2024 Year in Review

Happy New Year! ABA on Tap says 'thank you' for all your support over the last 5 seasons. We offer a 'Year in Review' for 2024 to revisit all the great tasting 'brews' we offered. Enjoy!

All ABA on Tap brews pair well with cerebration. SO--if you are ready to enjoy the benefits of Magic Mind and boost your brain performance, please use the following link and use the discount code AOT to receive 20% off your purchase, and 56% off a subscription.
https://www.magicmind.com/aot 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find the best recipe to brew the smoothest, coldest, and best tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA brew, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_00: 0:56

Right. All right. And welcome. To yet another installment of ABA 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: 1:13

Happy New Year. I am... This might be one of the most excited I've been for an episode, man. Looking to the prospects of 2025. A little bit under the weather, or my voice is at least a little under the weather, so may not be expressing the amount of excitement that I'm feeling, but stoked about this and what's to come.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

Right on, brother. Right on. You sound good. You sound good. I know we were a little tentative at first this morning. We were checking in on the voice. It's funny how that happens, right? I was never concerned about my voice ever in my life, and then we started doing ABA on tap, and suddenly it's like, oh, I've got a little tickle or I've got a little sniffle and you worry about it. We care about you listeners out there. We want to make sure not only do we impart good information, we sound good. I share your excitement and at the 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's kind of in shambles. My son has been traveling for the holidays, so he's got his clothes everywhere, but Mr. Dan's always gracious and puts up with whatever condition the Reptile Studio is in. Our guy Fang has a new light. I don't know if you noticed that. We're happy about that. He's stoked, getting a little more warmth in there. Cold-blooded animal. We're going to do a year in review. This is our 49th episode officially, which means This season will hit 50. We promise a huge 50th episode celebration to thank all of you out there who have stuck by us. There's a lot of you out there and we're learning more and more with our analytics that there's more of you than we actually realize. And it's super exciting. The reason I am so relaxed is we got to do a little bit of a. you know, a challenge, a pressured situation to try to come up with good content. And I think we've put the work in and now people have listened. And now we've got a whole slew of potential guests lined up, like we started seeing at the end 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 last season, a teacher during the summer asking us about out in Pennsylvania. We will allow her to remain anonymous. But if you're out there and you're listening, Please reach back out. Want to know how things went? So we did a couple free consultations for some people out there. Again, more people started reaching out. We love hearing the feedback. We didn't realize what a loyal, what a great listenership we actually had until... I mean, about halfway through that season, man. Started getting the emails. We got our own email address now. So, Dan, if you want to put that out there.

SPEAKER_01: 3:42

ABAontap at gmail.com. Easy to remember.

SPEAKER_00: 3:45

ABAontap at gmail.com. Please, please do reach out. Send us your questions, your comments, your ideas, your refutations. We said something you didn't agree with. Please tell us about it. We want to correct it. We want to address it. We want to bring you on to have a nice, healthy disagreement about what we may have said that that you might disagree with if you agree with us and you want to give good feedback even better reach out to us let us know you don't have to disagree with us to give us an idea to come on the show we're opening this thing up and again the guest slots are filling up quickly so we do urge you encourage you to reach out to us let us know you're listening let us know what you want to do if you want to come on if you got something to present just got something to say we want to hear from you and we're super excited at all the buzz we've got going so yeah yeah

SPEAKER_01: 4:34

Well, do we want to look back, look forward? What do you want to do first?

SPEAKER_00: 4:39

Let's look back. Now, last year, Buzzsprout, who are gracious hosts here for our RSS feed, we're very happy to have been working with them for five years now. So thank you to Buzzsprout. But they sent us this cool analytics review last year. I don't think we got it this year, but that's okay. The reason I mentioned that is that we learned about a lot of different people in different countries. that are listening to us if you're out there you're somewhere outside of the united states please do reach out to us So we know what's going on with you and what it is that brings you to this ABA on tap show here in the States. And then we got to learn about a bunch of different cities and other analytics. I see you scrolling through the Gmail there just in case. Did we get something? Was I wrong? No. Okay. Well, Buzzsprout, for whatever it's worth, if you're listening, that was cool. We'd love to get one of those from you guys again next year or at any point in time so we understand how you're seeing the analytics. But yeah, looking back, we started with a couple of articles from Jeremy Brown. And I have to, if Jeremy's listening, by chance, or anybody that knows Jeremy, I did try to reach out to him. I think he tried to reach back, and it's my failure to check my LinkedIn account that might be precluding us from connecting with Jeremy. So, Jeremy, if you're listening and you'd like to come on and present your ideas, we've definitely enjoyed those two articles. Give us a buzz. Send us a line over at abaontap at Gmail and we'll get you on, man.

SPEAKER_01: 6:10

Those are some of our most listened to episodes right off the new year with a bang. So yeah, love to have Jeremy on.

SPEAKER_00: 6:16

Yeah, I know I got to use some of that content during different parent education groups that I do. And I reached to those two articles online. actually quite frequently over the last year at the end or during parent education sessions where maybe the parent had presented their events over the last week. We had done the analysis and it's like, let's get into some discussion. And it's really cool how Jeremy presents his experience with his two boys so honestly, so earnestly. And it's not that everything that Jeremy says was a point of agreement. But maybe even better, sometimes there was a point of disagreement that allowed a lot of my parent groups to come up with a slew of other ideas that were also more particular and more helpful to their particular situation, knowing that autism is a very diverse condition, just like the human condition, right? It's a very diverse set of traits and skills. So what are your thoughts there, Mr. Dan?

SPEAKER_01: 7:13

Yeah, I agree. We started off our year with a bunch of kind of parenting focus. I feel like those two episodes were pretty focused on parenting. The next one, Seven Things to Do When You Lose Patience with Your Patient's Parenting article. And then we had a really unique episode. On March 25th, we actually had a guest. One of our first guests. I think it was our first actual live guest. We had the parent's

SPEAKER_00: 7:39

perspective. Now, we started off the year, I remember... trying to with the parenting focus. 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 from the past who had actually exited ABA services at that time, was not active in ABA services, which was sort of a testament to the success, to the experience that her and her child or her children, I guess, it was a dynamic systems matter right everybody got involved and that

SPEAKER_01: 8:18

was really cool everybody got involved with the podcast too they were all there

SPEAKER_00: 8:21

that's right that's right we got to listen back to that i forgot they came on the the kiddos came on the mic and and talked a little bit and were bashful isn't it interesting from a theory of mind perspective how um well maybe they listened to it with their mom the podcast or whatever it was but as soon as they were live and on that mic you know, these young kids who you may not credit for, for realizing what is happening. They get, they get shy, they get bashful, you know, a lot to be said about that. They, they must understand that this is going to get projected to, to many people or understand the idea that I don't like the way my voice sounds on a recording. I don't know. I just thought it was interesting that we, you know, a little nuance there that maybe we don't give a lot of our kiddos credit for, but clearly they understood, Hey, wait a minute. This is, this might be kind of embarrassing. What am I doing here? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:06

Especially considering that the, um, and the older sibling wanted to be on the mic, really wanted to, but then was a little bit bashful. Reminds me, I love tigers and when I went to Thailand, I was able to interact with them and I was so excited. And then when you get right next to it, you're like, uh, am I sure this is what I wanted to do? Kind of reminded me of that.

SPEAKER_00: 9:25

That was me with your chickens. Excuse me, I give you so much trouble about those chickens, about the girls. And then I'm at your house and I have a chance to interact with them and I'm like, I don't know what to do. I don't want to hold that chicken. What's it going to do to me? It's going to peck me. You're much

SPEAKER_01: 9:40

more friendly on the gifts you send.

SPEAKER_00: 9:42

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've talked about the chickens out there for you listeners, but farmer Dan here has a coop of chickens.

SPEAKER_01: 9:57

Maybe we'll get them on the pod.

SPEAKER_00: 9:59

And they express, they emit a whole bunch of behavior. We need to have a chicken segment on the tap, I think. Chicken and beer. There it is. 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 to come on and do the segment, the chicken check-in? She's going to bring one in. Just because the name is so good, I think we're going to have to do something with

SPEAKER_01: 10:41

it. If you all can't tell, this is completely unscripted today. All right. Review of the year. But yes, The chickens were a great part.

SPEAKER_00: 10:51

So... We talked about the parent interview early on in last season. Is this a good time to make our announcement, 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 the end. The little teaser there, we've got a couple big announcements. One very particular to the podcast, and then one that will be related to the podcast ongoing, but finally allows us, well, we'll save it. We'll save it. Anyway, episode four what did we do 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 started off with a two-parter on the 11 things not to do with your autistic child is that correct

SPEAKER_01: 11:34

okay yeah we started with the article reviews our goal was to um make sure that as we were having to bring all the content we we can always riff but we wanted to make sure that we had some credibility and um things to riff from so we started with the articles um and then yeah i guess technically it was our fifth episode because the first one was the year in review for 2023. Oh, that's right. Okay. We brought the parent on, and we look forward. I think most of our episodes, and we'll talk more as we go through this, in 2025 will be much 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 guests in 2025, and we very much look forward, or 2024, very much look forward 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, 11 things not to do with your autistic child. Yep. And then remind me the second one, 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 that was and how valuable it is to consider that, something we enjoy a lot here on the podcast. And looking at a three-part contingency as a parent, you're responsible for two-thirds of that. And a lot of times we conceptualize this as changing the child's behavior when, in fact, you're changing your behavior more than likely around the antecedent and the consequence. And I think Jeremy's... article on the seven things to do when you lose patience really drove that home. What are you going to do? It's not about your child changing their behavior. What are you going to do to change your behavior and then expect changes accordingly? And I can't highlight that enough,

SPEAKER_01: 13:22

right? Yeah, absolutely. How are you going to perceive the behavior which is going to affect how you respond to it?

SPEAKER_00: 13:28

Right. We like to say not reacting but responding. 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 to write the article if you're just going to be reflexive about it. But if you're going to stop and be planful and create a response that is now moving towards behavior modification, I think that's the first step, right? The idea that I'm changing first and 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 episode that we released with Kim. My boss at Proact was developed, you know, the crisis response management was developed from a systematic approach. The premise, the two premises, employees have a clear understanding of their own ability to affect the behavior of the people that they work with. Mike, you just talked about that, but the second one is the systematic approach. How can we make sure that we're all on the same page and that we know what we're doing. And this allows us to respond rather than react. And whether we're talking about it for price specifically, but that's so important with ABA or just parenting, just feeling like you have a plan and you can respond rather than react to these situations.

SPEAKER_00: 14:46

That's key. That's key. Again, it's the empowerment part, right? So anybody could take what we said, and this is a theme we've talked about here before. Any parent could look at us and say, well, so you're putting this on me. Well, yes, we are. We're not blaming you for the undesired behavior your child's emitting, but we're saying that if anybody is empowered to create the change, to incite the change, it's you along with your child, or better yet, you for your child. That goes a long way, and again, I can't stress that enough. As a parent, you love your kids unconditionally. You might find yourself in a situation, I'm actually going through a developmental explosion with my soon-to-be four-year-old. She'll turn four next week, and And, you know, from her theory of mind development to just her exploration 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 plane delays, being on... You know, being on vacation, and she gets a little bit sick. I think everybody I talk to got sick 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... family around us and everybody's trying to help and she just looks at us earnestly at one point she says i just want to be home i just want my stuff and at that point you realize okay i don't like the sounds you're making i don't like the way you're behaving or misbehaving as it were but i understand what you're saying i get it i need to be able to look at you and say kiddo i believe you i know that you want to be home because so do we but right now we're with family. So again, taking time to be planful, to not be reactive because all of these things are autonomic. And what I mean by that is automatic in the sense, your child is, you know, you're programmed to take certain stimuli from your kid and respond to them, they're distress calls. So again, really important theme here that I think Jeremy Brown reminds us of, which is you want your child's behavior to change and very likely if not almost entirely starts with you as a parent.

SPEAKER_01: 16:57

Well, you know what? Kim said something in that last episode, and we'll talk more about it at the end. I know I'm kind of going out of order, but it's so relevant to what you just said. She had a quote that was probably my favorite quote of the year that I implement all the time in my prior trainings when I'm talking to people. Whose needs are we meeting with? And I think when you were saying your daughter just said, I just want to be home and have my stuff. It's really easy to focus on our own needs because a lot of times especially younger individuals that have less impulse control are going to do that yelling and screaming and crying or they're going to do it and then we call it an outburst or a protest And then all we focus on is our need to get that to stop. And then in looking at that, we lose the fact of their need of what they're trying to, you know, we will call it the function of behavior, you know, in ABA. But I always feel like the stating it as whose needs are we meeting when even moving into the ABA field is so much more of a, That hits home better than saying the function of behavior. I feel like the function of behavior can sound very mechanical when we're talking to parents and sound very robotic. And it loses the interpersonal relationship of, hey, I'm still interacting with my kid or my client who's... not just my client, but that's somebody's son or daughter or sister or brother. These are people that we're working with. So it just made me think about it when you brought up your daughter's bringing that up. And maybe as she gets older, she's able to realize if she communicates that to you in better ways, she's actually able to get her needs met better than in other ways.

SPEAKER_00: 18:37

Yeah, so the differential reinforcement, right? And what you're talking about is a much longer process. So the idea that we often... I'm going to say this, we might bastardize a Premack principle in modern ABA implementation. It becomes this very authoritarian, you have to do what I'm asking you first before anything happens. Now, in and of itself, that's not incorrect. That is, in fact, the nature of the Premack principle. And then there's what you discussed, which is, it's not going to happen right away. Most of the time, it's not gonna happen after one so-called trial or one attempt. You're gonna have to dance. You're gonna ask, you're gonna tell your child, this is the contingency and if you can get this done, then we can make this available to you. It doesn't mean they're gonna stop crying. In fact, they might cry more because 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 is a consequence to our behavior. If that child escalates further, it doesn't mean that what we said or did was wrong necessarily. Although it should alert us to go, okay, wait a minute. Should I have done something different because I just increased the distress? Or... to sound mechanical, did I hit the function of the behavior? And now how do I start soothing toward then collaborating with the child, knowing that I might have one behavior in mind, one target behavior, but there's probably at least two, three other differentiated replacement behaviors that I could reinforce in this moment toward some suitable outcome. But we can get really, really myopic and really linear if we're not careful. I know we talk about that a lot here, but again, this is where in thinking about what you do as a parent, what are you gonna do when you lose your patience because your child has now been crying for 45 minutes, which by the way, is not completely out of range, right? We've talked about this stat here before, the idea that if you have an 18 to 60 month or so a toddler to five years old, you're gonna be caught in at least one and a half minutes, 90 seconds a day on average, per a lot of large studies, in some sort of tantrum behavior. That's just what kids do. Now, in all fairness, if you find yourself, I like my 80-20 rule, right? If you find yourself more than 20% of the time in those uncontrollable situations where you're losing patients and your child's also in distress, that's what people like us are here for. That's what people like us. So again, there's a normalcy to it. It's okay, hang tight. try to find some grace from a friend or somebody else, another parent. And then if you find yourself beyond that 20% in that distress feeling, please reach out to somebody, reach out to us here on ABA on tap. If it's not us that can help, we'll give you other resources. But there's a normalcy to the idea of tantrum, for example, and then your quality of life is being affected. Let's get you some help.

SPEAKER_01: 21:37

You know, it's interesting that I never really thought about, until you mentioned it right now, in the context that I just thought about it right now, is we talk about tantrum, and we're usually associating that with loud behaviors, you know, yelling, screaming, falling to the floor, and stuff like that. But somebody could lose their cognition equally, but be doing more internal behaviors. Like my girlfriend, when she gets upset, or my partner, when she gets upset, she's not gonna yell and scream, she's just gonna shut down. Which in theory, from a developmental perspective, is just as much of a tantrum or a break from baseline, I guess we would call, call that, right? The cognition has gone equally as far as somebody yelling or screaming, but we would never call somebody just sitting there quietly not responding a tantrum. It's really interesting, and I think that just goes because that's potentially more socially acceptable, but more importantly, it's easier for me to deal with. But their deviation from baseline might just be equally as far. I don't know if that

SPEAKER_00: 22:37

made sense. You just described my soon-to-be four-year-old's new technique. So we went from very, very loud outbursts. The kid can cry. She's got some lungs. In fact, I remember when she was born and they took her away at one point to do some testing. And my wife and I were hearing the sound. It's like, wow, that's a really interesting sound. To this day, we don't know if it was louder or clearer. We just know that we could hear that 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 the developmental progression or the behavioral progression from a very loud cry to the outright refusal. So It didn't matter what we offered her to play to soothe her. No, no, no. The answer was no. Now, to your point, I like the way you differentiate it, and we're going to use this in the future 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, and there's the withdrawal. And that's where my four-year-old is now, which is just as infuriating because even though she's not admitting something that looks like a tantrum, If I'm not careful, my response to her withdrawal might very much end up looking like an outburst. Because now I'm imploring her to respond 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 knows what rude is. But this is where these lessons begin. to develop, I guess, or to unfold. And the idea that I am now teaching her that not responding to somebody when they ask you a question can be taken as rude as much as I have to look in that moment and say, oh, it looks like you're not ready to respond to me. How can I move on to show you that I'm not going to get stuck and lend you undivided attention as a result of this behavior? I can say that really calmly now. I can kick back here with my coffee. Yeah, dude, of course, you need to 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 her withdrawn, let's say she's completely withdrawn, she's not responding, has a similar level of activation of her sympathetic nervous system, or would you say that would be less than if she's having 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 some conjecture here, but that's a really good question because I'm going to say that physiologically it's different. So I'm going to venture to guess that her respiration, her heart rate, are not like they are when she's having an outburst. I think that's hitting your question. However, maybe the flight... response isn't so active because of that, but the fight is still kind of entrenched. It's almost more like rumination, I guess. And one of these days, my daughter's going to hear this when she's older and say, I can't believe you gave so much of my private information when I was four. But it is interesting. It's turning into this almost like... self-effacing, like she'll want to punish herself. She'll throw her comfort blanket away. And then if we offer it to her, she says no. It's almost like this weird guilt thing that she's going through. I don't know. But yeah, I would say that the arousal is different. It is different. The refusal, the breakdown in communication is the same, but it is different. And to your point... It's just as infuriating as if she's crying. So again, I can preach this all day. I've got to get off the podcast or get home from work and be a father myself.

SPEAKER_01: 26:20

Yeah, it'd be interesting. I imagine the heart rate would be a little different. But I imagine it wouldn't be as different as people would think it would be. Because I think that a lot of times when people are doing the withdrawal, there's There's the idea that there's some semblance of control that's preventing them to basically tip over the edge into the outburst. And maybe there is, or maybe there isn't. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 26:44

You just made me think of something. I don't have super strict data on this, but I would say that something I didn't mention is that somewhere along the line, too, she's learned to feign crying and distress. There's a little manipulation there. Right? So the difference, one difference that I can tell just from observation is that if she's in true distress, then soothing her is never going to be at the snap of a finger. But if she's withdrawing or feigning, then I might be like, oh, look at this toy. And then all of a sudden we're from escalated or seemingly escalated status. to back to baseline in a snap of a 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 Raising Cane's getting some lunch and there was this kid, I don't know how old he is, five, six, seven, somewhere in that range. And he would lose it for like 20 seconds and immediately stop and look around the restaurant and see if anybody was paying attention to him. And if somebody was looking at him, he would orient himself to that person, fall down and lose it for like 20 seconds, then immediately stop and look around and 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 lost it. Well, this person clearly hadn't fully lost it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to immediately turn it off and have the cognition to look at who'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 make attributions about behavior. We're going to observe, right? And I know that parents often come in with the notion of, oh, they're doing that to manipulate. Yes. Not always the case, just like they're not always doing it to be rude. But I would contend that this is how we learn about being rude. This is how we learn about manipulating, knowing that we can emit certain stimuli, certain sounds, and people are going to pay attention for different reasons. And what is the outcome of that? So this takes me back to another, I know you got something for us, but this takes me back to the beginning of, or to the idea that we're so linear in ABA sometimes. And what you and I are talking about is one straight line with a whole bunch of possible offshoots 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 of that. How many kids have we worked with over the years that all they say is, I want ball, I want car, I want whatever. And it's because we've only accepted one behavior. And us as practitioners need to learn to accept more behaviors even if it's not the idyllic behavior at that moment to give them the idea that you don't just need to do the one response that we're looking for which actually might might even lead into the masking debate saying that you're only allowed to do one response but there's other responses that okay yes maybe unit is the client need to be flexible with what we'll accept but us as the practitioner need to also be flexible

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

right right now that that's uh that that bi-directionality i think is something that we've gotten better uh as a field we've gotten better at it And then there's the question of the young professionals that we're bringing in and how to train them to look at those things, right? So it's, we have to draw that straight line, that three-part contingency, that simple discrete trial, if you will, to use those phrasings. And then we have to open it up a little bit more. So all the things we're talking about now that's more of a dance, less of a I tell you than you do versus I tell you than maybe you don't do, what do I do next? I think that's where our training prospectively needs to get better with more developmentally sound framework to train our RBTs with an ongoing discussion. It's so hard in our field right now. Once you hit the ground, once you're out in the field, continuing with professional development, continuing to train our RBTs, our young professionals, with theory, sound theory, as opposed to just direct techniques or hacks, if you will. This is what you do, the first thens or the, you know, the bastardization of token economies. Again, all these things that are very 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 back to Prague, but one of the foundational principles of that is we use an approach rather than techniques. Because if people see a technique, 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 is really useful. And I think ABA can work on improving that, is empowering people. Because what happens... They also see it in ABA with RBTs. I've been training for 15 years. That people want to come to you and they want to know, when Johnny does this, what do I do? Which allows them to kind of turn off their brain as the RBT and just do the same thing. And in fact, the opposite needs to be the most effective thing. When they're escalating, we need to turn our brains on more and figure out what options we can give them. Because so often in ABA, it was just my way or the highway. And we led to, it wouldn't be an ABA on tap if we didn't bring up blanket extinction or blanket ignoring. But it led to these very rote responses. And then we wondered why our clients had very rote responses and seemed very robotic. Well, the people interacting with them, us, were very robotic. It was like, unless you do this exact behavior, unless you press this L key, that's the only way an L can get onto the screen. And it's like, well... What if you have a T and you move it to the bottom? Or what if I put an I and I just accept that and then we work on the L later? Like there's a lot of, I know I got kind of abstract there. There's a lot of ways we can get an L. What if I do an underline and then an I, right? There's various ways that we can do 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 remind me of, you know, these days when you're texting or sending a message and let's say I'll use a W for with, but the will turn into an A or something like that. And the idea that you read back your text sometimes, you're like, oh man, I made a mistake. And then you know your friends on the other end. You know who might get confused by that mistake, but you also know the larger group usually of people who are gonna understand contextually that you didn't mean that, you meant the other. And that's what it is. I think for a lot of our clients, our kiddos that we work with, I can only imagine how difficult it is to know that there's only one target. And you're kind of throwing the dart around the target. You're still scoring points, but nope, it's zero. It's zero, it's zero until you hit this one linear piece. And it sort of reminds me of... where actually my wife and I are going to start a little living room dancing for the new year, a little resolution to spend more time together. But it reminds me of this idea that having done dance lessons before, you go with the instructor, you're watching the video, you're in your living room, you move your coffee table, maybe your couch is getting in your way, but you've got this nice open space to do the steps exactly as planned. And then when you hit the dance floor with other people, you're going to have to modify those dance steps. The rhythm has The count can stay the same. The dance, the moves can stay the same. But now you're going to have to improvise a little bit. You're going to have to move this way before you counted your full three count that way because you're about to bump into somebody. And hopefully that analogy works. But I would want prospective RBTs, all of us in the field, to continue to consider that. A lot of times we're going to say, well, these are young professionals. We have to train them quickly. We have to train them in this one route. I don't disagree with that. But let's not stop there. Let's get them out onto those dance floors and allow them to modify those steps as opposed to expecting them to do the exact same steps precisely when they're in a crowd now or when they're in somebody's living room, to use that phrasing. And it's not working out exactly as planned.

SPEAKER_01: 34:52

Yeah. I think Maggie, and we'll talk about 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're listening. We'll prompt you. But big fans of Maggie Haraburda out 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 in the conference and in our meetings with her instead of having the you know the one way that we're saying that like you're saying that the people we work with have to go through let's give them eight ways and see which one they choose and then we can follow their lead rather than forcing them uh down you know one of the one of the 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 of what Maggie talks about, that it seems like a nuance, and if somebody doesn't listen closely enough, they might say, oh, I do that too. Believe me, you're not doing it like she is. She might brainstorm eight different things that are possibilities, and she's still looking for that ninth or that tenth during her observation, where even sometimes in my best effort to be a little bit more open-ended, even in picking those eight things, that can be very authoritarian or limiting if you're not careful. And it sounds like Maggie... watches. So she might prepare preemptively some things that she wants to see based on development or based on the violin or whatever it is she might be using. But again, she's not going to stop at those eight. She's going to keep observing toward those other things that the child might already have in place, the strengths that are already visibly observable, and then use those to launch into the other things that might be needed. And that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 36:28

Absolutely. Talk more about that when we talk about the conference. One of the next episodes I'm going to skip to because it's very relevant to what we're talking about now, then I'll come back to the one we skipped, was the models of disability. That was an episode, I think that was one of the... I don't want to say harder episodes, but it was one that we had to be very careful about. One that were not experts. We were sharing our opinions on it. One that can certainly be a hot button subject. And I think we covered a lot of ground in that models of disability. And the premise of that one was basically whose job is it to change in that models of disability? Because somebody has a disability, do they need to get fixed? Do we need to change? Does there need to be something in 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 words here. Fix. You know, who are we working for? Things like that. I think that that's very important. The idea of what's going wrong with who and then who... whose needs are we serving, which is something you keep talking about from Proact. I think if you bring those two things together, we begin to construct maybe both a very socially valid and medically valid model. There are things, there are challenges that are very present in a young child who is facing a developmental delay that may or may not be autism, right? And the idea that You're going to look at those and see them as important because of the challenges the deficits are creating. And then from the social model and thinking about ableism and all these other things that become a little bit detrimental to a lot of people, considering Is that the only fix? So the idea that I'm doing a violent questionnaire and the child, does your child say 50 words? No, he doesn't. Well, let's make a goal that he's gonna say 50 words. Okay, how are we gonna get there? We're not just gonna snap our fingers. And are words the main things we're after? Or is it 50 ways to... communicate different things or man for different things, whether it's with gestures or an AAC device. So I think this is what we're getting at here with this idea of models. Yes, the deficits are important, but if you talk to somebody like Maggie or we explore this topic a little bit more, or even our own approaches to ABA, well, how are we going to address the deficits? We're going to have to address them with something that's already available as we mold and teach something new, right? I don't think there's any way around that. So the strengths-based model, the strengths-based approach that is being kicked around a little bit, and sometimes I think people have a really good grip on it. I'm not going to claim that I have a very studious, well-researched grip on it, although I feel good about the premise, and I think a lot of my developmental approaches fall right into that already. But yeah, something very interesting that I know we're going to continue to explore, that we've continued to explore in the recent past, and it's working really well for us. And I can't wait to have Maggie on to tell us a little bit more about it.

SPEAKER_01: 39:45

Yeah. Shout out to, that also happened this year, both Sarah and Cindy. I think Sarah led us down this episode when she brought up these models of disability, which I wasn't even familiar with. So thank you, both of you ladies, for coming on outside of the podcast. And you all did a wonderful job just getting giving me some insight as Mike and I present a look to put together a parent training. I'm sorry, not a parent training. We're not training people how to be parents. A parent ABA education curriculum that is very much coming from parents as well. Because I think eventually people get tired of people that aren't parents telling them what to do or people that haven't been in that situation telling them what to do.

SPEAKER_00: 40:27

And Sarah and Cindy, just two other parents that we have the privilege of knowing who, as Dan said, came on to help us lend some perspective for first-time parents or people looking at ABA for the first time. Both these ladies are really well-versed in ABA with their kids. One of them with a much older son who's had a very rich and long history, an incredible content expertise for a parent, an incredible historical perspective for a parent as far as ABA is concerned. And then yes, to Sarah, more specifically, who kind of brought this idea of models to us in her discussion. And I Can't Mention Sarah episode, and he was very quick to say, hey, you guys didn't talk about collaborative parenting, which ever since then, whenever I talk about authoritative approaches, I mention the collaborative piece because I think that's a really good way to reframe the idea that, yes, I do have some authority over my child as a parent, and then better yet, when I can collaborate and cooperate along with them, that really allows that authoritative feel to take hold. So thanks for that, Pop-Pop.

SPEAKER_01: 41:49

Yes, and that just... exemplified kind of the point of this podcast is we want to have people from all walks of the life, people maybe that have autism, parents of people that have autism, ABA practitioners that are new or older, school teachers. We want to have all of you on so we can learn because I learned so much from those two parents. It was just incredible. Let me pass it over to you for a quick interlude.

SPEAKER_00: 42:15

Well, we're talking about our science here, right? I want to talk about a little bit of magic. Now, one of the things I'm really excited about yet again for our next season is lost touch a little bit, but very, very important partnership with Magic Mind. So again, I lost track a little bit, but we're back in the flow. 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 for providing this and for making it so exciting. So you open up this beautiful box and right on the inside, it says Magic Meets Science at magicmind.com slash learn. I encourage you to go on there to learn a little bit more about this product. product and what it offers you the other side of the box says it's not magic it's you and i like that from a behavioral perspective the idea that we want our kids to change but it's the change within us that comes first now let me tell you a little bit about what magic mind does for me it puts me in a really cool calm Sharper mind, calm energy, flow state. Man, I've tried energy drinks. I remember when Bread Bull first came out. Cool idea. Tasted funny. Just didn't do it for me. Definitely wasn't going to put it in my mixed drinks with vodka, which, again, I know people do that. More power to you. This wasn't for me, and it wasn't going to give me energy along with the vodka, so there goes that. You know, Monster, all these other products, they do well. They provide a certain level of energy, and I appreciate that. Much like I was always afterwards with my coffee, right? But my coffee, that also runs out at some point. I can only have so much of it before it affects my stomach. Magic Mind is just this nice, cool, refreshing, bright, kind of grassy tasting elixir that puts 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, a little bit of matcha tea extract in there. It flows really, really well. And it's something that I'm glad is back in my refrigerator. So they got some nice behavioral directions, which I've alluded to here. You shake, you breathe, you drink. You want it chilled, right? So best enjoyed refrigerated, although it's not necessary. And you want to add it to your daily morning ritual for better mental performance. I know that the more often I use it, the better I feel the effects. If I can use it three days in a row, 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's Sunday and it's time for you and I to record, Dan. I feel those effects. I feel energized. It's a nice, smooth, calm energy. Nothing jittery, nothing overly amped, but it's nice and clean. So, if you're out there and you want something, an alternative to your energy drink or to your coffee, let me recommend Magic Mind.

SPEAKER_01: 45:19

If you want to make sure that you are stimulated enough mentally to always just blow past the time frames that we have to do podcasts, do some magic mining. That will make sure that every podcast 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 our episode description or go to www.magicmind.com slash capital A, capital O, capital T. Use discount code AOT in all caps to receive 20% off your purchase and 56% off a subscription. Rediscover your mental power and endurance. shake breathe drink magic mind i'm so glad i'm so glad to be back with uh my little green shot sir moving on so um we we always like to keep things to about an hour That trend changed significantly in our last season. We started running an hour 13, hour 15. So we're not going to sell ourselves short, but we are going to keep things nice and succinct. So you guys have a nice little kernel, a nice little 60, 70, 80 minute kernel to enjoy. And we don't belabor this too much. 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'll talk about later. What was the 3 Pi Squared podcast? April and Steve, thank you so much. The announcement that we'll talk about later could not have been done without you. We really appreciate both going on your podcast and having you come on ours. Mike, thoughts on the 3 Pi Squared podcast and ABA business leaders. Y'all are doing some amazing stuff.

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 run their own business to now offering their insights to other business, ABA business leaders. I mean, truly a blessing to have met them, to have made that connection. It's just amazing to, again, to see that balance, to to see how Steve pays so much attention to April's clinical acumen. And then, you know, doesn't always agree with it from the business perspective, but they always find a really good balance. And if you're out there, you're an ABA business professional, you've got a business, you've got a partnership, you're whatever it is. If you don't know about 3 Pi Squared and the ABA business leadership page on Facebook, Please find them. Find Steven and April Smith as soon as you can. Try to make a connection if that's relevant to you. They are a wealth of information and yeah, I couldn't be happier that we made that connection with them.

SPEAKER_01: 48:07

Yes, if you are a professional looking to maybe branch out and start your own thing, there is so much that you have no idea about, I guarantee it. They have a course that can basically walk you through the thought to the process, to the credentialing, to the first day. So look at that. in the field in any capacity. They have the ABA Business Leaders Forum. That is a wonderful forum to allow people to connect and there's a lot of competition, a lot of trying to one-up in the ABA field and it's done nothing but hurt us and drive our rates down and drive our quality of service down. The forum that they've provided, the ABA Business Leaders, is a wonderful way to bring people together, to unite as an ABA field, to make our service more credible, more effective and the quality of the service that we provide better so please please check out both of the products that they offer and I know they're coming up with a lot of you know newer products I wouldn't be shouting this out if we didn't use it ourselves and see a huge benefit from it Please, please, please check out their podcast as well. April and Steve and 3 Pi Squared Family. Y'all do wonderful, wonderful stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 49:15

Yeah, we can't thank them enough. And we, again, incredibly blessed to be able to continue our partnership with them. So we've got some projects coming up with them in the new year and ongoing. Very excited to be collaborating with them. So can't say enough about them. Probably a good time to mention Suzanne Jeswick. Or should we wait a little bit? Let's wait a little bit on that. All right. We're going to wait on Suzanne just 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, hopefully you all will be back in 2025 on our podcast. Please. We will continue to collaborate this relationship. The next one was actually our most downloaded, I believe, episode of the entire year. We did split it into two episodes because, believe it or not, we ran a little long and decided to just keep it going and make it two episodes.

SPEAKER_00: 50:10

We were wordy? Imagine that.

SPEAKER_01: 50:11

Imagine that. Empirically validated treatments.

SPEAKER_00: 50:15

Oh, wow. I actually kind of forgot about this 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 discussions for empirically validated treatments?

SPEAKER_00: 50:27

Well, it's an ongoing discussion, right? I think there's a lot of our colleagues that are purists that would look at something like a Seven Dimensions seminal article and and look through that and not contextualize it from a time perspective and look at certain words or certain concepts that are written in there and begin to lend maybe some valid, but maybe some unneeded and harsh criticism over things like that. So everything in those seven dimensions, you could say has an empirical validation to it, right? That's what's being put out there, but it doesn't mean that from a social perspective, it's valid at this point in time. And in fact, there's a lot of backlash against those things. Now, I'm gonna say something very simple about an article like that. I believe that article still would use something like the word retardate to refer to a person, uses a noun to refer to a person that we would now say is intellectually disabled. Now, the reason I use that example is that that can be very offensive to read an antiquated word like that. And it can be so offensive that you lose perspective on the value of the information that's otherwise in that article. And I think that's what I would take away at this point in time from us having done that particular episode is we have a foundational science. We can go back and read about how Lovaas utilized electric shock to address a feminine behavior in a young boy. Even as I say those words, that sounds horrific. And then if we contextualize the time and place and the reason for it, you would see that Alovas had very, very good intent, had a really good reason to get into that. Now, would we want to think about that in 2025 and using such a procedure? Absolutely not. Does that kill the relevance of using such a procedure back in 1976? I believe it was. I'm gonna argue it doesn't. I'm gonna argue that it's as valid now as it was then, knowing that obviously we wouldn't take the same approach. We would be using different contextualized factors of modern day to then do something, which oddly enough, now being in my 28th year of practice, I can look back at year one and know that there was a lot of stuff I did that I would never do again. Now, does that mean, does that make me and my ABA evil? I hope not. What it does mean is I progressed. I moved ahead in my science. And that's what I think this, that episode in terms of empirical validation Just because something's empirically validated doesn't mean it's frozen in time toward its application in the future. We need to be able to evolve. We need to be able to take the idea of empirical validation and know that it's taken from a lab. And then how are we going to run with it to a setting with less or no experimental control for that matter? Now we're talking about instructional control. So I get the feeling we're going to revisit these models, just as we are going to revisit a lot of parenting styles, because from Commando to Helicopter to Gentle to I don't know what parenting, Diana Bommerman's model has now exploded from three, four different categories to about 50 million that come through with parenting magazines. something valid to say and something to criticize each other with but again the idea that we need to contextualize and continue to take what's valuable from these models knowing that if it works for our client and it works within reason and it's culturally valid in their home and it's improving the quality of life it doesn't really matter how well it replicates the exact journal article we took it from right so I said a lot there I don't know if 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 is evidence-based, and that's what allows us to get funding. And it was evidence-based in a lab. But people don't live in a lab. So the question is, the farther we get away from that lab treatment, the more external validity we have at the expense of internal validity. Does it lose validity, basically? If we're trying to do the lab procedure in someone's home that's not conducive, Can we alter it? Can we be flexible without losing that evidence-based criterion? And we had really good discussions. In fact, we made two episodes out of it. The first one being our most listened to episode of the year. Please, you know, listen to that. Let us know your thoughts. We're very, very open and interested to have people on the episode that say, hey, no, it needs to be very much like medicalized. It needs to be done in this specific way. Otherwise, it's not you lose the evidence base. Or if you're on the other side and say, no, let's make it fit into people's routines and you don't lose the evidence base. Listen to the episode, let us know your thoughts. We just want to create the discussions and make a better service.

SPEAKER_00: 55:20

And it's interesting because procedurally speaking, there's a physicality to a medical procedure, right? The idea that there probably aren't too many ways to insert an IV, right? There's a pretty strict procedure. probably very, very small margin of error, or meaning probably high margin of error if you're not careful, but probably not a whole lot of flexibility or not a whole lot of different methods to do so, to get it in correctly. There's only one way to get that thing flowing. And then there's the idea of human behavior, and the very fair question, is that more dynamic? I would argue it is. So with ABA, there might be one way and a student or SD one behavior, one consequence you've outlined as part of your program plan. That's great. Now, I would argue, I think you would agree that if you're going to really promote more generality or a better learning efficiency, you want to have several SDs with several behaviors, with several consequences that all fit the mold. And, you know, that's what we're moving toward here is, again, those dance steps. Yes, I know how to swing. I know how to swing in my living room and move around and it's great when nobody's in my way. And then there's the idea that other variables that are present in the environment, how are you going to adjust your dance steps, still move to the rhythm, still make it look good, and still end up swing dancing, for example.

SPEAKER_01: 56:48

I think with your IV example, there is some variability because I've been in the hospital so much that sometimes I'll put it in my hand, sometimes I'll put it in my arm. Good point. And we'll put it in somebody's foot. So you have to be able to roll with the punches depending on what that person is bringing to you.

SPEAKER_00: 57:03

And sometimes you get a young phlebotomist and they're just going to try your arm. They're just going to try your arm and you're going to end up bruised. And to your point there, I think that's an excellent variation you add to this variation you know, for better or worse example or analogy, but yeah, you're right. The example you just gave for phlebotomists, that's what we're after for ABA professionals. Hey, I don't see the vasculature in your arm. Can I try your hand? Oh, you're afraid of your hand. Okay, let's get you to squeeze on this a little bit more and let's tie you off and see if we can make that come up. How can I warm those things up? How gentle can I be? Can I warn you before it goes in? Whatever it is, do I know that I put it in, you know, kind of oddly, so now it's pinching. Do I start over? All of those things is what we'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, throwing items. Big challenge, man. We respect those RBTs out there in the field. They really... are the ones that promote the majority of what we do. So take care of them, keep training them, keep teaching them how to do those dance steps no matter what dance floor they're on.

SPEAKER_01: 58:10

Yeah, I like that analogy because I feel like historically in ABA we were like, no, we're going to put this IV in your arm. It doesn't matter how bruised you get, whatever, this IV goes in your arm. Maybe we're teaching joint attention. And we've got this one item. And if you don't jointly attend to it, we're going to prompt you. Because it has to go on the arm and you need to do this one item. Versus, let's look at other options. Are there other places we can do it? Are there other stimuli, other SDs that we can reinforce? So instead of forcing you to our SD, we're going to follow what your SDs are creating in the natural environment. Which is a whole other tangent. And created a whole lot of interesting disagreement at previous companies saying that we're not the only ones doing the SDs. Now, historically, I think me in the field, I would look at a bruised arm, but if the IV got in 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 forcing and 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 unreasonable premise. And at the same time, could we have done it without the bruising is the other question we're asking here. I really, really do appreciate that. That's excellent.

SPEAKER_01: 59:27

Because the more that arm bruises, the more painful it's going to be and the more that person's going to resist it, which is going to make it harder. Same thing with our concept. The more somebody doesn't want to do something and we're prompting it, the more that person is going to resist it because nobody wants to be physically prompted to do something they won't want to do. It's going to make it harder and it becomes cyclical.

SPEAKER_00: 59:47

And what's the the urgency of the IV, which I know we'll get into as we approach one of our final guests for last season. She brought up a really good true to life medical example. So to your point, how urgent is the IV? Can we wait on the IV? Because then sometimes the bruising just might be collateral damage. Sorry, didn't want to bruise you, needed to put this ID in urgently and quickly. Where can I afford the time to prepare the client or the patient in that sense to get the IV. So two different, at least two different premises that we have to span, two different circumstances we have to span to make sure that we're being as respectful, as humanitarian, as professional as we can be knowing that we have to vary our otherwise empirically validated linear approaches. That's a lot. That's a big order.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:40

How urgent is it? I would argue that the vast majority of the things that we're working on are not that urgent. And to whom is it urgent? Exactly. Maybe the person's not eating and failing to thrive. That's

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:51

urgent. Are they about to get a tube in their nose or their gut? Yeah, that's urgent.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:55

But if the person isn't playing with 15 toys, they're playing with two, maybe that's not life and death. Maybe that's not uber urgent. urgent and we can allow a little more grace.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:06

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 got rigidity or fixation, right? So I always like to put this premise 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 for 30 minutes already. So? Well, but the mom already said that they like dinosaurs a lot. Great. Go for it. So it's a really what I'm trying to say is, yes, the variation, the generality, the expansion beyond just playing with dinosaurs. Amazing. We want to get there. But the urgency of why, why do we want to get there just for the sake of variation? Can we sit with the dinosaurs and build rapport or do our pairing or do whatever it is we like to talk about that then builds that relationship with the child? How urgent is it that we change the stimulus of dinosaurs in this example? Because we're up against this diagnostic trait of fixation or rigidity, sometimes we create, in my opinion, an urgency which isn't necessarily there. These are all individualized situations. You cannot take what I'm saying and apply it blindly to every situation. And that's my point is you have to look at every individual circumstance.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:20

Yep. um next episode if you're good yes sir all right next episode was a big one in fact it was our second most listened to episode it might have been i would venture to guess it's probably actually our most listened to just on other platforms outside of just buzzsprout uh was miss kendall who came on the behavior influence your book is out by the way book is out i have a copy of it nice talk behavior to me The Rutledge Dictionary of the Top 150 Behavior Analytic Terms and Translations. One of our first guests that reached out, found us, came on. It was a pleasure to have you on, Kendall. Thank you for making that book.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:59

She'll be coming back.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:00

We really appreciate you coming on and giving us the time to talk. Yeah, we covered a lot of ground, talked a lot about sports, just a lot of ground on the technological dimension of ABA. How can we make this stuff understandable, implementable, and digestible to the people that are actually going to be doing the service?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:18

A quick shout out to Lindenwood, Lindenwood University. I hope I'm getting that right. Small world. Kendall is a sports coaching consultant for that university softball team. My sister-in-law happened to play on that team, although it was two different campuses. So they knew of each other, but didn't know each other. Small world. I couldn't agree more. Really super glad that Kendall was gracious enough to allow us to have access to her platform. She's got a tremendous amount of TikTok followers. TikTok followers, that's great. And she's got her book out. So I know we'll have her back and really take a deep dive into the book, knowing that she's trying to make ABA accessible in general, whether it is that you're treating autism or not. And then, as you mentioned, Dan, she's really breaking the boundaries. She's really going beyond, you know, our little our little scope here, having been mandated in California for almost 13 years now and only addressing one particular diagnostic code. Someone like Kendall is now taking ABA into sports training, into other, you know, fashion, makeup. Her TikTok has all sorts of different real life scenarios that she brings the ABA prowess into. So thank you for that, Kendall. I know that Because of her, we've got other people approaching us to be guests on the podcast. Couldn't thank you enough for that access and that promotion. And just a dynamic person all around. It was such a pleasure to talk to her. So look forward to having her in the future.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:55

I think one of the themes of the year, and we'll talk about it again later, was kind of a reinvigoration with the field of ABA. I feel like... Maybe, and hopefully it didn't come across like this because I think you and I are very optimistic about life, but being in the field of ABA, working with kids with autism, dealing with medical insurances, just can run down a little bit. It can just be like, oh, okay, another fight of justifying services to an insurance rep who doesn't know what they're talking about but just wants to deny it. And it just kind of can be like, ah, exhausting. And Kendall coming on just was so reinvigorating about the field, her personality, just her excitement. I remember her talking about her first professor that just really inspired her to get into the field. And it was like, yeah, I remember that. I remember when I was just so motivated. And I still very much am, and we'll talk about that. But it was nice to have that because so often just the monotony of the day-to-day life of ABA can just be so draining. And then you do so much. You try to fight so many obstacles, the billable hours, the medical insurance, the denials. Only to have, you know, a client screaming your face for, you know, two hours and you're just trying to find a solution. Only to have on Facebook, you know, 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 as well as the episode I'll talk about next in the conference. But that episode was the first one that kind of just reinvigorated me and grounded me. It was like, wow, we are doing some great stuff in ABA. The field is wonderful. There are certainly things that need to be addressed, which was obviously our impetus to create this podcast. That episode was very reinvigorating.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:36

We didn't talk once about time conversion on that episode. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. You mentioned the whole day about going through the process and getting the authorization and having some kid dancing for two hours and then having your administrators ding you because you didn't convert your session that night. Anyway, I couldn't help myself. Not once.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:55

If you're feeling run down in the field, reach out to Kendall. She will reinvigorate you into the field and give you some grounding on why we're doing what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:04

Check out her book, too. Let's plug her book. Check out her book. It's available on Amazon and everywhere you can find books. Talk behavior to me. Remind me the rest of it. The

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:13

Rutledge Dictionary of the top 150 behavior analytic terms and translations.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:18

Awesome. I hope it's doing well. I hope it's selling the cock eggs.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:20

Make ABA fun again.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:21

Congrats, Kendall. Congrats.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:24

The next episode, one of the... the biggest episodes, possibly in, not necessarily in immediate listenership, but I think this episode probably had the most profound impact on the direction of this podcast. And that was Jennifer Fitzpatrick in the

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:41

CPADA conference. Shout out to Jennifer, man. You were able to achieve quite a feat back in October. And I'm sure many months before that, before it could be achieved, but... Jennifer and Clinical Practice and ABA Conference, the inaugural presentation of that conference, we had the privilege of meeting a tremendous amount of very passionate, very successful, very innovative ABA professionals. And let me bring back the example that I know Jennifer used in her episode with us that Relates back to this idea of the IV. And again, gets back into this idea of empirical validation versus now, for lack of better phrasing, compassionate treatment. I know I have plenty of colleagues who have been practicing for many years, let's say 50 years at this point. And it's a little frustrating for them to hear about this new wave of compassionate ABA. Because for them, it could be like, wait, what was I doing? I wasn't being compassionate. How do you know? I've been compassionate and so forth, right? Now, Jennifer is sort of on that end of things. We'll call it a little bit more traditional school,

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:58

okay?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:59

And she brings up a really good point from a medical perspective, which then maybe speaks to the idea of something like physical prompting in our daily ABA sessions with kids that are on the autism spectrum or kids that are autistic. She talks about a catheter. And the idea that is someone who is suffering from dementia is continuing to suffer through urinary tract infections because they're not able to urinate effectively and fully. So a catheter can empty the bladder, clear out that line, prevent infection if applied correctly. And here this patient is refusing to allow somebody to apply a catheter, which at this point, if they continue to suffer infections, is going to compromise their very life. Maybe a little bit of a harsh or a dramatic example, but I think very poignant and very applicable. Your thoughts, sir?

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:56

Yeah, there were definitely a lot of hot takes in that episode. If you want an episode with a lot of hot takes, that would be the one to listen to. A lot of good points. I think some of the points were maybe... you know, we washed them out a little. That's not the term. We massaged them to get the actual point because maybe the way that it was delivered wasn't how it was intended. Jennifer, you opened up the door to our podcast to, you had really no idea who we are. And you had your baby, the CPABA conference that you were about to do. And I can't imagine how much money, how much time you spent in creating that. And you opened up the door to our podcast to moderate a whole lot of those conferences with a A lot of really bigwigs. We're talking about John Bailey who was at this conference. There was a lot of people that had a lot to say. And you trusted our podcast to moderate that. And thank you. Thank you for doing that. And that got us a 2025 list of a year's worth of podcast guests. Probably more. And actually changed the direction of the way that the podcast is probably going to go. It's going to be a lot more guest appearances and creating conversations with people that are very interesting and innovative in the field. And it was interesting because following Kendall's appearance, which I was then reinvigorated about, going and moderating the podcast and hearing how so many people in the field are doing so many innovative things. And there is a high level of compassion in the field. And it's not just about the billable hour. kind of allow me to take a step back 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 every single application.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:40

It was so enlightening to have a very important debate, to talk about themes of argument, to hear about some arguments that occurred during some of the sessions that were seemingly well resolved. And I think that the message I took away is, So maybe some people were promoting the whole mantra and take that ABA in and of itself is evil or misguided. Yet, however, I know none of those people have revoked their board certification. So that would tell me that we might disagree on the way our ABA looks, but ultimately we agree that ABA is a really good answer to a whole set of challenges that other people are facing out there. So while we still may not have arrived at a full alignment as to what ABA is supposed to look like or what techniques we're supposed to abandon or you know those things I think we all came away agreeing that ABA has value and that's why we are so you know feverishly arguing some of these points as to whether it's good bad or otherwise and yeah Jennifer let me echo Dan's sentiments thank you so much Jennifer Fitzpatrick for opening your doors and the CPABA conference for our assistance and moderating we were able to get some other Folks on the moderating panel, so Steve and April, our dear colleague CJ Conard was able to join and do some good work. Shout out to CJ. Truly one of the giants in the field that remains. So yeah, it was what a wonderful opportunity for us.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:16

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 are are doing ABA the way that we saw and hoped that it could be done. And people doing research, trying to find better ways to do it rather than just better ways to be more efficient. Yeah, that's good stuff. That was an exciting conference. Exhausting if that was 12 hours a 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. Joint attention. Creating a potential daycare or ABA in the school. All sorts of very relevant, interesting stuff. Check it out. Jennifer, thank you for doing that. Thank you for coming on our podcast. Definitely look forward to having you on after the conference where maybe you'll be a little bit more stress-free because I can't imagine how challenging that was to set up that conference.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:21

She was so, rightfully so, she was so concerned about getting it right. She represents... One of our first pre-interviews for the show, meaning we usually talk to people on email or a couple of text exchanges. Okay, come on. We'll moderate. We like to talk. For Jennifer, it was certainly a, well, hold on. Let's sit and talk about this because you've got a lot to offer. I think I called her episode an oatmeal imperial stout. You've got to pour big, but you've got to sip slowly, right? So, yeah, please do check it out. There's plenty of CEUs out there from the CPABA conference. Again, that's on Behavior Live, CPABA conference. It was back in October of 2024. You can still access it asynchronously and get some really good conversations and earn yourself some CEUs toward your two-year cycle here and recertification. So good luck on that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:16

And thank you, Jennifer, your daughter. Thank you, your daughter, for listening to us because Jennifer said she found out about our podcast through her daughter who listened to us. So thank you, Jennifer's daughter as well.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:26

Yeah, it was all of these folks that really brought our attention to the fact that we... 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 until folks like Kendall and Jennifer and Michael, who we can talk about next, brought it to our attention. So thank you, Jennifer. Without further ado here, Michael Gao, as we approach the end of our wrap-up, our year in review, Michael Gao and the Alpaca Health Group. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:56

That's it. That was an interesting one because I think you and I both have, and we shared it, we both have some skepticism about AI and how the more that we allow technology to make our services more efficient, potentially that takes away the humanality of the services. It makes them more robotic. So, Michael, I I think did a really awesome job of, we really appreciated the angle he was coming from, not just making it more efficient to add more billable hours, but actually allowing AI to really improve the quality of services. I think you were equally, if not more skeptical about AI in the beginning, Mike, what was some of your takeaways?

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:34

So my skepticism on AI is just the sort of free generation of content, right? So yes, very powerful tool that can write things for you. So the idea that AI was somehow going to be involved in creating treatment plans, knowing how averse even goal templates or goal banks have been for me when they're used incorrectly in my career, when it's just a plug and play, when it takes away the introspection or the careful planning for your treatment plans. So, yes, I was fully skeptical. The way Michael approached it really just allows the tool to do a lot of work for you that is going to save time toward then being able to apply more brain power, you know, more of your cognition, more of the clinical acumen toward the treatment planning. So we, in all honesty, we're still trying to find a better time to explore the tools fully. But, you know, again, Michael approached this from an ABA perspective, not just a general content creation perspective, or he knows what he's doing. He understands the service. And I feel very confident that he's created a tool that is very specific to our field. So we encourage you to go out there and check it out i think it's still uh free to access yeah and i know michael would very much appreciate um everybody's uh testing of this tool i do think it lends a lot of promise um with something like his explanation of like the parent interview yes and how uh you know in the near future as i get better at using this tool i'm a talker and sometimes i put out a ton of great ideas to these parents during an intake um an intake appointment and i can only capture so much so many of them even in the best notes that i produce so the notion that this is this tool can now capture everything and then i just go back and prompt it to bring up these things that as i you know create certain keywords or phrases as i'm speaking to the parent maybe write those down for my future reference and then put in a prompt to the tool to bring those sections back. And I've got a whole new transcript of everything that happened, not just what's in my memory. So again, shout out to Michael and the Alpaca Health Group. I think they've got some very promising things to offer the field.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:46

Yeah, yeah. I think we're very skeptical of templates ideas. We're really, really trying to get away from templated ABA. And a lot of the systems are kind of designed for that because that allows the computer programming to, if you can fit into that template, you can be increasingly more and more efficient. But like you said, Michael, what the parent interview talked about, how that can basically just notate what you talked about, because like you said, you can't really drive and text at the same time. RBT can't interact and take that at the same time. A lot of our parent interviews, we're hearing them talk, we're writing things down, but when we're writing them down, we can no longer interact and have that relationship with the parents. So there's a lot of things that this AI can allow us to do to be more efficient and actually more collaborative with the people that we're working with. I mean,

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:32

the idea, just the basic idea that I don't have to look away from them or say, give me a second to type and capture these notes, that has been a game changer, right? I like to be very attentive. I get to be an active listener when I speak to parents, especially so that they know that I'm taking it all in. And now this particular AI tool and this language model that Alpaca Health Group is developing specific to ABA services is going to make that very, very accessible. Now it's a conversation. It's not a questionnaire or an interview, so to speak. It's a conversation with a parent on the other side as a professional who knows how to offer help.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:11

Yes. And Michael, thank you for reaching 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 look forward to using Alpaca Health in the venture that we'll talk about here in a little while. Last episode that we published, and then I'll talk about the one that we didn't publish. was Kim Worma, the president of ProAct, Inc., the company that I work for. Kim, thank you so much for coming on. You shared, we went, I mean, it's what we do, we always go down wormholes, but you shared so much wisdom, even outside of ProAct. You know, again, my favorite saying of the year, whose needs are we meeting when, came from your podcast. And I remember that in the beginning, you were a little bit hesitant on like, how does this really, you know, you felt like you weren't necessarily the expert in ABA, but throughout the podcast, we just developed so many correlations between what PROAC does and ABA. And I can't emphasize enough. Look, I've been training PROAC for almost 15 years now in the ABA companies that I work with. If you have an ABA entity and you are worried about crisis management, you have a clinic where people might be coming escalated and potentially even assaultive, there's a lot of options out there. There's safety care, there's CPI, I'm familiar with most of them, and I'm not just saying that because I work there. Again, maybe my credibility isn't the best because

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:41

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'll get to that. Sorry about that. If anybody heard that, it was our outro music coming in a little prematurely. We ran long, that's what it's telling us.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:57

It's the year in review. We've got a lot to cover, so if we run long, we run long. Check out Proact as a crisis management and de-escalation curriculum. It is wonderful. Again, it really helps people feel empowered. Mike, you talked about earlier reacting rather than responding. If nothing else, I feel like over my 15 years of training, RBTs are most concerned about when I'm in the home and this client gets assaulted or this client escalates and the parents there, what do I do? This gives some great approaches and frameworks, not techniques, but frameworks for how to respond to various situations. It also gives some additional frameworks on if somebody is becoming assaultive, how to keep yourself safe as well.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:43

A lot of people might think of PROACT traditionally and what you focus on is the restraint part. And I think that not only has PROACT largely moved away from that, and I say that knowing that it might not have been their original intent, but I think Kim did such a wonderful job of stressing that particular thing that it's not even about the restraint part. And in fact, in our daily lives, in our daily work, we don't, outside of very particular circumstances, we wouldn't even be able to implement the restraint part. So to your point, it's all the other behavior management, rapport building, communication pieces that PROACT brings to the table, which you've made the point. The notion that a company would somehow integrate or just make the investment of that PROACT training as part of new hire training. I think that we don't consider how far that goes in learning how to interact with somebody who might be in crisis or escalating toward a crisis. How much of learning how to respond and react in that moment actually applies to just basic interaction. And how it stresses the listening part, right? So my favorite, going to a different set of techniques, we talk a lot about linguistic mapping and contingent imitation here. And my favorite part of those techniques is that it makes the professional watch and listen first. And I would say that that's the biggest takeaway I have from ProAct. Not to mention how much it brings in the idea of autonomic arousal. So now the idea of brain and behavior and how those things are correlated. That's amazing. That's amazing. with you there's a lot of systems out there yes my partner here is an employee of proact but i am unabashedly going to say if you haven't heard about proact if you haven't used it revisit it find it consider all the things that it can teach you toward effective ABA practice that are well before and completely separate from any idea of physical restraint.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:47

Yep. And prioritizing safety, right? That's the goal is to create a safe environment. And that's always priority number one. Another thing that Farag talks about that I think is really interesting is offering alternatives when people were escalating. We had some interesting discussions with Kim on that, how sometimes I think in ABA, we can be pretty dense or we can be pretty black and white of, well, if they're escalating, why are we going to offer alternatives? Is that reinforcing the behavior that we don't want them to do? And we worked through that. We talked about that. So listen to that episode to hear 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 ask me any questions on the ABA on tap. I am not doing this to For any other reason besides, I've done this for 15 years. This is not a paid endorsement. A huge, huge difference in the quality 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 about restraining somebody or anything like that, we're violating their rights. And we should be making that an absolute last resort. And product can give you some really good strategies to utilize instead of getting to that. In fact, the product is a two-day training. Well, the 14-hour training. The first seven hours, we don't even talk about responses. We talk about how to make sure that we are being the most professional. What is the purpose? What alternatives can we offer? How do we avoid the crisis?

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:16

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 it makes you think about, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:22

Exactly. And that's what really separates Proact from the other crisis management, which goes right into the responses. Proact is proactive. How can we prevent these things from happening?

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:33

I like that. I like that a lot. Well, so that was our final guest for this season. Are we? Oh, you got something else. Thank you again, Kim, for coming

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:41

on. Our last guest of the season, which was not released in the podcast. Not quite yet. We'll debate when and how to release this, was another lady who found us. And yeah, Suzanne. Suzanne. She's another person that is going to kind of change the direction of ABA on tap moving into 2025. Let me pass it to you, Mike.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:05

So Suzanne Jeswick from Innovation Moon and a few other projects that we'll mention throughout the season. We are proud to announce, not official yet, but we are currently in negotiations with Suzanne. She has agreed to come on as a partner onto ABA on Tap and to promote us and take care of our marketing and build us a website, start revisiting some of the older episodes to see if we can release them to you all as CEUs for a really affordable price. A lot of exciting things that Suzanne is pitching to us. We're excited at our prospective partnership. After five years of doing this, going into our sixth season, the premise, the notion that somebody out there caught wind of us and is interested enough to invest her time and her money. You know, she's got, she's a mom. She's tremendously dynamic, tremendously busy. So we couldn't be happier at the prospect 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 and some terms of agreement to try and make this happen as quickly as possible. One of the things that we want Suzanne on for As I mentioned earlier, we will be hitting our 50th episode of ABA on tap. So having somebody with her expertise and experience would make a 50th episode celebration that much more exciting. Again, I'll mention we probably won't do our 50th episode celebration on the 50th episode. I think maybe... I forget, there was another podcast that I was listening to that had the same quandary where they had some episode celebration, but it was actually the episode after that or whatever. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We'll celebrate our hallmark. Suzanne, thank you for finding us. Thank you for reaching out to us and keeping us honest and keeping honest about doing certain things. And we're excited to, at your prospective 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: 1:29:05

Yeah. Thank you, Suzanne. Those of you that I've reached out to from the CPABA conference, We've been incredibly busy and we'll talk about that in just a second. We will reach out to you. We will come up with a more efficient way to schedule guests because we do have quite the guest list for 2025. We will likely be maybe even doing more episodes in 2025. So we're very, very excited about the direction of the tap. It's been five years of you and I talking into... In your reptile studio. And I think in 2025, we will become more organized. Suzanne will have a huge part in that. You'll be able to get our podcast out to a lot more people. Again, our email address, abaontap.gmail.com. If you have any interest, want to come on the podcast, please reach out to us. This year, 2025, our sixth season, I think will be the biggest season yet. And we very, very, very much look forward to it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:04

So... We've got one more thing, at least one more thing, which is going to provide us with a tremendous amount of content for ABA on Tap. The way you put it, Dan, I'm going to set this up. I'm going to let you knock it out of the park for us. The way you put it is we get to talk all sorts of things here on ABA on Tap. The way I put it is I get to talk all of this stuff and then I have to go home and be a parent. So now for the two of us, we get to talk all of these great ideas here on ABA on Tap. And now we get the opportunity to do it our way, sir. Let's announce a big, big announcement here. We want to present

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:44

Ascend Behavioral Solutions

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:46

here in San Diego, California. Mr. Dan Lowry and I are proud to announce that we have finally taken the plunge. It's been a year, sir. So almost exactly a year ago today, we embarked on the journey of building and starting our own company. This is where Steve and April have been instrumental. This is where Suzanne, I know, is also going to be instrumental in helping our future. So all these wonderful ideas that we've been pitching and promoting and proselytizing, to use that fancy word. Now we get to put our money where our mouth is, which is where Mr. Dan's famous quote comes in. Couldn't be more excited, man. You and I are at... about 20 years of work together, maybe a little under. So to know that 20 years ago, we walked into that situation with a very, very interesting client who 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 Behavioral Solutions. Quick shout out to Scotty.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:53

Yep, the Ferb.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:54

The Scotty, Scott Ferbershaw, who has made this dream possible, who is going to keep our books going clean and up to date and exactly what the IRS wants to see. I know the IRS loves Scott. He's so precise and his spreadsheets are so perfect. And we've got a couple of other partners that we'll be announcing as time moves on. People that have been instrumental in helping us with a lot of sweat equity. All of us started working for free and now we definitely have a lot of very excited people who are giving their assistance just in hopes of joining the project at some point when that's ready. So I couldn't be more proud, man. I couldn't be happier to be doing this with you, Mr. Dan. Thank you, man. Likewise. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:37

AscendABAtherapy.com. Yes, sir. Please check out that website. Yeah, I think the podcast had a lot to do with us creating this joint venture. Like I mentioned, prior to that Kendall episode and the CPABA conference, I feel like there was just a lot of... complaining or frustrations about the field. And yeah, like you said, about a year ago, we started on this venture and I think it was kind of one of those things of we either got to stop complaining about it or we got to do it ourselves. Because eventually it's going to be fraudulent if we keep talking about some of our frustrations on the tap, but then going and doing them, you know, outside of the 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: 1:33:30

We've learned very quickly, too, about a lot of the reasons why where our grievances stem from. We've learned about why people do certain things. Not that we didn't know a lot of that already, but now we've had to deal with it face to face, head to head. And we're excited about presenting a lot of solutions out there. We have funders, insurance companies that we have to partner with to be very candid. They know this. They don't. ever make it easy we're not sure as to the motives why you know there's at least two things either they're making it challenging in order to deny payment and then on the other end another important question is what are we doing to make them consider such challenges in order to prevent us from being fraudulent or the like so I think that we've learned at least that much right you know if you're out there and you're talking about The idea that clients, the moment they call your office, now have to be ready to subscribe to a three hours a day, five days a week program without even seeing the child. I'm not going to be critical about that, but well, yes, I am. I will, too. I would ask you to be cautious and consider what that does to the rest of us who aren't necessarily enforcing that rubric. I would ask you to consider the ethics of such an approach. You know, we've talked about these things before. Now we're facing them head to head. And again, we will be lending our answers from a collaborative perspective. How do we all, we're all in this. There's six to eight month waiting lists all across the nation. Why are we so feverishly competing 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 be educating. competing against to raise those rates, to make ABA more accessible. And that means that on our part, we need to stay true to our science, true to our practice and stop committing things that make us look fraudulent. That's what I would say is there's at least two parties involved in this without including the family and the actual client. And these two parties are often fighting about know funding or things that that don't necessarily relate to the clinical need we're really hoping to become uh focused uh on the clinical practice and put some of the other things away as much as we can i am getting blown up by uh alerts here sorry i didn't turn those off hopefully they're not interrupting uh anybody too much but yeah very proud to announce ascend behavioral solutions we'll be looking to to make a change

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:01

yes yes um yeah just looking here you know our mission um is is going to be to deliver ethical effective and progressive behavioral therapy with collaboration and respect with our patients and families um how nice thank you yeah that's our goal is we have an idea of what we want aba to be um there's only one way to know if it's feasible or not is to go kind of um do it on our own mike's gonna be doing most of the groundwork i'm a little bit more um behind the scenes But with your developmental background and your expertise in ABA, I think it can become more than just an hours mill. And that's the important thing. Can we have clients be happy? Can we make RVTs happy? Can we focus on the clinical integrity 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 couple other young professionals that have joined. People or a person that we've known for a long time. Our first employee, we're excited to have her on board. At

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:13

some point, we'll do a whole episode, right? We'll bring a roundtable or something and talk to everybody to see how it's going. Maybe it'll be our first year kind of review or something. I'd love to get RBT perspectives, especially if we... end up hiring RBTs that are experienced and have worked at other companies to have them talk about the differences that we've achieved. I know that doing some of the groundwork in terms of the direct therapy has really offered me a whole new professional development and appreciation for what our RBTs do. So now being in an RBT shoes as we start to develop this, knowing that it's the most cost effective way to start is to have me providing the service. It's a whole new perspective I've gained. Yes, I know that the RBTs are out there doing most of the footwork. So to really put myself in those shoes again, to see how rigorous, how tiresome it is, to understand better why professional development time and planning time is necessary. um yeah these are all things i'm reliving now so a great deal of respect out out there for those of you who are doing the rbt work um please know that that i've uh i've put those shoes back on and i've got a new found a new newly developed respect for rbts especially the ones that that are out there doing that tiresome work that don't call out that um you know really really get invested in their clients um they make all the difference they're the ones that are delivering the majority of the hours so I know that at Ascend, one of our missions, one of our objectives is going to be to really revolutionize the RBT position and turn it into something that young psychology professionals want to go into. They want to move further into the field where right now it can be difficult to be an RBT and to sustain such a job.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:01

Yeah, yeah. And a lot of, like you said, BCBA Direct. The people that, there have been so many people that I've consulted with, I can't list them all. Thank you all. The general idea in the ABA field right now, it's funded by medical insurance for individuals with autism, You make money on the RBTs. And that's where your margins are. And our goal is let's either have very experienced RBTs or the BCBAs, the people with the expertise, deliver the service directly. Because if we can do that, maybe you don't need the same amount of hours that you would need if an RBT delivered it. Maybe we can do it less. Maybe we can be more efficient with our time. You know, a great word that seems to be thrown around a lot. Efficiency. It's all about efficiency. And the clinical ability is probably going to be much higher. So that is our goal. Can we make the clinical priority and staff morale? Can we keep that to the level that we want that we think will deliver the highest quality clinical service?

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:09

Can we reduce turnover? You know, the idea that can an RBT... be an rbt at your company for the duration of can most of the rbts for the duration of their schooling or whatever it is they're doing can an rbt just be a career rbt is that something that's possible that i don't think is happening in the field but just like a like a registered nurse can have a very experienced registered nurse that doesn't move on in her career they don't all become doctors or maybe not even a whole lot of them become doctors but then they train younger nurses and in our field we don't have that system we don't have that tiered system set up right now it's you're an rbt and you're going to become a bcba or you're going to walk out the revolving door and some new RBT has come in. To see clients go through five, six, seven staff in a year because of this turnover, this is really something that we need to address in the field and something I'm excited to be able to tackle along with you, Mr. Dan, to improve professional development and training and how it is we value the hours these people put in, how we take care of cancellations from either end so that nobody necessarily loses money if they don't have to. A lot of things that need to be in that are going to ultimately improve service delivery. And I'm excited prospectively to be a part of that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:26

Yeah, I think there will be an increased level of authenticity in 2025. There's, you know, it's really easy to sit and complain about what's going wrong. I think that happens in politics too, right? People just, well, this is bad and this is bad. Okay, what do you do about it? How do we fix it now? Now it's going to be on us to fix it. Like I said, an increased level of authenticity. I do want to shout out Maggie again. You came on to talk with the team a little bit ago. I think that you are running the East Coast version of what Ascent Behavioral Solutions hopes to be. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. A lot of Ascent-based therapy. empowering strength-based goals, how we can continue to run an innovative program because that word is thrown around so often to the extent that we actually did not put that in our mission statement because it's so bastardized. Everybody says they're doing innovative stuff. I

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:21

like to say if you're doing something innovative, it should look different from what other people are doing. Otherwise, you might not be innovating. So Maggie, for example, I know I like to make this joke. She showed us her environment over the video call. I don't think I saw one laminated square or any Velcro. I challenge all of you out there to achieve the same level. So I think with that in mind, are we good?

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:51

If you're interested, like you said, the website, ascendabatherapy.com. We'll also throw the link in the chat or in the description. If you're a family in the San Diego area, you're interested in having services provided by potentially Mike directly, reach out to us. We are very excited to grow this venture and make ABA the best we can.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:12

And we can assure you that even now, you're not going to be waiting six months. In fact, you're going to hear back from us right away. You're going to get an appointment within a couple of weeks at most. And then we're going to take you through the very thorough assessment process. So it might take a couple months to go through the assessment process and start, but you won't be sitting waiting for six to eight months. So I'd like to do our recap here, Mr. Dan. Let's see. So we're going to say, stay truly innovative. Consider when your laminator breaks down, if you really, or when you run out of Velcro, if you really need those things to do effective ABA. And of most importance, always,

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:51

Analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:52

Happy New Year, sir.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:53

2025 is going to be a big one.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:55

Here we go. Cheers. ABA on Tap is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.