When my now 15 year-old daughter was much younger, I used to observe parents of the older autistic children and be grateful that many of the issues they were dealing with were not relevant to my daughter. She was well behaved and we frequented restaurants, movies, took many plane trips, frequented the grocery store, participated in horseback riding, took her on the Disney Cruise, enjoyed ballets and symphonies. We were always grateful that even though she was autistic she was happy and loving and we enjoyed a family life.

When she turned 12 she started having horrible, uncontrollable meltdowns.

I would love the opportunity to parent this child. That would be so much easier than restraining her from her self-injury.

I find your judgemental attitude very hurtful and harmful toward parents who have spent their lives and their fortunes doing all they can for their children.

I tend to think that some meltdowns, while not exactly for “attention,” can be a way for the autistic individual to show a need for support or assistance from others in the room. When your ability to communicate is compromised in some way–and this is even the case in those with Asperger’s–you tend to go “0-to-60″ when facing frustration or other “brick walls.”

My son seems to melt down more wildly when I am in the room, and to me this looks like he is expressing frustration in an effort to get me to intervene and help him with whatever he’s trying to do. In that way, his meltdowns are more acute when others are present. However, this theory is difficult to test, because my son is rarely left alone long enough to know how he would handle frustration without others there to intervene.

If meltdowns were primarily a means of gaining attention, that would not explain meltdowns in the absense of anyone else around.

I suppose meltdowns could be done to gain attention but I haven’t observed them being “used” that way, for the most part.

“The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.”

Why does “discipline” always default in NT minds to negative attention?

In fact, “discipline” is far more important when it’s focused on advantaging positive skill sets. You know, like ignoring negative inputs, selecting one’s perseverations, etc.

“No” is all fine and good, but the adult autie is far more concerned about getting other people to say yes; overcoming wetware deficits that make social interactions difficult or impossible.

I might also add that it’s perfectly possible to learn everything there is to know about how Neurotypicals do these things and be unable to do them.

Yet, when autistic children start problem-solving these issues in kindergarten, the first thing that happens is that they are told “no.”

Oh, btw, it IS a spectrum, and there are intractable cases of everything. Autistics are human first, and as perverse and strange as anyone else.

None of the above, though, makes operant conditioning and torture acceptable, and that is what ABA is based on.

BF Skinner himself renounced it as an approach to be used on human beings. And no matter how warm and fuzzy it may become, whether or not you can make it non-abusive, I feel the fundamental assumptions are so elementally flawed that it cannot be considered an approach with wider general application than, say, shock therapy or gamma knives.

ABA works very well, in one sense. It will produce compliance in your presence. And that’s all. Furthermore, that’s all you will ever get – a compliant, but crippled individual. So it had best be reserved for situations where that is genuinely the best outcome that can be expected.