to the floor,
and stuff like that.
But somebody could lose theircognition equally, but be doing

(21:58):
more internal behaviors.
Like my girlfriend, when shegets upset, or my partner, when
she gets upset, she's not gonnayell and scream, she's just
gonna shut down.
Which in theory, from adevelopmental perspective, is
just as much of a tantrum or abreak from baseline, I guess we
would call, call that, right?
The cognition has gone equallyas far as somebody yelling or

(22:18):
screaming, but we would nevercall somebody just sitting there
quietly not responding atantrum.
It's really interesting, and Ithink that just goes because
that's potentially more sociallyacceptable, but more
importantly, it's easier for meto deal with.
But their deviation frombaseline might just be equally
as far.
I don't know if that

SPEAKER_00 (22:37):
made sense.
You just described my soon-to-befour-year-old's new technique.
So we went from very, very loudoutbursts.
The kid can cry.
She's got some lungs.
In fact, I remember when she wasborn and they took her away at
one point to do some testing.
And my wife and I were hearingthe sound.
It's like, wow, that's a reallyinteresting sound.

(22:57):
To this day, we don't know if itwas louder or clearer.
We just know that we could hearthat sound from down the hall.
And it turned out to be her.
So she's got a really loud cry.
We went from sort of thedevelopmental progression or the
behavioral progression from avery loud cry to the outright
refusal.
So It didn't matter what weoffered her to play to soothe
her.
No, no, no.

(23:18):
The answer was no.
Now, to your point, I like theway you differentiate it, and
we're going to use this in thefuture now.
You just created something.
I don't know if you realized.
You've got a tantrum behavior,and then there's at least two
kinds.
There's the outburst, andthere's the withdrawal.
And that's where myfour-year-old is now, which is
just as infuriating because eventhough she's not admitting

(23:41):
something that looks like atantrum, If I'm not careful, my
response to her withdrawal mightvery much end up looking like an
outburst.
Because now I'm imploring her torespond to me, right?
Hey, are you going to answer me?
Why do you do that?
That's rude.
Is she trying to be rude?
I don't even think she knowswhat rude is.
But this is where these lessonsbegin.

(24:02):
to develop, I guess, or tounfold.
And the idea that I am nowteaching her that not responding
to somebody when they ask you aquestion can be taken as rude as
much as I have to look in thatmoment and say, oh, it looks
like you're not ready to respondto me.
How can I move on to show youthat I'm not going to get stuck
and lend you undivided attentionas a result of this behavior?

(24:26):
I can say that really calmlynow.
I can kick back here with mycoffee.
Yeah, dude, of course, you needto be calm.
They get you, man.
They get you.
It pushes your buttons.

SPEAKER_01 (24:38):
I have a question for you regarding that.
Would you say that herwithdrawn, let's say she's
completely withdrawn, she's notresponding, has a similar level
of activation of her sympatheticnervous system, or would you say
that would be less than if she'shaving the more traditional
outburst?
Wow,

SPEAKER_00 (24:53):
that's an excellent question.
Man, I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, I could lend someconjecture here, but that's a
really good question because I'mgoing to say that
physiologically it's different.
So I'm going to venture to guessthat her respiration, her heart

(25:14):
rate, are not like they are whenshe's having an outburst.
I think that's hitting yourquestion.
However, maybe the flight...
response isn't so active becauseof that, but the fight is still
kind of entrenched.
It's almost more likerumination, I guess.
And one of these days, mydaughter's going to hear this

(25:36):
when she's older and say, Ican't believe you gave so much
of my private information when Iwas four.
But it is interesting.
It's turning into this almostlike...
self-effacing, like she'll wantto punish herself.
She'll throw her comfort blanketaway.
And then if we offer it to her,she says no.
It's almost like this weirdguilt thing that she's going

(25:58):
through.
I don't know.
But yeah, I would say that thearousal is different.
It is different.
The refusal, the breakdown incommunication is the same, but
it is different.
And to your point...
It's just as infuriating as ifshe's crying.
So again, I can preach this allday.
I've got to get off the podcastor get home from work and be a

(26:19):
father myself.

SPEAKER_01 (26:20):
Yeah, it'd be interesting.
I imagine the heart rate wouldbe a little different.
But I imagine it wouldn't be asdifferent as people would think
it would be.
Because I think that a lot oftimes when people are doing the
withdrawal, there's There's theidea that there's some semblance
of control that's preventingthem to basically tip over the
edge into the outburst.
And maybe there is, or maybethere isn't.

(26:42):
I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 (26:44):
You just made me think of something.
I don't have super strict dataon this, but I would say that
something I didn't mention isthat somewhere along the line,
too, she's learned to feigncrying and distress.
There's a little manipulationthere.
Right?

(27:04):
So the difference, onedifference that I can tell just
from observation is that ifshe's in true distress, then
soothing her is never going tobe at the snap of a finger.
But if she's withdrawing orfeigning, then I might be like,
oh, look at this toy.
And then all of a sudden we'refrom escalated or seemingly

(27:25):
escalated status.
to back to baseline in a snap ofa finger.

SPEAKER_01 (27:31):
I saw that when I was doing a prog training out in
a different county.
This year, I was at a RaisingCane's getting some lunch and
there was this kid, I don't knowhow old he is, five, six, seven,
somewhere in that range.
And he would lose it for like 20seconds and immediately stop and
look around the restaurant andsee if anybody was paying

(27:52):
attention to him.
And if somebody was looking athim, he would orient himself to
that person, fall down and loseit for like 20 seconds, then
immediately stop and look aroundand see if that person was
looking.
That's kind of that feign piece,right?
Because if you've lost it,you're not able to immediately
turn it off because you've lostit.
Well, this person clearly hadn'tfully lost it.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be ableto immediately turn it off and

(28:13):
have the cognition to look atwho's responding to them in the
environment.

SPEAKER_00 (28:17):
And oftentimes, I've heard you, Deal, talk to parents
about this, this idea of, well,one of the first ABA lessons is
we're not going to makeattributions about behavior.
We're going to observe, right?
And I know that parents oftencome in with the notion of, oh,
they're doing that tomanipulate.
Yes.
Not always the case, just likethey're not always doing it to
be rude.
But I would contend that this ishow we learn about being rude.

(28:41):
This is how we learn aboutmanipulating, knowing that we
can emit certain stimuli,certain sounds, and people are
going to pay attention fordifferent reasons.
And what is the outcome of that?
So this takes me back toanother, I know you got
something for us, but this takesme back to the beginning of, or
to the idea that we're so linearin ABA sometimes.
And what you and I are talkingabout is one straight line with

(29:03):
a whole bunch of possibleoffshoots that we need to be
mindful of, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 (29:07):
Yeah, we call that response generality in ABA.
We've done a really poor job ofthat.
How many kids have we workedwith over the years that all
they say is, I want ball, I wantcar, I want whatever.
And it's because we've onlyaccepted one behavior.
And us as practitioners need tolearn to accept more behaviors
even if it's not the idyllicbehavior at that moment to give

(29:30):
them the idea that you don'tjust need to do the one response
that we're looking for whichactually might might even lead
into the masking debate sayingthat you're only allowed to do
one response but there's otherresponses that okay yes maybe
unit is the client need to beflexible with what we'll accept
but us as the practitioner needto also be flexible

SPEAKER_00 (29:50):
right right now that that's uh that that
bi-directionality i think issomething that we've gotten
better uh as a field we'vegotten better at it And then
there's the question of theyoung professionals that we're
bringing in and how to trainthem to look at those things,
right?
So it's, we have to draw thatstraight line, that three-part
contingency, that simplediscrete trial, if you will, to

(30:11):
use those phrasings.
And then we have to open it up alittle bit more.
So all the things we're talkingabout now that's more of a
dance, less of a I tell you thanyou do versus I tell you than
maybe you don't do, what do I donext?
I think that's where ourtraining prospectively needs to
get better with moredevelopmentally sound framework

(30:33):
to train our RBTs with anongoing discussion.
It's so hard in our field rightnow.
Once you hit the ground, onceyou're out in the field,
continuing with professionaldevelopment, continuing to train
our RBTs, our youngprofessionals, with theory,
sound theory, as opposed to justdirect techniques or hacks, if

(30:57):
you will.
This is what you do, the firstthens or the, you know, the
bastardization of tokeneconomies.
Again, all these things that arevery effective and that we need
to have a good understanding of,and maybe they've become a
little bit too plug and play.

SPEAKER_01 (31:14):
Yeah.
I mean, I hate to again go backto Prague, but one of the
foundational principles of thatis we use an approach rather
than techniques.
Because if people see atechnique, they want to put that
square peg in every hole.
And it works for a square hole,but it doesn't work for a
triangle or a circular hole.
And that's why the approach isreally useful.
And I think ABA can work onimproving that, is empowering

(31:36):
people.
Because what happens...
They also see it in ABA withRBTs.
I've been training for 15 years.
That people want to come to youand they want to know, when
Johnny does this, what do I do?
Which allows them to kind ofturn off their brain as the RBT
and just do the same thing.
And in fact, the opposite needsto be the most effective thing.
When they're escalating, we needto turn our brains on more and

(31:57):
figure out what options we cangive them.
Because so often in ABA, it wasjust my way or the highway.
And we led to, it wouldn't be anABA on tap if we didn't bring up
blanket extinction or blanketignoring.
But it led to these very roteresponses.
And then we wondered why ourclients had very rote responses
and seemed very robotic.
Well, the people interactingwith them, us, were very

(32:18):
robotic.
It was like, unless you do thisexact behavior, unless you press
this L key, that's the only wayan L can get onto the screen.
And it's like, well...
What if you have a T and youmove it to the bottom?
Or what if I put an I and I justaccept that and then we work on
the L later?
Like there's a lot of, I know Igot kind of abstract there.
There's a lot of ways we can getan L.

(32:40):
What if I do an underline andthen an I, right?
There's various ways that we cando it to make it much more of a
vivid experience.

SPEAKER_00 (32:47):
This is, I'm going to get even a little more
abstract perhaps, but you remindme of, you know, these days when
you're texting or sending amessage and let's say I'll use a
W for with, but the will turninto an A or something like
that.
And the idea that you read backyour text sometimes, you're
like, oh man, I made a mistake.
And then you know your friendson the other end.
You know who might get confusedby that mistake, but you also

(33:11):
know the larger group usually ofpeople who are gonna understand
contextually that you didn'tmean that, you meant the other.
And that's what it is.
I think for a lot of ourclients, our kiddos that we work
with, I can only imagine howdifficult it is to know that
there's only one target.
And you're kind of throwing thedart around the target.

(33:32):
You're still scoring points, butnope, it's zero.
It's zero, it's zero until youhit this one linear piece.
And it sort of reminds me of...
where actually my wife and I aregoing to start a little living
room dancing for the new year, alittle resolution to spend more
time together.
But it reminds me of this ideathat having done dance lessons

(33:52):
before, you go with theinstructor, you're watching the
video, you're in your livingroom, you move your coffee
table, maybe your couch isgetting in your way, but you've
got this nice open space to dothe steps exactly as planned.
And then when you hit the dancefloor with other people, you're
going to have to modify thosedance steps.
The rhythm has The count canstay the same.
The dance, the moves can staythe same.

(34:13):
But now you're going to have toimprovise a little bit.
You're going to have to movethis way before you counted your
full three count that waybecause you're about to bump
into somebody.
And hopefully that analogyworks.
But I would want prospectiveRBTs, all of us in the field, to
continue to consider that.
A lot of times we're going tosay, well, these are young
professionals.
We have to train them quickly.
We have to train them in thisone route.

(34:33):
I don't disagree with that.
But let's not stop there.
Let's get them out onto thosedance floors and allow them to
modify those steps as opposed toexpecting them to do the exact
same steps precisely whenthey're in a crowd now or when
they're in somebody's livingroom, to use that phrasing.
And it's not working out exactlyas planned.

SPEAKER_01 (34:52):
Yeah.
I think Maggie, and we'll talkabout the conference.
We'll talk about her.
She'll be a guest

SPEAKER_00 (34:56):
in 2025.
Maggie Haraburda.
Yes.
We are a big fan.
Maggie, I hope maybe you'relistening.
We'll prompt you.
But big fans of Maggie Haraburdaout in Philly.

SPEAKER_01 (35:05):
Oh, yeah.
unfurling littles

SPEAKER_00 (35:06):
unfurling littles yeah

SPEAKER_01 (35:08):
shout out to you um you're doing great stuff but you
know she's talked about um inthe conference and in our
meetings with her instead ofhaving the you know the one way
that we're saying that likeyou're saying that the people we
work with have to go throughlet's give them eight ways and
see which one they choose andthen we can follow their lead
rather than forcing them uh downyou know one of the one of the

(35:29):
ones that we want to choose

SPEAKER_00 (35:30):
that's been amazing just to just to echo that i
think that that's a huge part ofwhat Maggie talks about, that it
seems like a nuance, and ifsomebody doesn't listen closely
enough, they might say, oh, I dothat too.
Believe me, you're not doing itlike she is.
She might brainstorm eightdifferent things that are
possibilities, and she's stilllooking for that ninth or that

(35:52):
tenth during her observation,where even sometimes in my best
effort to be a little bit moreopen-ended, even in picking
those eight things, that can bevery authoritarian or limiting
if you're not careful.
And it sounds like Maggie...
watches.
So she might preparepreemptively some things that
she wants to see based ondevelopment or based on the
violin or whatever it is shemight be using.

(36:13):
But again, she's not going tostop at those eight.
She's going to keep observingtoward those other things that
the child might already have inplace, the strengths that are
already visibly observable, andthen use those to launch into
the other things that might beneeded.
And that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 (36:28):
Absolutely.
Talk more about that when wetalk about the conference.
One of the next episodes I'mgoing to skip to because it's
very relevant to what we'retalking about now, then I'll
come back to the one we skipped,was the models of disability.
That was an episode, I thinkthat was one of the...
I don't want to say harderepisodes, but it was one that we
had to be very careful about.

(36:50):
One that were not experts.
We were sharing our opinions onit.
One that can certainly be a hotbutton subject.
And I think we covered a lot ofground in that models of
disability.
And the premise of that one wasbasically whose job is it to
change in that models ofdisability?
Because somebody has adisability, do they need to get

(37:11):
fixed?
Do we need to change?
Does there need to be somethingin the middle?
That was an interesting episode.
Let me pass it to you.
Thoughts on that

SPEAKER_00 (37:21):
one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the idea...
You mentioned some key wordshere.
Fix.
You know, who are we workingfor?
Things like that.
I think that that's veryimportant.
The idea of what's going wrongwith who and then who...

(37:41):
whose needs are we serving,which is something you keep
talking about from Proact.
I think if you bring those twothings together, we begin to
construct maybe both a verysocially valid and medically
valid model.
There are things, there arechallenges that are very present

(38:02):
in a young child who is facing adevelopmental delay that may or
may not be autism, right?
And the idea that You're goingto look at those and see them as
important because of thechallenges the deficits are
creating.
And then from the social modeland thinking about ableism and
all these other things thatbecome a little bit detrimental

(38:22):
to a lot of people, consideringIs that the only fix?
So the idea that I'm doing aviolent questionnaire and the
child, does your child say 50words?
No, he doesn't.
Well, let's make a goal thathe's gonna say 50 words.
Okay, how are we gonna getthere?
We're not just gonna snap ourfingers.
And are words the main thingswe're after?

(38:43):
Or is it 50 ways to...
communicate different things orman for different things,
whether it's with gestures or anAAC device.
So I think this is what we'regetting at here with this idea
of models.
Yes, the deficits are important,but if you talk to somebody like
Maggie or we explore this topica little bit more, or even our
own approaches to ABA, well, howare we going to address the

(39:05):
deficits?
We're going to have to addressthem with something that's
already available as we mold andteach something new, right?
I don't think there's any wayaround that.
So the strengths-based model,the strengths-based approach
that is being kicked around alittle bit, and sometimes I
think people have a really goodgrip on it.
I'm not going to claim that Ihave a very studious,

(39:26):
well-researched grip on it,although I feel good about the
premise, and I think a lot of mydevelopmental approaches fall
right into that already.
But yeah, something veryinteresting that I know we're
going to continue to explore,that we've continued to explore
in the recent past, and it'sworking really well for us.
And I can't wait to have Maggieon to tell us a little bit more
about it.

SPEAKER_01 (39:45):
Yeah.
Shout out to, that also happenedthis year, both Sarah and Cindy.
I think Sarah led us down thisepisode when she brought up
these models of disability,which I wasn't even familiar
with.
So thank you, both of youladies, for coming on outside of
the podcast.
And you all did a wonderful jobjust getting giving me some
insight as Mike and I present alook to put together a parent

(40:08):
training.
I'm sorry, not a parenttraining.
We're not training people how tobe parents.
A parent ABA educationcurriculum that is very much
coming from parents as well.
Because I think eventuallypeople get tired of people that
aren't parents telling them whatto do or people that haven't
been in that situation tellingthem what to do.

SPEAKER_00 (40:27):
And Sarah and Cindy, just two other parents that we
have the privilege of knowingwho, as Dan said, came on to
help us lend some perspectivefor first-time parents or people
looking at ABA for the firsttime.
Both these ladies are reallywell-versed in ABA with their
kids.
One of them with a much olderson who's had a very rich and
long history, an incrediblecontent expertise for a parent,

(40:51):
an incredible historicalperspective for a parent as far
as ABA is concerned.
And then yes, to Sarah, morespecifically, who kind of
brought this idea of models tous in her discussion.
And I Can't Mention Sarahepisode, and he was very quick

(41:23):
to say, hey, you guys didn'ttalk about collaborative
parenting, which ever sincethen, whenever I talk about
authoritative approaches, Imention the collaborative piece
because I think that's a reallygood way to reframe the idea
that, yes, I do have someauthority over my child as a
parent, and then better yet,when I can collaborate and
cooperate along with them, thatreally allows that authoritative

(41:46):
feel to take hold.
So thanks for that, Pop-Pop.

SPEAKER_01 (41:49):
Yes, and that just...
exemplified kind of the point ofthis podcast is we want to have
people from all walks of thelife, people maybe that have
autism, parents of people thathave autism, ABA practitioners
that are new or older, schoolteachers.
We want to have all of you on sowe can learn because I learned
so much from those two parents.

(42:11):
It was just incredible.
Let me pass it over to you for aquick interlude.

SPEAKER_00 (42:15):
Well, we're talking about our science here, right?
I want to talk about a littlebit of magic.
Now, one of the things I'mreally excited about yet again
for our next season is losttouch a little bit, but very,
very important partnership withMagic Mind.
So again, I lost track a littlebit, but we're back in the flow.

(42:38):
Nice little green bottles back,chilling in my refrigerator.
And what I've got here today,Dan, is just this beautiful
packaging.
I have to thank Magic Mind forproviding this and for making it
so exciting.
So you open up this beautifulbox and right on the inside, it
says Magic Meets Science atmagicmind.com slash learn.

(42:59):
I encourage you to go on thereto learn a little bit more about
this product.
product and what it offers youthe other side of the box says
it's not magic it's you and ilike that from a behavioral
perspective the idea that wewant our kids to change but it's
the change within us that comesfirst now let me tell you a
little bit about what magic minddoes for me it puts me in a

(43:21):
really cool calm Sharper mind,calm energy, flow state.
Man, I've tried energy drinks.
I remember when Bread Bull firstcame out.
Cool idea.
Tasted funny.
Just didn't do it for me.
Definitely wasn't going to putit in my mixed drinks with
vodka, which, again, I knowpeople do that.
More power to you.

(43:42):
This wasn't for me, and itwasn't going to give me energy
along with the vodka, so theregoes that.
You know, Monster, all theseother products, they do well.
They provide a certain level ofenergy, and I appreciate that.
Much like I was alwaysafterwards with my coffee,
right?
But my coffee, that also runsout at some point.
I can only have so much of itbefore it affects my stomach.

(44:03):
Magic Mind is just this nice,cool, refreshing, bright, kind
of grassy tasting elixir thatputs me in the right state of
mind with the right ingredients,right?
Nice and basic stuff,nootropics, adaptogens, a little
bit of agave for sweetness, alittle bit of matcha tea extract
in there.

(44:24):
It flows really, really well.
And it's something that I'm gladis back in my refrigerator.
So they got some nice behavioraldirections, which I've alluded
to here.
You shake, you breathe, youdrink.
You want it chilled, right?
So best enjoyed refrigerated,although it's not necessary.
And you want to add it to yourdaily morning ritual for better

(44:44):
mental performance.
I know that the more often I useit, the better I feel the
effects.
If I can use it three days in arow, even better, just like when
I prepare for the podcast.
Maybe I'm busy or absent-minded,but if I start that little shot
on Friday, By that time it'sSunday and it's time for you and
I to record, Dan.
I feel those effects.
I feel energized.
It's a nice, smooth, calmenergy.

(45:05):
Nothing jittery, nothing overlyamped, but it's nice and clean.
So, if you're out there and youwant something, an alternative
to your energy drink or to yourcoffee, let me recommend Magic
Mind.

SPEAKER_01 (45:19):
If you want to make sure that you are stimulated
enough mentally to always justblow past the time frames that
we have to do podcasts, do somemagic mining.
That will make sure that everypodcast you have, like ours,
goes over the expected time.

SPEAKER_00 (45:34):
All right.
To boost your brain performance,your memory, your mental acuity,
your alertness and awareness,add Magic Mind to your day
today.
Simply use the link in ourepisode description or go to
www.magicmind.com slash capitalA, capital O, capital T.

(45:55):
Use discount code AOT in allcaps to receive 20% off your
purchase and 56% off asubscription.
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shake breathe drink magic mindi'm so glad i'm so glad to be
back with uh my little greenshot sir moving on so um we we

(46:17):
always like to keep things toabout an hour That trend changed
significantly in our lastseason.
We started running an hour 13,hour 15.
So we're not going to sellourselves short, but we are
going to keep things nice andsuccinct.
So you guys have a nice littlekernel, a nice little 60, 70, 80
minute kernel to enjoy.
And we don't belabor this toomuch.
But moving right along, sir.

SPEAKER_01 (46:38):
Next one was a big one, and it's going to have a
lot of relevance to what we'lltalk about later.
What was the 3 Pi Squaredpodcast?
April and Steve, thank you somuch.
The announcement that we'll talkabout later could not have been
done without you.
We really appreciate both goingon your podcast and having you
come on ours.

(46:59):
Mike, thoughts on the 3 PiSquared podcast and ABA business
leaders.
Y'all are doing some amazingstuff.

SPEAKER_00 (47:04):
I am so glad for all the people that...
I know, know April and Steve.
They're just such a dynamic duo.
It's incredible from having runtheir own business to now
offering their insights to otherbusiness, ABA business leaders.
I mean, truly a blessing to havemet them, to have made that

(47:26):
connection.
It's just amazing to, again, tosee that balance, to to see how
Steve pays so much attention toApril's clinical acumen.
And then, you know, doesn'talways agree with it from the
business perspective, but theyalways find a really good
balance.
And if you're out there, you'rean ABA business professional,
you've got a business, you'vegot a partnership, you're

(47:48):
whatever it is.
If you don't know about 3 PiSquared and the ABA business
leadership page on Facebook,Please find them.
Find Steven and April Smith assoon as you can.
Try to make a connection ifthat's relevant to you.
They are a wealth of informationand yeah, I couldn't be happier
that we made that connectionwith them.

SPEAKER_01 (48:07):
Yes, if you are a professional looking to maybe
branch out and start your ownthing, there is so much that you
have no idea about, I guaranteeit.
They have a course that canbasically walk you through the
thought to the process, to thecredentialing, to the first day.
So look at that.
in the field in any capacity.

(48:27):
They have the ABA BusinessLeaders Forum.
That is a wonderful forum toallow people to connect and
there's a lot of competition, alot of trying to one-up in the
ABA field and it's done nothingbut hurt us and drive our rates
down and drive our quality ofservice down.
The forum that they've provided,the ABA Business Leaders, is a
wonderful way to bring peopletogether, to unite as an ABA

(48:50):
field, to make our service morecredible, more effective and the
quality of the service that weprovide better so please please
check out both of the productsthat they offer and I know
they're coming up with a lot ofyou know newer products I
wouldn't be shouting this out ifwe didn't use it ourselves and
see a huge benefit from itPlease, please, please check out

(49:10):
their podcast as well.
April and Steve and 3 Pi SquaredFamily.
Y'all do wonderful, wonderfulstuff.

SPEAKER_00 (49:15):
Yeah, we can't thank them enough.
And we, again, incrediblyblessed to be able to continue
our partnership with them.
So we've got some projectscoming up with them in the new
year and ongoing.
Very excited to be collaboratingwith them.
So can't say enough about them.
Probably a good time to mentionSuzanne Jeswick.
Or should we wait a little bit?
Let's wait a little bit on that.

(49:36):
All right.
We're going to wait on Suzannejust to give it a little bit
more.
Because that's the future.
We're doing the past.
Okay.
All right.
We keep alluding to that.
We keep teasing.
We keep teasing.
So thanks to April and Steve.
Moving on.

SPEAKER_01 (49:48):
Moving on.
And April and Steve, hopefullyyou all will be back in 2025 on
our podcast.
Please.
We will continue to collaboratethis relationship.
The next one was actually ourmost downloaded, I believe,
episode of the entire year.
We did split it into twoepisodes because, believe it or
not, we ran a little long anddecided to just keep it going

(50:09):
and make it two episodes.

SPEAKER_00 (50:10):
We were wordy?
Imagine that.

SPEAKER_01 (50:11):
Imagine that.
Empirically validatedtreatments.

SPEAKER_00 (50:15):
Oh, wow.
I actually kind of forgot aboutthis one.

SPEAKER_01 (50:18):
Well, this was one that you brought kind of to the
table.
This was your baby.
Let me pass it to you.
Thoughts on those discussionsfor empirically validated
treatments?

SPEAKER_00 (50:27):
Well, it's an ongoing discussion, right?
I think there's a lot of ourcolleagues that are purists that
would look at something like aSeven Dimensions seminal article
and and look through that andnot contextualize it from a time
perspective and look at certainwords or certain concepts that

(50:50):
are written in there and beginto lend maybe some valid, but
maybe some unneeded and harshcriticism over things like that.
So everything in those sevendimensions, you could say has an
empirical validation to it,right?
That's what's being put outthere, but it doesn't mean that
from a social perspective, it'svalid at this point in time.

(51:12):
And in fact, there's a lot ofbacklash against those things.
Now, I'm gonna say somethingvery simple about an article
like that.
I believe that article stillwould use something like the
word retardate to refer to aperson, uses a noun to refer to
a person that we would now sayis intellectually disabled.
Now, the reason I use thatexample is that that can be very

(51:34):
offensive to read an antiquatedword like that.
And it can be so offensive thatyou lose perspective on the
value of the information that'sotherwise in that article.
And I think that's what I wouldtake away at this point in time
from us having done thatparticular episode is we have a
foundational science.
We can go back and read abouthow Lovaas utilized electric

(51:58):
shock to address a femininebehavior in a young boy.
Even as I say those words, thatsounds horrific.
And then if we contextualize thetime and place and the reason
for it, you would see thatAlovas had very, very good
intent, had a really good reasonto get into that.
Now, would we want to thinkabout that in 2025 and using

(52:22):
such a procedure?
Absolutely not.
Does that kill the relevance ofusing such a procedure back in
1976?
I believe it was.
I'm gonna argue it doesn't.
I'm gonna argue that it's asvalid now as it was then,
knowing that obviously wewouldn't take the same approach.
We would be using differentcontextualized factors of modern

(52:44):
day to then do something, whichoddly enough, now being in my
28th year of practice, I canlook back at year one and know
that there was a lot of stuff Idid that I would never do again.
Now, does that mean, does thatmake me and my ABA evil?
I hope not.
What it does mean is Iprogressed.
I moved ahead in my science.
And that's what I think this,that episode in terms of

(53:06):
empirical validation Justbecause something's empirically
validated doesn't mean it'sfrozen in time toward its
application in the future.
We need to be able to evolve.
We need to be able to take theidea of empirical validation and
know that it's taken from a lab.
And then how are we going to runwith it to a setting with less
or no experimental control forthat matter?
Now we're talking aboutinstructional control.

(53:28):
So I get the feeling we're goingto revisit these models, just as
we are going to revisit a lot ofparenting styles, because from
Commando to Helicopter to Gentleto I don't know what parenting,
Diana Bommerman's model has nowexploded from three, four
different categories to about 50million that come through with
parenting magazines.

(53:48):
something valid to say andsomething to criticize each
other with but again the ideathat we need to contextualize
and continue to take what'svaluable from these models
knowing that if it works for ourclient and it works within
reason and it's culturally validin their home and it's improving
the quality of life it doesn'treally matter how well it
replicates the exact journalarticle we took it from right so

(54:11):
I said a lot there I don't knowif you've got anything to unpack
for us

SPEAKER_01 (54:14):
no I think people should listen to that episode we
delve into the idea that ABA isevidence-based, and that's what
allows us to get funding.
And it was evidence-based in alab.
But people don't live in a lab.
So the question is, the fartherwe get away from that lab
treatment, the more externalvalidity we have at the expense
of internal validity.

(54:35):
Does it lose validity,basically?
If we're trying to do the labprocedure in someone's home
that's not conducive, Can wealter it?
Can we be flexible withoutlosing that evidence-based
criterion?
And we had really gooddiscussions.
In fact, we made two episodesout of it.
The first one being our mostlistened to episode of the year.
Please, you know, listen tothat.
Let us know your thoughts.

(54:55):
We're very, very open andinterested to have people on the
episode that say, hey, no, itneeds to be very much like
medicalized.
It needs to be done in thisspecific way.
Otherwise, it's not you lose theevidence base.
Or if you're on the other sideand say, no, let's make it fit
into people's routines and youdon't lose the evidence base.
Listen to the episode, let usknow your thoughts.

(55:16):
We just want to create thediscussions and make a better
service.

SPEAKER_00 (55:20):
And it's interesting because procedurally speaking,
there's a physicality to amedical procedure, right?
The idea that there probablyaren't too many ways to insert
an IV, right?
There's a pretty strictprocedure.
probably very, very small marginof error, or meaning probably

(55:42):
high margin of error if you'renot careful, but probably not a
whole lot of flexibility or nota whole lot of different methods
to do so, to get it incorrectly.
There's only one way to get thatthing flowing.
And then there's the idea ofhuman behavior, and the very
fair question, is that moredynamic?
I would argue it is.
So with ABA, there might be oneway and a student or SD one

(56:05):
behavior, one consequence you'veoutlined as part of your program
plan.
That's great.
Now, I would argue, I think youwould agree that if you're going
to really promote moregenerality or a better learning
efficiency, you want to haveseveral SDs with several
behaviors, with severalconsequences that all fit the

(56:26):
mold.
And, you know, that's what we'removing toward here is, again,
those dance steps.
Yes, I know how to swing.
I know how to swing in my livingroom and move around and it's
great when nobody's in my way.
And then there's the idea thatother variables that are present
in the environment, how are yougoing to adjust your dance
steps, still move to the rhythm,still make it look good, and
still end up swing dancing, forexample.

SPEAKER_01 (56:48):
I think with your IV example, there is some
variability because I've been inthe hospital so much that
sometimes I'll put it in myhand, sometimes I'll put it in
my arm.
Good point.
And we'll put it in somebody'sfoot.
So you have to be able to rollwith the punches depending on
what that person is bringing toyou.

SPEAKER_00 (57:03):
And sometimes you get a young phlebotomist and
they're just going to try yourarm.
They're just going to try yourarm and you're going to end up
bruised.
And to your point there, I thinkthat's an excellent variation
you add to this variation youknow, for better or worse
example or analogy, but yeah,you're right.
The example you just gave forphlebotomists, that's what we're
after for ABA professionals.

(57:24):
Hey, I don't see the vasculaturein your arm.
Can I try your hand?
Oh, you're afraid of your hand.
Okay, let's get you to squeezeon this a little bit more and
let's tie you off and see if wecan make that come up.
How can I warm those things up?
How gentle can I be?
Can I warn you before it goesin?
Whatever it is, do I know that Iput it in, you know, kind of
oddly, so now it's pinching.
Do I start over?

(57:44):
All of those things is whatwe're after, I think, is for
RBTs.
And that's a tall order.
These are young professionals.
There's a kid kicking, crying,screaming, spitting, sometimes
falling to the floor, throwingitems.
Big challenge, man.
We respect those RBTs out therein the field.
They really...
are the ones that promote themajority of what we do.
So take care of them, keeptraining them, keep teaching

(58:07):
them how to do those dance stepsno matter what dance floor
they're on.

SPEAKER_01 (58:10):
Yeah, I like that analogy because I feel like
historically in ABA we werelike, no, we're going to put
this IV in your arm.
It doesn't matter how bruisedyou get, whatever, this IV goes
in your arm.
Maybe we're teaching jointattention.
And we've got this one item.
And if you don't jointly attendto it, we're going to prompt
you.
Because it has to go on the armand you need to do this one

(58:30):
item.
Versus, let's look at otheroptions.
Are there other places we can doit?
Are there other stimuli, otherSDs that we can reinforce?
So instead of forcing you to ourSD, we're going to follow what
your SDs are creating in thenatural environment.
Which is a whole other tangent.
And created a whole lot ofinteresting disagreement at
previous companies saying thatwe're not the only ones doing

(58:53):
the SDs.
Now, historically, I think me inthe field, I would look at a
bruised arm, but if the IV gotin there, I was like, well, the
IV got in there.

SPEAKER_00 (59:02):
And now it's

SPEAKER_01 (59:02):
like, let's try to find an easier way to get this
IV in there rather than forcingand prompting it.

SPEAKER_00 (59:08):
Yeah, no, that's a really, really excellent way to
put it.
I like that.
So the arm is bruised.
Who cares?
The IV got in.
That's a...
That's not an unreasonablepremise.
And at the same time, could wehave done it without the
bruising is the other questionwe're asking here.
I really, really do appreciatethat.
That's excellent.

SPEAKER_01 (59:27):
Because the more that arm bruises, the more
painful it's going to be and themore that person's going to
resist it, which is going tomake it harder.
Same thing with our concept.
The more somebody doesn't wantto do something and we're
prompting it, the more thatperson is going to resist it
because nobody wants to bephysically prompted to do
something they won't want to do.
It's going to make it harder andit becomes cyclical.

SPEAKER_00 (59:47):
And what's the the urgency of the IV, which I know
we'll get into as we approachone of our final guests for last
season.
She brought up a really goodtrue to life medical example.
So to your point, how urgent isthe IV?
Can we wait on the IV?
Because then sometimes thebruising just might be
collateral damage.
Sorry, didn't want to bruiseyou, needed to put this ID in

(01:00:11):
urgently and quickly.
Where can I afford the time toprepare the client or the
patient in that sense to get theIV.
So two different, at least twodifferent premises that we have
to span, two differentcircumstances we have to span to
make sure that we're being asrespectful, as humanitarian, as
professional as we can beknowing that we have to vary our

(01:00:35):
otherwise empirically validatedlinear approaches.
That's a lot.
That's a big order.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:40):
How urgent is it?
I would argue that the vastmajority of the things that
we're working on are not thaturgent.
And to whom is it urgent?
Exactly.
Maybe the person's not eatingand failing to thrive.
That's

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:51):
urgent.
Are they about to get a tube intheir nose or their gut?
Yeah, that's urgent.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:55):
But if the person isn't playing with 15 toys,
they're playing with two, maybethat's not life and death.
Maybe that's not uber urgent.
urgent and we can allow a littlemore grace.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:06):
That reminds me of a quick idea and then we'll move
forward because we, as always,we're always up against the
clock.
But the idea that we've gotrigidity or fixation, right?
So I always like to put thispremise to some of my younger
professionals and I tell them,hey, you're building rapport
with that.
Keep playing that.
Oh, we've been playing this for30 minutes already.
So?

(01:01:28):
Well, but the mom already saidthat they like dinosaurs a lot.
Great.
Go for it.
So it's a really what I'm tryingto say is, yes, the variation,
the generality, the expansionbeyond just playing with
dinosaurs.
Amazing.
We want to get there.
But the urgency of why, why dowe want to get there just for
the sake of variation?
Can we sit with the dinosaursand build rapport or do our

(01:01:49):
pairing or do whatever it is welike to talk about that then
builds that relationship withthe child?
How urgent is it that we changethe stimulus of dinosaurs in
this example?
Because we're up against thisdiagnostic trait of fixation or
rigidity, sometimes we create,in my opinion, an urgency which
isn't necessarily there.
These are all individualizedsituations.

(01:02:12):
You cannot take what I'm sayingand apply it blindly to every
situation.
And that's my point is you haveto look at every individual
circumstance.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:20):
Yep.
um next episode if you're goodyes sir all right next episode
was a big one in fact it was oursecond most listened to episode
it might have been i wouldventure to guess it's probably
actually our most listened tojust on other platforms outside
of just buzzsprout uh was misskendall who came on the behavior
influence your book is out bythe way book is out i have a

(01:02:42):
copy of it nice talk behavior tome The Rutledge Dictionary of
the Top 150 Behavior AnalyticTerms and Translations.
One of our first guests thatreached out, found us, came on.
It was a pleasure to have youon, Kendall.
Thank you for making that book.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:59):
She'll be coming back.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:00):
We really appreciate you coming on and giving us the
time to talk.
Yeah, we covered a lot ofground, talked a lot about
sports, just a lot of ground onthe technological dimension of
ABA.
How can we make this stuffunderstandable, implementable,
and digestible to the peoplethat are actually going to be
doing the service?

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:18):
A quick shout out to Lindenwood, Lindenwood
University.
I hope I'm getting that right.
Small world.
Kendall is a sports coachingconsultant for that university
softball team.
My sister-in-law happened toplay on that team, although it
was two different campuses.
So they knew of each other, butdidn't know each other.

(01:03:40):
Small world.
I couldn't agree more.
Really super glad that Kendallwas gracious enough to allow us
to have access to her platform.
She's got a tremendous amount ofTikTok followers.
TikTok followers, that's great.
And she's got her book out.
So I know we'll have her backand really take a deep dive into
the book, knowing that she'strying to make ABA accessible in

(01:04:03):
general, whether it is thatyou're treating autism or not.
And then, as you mentioned, Dan,she's really breaking the
boundaries.
She's really going beyond, youknow, our little our little
scope here, having been mandatedin California for almost 13
years now and only addressingone particular diagnostic code.
Someone like Kendall is nowtaking ABA into sports training,

(01:04:26):
into other, you know, fashion,makeup.
Her TikTok has all sorts ofdifferent real life scenarios
that she brings the ABA prowessinto.
So thank you for that, Kendall.
I know that Because of her,we've got other people
approaching us to be guests onthe podcast.

(01:04:47):
Couldn't thank you enough forthat access and that promotion.
And just a dynamic person allaround.
It was such a pleasure to talkto her.
So look forward to having her inthe future.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:55):
I think one of the themes of the year, and we'll
talk about it again later, waskind of a reinvigoration with
the field of ABA.
I feel like...
Maybe, and hopefully it didn'tcome across like this because I
think you and I are veryoptimistic about life, but being
in the field of ABA, workingwith kids with autism, dealing
with medical insurances, justcan run down a little bit.

(01:05:18):
It can just be like, oh, okay,another fight of justifying
services to an insurance rep whodoesn't know what they're
talking about but just wants todeny it.
And it just kind of can be like,ah, exhausting.
And Kendall coming on just wasso reinvigorating about the
field, her personality, just herexcitement.
I remember her talking about herfirst professor that just really
inspired her to get into thefield.

(01:05:38):
And it was like, yeah, Iremember that.
I remember when I was just somotivated.
And I still very much am, andwe'll talk about that.
But it was nice to have thatbecause so often just the
monotony of the day-to-day lifeof ABA can just be so draining.
And then you do so much.
You try to fight so manyobstacles, the billable hours,
the medical insurance, thedenials.
Only to have, you know, a clientscreaming your face for, you

(01:06:01):
know, two hours and you're justtrying to find a solution.
Only to have on Facebook, youknow, ABA just lambasted.
And sometimes it's just like,man, we cannot win.
And that episode was one of the,it was just so nice, man.
It was so, it relit the fire aswell as the episode I'll talk
about next in the conference.
But that episode was the firstone that kind of just

(01:06:22):
reinvigorated me and groundedme.
It was like, wow, we are doingsome great stuff in ABA.
The field is wonderful.
There are certainly things thatneed to be addressed, which was
obviously our impetus to createthis podcast.
That episode was veryreinvigorating.

SPEAKER_00 (01:06:36):
We didn't talk once about time conversion on that
episode.
Sorry, I had to throw that inthere.
You mentioned the whole dayabout going through the process
and getting the authorizationand having some kid dancing for
two hours and then having youradministrators ding you because
you didn't convert your sessionthat night.
Anyway, I couldn't help myself.
Not once.

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:55):
If you're feeling run down in the field, reach out
to Kendall.
She will reinvigorate you intothe field and give you some
grounding on why we're doingwhat we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 (01:07:04):
Check out her book, too.
Let's plug her book.
Check out her book.
It's available on Amazon andeverywhere you can find books.
Talk behavior to me.
Remind me the rest of it.
The

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:13):
Rutledge Dictionary of the top 150 behavior analytic
terms and translations.

SPEAKER_00 (01:07:18):
Awesome.
I hope it's doing well.
I hope it's selling the cockeggs.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:20):
Make ABA fun again.

SPEAKER_00 (01:07:21):
Congrats, Kendall.
Congrats.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:24):
The next episode, one of the...
the biggest episodes, possiblyin, not necessarily in immediate
listenership, but I think thisepisode probably had the most
profound impact on the directionof this podcast.
And that was JenniferFitzpatrick in the

SPEAKER_00 (01:07:41):
CPADA conference.
Shout out to Jennifer, man.
You were able to achieve quite afeat back in October.
And I'm sure many months beforethat, before it could be
achieved, but...
Jennifer and Clinical Practiceand ABA Conference, the
inaugural presentation of thatconference, we had the privilege

(01:08:06):
of meeting a tremendous amountof very passionate, very
successful, very innovative ABAprofessionals.
And let me bring back theexample that I know Jennifer
used in her episode with us thatRelates back to this idea of the
IV.
And again, gets back into thisidea of empirical validation

(01:08:27):
versus now, for lack of betterphrasing, compassionate
treatment.
I know I have plenty ofcolleagues who have been
practicing for many years, let'ssay 50 years at this point.
And it's a little frustratingfor them to hear about this new
wave of compassionate ABA.
Because for them, it could belike, wait, what was I doing?

(01:08:47):
I wasn't being compassionate.
How do you know?
I've been compassionate and soforth, right?
Now, Jennifer is sort of on thatend of things.
We'll call it a little bit moretraditional school,

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:58):
okay?

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:59):
And she brings up a really good point from a medical
perspective, which then maybespeaks to the idea of something
like physical prompting in ourdaily ABA sessions with kids
that are on the autism spectrumor kids that are autistic.
She talks about a catheter.
And the idea that is someone whois suffering from dementia is

(01:09:20):
continuing to suffer throughurinary tract infections because
they're not able to urinateeffectively and fully.
So a catheter can empty thebladder, clear out that line,
prevent infection if appliedcorrectly.
And here this patient isrefusing to allow somebody to

(01:09:41):
apply a catheter, which at thispoint, if they continue to
suffer infections, is going tocompromise their very life.
Maybe a little bit of a harsh ora dramatic example, but I think
very poignant and veryapplicable.
Your thoughts, sir?

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:56):
Yeah, there were definitely a lot of hot takes in
that episode.
If you want an episode with alot of hot takes, that would be
the one to listen to.
A lot of good points.
I think some of the points weremaybe...
you know, we washed them out alittle.
That's not the term.
We massaged them to get theactual point because maybe the

(01:10:17):
way that it was delivered wasn'thow it was intended.
Jennifer, you opened up the doorto our podcast to, you had
really no idea who we are.
And you had your baby, the CPABAconference that you were about
to do.
And I can't imagine how muchmoney, how much time you spent
in creating that.
And you opened up the door toour podcast to moderate a whole

(01:10:39):
lot of those conferences with aA lot of really bigwigs.
We're talking about John Baileywho was at this conference.
There was a lot of people thathad a lot to say.
And you trusted our podcast tomoderate that.
And thank you.
Thank you for doing that.
And that got us a 2025 list of ayear's worth of podcast guests.

(01:11:00):
Probably more.
And actually changed thedirection of the way that the
podcast is probably going to go.
It's going to be a lot moreguest appearances and creating
conversations with people thatare very interesting and
innovative in the field.
And it was interesting becausefollowing Kendall's appearance,
which I was then reinvigoratedabout, going and moderating the

(01:11:20):
podcast and hearing how so manypeople in the field are doing so
many innovative things.
And there is a high level ofcompassion in the field.
And it's not just about thebillable hour.
kind of allow me to take a stepback and say, okay, this is the
field that I hoped it would be,even if it's not the field I
hoped it would be in everysingle application.

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:40):
It was so enlightening to have a very
important debate, to talk aboutthemes of argument, to hear
about some arguments thatoccurred during some of the
sessions that were seeminglywell resolved.
And I think that the message Itook away is, So maybe some

(01:12:00):
people were promoting the wholemantra and take that ABA in and
of itself is evil or misguided.
Yet, however, I know none ofthose people have revoked their
board certification.
So that would tell me that wemight disagree on the way our
ABA looks, but ultimately weagree that ABA is a really good

(01:12:22):
answer to a whole set ofchallenges that other people are
facing out there.
So while we still may not havearrived at a full alignment as
to what ABA is supposed to looklike or what techniques we're
supposed to abandon or you knowthose things I think we all came
away agreeing that ABA has valueand that's why we are so you

(01:12:42):
know feverishly arguing some ofthese points as to whether it's
good bad or otherwise and yeahJennifer let me echo Dan's
sentiments thank you so muchJennifer Fitzpatrick for opening
your doors and the CPABAconference for our assistance
and moderating we were able toget some other Folks on the
moderating panel, so Steve andApril, our dear colleague CJ

(01:13:02):
Conard was able to join and dosome good work.
Shout out to CJ.
Truly one of the giants in thefield that remains.
So yeah, it was what a wonderfulopportunity for us.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:16):
Got to meet the co-author of one of my favorite
articles, Megan Miller.
Oh yeah, Megan.
Do Better Collective.
Definitely check that out.
Got to meet Maggie.
Got to just meet people that areare doing ABA the way that we
saw and hoped that it could bedone.
And people doing research,trying to find better ways to do
it rather than just better waysto be more efficient.

(01:13:37):
Yeah, that's good stuff.
That was an exciting conference.
Exhausting if that was 12 hoursa day.
Those of you that need CEUs,please do check out Behavior
Live in the CPABA conference.
You can get CEUs.
We talked about masking.
We talked about ABA in schools,charter schools.
Joint attention.

(01:13:58):
Joint attention.
Creating a potential daycare orABA in the school.
All sorts of very relevant,interesting stuff.
Check it out.
Jennifer, thank you for doingthat.
Thank you for coming on ourpodcast.
Definitely look forward tohaving you on after the
conference where maybe you'll bea little bit more stress-free
because I can't imagine howchallenging that was to set up

(01:14:20):
that conference.

SPEAKER_00 (01:14:21):
She was so, rightfully so, she was so
concerned about getting itright.
She represents...
One of our first pre-interviewsfor the show, meaning we usually
talk to people on email or acouple of text exchanges.
Okay, come on.
We'll moderate.
We like to talk.
For Jennifer, it was certainlya, well, hold on.
Let's sit and talk about thisbecause you've got a lot to

(01:14:44):
offer.
I think I called her episode anoatmeal imperial stout.
You've got to pour big, butyou've got to sip slowly, right?
So, yeah, please do check itout.
There's plenty of CEUs out therefrom the CPABA conference.
Again, that's on Behavior Live,CPABA conference.
It was back in October of 2024.
You can still access itasynchronously and get some

(01:15:06):
really good conversations andearn yourself some CEUs toward
your two-year cycle here andrecertification.
So good luck on that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:15:16):
And thank you, Jennifer, your daughter.
Thank you, your daughter, forlistening to us because Jennifer
said she found out about ourpodcast through her daughter who
listened to us.
So thank you, Jennifer'sdaughter as well.

SPEAKER_00 (01:15:26):
Yeah, it was all of these folks that really brought
our attention to the fact thatwe...
Thank you to all.
Thanks to you all out there.
We've got listeners.
We knew we had some traction.
We didn't realize how much untilfolks like Kendall and Jennifer
and Michael, who we can talkabout next, brought it to our
attention.
So thank you, Jennifer.
Without further ado here,Michael Gao, as we approach the

(01:15:49):
end of our wrap-up, our year inreview, Michael Gao and the
Alpaca Health Group.
Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 (01:15:56):
That's it.
That was an interesting onebecause I think you and I both
have, and we shared it, we bothhave some skepticism about AI
and how the more that we allowtechnology to make our services
more efficient, potentially thattakes away the humanality of the
services.
It makes them more robotic.
So, Michael, I I think did areally awesome job of, we really

(01:16:20):
appreciated the angle he wascoming from, not just making it
more efficient to add morebillable hours, but actually
allowing AI to really improvethe quality of services.
I think you were equally, if notmore skeptical about AI in the
beginning, Mike, what was someof your takeaways?

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:34):
So my skepticism on AI is just the sort of free
generation of content, right?
So yes, very powerful tool thatcan write things for you.
So the idea that AI was somehowgoing to be involved in creating
treatment plans, knowing howaverse even goal templates or
goal banks have been for me whenthey're used incorrectly in my

(01:16:55):
career, when it's just a plugand play, when it takes away the
introspection or the carefulplanning for your treatment
plans.
So, yes, I was fully skeptical.
The way Michael approached itreally just allows the tool to
do a lot of work for you that isgoing to save time toward then
being able to apply more brainpower, you know, more of your

(01:17:17):
cognition, more of the clinicalacumen toward the treatment
planning.
So we, in all honesty, we'restill trying to find a better
time to explore the tools fully.
But, you know, again, Michaelapproached this from an ABA
perspective, not just a generalcontent creation perspective, or
he knows what he's doing.
He understands the service.

(01:17:38):
And I feel very confident thathe's created a tool that is very
specific to our field.
So we encourage you to go outthere and check it out i think
it's still uh free to accessyeah and i know michael would
very much appreciate umeverybody's uh testing of this
tool i do think it lends a lotof promise um with something
like his explanation of like theparent interview yes and how uh

(01:18:00):
you know in the near future as iget better at using this tool
i'm a talker and sometimes i putout a ton of great ideas to
these parents during an intakeum an intake appointment and i
can only capture so much so manyof them even in the best notes
that i produce so the notionthat this is this tool can now
capture everything and then ijust go back and prompt it to

(01:18:22):
bring up these things that as iyou know create certain keywords
or phrases as i'm speaking tothe parent maybe write those
down for my future reference andthen put in a prompt to the tool
to bring those sections back.
And I've got a whole newtranscript of everything that
happened, not just what's in mymemory.
So again, shout out to Michaeland the Alpaca Health Group.

(01:18:42):
I think they've got some verypromising things to offer the
field.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:46):
Yeah, yeah.
I think we're very skeptical oftemplates ideas.
We're really, really trying toget away from templated ABA.
And a lot of the systems arekind of designed for that
because that allows the computerprogramming to, if you can fit
into that template, you can beincreasingly more and more
efficient.
But like you said, Michael, whatthe parent interview talked
about, how that can basicallyjust notate what you talked

(01:19:09):
about, because like you said,you can't really drive and text
at the same time.
RBT can't interact and take thatat the same time.
A lot of our parent interviews,we're hearing them talk, we're
writing things down, but whenwe're writing them down, we can
no longer interact and have thatrelationship with the parents.
So there's a lot of things thatthis AI can allow us to do to be
more efficient and actually morecollaborative with the people

(01:19:30):
that we're working with.
I mean,

SPEAKER_00 (01:19:32):
the idea, just the basic idea that I don't have to
look away from them or say, giveme a second to type and capture
these notes, that has been agame changer, right?
I like to be very attentive.
I get to be an active listenerwhen I speak to parents,
especially so that they knowthat I'm taking it all in.
And now this particular AI tooland this language model that

(01:19:54):
Alpaca Health Group isdeveloping specific to ABA
services is going to make thatvery, very accessible.
Now it's a conversation.
It's not a questionnaire or aninterview, so to speak.
It's a conversation with aparent on the other side as a
professional who knows how tooffer help.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:11):
Yes.
And Michael, thank you forreaching out.
We will get back to you.
We promise.
It has been incredibly busy.
Don't run away.
Keep reaching out to us.
Stay on top of us.
We will get back to you and lookforward to using Alpaca Health
in the venture that we'll talkabout here in a little while.
Last episode that we published,and then I'll talk about the one

(01:20:33):
that we didn't publish.
was Kim Worma, the president ofProAct, Inc., the company that I
work for.
Kim, thank you so much forcoming on.
You shared, we went, I mean,it's what we do, we always go
down wormholes, but you sharedso much wisdom, even outside of
ProAct.
You know, again, my favoritesaying of the year, whose needs

(01:20:53):
are we meeting when, came fromyour podcast.
And I remember that in thebeginning, you were a little bit
hesitant on like, how does thisreally, you know, you felt like
you weren't necessarily theexpert in ABA, but throughout
the podcast, we just developedso many correlations between
what PROAC does and ABA.
And I can't emphasize enough.

(01:21:14):
Look, I've been training PROACfor almost 15 years now in the
ABA companies that I work with.
If you have an ABA entity andyou are worried about crisis
management, you have a clinicwhere people might be coming
escalated and potentially evenassaultive, there's a lot of
options out there.
There's safety care, there'sCPI, I'm familiar with most of

(01:21:35):
them, and I'm not just sayingthat because I work there.
Again, maybe my credibilityisn't the best because

SPEAKER_00 (01:21:41):
I work for Proacting.
Well, no, you're admitting it.
You have to admit it.
ABA on tap.
Here we go.
We're done for today.
Well, a little premature, we'llget to that.
Sorry about that.
If anybody heard that, it wasour outro music coming in a
little prematurely.
We ran long, that's what it'stelling us.

SPEAKER_01 (01:21:57):
It's the year in review.
We've got a lot to cover, so ifwe run long, we run long.
Check out Proact as a crisismanagement and de-escalation
curriculum.
It is wonderful.
Again, it really helps peoplefeel empowered.
Mike, you talked about earlierreacting rather than responding.
If nothing else, I feel likeover my 15 years of training,

(01:22:21):
RBTs are most concerned aboutwhen I'm in the home and this
client gets assaulted or thisclient escalates and the parents
there, what do I do?
This gives some great approachesand frameworks, not techniques,
but frameworks for how torespond to various situations.
It also gives some additionalframeworks on if somebody is
becoming assaultive, how to keepyourself safe as well.

SPEAKER_00 (01:22:43):
A lot of people might think of PROACT
traditionally and what you focuson is the restraint part.
And I think that not only hasPROACT largely moved away from
that, and I say that knowingthat it might not have been
their original intent, but Ithink Kim did such a wonderful
job of stressing that particularthing that it's not even about
the restraint part.
And in fact, in our daily lives,in our daily work, we don't,

(01:23:06):
outside of very particularcircumstances, we wouldn't even
be able to implement therestraint part.
So to your point, it's all theother behavior management,
rapport building, communicationpieces that PROACT brings to the
table, which you've made thepoint.
The notion that a company wouldsomehow integrate or just make

(01:23:30):
the investment of that PROACTtraining as part of new hire
training.
I think that we don't considerhow far that goes in learning
how to interact with somebodywho might be in crisis or
escalating toward a crisis.
How much of learning how torespond and react in that moment

(01:23:53):
actually applies to just basicinteraction.
And how it stresses thelistening part, right?
So my favorite, going to adifferent set of techniques, we
talk a lot about linguisticmapping and contingent imitation
here.
And my favorite part of thosetechniques is that it makes the
professional watch and listenfirst.
And I would say that that's thebiggest takeaway I have from
ProAct.

(01:24:14):
Not to mention how much itbrings in the idea of autonomic
arousal.
So now the idea of brain andbehavior and how those things
are correlated.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
with you there's a lot ofsystems out there yes my partner
here is an employee of proactbut i am unabashedly going to
say if you haven't heard aboutproact if you haven't used it

(01:24:35):
revisit it find it consider allthe things that it can teach you
toward effective ABA practicethat are well before and
completely separate from anyidea of physical restraint.

SPEAKER_01 (01:24:47):
Yep.
And prioritizing safety, right?
That's the goal is to create asafe environment.
And that's always prioritynumber one.
Another thing that Farag talksabout that I think is really
interesting is offeringalternatives when people were
escalating.
We had some interestingdiscussions with Kim on that,
how sometimes I think in ABA, wecan be pretty dense or we can be
pretty black and white of, well,if they're escalating, why are

(01:25:10):
we going to offer alternatives?
Is that reinforcing the behaviorthat we don't want them to do?
And we worked through that.
We talked about that.
So listen to that episode tohear more about that.
Reach out on ABA on tap.
If you're interested in product,reach out to us, reach out to,
you know, check out the website.
You can reach out to me and askme any questions on the ABA on
tap.

(01:25:30):
I am not doing this to For anyother reason besides, I've done
this for 15 years.
This is not a paid endorsement.
A huge, huge difference in thequality of services that we can
provide.
Because at the end of the day,the people that we work with
have the same rights that we do.
And if we're ever thinking aboutrestraining somebody or anything

(01:25:50):
like that, we're violating theirrights.
And we should be making that anabsolute last resort.
And product can give you somereally good strategies to
utilize instead of getting tothat.
In fact, the product is atwo-day training.
Well, the 14-hour training.
The first seven hours, we don'teven talk about responses.
We talk about how to make surethat we are being the most

(01:26:11):
professional.
What is the purpose?
What alternatives can we offer?
How do we avoid the crisis?

SPEAKER_00 (01:26:16):
How do you stand?
How far do you stand?
How do you place your hands?
I don't know.
There's a million things that itmakes you think about, man.

SPEAKER_01 (01:26:22):
Exactly.
And that's what really separatesProact from the other crisis
management, which goes rightinto the responses.
Proact is proactive.
How can we prevent these thingsfrom happening?

SPEAKER_00 (01:26:33):
I like that.
I like that a lot.
Well, so that was our finalguest for this season.
Are we?
Oh, you got something else.
Thank you again, Kim, for coming

SPEAKER_01 (01:26:41):
on.
Our last guest of the season,which was not released in the
podcast.
Not quite yet.
We'll debate when and how torelease this, was another lady
who found us.
And yeah, Suzanne.
Suzanne.
She's another person that isgoing to kind of change the
direction of ABA on tap movinginto 2025.

(01:27:03):
Let me pass it to you, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 (01:27:05):
So Suzanne Jeswick from Innovation Moon and a few
other projects that we'llmention throughout the season.
We are proud to announce, notofficial yet, but we are
currently in negotiations withSuzanne.
She has agreed to come on as apartner onto ABA on Tap and to

(01:27:27):
promote us and take care of ourmarketing and build us a
website, start revisiting someof the older episodes to see if
we can release them to you allas CEUs for a really affordable
price.
A lot of exciting things thatSuzanne is pitching to us.
We're excited at our prospectivepartnership.
After five years of doing this,going into our sixth season, the

(01:27:50):
premise, the notion thatsomebody out there caught wind
of us and is interested enoughto invest her time and her
money.
You know, she's got, she's amom.
She's tremendously dynamic,tremendously busy.
So we couldn't be happier at theprospect of having her join our
team.
It's just a matter of, in fact,when we're done here, I think
we're reviewing some things andsome terms of agreement to try

(01:28:12):
and make this happen as quicklyas possible.
One of the things that we wantSuzanne on for As I mentioned
earlier, we will be hitting our50th episode of ABA on tap.
So having somebody with herexpertise and experience would
make a 50th episode celebrationthat much more exciting.
Again, I'll mention we probablywon't do our 50th episode
celebration on the 50th episode.

(01:28:34):
I think maybe...
I forget, there was anotherpodcast that I was listening to
that had the same quandary wherethey had some episode
celebration, but it was actuallythe episode after that or
whatever.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
We'll celebrate our hallmark.
Suzanne, thank you for findingus.
Thank you for reaching out to usand keeping us honest and
keeping honest about doingcertain things.

(01:28:55):
And we're excited to, at yourprospective partnership, we
think that you will take...
the podcast to the next level.
So thank you so much.
Are we there yet, sir?

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:05):
Yeah.
Thank you, Suzanne.
Those of you that I've reachedout to from the CPABA
conference, We've beenincredibly busy and we'll talk
about that in just a second.
We will reach out to you.
We will come up with a moreefficient way to schedule guests
because we do have quite theguest list for 2025.

(01:29:25):
We will likely be maybe evendoing more episodes in 2025.
So we're very, very excitedabout the direction of the tap.
It's been five years of you andI talking into...
In your reptile studio.
And I think in 2025, we willbecome more organized.
Suzanne will have a huge part inthat.
You'll be able to get ourpodcast out to a lot more

(01:29:45):
people.
Again, our email address,abaontap.gmail.com.
If you have any interest, wantto come on the podcast, please
reach out to us.
This year, 2025, our sixthseason, I think will be the
biggest season yet.
And we very, very, very muchlook forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 (01:30:04):
So...
We've got one more thing, atleast one more thing, which is
going to provide us with atremendous amount of content for
ABA on Tap.
The way you put it, Dan, I'mgoing to set this up.
I'm going to let you knock itout of the park for us.
The way you put it is we get totalk all sorts of things here on
ABA on Tap.

(01:30:24):
The way I put it is I get totalk all of this stuff and then
I have to go home and be aparent.
So now for the two of us, we getto talk all of these great ideas
here on ABA on Tap.
And now we get the opportunityto do it our way, sir.
Let's announce a big, bigannouncement here.
We want to present

SPEAKER_01 (01:30:44):
Ascend Behavioral Solutions

SPEAKER_00 (01:30:46):
here in San Diego, California.
Mr.
Dan Lowry and I are proud toannounce that we have finally
taken the plunge.
It's been a year, sir.
So almost exactly a year agotoday, we embarked on the
journey of building and startingour own company.
This is where Steve and Aprilhave been instrumental.

(01:31:10):
This is where Suzanne, I know,is also going to be instrumental
in helping our future.
So all these wonderful ideasthat we've been pitching and
promoting and proselytizing, touse that fancy word.
Now we get to put our moneywhere our mouth is, which is
where Mr.
Dan's famous quote comes in.
Couldn't be more excited, man.
You and I are at...

(01:31:30):
about 20 years of work together,maybe a little under.
So to know that 20 years ago, wewalked into that situation with
a very, very interesting clientwho taught us a whole bunch of
stuff right from the beginning.
And now almost 20 years later,sir, to be partners in our own
venture, Ascend BehavioralSolutions.

(01:31:51):
Quick shout out to Scotty.

SPEAKER_01 (01:31:53):
Yep, the Ferb.

SPEAKER_00 (01:31:54):
The Scotty, Scott Ferbershaw, who has made this
dream possible, who is going tokeep our books going clean and
up to date and exactly what theIRS wants to see.
I know the IRS loves Scott.
He's so precise and hisspreadsheets are so perfect.
And we've got a couple of otherpartners that we'll be
announcing as time moves on.

(01:32:15):
People that have beeninstrumental in helping us with
a lot of sweat equity.
All of us started working forfree and now we definitely have
a lot of very excited people whoare giving their assistance just
in hopes of joining the projectat some point when that's ready.
So I couldn't be more proud,man.
I couldn't be happier to bedoing this with you, Mr.
Dan.
Thank you, man.

(01:32:36):
Likewise.
Thank you.

SPEAKER_0 (01:32:37):
AscendABAtherapy.com.
Yes, sir.
Please check out that website.
Yeah, I think the podcast had alot to do with us creating this
joint venture.
Like I mentioned, prior to thatKendall episode and the CPABA
conference, I feel like therewas just a lot of...

(01:32:59):
complaining or frustrationsabout the field.
And yeah, like you said, about ayear ago, we started on this
venture and I think it was kindof one of those things of we
either got to stop complainingabout it or we got to do it
ourselves.
Because eventually it's going tobe fraudulent if we keep talking
about some of our frustrationson the tap, but then going and

(01:33:20):
doing them, you know, outside ofthe tap just felt a little bit
fraudulent.
So it's like, well, if...
We want to do it.
We want to do it our way.
Let's see if it's possible.

SPEAKER_00 (01:33:30):
We've learned very quickly, too, about a lot of the
reasons why where our grievancesstem from.
We've learned about why peopledo certain things.
Not that we didn't know a lot ofthat already, but now we've had
to deal with it face to face,head to head.
And we're excited aboutpresenting a lot of solutions
out there.
We have funders, insurancecompanies that we have to

(01:33:52):
partner with to be very candid.
They know this.
They don't.
ever make it easy we're not sureas to the motives why you know
there's at least two thingseither they're making it
challenging in order to denypayment and then on the other
end another important questionis what are we doing to make
them consider such challenges inorder to prevent us from being

(01:34:17):
fraudulent or the like so Ithink that we've learned at
least that much right you knowif you're out there and you're
talking about The idea thatclients, the moment they call
your office, now have to beready to subscribe to a three
hours a day, five days a weekprogram without even seeing the
child.
I'm not going to be criticalabout that, but well, yes, I am.

(01:34:37):
I will, too.
I would ask you to be cautiousand consider what that does to
the rest of us who aren'tnecessarily enforcing that
rubric.
I would ask you to consider theethics of such an approach.
You know, we've talked aboutthese things before.
Now we're facing them head tohead.
And again, we will be lendingour answers from a collaborative
perspective.

(01:34:58):
How do we all, we're all inthis.
There's six to eight monthwaiting lists all across the
nation.
Why are we so feverishlycompeting against each other?
Is there a competition?
Yeah, there is a competition.
Who is it?
The insurance funders.
They're the people we need to beeducating.
competing against to raise thoserates, to make ABA more
accessible.
And that means that on our part,we need to stay true to our

(01:35:20):
science, true to our practiceand stop committing things that
make us look fraudulent.
That's what I would say isthere's at least two parties
involved in this withoutincluding the family and the
actual client.
And these two parties are oftenfighting about know funding or
things that that don'tnecessarily relate to the
clinical need we're reallyhoping to become uh focused uh

(01:35:44):
on the clinical practice and putsome of the other things away as
much as we can i am gettingblown up by uh alerts here sorry
i didn't turn those offhopefully they're not
interrupting uh anybody too muchbut yeah very proud to announce
ascend behavioral solutionswe'll be looking to to make a
change

SPEAKER_01 (01:36:01):
yes yes um yeah just looking here you know our
mission um is is going to be todeliver ethical effective and
progressive behavioral therapywith collaboration and respect
with our patients and familiesum how nice thank you yeah
that's our goal is we have anidea of what we want aba to be

(01:36:22):
um there's only one way to knowif it's feasible or not is to go
kind of um do it on our ownmike's gonna be doing most of
the groundwork i'm a little bitmore um behind the scenes But
with your developmentalbackground and your expertise in
ABA, I think it can become morethan just an hours mill.

(01:36:43):
And that's the important thing.
Can we have clients be happy?
Can we make RVTs happy?
Can we focus on the clinicalintegrity of our services?
Because at the end of the day,that's all we have.
That'll be our goal.
Let's make it happen.
We are excited.
We have, like we said, a coupleother young professionals that
have joined.

(01:37:04):
People or a person that we'veknown for a long time.
Our first employee, we'reexcited to have her on board.
At

SPEAKER_00 (01:37:13):
some point, we'll do a whole episode, right?
We'll bring a roundtable orsomething and talk to everybody
to see how it's going.
Maybe it'll be our first yearkind of review or something.
I'd love to get RBTperspectives, especially if
we...
end up hiring RBTs that areexperienced and have worked at
other companies to have themtalk about the differences that
we've achieved.
I know that doing some of thegroundwork in terms of the

(01:37:34):
direct therapy has reallyoffered me a whole new
professional development andappreciation for what our RBTs
do.
So now being in an RBT shoes aswe start to develop this,
knowing that it's the most costeffective way to start is to
have me providing the service.
It's a whole new perspectiveI've gained.

(01:37:54):
Yes, I know that the RBTs areout there doing most of the
footwork.
So to really put myself in thoseshoes again, to see how
rigorous, how tiresome it is, tounderstand better why
professional development timeand planning time is necessary.
um yeah these are all things i'mreliving now so a great deal of

(01:38:15):
respect out out there for thoseof you who are doing the rbt
work um please know that thati've uh i've put those shoes
back on and i've got a new founda new newly developed respect
for rbts especially the onesthat that are out there doing
that tiresome work that don'tcall out that um you know really
really get invested in theirclients um they make all the

(01:38:36):
difference they're the ones thatare delivering the majority of
the hours so I know that atAscend, one of our missions, one
of our objectives is going to beto really revolutionize the RBT
position and turn it intosomething that young psychology
professionals want to go into.
They want to move further intothe field where right now it can

(01:38:58):
be difficult to be an RBT and tosustain such a job.

SPEAKER_01 (01:39:01):
Yeah, yeah.
And a lot of, like you said,BCBA Direct.
The people that, there have beenso many people that I've
consulted with, I can't listthem all.
Thank you all.
The general idea in the ABAfield right now, it's funded by
medical insurance forindividuals with autism, You
make money on the RBTs.

(01:39:22):
And that's where your marginsare.
And our goal is let's eitherhave very experienced RBTs or
the BCBAs, the people with theexpertise, deliver the service
directly.
Because if we can do that, maybeyou don't need the same amount
of hours that you would need ifan RBT delivered it.
Maybe we can do it less.
Maybe we can be more efficientwith our time.

(01:39:42):
You know, a great word thatseems to be thrown around a lot.
Efficiency.
It's all about efficiency.
And the clinical ability isprobably going to be much
higher.
So that is our goal.
Can we make the clinicalpriority and staff morale?

(01:40:04):
Can we keep that to the levelthat we want that we think will
deliver the highest qualityclinical service?

SPEAKER_00 (01:40:09):
Can we reduce turnover?
You know, the idea that can anRBT...
be an rbt at your company forthe duration of can most of the
rbts for the duration of theirschooling or whatever it is
they're doing can an rbt just bea career rbt is that something
that's possible that i don'tthink is happening in the field
but just like a like aregistered nurse can have a very

(01:40:32):
experienced registered nursethat doesn't move on in her
career they don't all becomedoctors or maybe not even a
whole lot of them become doctorsbut then they train younger
nurses and in our field we don'thave that system we don't have
that tiered system set up rightnow it's you're an rbt and
you're going to become a bcba oryou're going to walk out the
revolving door and some new RBThas come in.

(01:40:54):
To see clients go through five,six, seven staff in a year
because of this turnover, thisis really something that we need
to address in the field andsomething I'm excited to be able
to tackle along with you, Mr.
Dan, to improve professionaldevelopment and training and how
it is we value the hours thesepeople put in, how we take care
of cancellations from either endso that nobody necessarily loses

(01:41:16):
money if they don't have to.
A lot of things that need to bein that are going to ultimately
improve service delivery.
And I'm excited prospectively tobe a part of that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:41:26):
Yeah, I think there will be an increased level of
authenticity in 2025.
There's, you know, it's reallyeasy to sit and complain about
what's going wrong.
I think that happens in politicstoo, right?
People just, well, this is badand this is bad.
Okay, what do you do about it?
How do we fix it now?
Now it's going to be on us tofix it.
Like I said, an increased levelof authenticity.
I do want to shout out Maggieagain.

(01:41:48):
You came on to talk with theteam a little bit ago.
I think that you are running theEast Coast version of what
Ascent Behavioral Solutionshopes to be.
Yeah, that's a good way to putit.
A lot of Ascent-based therapy.
empowering strength-based goals,how we can continue to run an
innovative program because thatword is thrown around so often

(01:42:10):
to the extent that we actuallydid not put that in our mission
statement because it's sobastardized.
Everybody says they're doinginnovative stuff.
I

SPEAKER_00 (01:42:21):
like to say if you're doing something
innovative, it should lookdifferent from what other people
are doing.
Otherwise, you might not beinnovating.
So Maggie, for example, I know Ilike to make this joke.
She showed us her environmentover the video call.
I don't think I saw onelaminated square or any Velcro.

(01:42:44):
I challenge all of you out thereto achieve the same level.
So I think with that in mind,are we good?

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:51):
If you're interested, like you said, the
website, ascendabatherapy.com.
We'll also throw the link in thechat or in the description.
If you're a family in the SanDiego area, you're interested in
having services provided bypotentially Mike directly, reach
out to us.
We are very excited to grow thisventure and make ABA the best we

(01:43:12):
can.

SPEAKER_00 (01:43:12):
And we can assure you that even now, you're not
going to be waiting six months.
In fact, you're going to hearback from us right away.
You're going to get anappointment within a couple of
weeks at most.
And then we're going to take youthrough the very thorough
assessment process.
So it might take a couple monthsto go through the assessment
process and start, but you won'tbe sitting waiting for six to

(01:43:32):
eight months.
So I'd like to do our recaphere, Mr.
Dan.
Let's see.
So we're going to say, staytruly innovative.
Consider when your laminatorbreaks down, if you really, or
when you run out of Velcro, ifyou really need those things to
do effective ABA.
And of most importance, always,

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:51):
Analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_00 (01:43:52):
Happy New Year, sir.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:53):
2025 is going to be a big one.

SPEAKER_00 (01:43:55):
Here we go.
Cheers.
ABA on Tap is recorded live andunfiltered.
We're done for today.
You don't have to go home, butyou can't stay here.
See you next time.

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