Shared Joy Before Data: A Discussion with Dr. Megan DeLeon Miller, Part II

ABA on Tap is proud to present Dr. Megan DeLeon Miller (Part 2 of 2):

Join us for an insightful conversation with renowned behavior analyst, author, and speaker Dr. Megan DeLeon Miller. As the founder of the international Do Better Collective, Megan is a leading voice in advancing humane, person-centered, and neurodiversity-affirming practices within Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In this episode, we dive into:

• The crucial role of building genuine trust and rapport with clients.
• Strategies for approaching challenging behaviors while maintaining dignity and respect for the individual.
• Translating complex behavioral science into practical, compassionate, and individualized interventions.
• The "Do Better Movement" and the importance of lifelong learning and self-reflection in the field.

Dr. DeLeon (Miller) offers valuable insights for behavior analysts, parents, and service providers looking to bridge the gap between research and practice, and deliver truly impactful, human-centered care.

Chapters

• 0:10 Welcome And Part Two Setup
• 1:08 Rethinking Data And Quality Interactions
• 4:29 Schools Teach Then Test; ABA Balance
• 4:33 Insurance, DSM‑5, And Social Communication
• 6:12 Over Task Analysis And Foundational Skills
• 7:41 Hand Leading, Bodies As Communication
• 9:24 Acknowledging Unsafe Behaviors And Shaping
• 11:31 Gaze Shifting Versus Eye Contact
• 13:49 Early Influences: Play And Art Therapy
• 16:02 Social Stories, Neuroscience, And Validity
• 19:15 Naturalistic Models And Following The Child
• 21:12 Finding The Child–Adult Directed Balance
• 22:57 The Practice–Research Gap, Not The Reverse
• 26:35 Lab To Living Room: Flexibility Over Rigidity
• 31:09 Training That Blends Science And Reality
• 36:43 Seven Steps: Origins And Impact
• 40:04 Updating To Instructional Motivation
• 44:41 Troubleshooting Instead Of Withdrawing Fun
• 48:12 Language Shifts And Parent Alignment
• 51:42 Do Better Collective: Mission And Programs
• 56:00 Rejected Conference And Retreats
• 59:30 RBT Training That Actually Trains

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:10

Welcome to ABA OnTAC, where our goal is to find the best recipe to food the smoothest, coldest, and best tasting ABA or out. 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 food, 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_02: 0:51

All right, all right. Welcome back to another installment of ABA on tech. I am your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, and this is part two of our intriguing interview with Dr. Megan DeLeon Miller. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

Yeah. And I really don't know like 100% that the more data, the better is true when we look at the research, especially for autism. I'm not, I mean, it could be something else, but like for the type of service that needs to exist with that shared experience and really authentically, genuinely being responsive to your clients, it's impossible to have a ton of data to do that well. But the data we like the data we take needs to matter and we need to make decisions based off of that data and still have a process in place for that. But even if we only I'm not saying to do this, but my guess would be even if we only took data once a week, maybe you even like video record and you look back, right? Yeah. You're going to see if if from a fidelity standpoint the people are setting things up the way they should be, then you're likely to see much more progress than if you're, you know, being super rigid and regimented about taking, you know, I know companies will promote, like, oh, if you get 100 trials in per session, you like win a prize or something. It's like, I'd rather have like five quality data points in the session and be able to observe that you had some really good connected experiences with your client than see a hundred data points. Because if you got a hundred data points, I guarantee you your interactions were not quality.

SPEAKER_02: 2:22

Dan literally took data sets and took extensive data sets and then would pick every other data point or every third data point and then demonstrate in training to our staff the difference in those curves, which was minimal. But we just had these die hard BCBAs who were like, nope, no, I mean, and you did such a good job of literally parsing it down because now I'm gonna take every third data point, now every fourth. Did it did this curve really tell us anything different than having every single one? And they were convinced it did. And it's like, look at it. No, it it no, look at the trend line. I mean, it's almost exact. And but you know, it's so hard to get away from that notion that we can be so precise. And I like the way you said statistically it might be better to have all the data points, but again, if it's compromised your interaction at all, then you've got something different there. But the idea that somebody videotaped you or somebody sitting there and taking the data, or like we tell our you know staff, uh, if you see a kiddo twice a week, teach one of the days, and then maybe the other day you take the data. And better yet, the day that I'm there with you, I'll take the data. You just interact. And that I think that makes a lot of sense. We we definitely appreciate you saying that here on ABA on Talk.

SPEAKER_04: 3:33

You you asked that question too, the blasphemous question. What if we only took data once a week? I remember you asking that question. I'm blaming it on you.

SPEAKER_02: 3:42

I don't need any more trouble.

SPEAKER_04: 3:43

Okay, it is interesting though, like you said, and and like Megan said, that if you look at schools, right? Schools teach, teach, teach, then test. And ABA was always like teach and test at the same time. And how many times do we need to test? How many times do we need to stick this thermometer into this turkey to realize it's not cooked yet? Like, can we can we give a little bit of time to let the turkey cook rather than okay, not cooked, still not cooked, still not cooked, still not cooked. Like at some point, and then like Megan said, too, with the data, I would say that a lot of times there is too much data because what happens is you get satiated to the data. There's too much, people don't know it doesn't have the great value anymore, and people don't even know what to do with it any anymore because you're losing the value.

SPEAKER_02: 4:23

So, yeah, you get another three-inch binder after then you get a central reader. Put it on some shelf. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Can I close out one thought on the health insurance piece? So again, I think the biggest thing, what's interesting is when people give me pushback about like especially the social communication, when you look at for autism specifically, the DSM5 diagnosis, it's way easier to tie in social communication goals and a social communication focus to the diagnosis and medical necessity than any of the things in any of our other assessments. Like it just blows my mind. I'm like, why not? What if if you truly are making it based off of the diagnosis like we're supposed to be, and aligning it with the DSM 5, every single one of your goals should be tied to social communication. And maybe with the exception of a few, depending. But generally speaking, they should all somehow that's how you get a diagnosis.

SPEAKER_02: 5:17

Like so you're you're saying autism is a social communicative disorder, Dr. Moon?

SPEAKER_00: 5:22

Isn't that wild?

SPEAKER_04: 5:23

No, we literally had to do that with uh with a peer-to-peer reviewer. And it was interesting because like social communication and the goal was kind of like in between, but it had like language in it. And she was like, Why is that not communication? We're like, Oh, we could take this, we could move it from social to communication. It doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02: 5:40

Yeah, which which domain do you want me to put it in? I'll rewrite it because it's and again, I think that's maybe we can talk about this a little bit. I you're you're sort of uh alluding to it without speaking to it directly, but we we've we've almost we're almost too good at our task analysis, I think, in ABA. We almost break things apart too far, and then putting them back together gets a little difficult, and then we get caught up in, well, that should be in this domain, and that's addressing this. To your point, Dr. Megan, it's all connected somehow. We just have to learn how that how that is. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_00: 6:12

Well, it's funny, I think it what's interesting is we break certain things down so far, and then there's other things that we've just completely ignored that are actually so like again when we were talking about with manding, like people want to just jump in and start with manding, but they've done nothing with pre-communicative social communication type skills. So it's like, well, we haven't broken that down far enough. And actually, if you did all of the little steps we have for manding, you probably wouldn't even need because you'd have the foundation built and everything else, generally speaking, for most kids would come online because we've put the foundation in in the first place that was missing.

SPEAKER_02: 6:48

You you made me think about something just now that I've been contemplating. I'd love your take on it. What about hand leading? Hand leading is, I feel historically, such a controversial little thing because it seems to be that a lot of the kiddos we treat do that, so people almost misperceive it as a problem. But yeah, what's your I mean, that's socially communicative.

SPEAKER_00: 7:09

We call that that's part of the ADOS and it's using the person as a tool. Okay, okay, I think what you're saying is around to like get something, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:18

Or even just uh going to you know, grab a parent with no verb, no vocal over, right? Which again, I think is a little diagnostically relevant and then developmentally also very relevant. Yeah, I'll let you explain that.

SPEAKER_00: 7:29

Yeah. Well, I think for that, it ties back in with what we were talking about earlier, with looking at, you know, demanding and tacting and social communication and really needing to connect with what how this person shows up. So if it's hand leading, or I know a lot of children who use their body to communicate. Sometimes they don't do it in a safe way, but you watch their body and it's like they're not using gestures or signs, they're physically moving their body toward things or away from things. They might be eloping, they might, I call it bullying, not to mean like as a negative term, but it just looks like they're bullying their way through stuff, like they're just like doing this kind of thing to like get to what they want. And they're communicating so much. But instead of noticing that and affirming and honoring that, even if it's unsafe at first, we can still acknowledge it and shape it into something safer, but we tend to ignore it completely. We don't give it any sort of recognition, and we're like, no, you have to communicate like this. Could you imagine being in a foreign country, not knowing the language and using hand leading or using your body and having people just be like, like, I don't know, I'm not helping you, right? Like that would be so frustrating. But we do that to our clients all the time, where it's like, well, the way you're communicating isn't good enough. And we put the responsibility on them instead of acknowledging and connecting with what they're doing that comes up for them naturally, and then using that to shape not because the way they're communicating is wrong, but because if we can shape it into something that more people understand, then they can get their needs met and like navigate the world in a safer way. But ultimately, I hope at some point, these other forms of communication, like hand leading or using their body or whatever, people will be more affirming of. So it's like, oh, we don't even have to teach other people because everyone understands that some people just communicate this way and that's okay.

SPEAKER_02: 9:24

I mean, you know, it's maybe a little less, a little more unsafe, but you could make the same argument for a young child with biting, for example. Is that fair to say? Would you would you say that fits a category of some level of social communication?

SPEAKER_00: 9:37

Biting sometimes it's like both there's the there's like a sensory piece that comes up. Like a kid gets so excited or so mad, and they're just this like physical urge to like bite something for whatever reason. I don't know. Squeeze their fists, sure. Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 9:50

Or the stiffening when kids have tantrums, they stiffen their body. I think it's all very similar.

SPEAKER_00: 9:55

There's like that physical piece to it. So again, it's the same idea. We can acknowledge oh, this is what you're trying to communicate right now, like this is the meaning that I can observe from what you're doing. And when you're and then it makes it easier to explicitly teach, you know, okay, next time you're feeling too excited, here's a safer thing that we can try to do, or here's like a pillow you can bite on, or something. Like if there that, you know, yeah, motivation is so high to engage in the the thing that might not be that safe, we can make it safer.

SPEAKER_02: 10:24

So the idea is we we allow, we accommodate, we allow for the behavior, but we posit it such that it doesn't have a negative impact on the environment. That's kind of what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00: 10:34

Yeah. And then my big piece with that, sorry, is that a lot of people try to just wait until the moments happen, but the more we can practice in like neutral times and build up fluency with the replacements, because a lot of people think you can just write a replacement on paper and it'll just magically happen. Yeah, like oh, our replacement for biting is that they'll clap their hands, which doesn't even make sense because they're not even related.

SPEAKER_02: 10:55

So that's that's why you put it in the goal, though, right? Once you write it in the goal, it happens. Like the child is not speaking, the child will speak 50 words. Voila, right? You don't have to write it in the goal. Dr. Megan, you've you're causing a lot of controversy on our show. We appreciate it though. One more question, I think what and and trying to differentiate these things that we've discussed, but you're lending much more nuance. You've talked about shifting gaze, which I love. And a long time ago, we were very focused on eye contact. What's the difference? How do they work together? Give us your insight on that.

SPEAKER_00: 11:31

So the this is another one that comes down to like function and topography. Yeah. So gaze shifting is like we shift our gaze for multiple reasons. If something without a person could happen in the environment and we're gonna shift our gaze, like, what was that sound? Or what's that new thing that just came in? And we're we're orienting our eyes in whatever you know direction we need to. We can do the same thing with people. We're gonna gaze shift maybe to check in, or you'll see it even with like little ones if they're in a situation where they're not they're starting to feel unsafe and they start like looking around for their parents and like checking. Oh, is my mom still seemed calm? Okay, I'm still calm. And they, you know, there's that social component to it. So that's the functional piece of gaze shifting, right? Like that's what we need to be seeing. It doesn't need to be I'm like directly staring into your eyes, right? But it's more of that orienting my attention to whether it's people or objects or whatever, versus eye contact. Again, there's like this idea because well-meaning people, well, before we understood all of this, noticed that people who tend to make eye contact, like different things are happening for them. So they that was, you know, a goal. Obviously, that was initially a huge focus, but again, that was topographical. Look at me, look at me. You know, like that's topographical. There's no meaning behind it. Why am I looking at you? Right? Like, if I'm just looking at you because you told me to, that doesn't mean anything. Like that doesn't mean anything for skill development. And of course, we have autistic self-advocates who've said looking someone directly in the eye, it can be very disorienting and dysregulating for them. So, like, why would we have that as a thing that we're doing? And they and then, especially from like a we're having a conversation, let's look at each other's standpoint. They get so distracted. Okay, I gotta look, I gotta make sure. Is it been five seconds? I got it, you know, and they're they're doing it again topographically, instead of really looking at how do we do this from a way that's meaningful, that like the gaze is going to shift as just a functional part of the interaction.

SPEAKER_02: 13:37

So, what if I'm holding an MM by my I'm kidding. Go ahead. Yeah, we gotta do, we gotta go ahead. I know you got questions, Dan. I'm gonna let you loose again.

SPEAKER_04: 13:48

Yeah, sounds good. So you said initially kind of your first ABA-ish. I don't even know if it was an ABA experience, but you were partnered or collaborating with an art therapist and a plate therapist way back in the day. Yeah. So that being your first kind of experience into the field, do you think that that shaped your perspective rather than just being a you know traditional, I'm gonna jump into the ABA as a lot of people would do now without having any of the diversification?

SPEAKER_00: 14:14

Yeah, it definitely helped a ton. There were, I don't know, it seems like you guys had kind of a similar model when you started. So I was part of the early days where you had like a family would hire three to five people to come in and do their ADA sessions for 40 hours a week. And then there was a consultant that would come like once a month. If we got observed, we were lucky. So that one team out of the four teams I had had the play therapist and the art therapist. Then I was on other teams, and like one of the teams had like a super rigid person that was like, this is how we have to do it, blah, blah, blah. And I, and so I got to see the contrast of you know, the progress or not being made versus the different perspectives. And that really impacted me a lot. Like the one, the little boy where they had we had the play therapist and the art therapist, he tried so much during the first weekend, like the first workshop that he threw up. Like I was shocked that the parents even wanted to continue with therapy. And I, you know, wonder to this day where this little boy would have gone if he had had all rigid people up in there, you know, like his life experience would be so drastically different. Um, but thankfully, you know, especially it was the art therapist was definitely much more like compassion and like, oh, let's not put him through this. And then when the plate therapist came in, she was like, Why do we have a table and chairs in here? He's clearly upset about that. Like, okay, why don't we just sit on the floor and play with him and like use shaping and all the things?

SPEAKER_02: 15:47

Wait a minute, sit on the floor. Does that are you sure that works? Well, that's why I said it wasn't ABA because didn't have the table and chairs. Yeah. It really wasn't an IKEA table and chairs. That might have been the other problem that Dan tends to identify. Maybe gave you a little go ahead, please.

SPEAKER_00: 16:02

Oh, with that little boy, we use social stories and he the amount of progress, he was only two, but he was really into books and had a lot of things that, you know, looking back and knowing what I know now about neuroscience and emotional regulation, there was just a lot of stuff causing him this, you know, activating his nervous system. And reading the books to him gave him that like expectation, that predictability and the practice with what to do instead. And we combined it with shaping, but we did it very behavioral skills training. I didn't know if that's what it was called at the time, but you know, we would read the book, practice, and like slowly put him into whatever situation was causing difficulty for him. And it like broke my heart when I went to grad school and had professors or researchers being like, social stories are not okay, like they're not research-based. And I'm like, Well, I have why don't you go tell that to this little guy who has like a hundred social stories, and his life would be completely different if we hadn't done that with him because he's whether it, you know, just from his one example alone, like it's effective.

SPEAKER_04: 17:04

For sure. And then, you know, a lot of times in ABA we get kind of stuck in our habits, right? So we think about the social stories of like the where they're gonna be laminated, and you know, my name is Johnny. I don't like going to the dentist when I go to the dentist, like those kind of things, but now even watching a video or looking at a lot of things on YouTube can be the next iteration of a social story explaining what a situation's gonna be like in a much more meaningful way to these individuals, to any individuals. I watch social stories all the time.

SPEAKER_02: 17:31

Yeah, I wonder how that works. Carol Gray is is one of those people in the field that I feel, I mean, very effective with what she's done with social stories, and then yet I feel like almost like Pex, a lot of us just haven't implemented those things the way they were intended to be implemented, so they miss. Yeah. And that's interesting. And I also wonder with social stories, I don't know if based on the traits of autism, if we sort of discount the idea of or the potential of observational learning from a social learning perspective, and that's why we sort of poo-poo them. But no, I agree. I uh it's one of my favorite things to I mean, we're I'm sharing a story, and the idea that we've created these formats for social stories, I'm very appreciative of, and then I've also been guilty of saying, well, most children's books are social stories in some way. So if you can engage with a book, now you're working on communication and joint attention and social information and all these things that, you know, back to your point, we task analyze, we piece things apart so much because it's important from a developmental perspective. Now we're talking about making sure that we don't take them apart so far that they're decontextualized. And I think that's a really important piece. As far as the working with a play therapist, that must have informed you so much beyond this idea of SD response consequence, right? So the idea that somebody's engaging a child, somebody's playing. Will you talk about that a little bit more and what you had seen in terms of a contingency, and then now what a play therapist was turning that into with regard to uh interaction?

SPEAKER_00: 18:59

So the play therapist in it was more like showing us how to just be more naturalistic for, you know, just again sitting on the floor. He had a playroom downstairs, so just kind of following his lead. It's a lot of what we would see with the naturalistic interventions, like pivotal response, or early start Denver model. So there wasn't a whole lot like to me that's different from the those approaches. And you know, that was more. I think her her training as a play therapist was more in like from I think it was it was either floor time or something similar to that. So it was just like again, it was a lot more about connecting with the child and just closely observing them and being able to follow their lead and you know, make critical decisions like is now the best time to try to present a few instructions or you know, all that kind of stuff. So now unfortunately with floor time, there isn't really, there's still not research. And that's it's really unfortunate because a lot of the things with the developmentally based therapies that came out, kind of as like a pushback against the more traditional low boss approaches, they were on the right track with a lot of stuff. So they never did the research and they kind of stopped at the level of just imitate the child, like that's gonna do everything. Right. They never really took it further than that. So I'm grateful again to have her model and like see that. And she was also like in grad as she was either in or was planning to go to grad school in ABA, and she ended up becoming a BCBA as well. So it was nice, like model of I don't want to say this in like a mean way, but sometimes if somebody came in with just the training on like the floor time or like play therapy, it might have been too loose or like too far away from what we would be doing as a science. It wasn't like that. She was, you know, kind of synthesizing both things.

SPEAKER_02: 20:54

So we've have I've current I'm currently on a quest to find the balance between. So traditionally we've talked about structured versus unstructured and more play-based or child-directed approaches falling under this unstructured category, which feels very loose. But the notion of child versus adult-directed. And I think that's the balance that we've been trying to strike in terms of you come in very child-directed, very play-based, and then at some point we've got to hit these targets, so to speak, which now becomes much more adult-directed per se. What is that balance? And that's an ongoing question, and it's different for every child, in my opinion. But again, that's something that we've been exploring in terms of when do you make that shift? So you you truly pair or build that rapport, or whatever other terms you want to apply to it, and then when do we know that the child is ready to take more instruction, to receive it more, to be receptive, so that we can build those skills uh accordingly. But that's a that's a tough question, and it I think we agree. It starts with us sort of taking their lead uh to some extent.

SPEAKER_04: 21:51

So there's a there's an idea I want to explore, and there's maybe a few offshoots of it, but I think it's an important concept. So from the the conference that we had, right, there were some people that were actually kind of more in the academia side of things, you know, Dr. Bailey, uh, maybe even more like yourself, and there were some people that were more in the like direct delivery that owned companies and were coming from some of the companies. And it's always seemed like there's a little bit of a chasm between what goes on in academia and what's actually going on with Johnny down the street when he gets his ABA services. And maybe that wasn't, maybe it isn't as great as I as I thought it was. So there were a couple of ideas that I wanted to float to you, and you can kind of pick and choose whichever ones you want to run to. One is we have this idea, this phrase we use, Mike and I, and then at our company is taking ABA from the lab to the living room. So that's one of it. Sometimes I feel like we try to, or we feel like we try to reenact the lab, and we don't have that nearly that level of experimental control in somebody's living room. And sometimes by trying to reenact that lab, we just end up putting a square peg to a round hole. So that one. The second idea being that you talked about that you went from academia to starting your own company. So I don't know if there were any realizations that you had or any challenges or any thoughts there. And then the last one being that it seems like in a lot of the so you brought up private equity earlier, some of the bigger companies that we've both come from and that ended up buying our companies out, really I don't want to say didn't care. That's probably too strong, but that's sure how it seemed about what the current research was or what was actually going on. It was just about like billable hours. And I think that's kind of pervasive, honestly, in this ABA field of there are people doing things that everybody, you know, not everybody, but a lot of these companies are citing Lovos from you know the 80s, and oh well, we need 40 hours a week because Lovos said we need it in the 80s, and what here billable hours, billable hours. Like a lot of our clinical meetings, literally none of them at our last company were clinical at all. So there was this chasm between nobody would know what's going on in academia because nothing was talked about what was going on in academia. And I'm sure there's some really good stuff being done and some really good research. But if we could do 15-year-old methodologies but build three more hours, the companies would be much more happier doing that than doing anything that's innovative. So those are kind of my three thoughts. I want to kind of pass it to you about academia versus the kind of infield and open the floor up to you. I think this goes into the fifth hour. That's why I wanted to get to it. I think it's an important concept. Great question.

SPEAKER_00: 24:36

So, okay, the and you might have to remind me as we go because I heard academia and then got distracted. So academia, but that's like a hot button thing for me. I don't know if you guys if you all were on one of there was a panel. I don't remember if you all were the moderators for that one, but I always say that there is a practice to research gap. It drives me to be to hear people say research to practice gap. And I know you didn't actually say that, but it's just wild, like it shows the ivory tower, the like the pedestal that research gets placed on and academia gets placed on above practitioners, which is wild because this field wouldn't exist without practitioners, you know. But at the same time, when we look at an applied science, now I'm not talking about EAB or translational necessarily, but when you're looking at the applied research that needs to be done, how many researchers are actually going and connecting with practitioners to find out what the issues are that we need to address for sure and then doing the research accordingly. They're not, but then they're complaining that they don't think practitioners read the research, and it's like, well, why would we if it's not functional and meaningful to what we're doing?

SPEAKER_01: 25:46

Yep. Like that doesn't make any sense, you know?

SPEAKER_00: 25:48

So, and I've I can't even tell you how many times I've been to conferences and like, you know, a researcher is presenting on something that's important, and then I'll ask a question from the practitioner lens, and they just scoff at me, like, well, who are you to even ask? Like, I'm a researcher, like, how dare you to question what I'm doing? And I'm like, okay. I love Greg Hanley for the work he's done because he's one of the only people that's really embraced that idea of like he had his he had his research-based research. And then when he finally like started doing practitioner-focused stuff, he realized. I mean, I I'm not trying to speak for him, but this is my observation. It seems like he realized, like, oh, I knew nothing as a researcher. But is it not true? He knew a lot. But like, do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04: 26:32

Like, it's a Dennon Kruger effect, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 26:35

Yeah, when you see the drastic change in the work, he's always done amazing work and he's always done compassionate work, but there's still like these huge shifts that happen in the work that he's done once he started doing more with the practitioners than when he was, you know, in more of the silo of just academia.

SPEAKER_01: 26:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 26:53

So I would love to see more researchers really connect with, you know, practitioners and look at that. You know, it should be there's it should be going both ways. Like it should be bi-directional in how that's happening. And then, of course, I would think more practitioners would be pulling in the research if it was more aligned with like what would help us do a better job. But then that being said, as I've mentioned, there is research that is in the field for autism specifically right now and neuroscience, like relate fields related to behavior analysis that people are completely ignoring because they're going based simply on how they were trained to practice. So there's, you know, there is there are gaps in both directions. I just, it just drives me crazy when people only talk about research for practice. So I think like again, being staying informed in whatever population you work with around like what what's the research that's happening here would be ideal, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 27:52

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it doesn't that's I think part of the chasm, right? It doesn't seem like it goes either direction, and you're saying, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Continue.

SPEAKER_00: 28:01

Yeah. But and then then you just look at the things that researchers are sometimes arguing about too in publications, and it's like, are there not more important things that we could be doing right now? Like what is happening?

SPEAKER_02: 28:12

Exactly. Well, and the idea that um, I mean, sometimes it's it's a lot about how things are learned or how behaviors are changed, and then the idea that there's a protocol that comes out of that that can actually be implemented is a whole separate question, I think, is something you're speaking to. And we talked about that reciprocal imitation paradigm that came out of research. I think that did a very good job of presenting something that you can actually replicate in your practice. But yeah, I I think we can all agree it doesn't go both ways. And yeah, a lot of times the articles you read, it's like, well, this I'm not sure when I would use this. The language is very uh elevated, so it's already not very attractive. Uh there's a bunch of stats here that I don't understand. It's it's pretty hard. But at the same time, we you know we do understand the uh the ivory tower elements of that research. It is very stirnuous, it is very difficult to have to to maintain grant funding, and there's certain you know, pressures around that. So how to make that a friendlier exchange would be something very interesting to continue to explore. Because it it should. The research should inform us, and then to your point, Dr. Megan, the research should be informed by what we did with the prior research toward their next research endeavor. So it it's it's a circle, it's a cycle that doesn't exist right now. Or maybe in a very limited fashion. I I I haven't uh tapped into anybody yet.

SPEAKER_04: 29:27

I'll pass it back to you. I know you had more to say on that.

SPEAKER_00: 29:30

Uh well, I mean, that's really like the big thing for me from like the academia side. And I do think, again, I think there's a piece where because for academia, there's not a requirement necessarily to be practicing in the field directly. And I think this is not unique to behavior analysis. You would see this in med school and like different, you know, fields in general, like there's the people who are teaching, and if they're not directly providing the service that they're teaching about, there's going to be a disconnect as things change. And I just like I hope to continue to see people be more open to getting that, you know, feedback. I I feel like we're seeing it shift. That arrogance and that kind of like, well, I know best because I'm here at the university is shifting quite a bit. But there's still like there is this tendency for people to just dig in on, you know, what they were trained in and not be open and curious to learn more about, you know, why we might shift. Even when I when I first started presenting on Early Start Denver model, like back when it first came out in 2010, I did a presentation on it and I talked about some of the neuroscience pieces that are in that. And one of my like mentors was like, we don't need to know about neuroscience. We're behavior analysts and everything.

SPEAKER_01: 30:44

Really?

SPEAKER_00: 30:45

He's like, everything was great except for that part. And I'm like, oh my gosh, seriously. Like, we need to know about all of it.

SPEAKER_02: 30:52

I I mean, I might be off my game here, but I'm pretty sure the the brain and spinal cord are antecedents to behavior. I'm just gonna put that out there. I'm pretty sure if you don't have those, there's no behavior, but that could just be me uh being uh blasphemous again.

SPEAKER_04: 31:08

So what are your thoughts on the the lab delivering room piece? I think that's where a lot of the maybe excess data and stuff like that comes into play because obviously in academia or research, right, you have to have a lot of data, you have to have really high levels of internal validity and control and things like that. And you know, initially ABA was taken kind of from that, so there was you know a lot of table and chair and no distractions, and you have to tell the parent to leave, and there can't be anything on the wall because we have to make sure our SD is the only SD, and it was really titrated down to make sure that when we got a data point, we could replicate that and that replicability. And hope it seems like the field is going away from it. At least I know we are. I mean, I think maybe the field is a whole is, but what is kind of your thought on that lab to the living room piece?

SPEAKER_00: 31:55

So yeah, that's the part I didn't talk about. Your actual question.

SPEAKER_04: 31:59

So well, I had many questions.

SPEAKER_00: 32:02

The so that part I think I talk about this quite a bit with people that there needs to be more done. Again, we are an applied science. And the way, like when people are going to grad school, you know, I would say we're probably at the point now where 99% of them are going to be out in the field practicing, they're not going to be in a research lab, but still, the a lot of the programs are still structured as if they're going to be conducting research and people aren't being trained to know the difference, right? Okay, if you're doing a research study, these things are true. And when you're with a human, these things are true. And even when you're doing a research study, you're likely with humans. So we need to be a little bit more flexible there too. But that's like a whole separate discussion. So when people are trained, you know, that we have to have like this very strict data collection and these very like, you know, strict procedures and all of the things that like from a learning history, reinforcement history standpoint, their professors have been conditioned as like the most valuable things. That's going to be problematic when we then go into a home, and none of that is actually true. And it could actually be in the opposite direction. The more you try to do something like it's a research study in a person's home or school or community, they're not going to make the progress we would want to see. We need to be able to be flexible and make adjustments and all of that kind of stuff. So I think more needs to be done at the training level, whether it's supervision or university programs, to show that there are two different things going on here. You know, like we need to understand how we do research in a way that's ethical and humane. And we need to understand how we can take the science and use it. My favorite example that I give with this is not mine, but I did a presentation with Dr. Merritt Schenk, who was a BCBA at USF, and he studied baseball. So he did his study was with a little league team and working with the pitchers. And we presented at ABAI and he presented his research. And somebody asked a question or he had it in his presentation, I can't remember. But basically, this idea of our science is incredible. There's so many different things we could do with it. And he had so many ideas of what he wanted to do with this little league team. But he can't make the rules of the game, he can't change the game. So we had to think about how can I make the best use of the science with the game I'm given, not the game I want to be playing. And I just think that like metaphor is huge. Like people need to be trained to learn and be nimble enough with our science to have it work with the game they're given, whether it's the family, the school, the community, figure out. If you can't figure that out, then our science might as well not exist.

SPEAKER_04: 34:44

That's tricky, right?

SPEAKER_02: 34:49

We we spend a lot of time teaching the rules of the game. You could probably be a better umpire than player in that sense. It's the same with our RBTs, right? You do this 40-hour classroom training and they pass this competency exam, but at the end of it, they probably have no idea how to run a session. And again, both things are really important, and and to you that's what you're speaking about is how do we make them come together better? Because we we're teaching the right things. You need to know all the rules of the game to play baseball, but if you don't play baseball, you're not going to be a very good player.

SPEAKER_04: 35:18

For sure. It's that balance, right? Because if you stray too far from it has to be individualized, much more so in the home than it does the lab. But if you stray too far from it, then you're losing the scientific validity. So is the science still the science anymore? But if you try to replicate it too much, that's almost impossible in the home. So it is it is a challenge, and that's just yeah, that's that that kind of chasm that that I saw, but it does seem like there are a lot of people people out there trying to bridge that, which is which is good, like yourself. And and I think that third piece is just the the motivation of of companies to try to do better service and not just be more fiscally uh doing better fiscally, because that's the other, but that's a whole nother yeah, that'd be our six of this of this podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 36:04

I'm gonna add one more thing. Like, so the one of the things I really liked at Florida State was they they did both for us. So we would read articles about a topic, right? And they usually had like a foundational article that was, you know, the first thing published on the topic, like one of the first differential reinforcement articles. But then we would read a couple articles that were new and like recently published, and all of our exams were scenario-based. So it would be like you have a client where X, Y, and Z is happening. How would you apply a article and why? And we had to, you know, our answer was looking at how to take the information and make it relevant to the scenario they gave us. And we couldn't just regurgitate like every single step of a study and be like, oh, I would just, they did this and that's what I would do. We had to explain what parts of it we would apply and why and how it all comes together. And I think the more whether it's through supervision or graduate work that people would incorporate that style of knowledge application, we would see more of that happening where people can understand how to like how much to replicate and how much to to adjust that still aligns with the science, but would make sense for the individual situation.

SPEAKER_04: 37:16

Okay. Speaking of uh making sense, got to get to the uh the seven steps of instructional control. So I found out when we were moderating the podcast that you uh you had some input into that article or you worked with uh Dr. Shram. So I love this article. Uh, check it out. You can literally just Google seven steps for instructional control. I use it in my parent groups. Can you talk talk to that, the article, your how you got involved with Dr. Shram? Like let me pass it to you for that because thank you. That's gotten me a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 37:48

So I'll tell you the quick story. When when I was first coming, moving to Virginia from Florida State, I uh was on a lot of message boards. So back in the day there were Yahoo groups, and I was on the Yahoo groups. And I had a couple clients when I was at Florida State that were not responding to traditional escape extinction procedures. So I just, you know, used my knowledge of the science and thought about, you know, what was going on for them and did some analyses to figure out what was maintaining and what skill deficits were there, and came up with a procedure that was basically the seven steps, but I didn't, I had never read the seven steps. So somebody had posted on the Yahoo group asking about like, you know, they had a a child or something where escape extinction wasn't working. And I commented with like, here's my here's been my experience when that doesn't work. This is what I did. And Robert contacted me and he was like, Where'd you come up with that? And I was like, My brain, I don't know. And he was like, Why, you know, wrote this thing, the seven steps, you haven't read it. And I was like, No. This was he, I think he published the first book in 2008, and this was 2009. So I hadn't encountered it yet. When the funniest part is, right around that same exact time, I was establishing my client base in Virginia, and I had a parent reach out to me that had seen our exchange on the Yahoo group, and she said, I just moved here from Germany, Robert was my BCBA, and I'm hoping to have you be my BCBA because we all seem to do similar things. So like super small world. So we worked, I ended up working with that family. But then once um Robert and I got a chance to chat and whatnot, and we met up at one of the ABAI conferences, I went to his workshop and basically stalked him a little bit. And he was like, I'm gonna pick your brain all night long. He was like, Okay. So we decided to start doing some work together, and I created this training packet and integrity checklist, and I did a little mini study in Virginia with a center that was not using the seven steps, and we showed the effectiveness, you know, of using the seven steps compared to the current practice, which was basically traditional escape extinction, had amazing results from it. And then we just sort of kept, you know, doing stuff together from there. We're actually in the process of revamping, and we have been for like two years because I keep getting sidetracked. We're like this close to being done, but I need a few, like a few days in a row of several hours to just knock it out. So, as silly as this might sound, I'm leaving for a cruise on Friday and I've decided to try to make it like a working cruise. So I'm hoping it'll be my little retreat to try to get it finished. But so back when the seven steps first came out, we it was so drastically different from what people were doing with traditional escape extinction. And the whole idea was basically to create this, you know, fun oasis of fun and just be super, super, super engaging, which some people were doing that already. But even when I watched Robert was like his initial pairing videos, I realized I have never been trained like this. And he's just a well, I don't know if it's naturally, but from his learning history, he's a super fun, motivating, energetic guy. So just I think whether it was the seven steps or anything else, anyone ever watching his early trainings, you just felt like you learned a ton about just how to be like a fun therapist or a fun behavior analyst. Which is so important. Yeah. So he like that part was huge, you know. And then the whole idea of we're not going to physically force or use like nagging or anything, we're not going to keep repeating ourselves. We're just going to wait until the child's ready to engage again. And the thing that I think is most important with the seven steps, especially back then, was how we can make ourselves part of the fun. Because a lot of people were being told to pair to become a walking MM, but they weren't really being guided on how do we make ourselves part of that fun experience.

SPEAKER_04: 41:53

Isn't that step number two? Make yourself fun. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00: 41:57

Yep. So I if I had it my way, like I told Robert, I was like, when we redo the seven steps, I think we should make step two, step number one, because it is the most important, but it's you know, they are what they are. So with the new seven steps, we have done a lot to revamp it to where we are looking at making it more aligned with being affirming. So one of the things I told Robert, you know, back when he, you know, he published his book in 2008, but we published a book together with like the training packet and everything. We did that in 2012, I think. So in that time, you know, we've definitely learned and keep doing better and all that kind of stuff. And what I realized is a lot of the the like language and the way it's written is more focused on the parent and like essentially kind of making the parent's life easier. So so instead, we're working on really updating the language to be more affirming and honoring of the child's experience while also supporting like the parent or the therapist. So you guys can have the first preview here because we haven't really put this out anywhere. But so we updated the steps, and I'm just trying to pull up the document where they're listed so I can tell you what they are. We're calling it the seven steps of instructional motivation now. So the steps now are step one is yeah, step one is still basically the same. Identify and organize your reinforcement. Step two, that used to be have fun, is now build an authentic relationship. And again, it's focused more on showing your child that you're authentically there and like with them and you're there to support them and have fun. Step three is how and when to give important instructions. So we put a much bigger focus in this one on like really closely observing the child and choosing when to place demand based on the child's priorities and values and not just like what the adult wants to see. Step four is to use positive reinforcement. That one really hasn't changed. But again, we've put in a little bit more language around you're not just like doing it like I'm trying to withhold reinforcement from you, so you'll do what I want you to do. It's more again, closely observing and determining how best to use the reinforcement to support the child. Step five is the same too. It hasn't really changed that much to grow your expectations over time. Step six haven't changed, determine your priorities. Step seven is the biggest change. So if you remember, step seven was basically like to shut down the fun and and like use like a minor form of extinction where we're not gonna make you do the thing, but we're not really going to sit here and engage with you until you come back. So now instead of that, it's to troubleshoot. Because if you get to a point with step seven where the child has left you, it's like no longer choosing to participate, then something in the first six steps is not going well. Yep. So it's more to stop and reflect and think about okay, what where did I lose this? Like, what do I need to be doing differently? And like have it as a reflection moment instead of shutting down the environment and trying to wait for the child to come back to you.

SPEAKER_04: 45:22

That makes a lot of sense. And that goes more towards, and we use the term blanket extinction. You kind of talked about it with escape extinction, like you know, historical ABA, right? Shut down the fun. If they're not doing what we want, then we just don't do anything until they do what we want. So it seems like kind of what you're saying is now we're troubleshooting the situation and we're not completely detaching, we're trying to problem solve.

SPEAKER_00: 45:42

Yeah, yeah. So, and I it's just so funny because when when the seven steps came out, again, it was just such a drastic change. And people, you you obviously know because you're one of them, we're just like blown away, like, oh my gosh, this makes my practice so much better. And but then, you know, I go back and I read stuff now from the book and I'm like, ooh, we said that. Why did we say it like that? You know?

SPEAKER_04: 46:04

Let me let me ask you this question, and I've really liked the changes. I think that's awesome. And I want one of those copies as soon as it gets released, so you gotta let me know where.

SPEAKER_02: 46:11

He needs to re-wallpaper his office so you're as soon as you can get that manuscript or a copy of it, he's gonna appreciate that because now his office walls are outdated with the old steps.

SPEAKER_04: 46:21

Yes, and I I like I really like taking control out. That again, that seems like more of a affirming thing rather than I'm gonna control somebody. The the first step, identify an organized reinforcement. Do we run the risk of, and maybe it's just explained within there, of with that phrasing, thinking that reinforcement is more extrinsic because we're talking about organizing it.

SPEAKER_00: 46:44

Yeah. So this is the Robert's language mostly, but it's basically like creating your environment in a way that's organized and beneficial for the child. So this might mean for some children that things are organized, like in the original seven steps, where you might have things in containers and you know, all of that kind of stuff. It might mean that you just know what your boundaries are and what like especially for gearing it towards parents, like knowing what types of things require you to sort of step back and say, like, that's not safe. We need to, you know, have a shift here. And then knowing what types of things it's like we're gonna be flexible and that kind of stuff. So it's more focused on that side of thing as opposed to like extrins, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. So it's more setting like that organizational view of what are kind of our house rules and what are the types of things that we need to provide some more support and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 47:43

That makes that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if the word reinforcement, because it's used in a later step, would be better not used in that step if we're talking to parents. Yeah. So we can use a word that's more comfortable. And then we, as we explain things, then we introduce it in positive reinforcement. That's my unsolicited two cents.

SPEAKER_01: 48:00

I love your article.

SPEAKER_04: 48:01

I'll tell Robert trying to run light advice over here.

SPEAKER_02: 48:05

And again, once we do, he needs several copies to be able to redo his office.

SPEAKER_04: 48:10

But thank you so much for doing that article. That has really been a lifesaver. I've seen and and it says, I think there's a preface in there before the steps that talks about making it parent-friendly. And it really is. Like anybody who's listening to this podcast who isn't affiliated with Mike or Ion anyway, please check out this article. It really does connect the dots in a way that if you do those seven steps, you will see an increase in what used to be called instructional control. Now, what do you call it?

SPEAKER_00: 48:36

The seven steps to instructional motivation. I have to give credit to uh Vince Lamarca. He's actually the one that was like, wouldn't this be a better way to call it? Yes, it would, actually. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02: 48:51

I think that I think the word control is I I again, I understand it academically. I think it is problematic in translation. Uh and that the way you just put that is is much better. So the idea is we don't we're not controlling anything. We're we're influencing motivation. And and the more motivated the child is to do what we're asking them to do, then the better our data or whatever it is we're we're after. So that makes a lot of sense. Time flies, I think you have a better. Yeah, so we need to we've you've got let's let's get to the let's fast forward to the modern day. Let's talk about do better collective. I know you've got some events and some things that you're working on currently. Let's take this time to make sure we let people know about those. So, first things first, do better collective. You've sort of alluded to it and and everything we can do better throughout this uh almost two hours. Tell us what you guys are doing currently, tell us a little bit about the history, tell us whatever you want to tell us about do better.

SPEAKER_00: 49:44

Okay. So quick. So basically, when I first started doing training, I when I was presenting uh to tell people about early start Denver model and seven steps, I had this like opening slide where I listed out the various things I learned in my early career. And then I had a column that said, like, how I learned to do it better, basically. Like, this is the way I did better. And that sort of under was just like an underlying theme for me. That training was from like 2009 or something, 2010, like a long time ago. And then I kept finding myself going, whether I was supervising people, I did a lot of international supervision, I did a lot of, you know, United States supervision too, teaching college classes, whatever it was that I was doing. I kept encountering situations where people weren't learning all of the things I had had the privilege of learning in my career, whether it was at FSU or other avenues. And I just kept saying, like, we can do better, we can do better. Like, why is it not better? So I went to a training with Rick Kubina in 2017, like the end of the year, and he was doing his precision teaching, you know, very inspirational, like the stuff he was talking about. And so many people in there were just blown away. And I just kept like, man, why are we not here? So that like night or something, I went home and I just wrote out all of the different things that I felt like I was constantly having to teach people that we could do better in our field, that are integral parts of our field that exists and research has been there, you know, but people just were not learning about it. So over 2018, I started what we call the do better movement. And I had like a different webinar each month, and it was free and just to try to get like this information out there to people. It was on things like behavioral skills training, functional communication training, some of the advancements in early intervention, like all sorts of stuff that I felt like I just learned, but other people were not learning. And then we just kept with that theme. So in 2021, we're actually about to celebrate our fifth birthday, sorry, November of 2020. We started the membership community. So we'll have our fifth birthday on November eighth, November 15th, and we're gonna be doing some like special offerings for that. But so we've carried over this, we do a webinar every month trying to bring in practitioners that are doing you know better things in our field and have them share the work that they're doing. And then we have the online community where people can interact with each other, access the previous, like we have five years, we'll have five years essentially plus of webinars. Can we start it? The 2018 webinars going forward, as long as they're still relevant, are in there. So we have a ton of, you know, 70 plus different courses, and we have meetings twice a month where we share resources and we put all the resources and recordings from those meetings in there as well. And it's nice because the community is made up of seasoned behavior analysts, RBTs, parents, new behavior analysts. So everyone can kind of come together and interact with one another. And like they're different, everyone's open, curious, humble, like interacting just to, you know, elevate whatever they're doing in the like in the field. So one of the things we started last year because I was getting so frustrated with conferences, it's called rejected. And the point of rejected is to really platform and highlight the work of practitioners in a comp, like a full conference. So it's online. We might do an in-person one every few years, but right now it's online. So our rejected 2025 conference is happening in December. And the whole idea is there's no rejection happening. Like people, it's basically first come, first serve. And as long as it meets the you know values of our practice and everything, they can present.

SPEAKER_04: 53:32

And if you need an MC or there's anything we can do for that, let us know.

SPEAKER_00: 53:37

I'll let you know. Yeah. So we have a really cool like mix of practitioners this time around. Last year we did like I planned it in like two weeks, and we had like 30 presentations, and it was a lot. So this year we're only doing, I think it's 12, 14, 16, something less than the 30 that we did last year. Okay, but it's a value like we do initially have like a values-based registration. We try to keep everything really cost effective. All the presenters get paid for presenting as well because we want to make sure we're compensating them for their time. And yeah, so that's happening in December. And then we also started doing retreats. I did the first retreat in 20, well, it was supposed to be 2020, but it got pushed to 2021. But we call it couch to camp, and it's where we do some learning online and then we all meet together at a retreat in person. And our next retreat is in February, and it's much smaller now because I'm using a retreat space here in Florida where we can only have like about 15 people. So it's a really nice, like intimate experience. And we do a self-care day that's focused on just rejuvenating and relaxing and getting reset. There's a pool and like musical instruments and all of like a path, a walking path, horses, goats, like it's just it's really nice reset. And then on the Sunday, we do the learning, like we have CE activities that we do, but they're more workshoppy and like we don't use PowerPoints, it's more discussion and workshop based. So those are the two big things we're doing. Oh, sorry, we have one more, three. Perfect RBTs. RBTs matter. So we have we're finally doing a 40-hour RBT training, and that's gonna come out in 2026. And my colleague Allison is an instructional designer, so she's using all of this really cool software to design it in ways that are more engaging and interactive. And we have a guy named Jack, and a lot of it is like the story of Jack becoming an RBT and learning the different concepts through Jack instead of just lecture based. And then we're creating an RBT library as well that's more interactive and it'll have exercises where you're engaging with the content again and not just listening to a lecture. And that for now is part of our business membership. So anyone who has a business membership gets free access to those resources and it's free for the RBTs. So they pay for their BCBAs, but they get free access for the RBTs.

SPEAKER_04: 56:00

That is so as somebody who is the RBT trainer, well, even before it's an RBT, for probably the last 15 years and 10 years at initially in the the big company, like that is so needed. So thank you. Because they often get forgotten. So thank you for doing that. That is absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 56:16

Shout out to Allison. Yeah who was who was on who was on our uh on our podcast. Oh, it's a different Allison, probably.

SPEAKER_00: 56:23

This is Alison Kim.

SPEAKER_02: 56:24

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 56:25

You probably don't know her, but you can't.

SPEAKER_02: 56:27

Sorry, we can still yeah, we can shout out Allison. You made a special design, it was too much of a coincidence.

SPEAKER_04: 56:31

Two thoughts as to what you said. One, have you Dr. Scott, what's his last name? O'Donnell. Dr. Scott O'Donnell. Are you familiar with Dr. Scott O'Donnell?

SPEAKER_00: 56:39

We're connected on LinkedIn, but I don't really I haven't like interacted with him as much as I would like to. I see his posts and and then always like, yeah, pretty accurate.

SPEAKER_04: 56:48

He may be a good person for the rejected. He's looking at even creating a secondary board for the uh with the BACB or in competition with the competition for lack of a better term, with the BACB, might be somebody that would be an interesting person to talk to. Also, you mentioned that you have people like practitioners in the field come and and give discussions and things like that from people in the field. If there's anything we can do, so I kind of alluded to this earlier, but shortly after the conference that we moderated, Mike and I, honestly, mainly with inspiration of people like Maggie and yourself created our own company. So we've been doing our own thing for about a year, doing a lot of, I think, very innovative stuff. We have fault insurance companies on some things, and one doing a lot of ascent-based, compassionate-based care and therapy and really focusing on quality over quantity. So if there's anything we can do or speak to a webinar, anything for the do better collective, we'd love to do it because you are a huge inspiration for us going on and doing our own thing. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 57:46

Thank you so much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 57:48

Where do people find, besides in the uh the show notes, but other than that, where would people find the do better collective?

SPEAKER_00: 57:55

Um, we have our website, dobettercollective.com. We have Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn. All just do better collective if you look it up. I don't really do a whole lot with TikTok. I've been trying, but I'm just not I'm not young enough to figure it out.

SPEAKER_04: 58:09

You don't have a do better dance or anything? Come on, Megan. You gotta learn that on the cruise.

SPEAKER_00: 58:19

I do like a partnership with this company, Step Forward AVA, and they had a bunch of their younger staff there that are still RBTs or just newly certified DCBAs, and they were, you know, making all these TikTok videos. And I shared my idea because I don't know if you all have seen the trend, but it's like you seem happier now. And then the person's like, thanks. I left an abusive relationship and took care of myself or something like that. That's the trend. And I was like, You guys should do one where it's like you seem happier now. And then the person's like, Yeah, I left a crappy AVA company and now I'm with Steph Ford. And all other little young people looked at me like I was crazy.

SPEAKER_02: 58:54

Like, we might still be talking about we'll we'll we'll take that. We'll and we'll credit you. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00: 59:01

So I'm like, all right, I really need to like contract a 22-year-old to do some stuff with that.

SPEAKER_02: 59:07

We we've been trying with the podcast. I'm with you. I'm just not interested in the social media part, but it's still relevant. It and it it makes a difference and it certainly lets us get a little further reach. So we agree. We're and we're gonna have to steal your idea just blatantly.

unknown: 59:22

Go for it.

SPEAKER_02: 59:23

We we joked it, but we could probably go three, four hours. We are at the end of our time. Thank you so, so much for breaking us with all the information. And it's been a very, very fun conversation. I get the feeling we'll have you back at some point. I like to do a little uh three to four point synopsis here at the end so we can do our tagline. So the first one I'm gonna say, Dan, is consider motivation over control.

SPEAKER_04: 59:46

Oh, I like that. Oh maybe uh research. What was it? Research to practice to research to practice to research, um not just research to practice.

SPEAKER_02: 59:56

Definitely do better and always analyze responsibly. Cheers, Dr. Megan. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks so much for your time.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:02

Thanks, guys. Always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:07

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.