Skittles, A Rubik’s Cube, And The ABA Rabbit Hole: A Sip and A Candid Chat with Asia Johnson (Part II)

ABA on Tap is proud to present Asia Johnson (Part 2 of 2):

A kid can learn their colors and still be worse off if they’ve been trained to silence “no.” That tension drives our candid conversation with Asia Johnson as we wrestle with what ethical, modern ABA therapy should look like when the goal is a real life, not perfect compliance. We talk honestly about how many clinicians are shaped by a single supervisor, a single company, and a single packaged system, and how that funnel can turn good people into one-track practitioners without meaning to.

From VB-MAPP popularity to PEAK’s assessment structure, we dig into “teaching to the test” and why assessment scores can’t be the finish line. We compare naturalistic teaching with discrete trial training as a tool, then zoom out to the bigger issue: assent-based practice, withdrawal of assent, and the fine line between instruction and coercion. We also unpack a hard but necessary question for client outcomes: what did it cost to get that progress, and did it create masking, trauma, or reduced self-advocacy?

Then we shift into cultural competency in ABA and autism services in Black communities, where programming details matter, like hair care routines, barber shop versus salon experiences, and language goals that erase AAVE. Asia breaks down how competency, referral decisions, Medicaid access, and limited provider pools collide in the real world, plus why research diversity and historical medical mistrust shape family engagement. If you care about trauma-informed care, ethical ABA, and culturally responsive autism support, this conversation will stretch your thinking. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave us a review with the biggest “success metric” you think ABA should be judged by.

Enjoy the second pour with Asia Johnson, share this with a parent or clinician who needs it, subscribe and leave a review with your take. Tell us---what should ethical ABA protect first?

Tune in, drink up and ALWAYS analyze responsibly.

Transcript

Welcome Back And Part Two Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to ABA on tap. I'm Mike Ribio with Dan Lowry. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly. All right, all right. Welcome back to another installment of ABA On Tap. I am your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, and this is part two of Skittles, A Rubik's Cube, and the ABA rabbit hole. A sip and a candid chat with Asia Johnson. Cheers.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

That's such a good point because a lot of people do get their get their the first field hours. Well, they get all their field hours from one BCBA. I'd say the vast majority get it from one company. A lot of them get it from one person. So that's actually a really good point. I have some follow-up questions, but I'll I'll pass it to you. I don't want to if you've got something to ask.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

No, no. I just think I think it's uh really important to think about all of this in terms of that, you know, learning under one mentor. And then what I would add to that is that there's usually some curricular or a packaged effort, right? And I'm not being critical of those things. So why why it's a slipping me right now? So the uh the VB map right now is very popular, and again, lending no criticism toward that, but to your point, Asia, you might just learn that particular angle, and then now that's the lens. That's that's what everything gets filtered through. And you, you know, any of us can become too brute force a hammer

Supervision Funnels And One Lens

SPEAKER_02 1:45

where everything now looks like a nail, and we're not then truly individualizing those treatment plans like we say we are. And it's not with any harmful intent. I mean, I'll give people the benefit of the doubt, it is because of a limited experience or a packaged training. And for any of us that run a company, we're lucky to be small at this point, but as we scale, we're gonna face the same problem of how are we packaging our training, what systems are included within that training, and how do those systems now, as packages, become interpreted as being the be all end all ABA, right? They're not just they're they're they are part of ABA, but the VB map does not, for example, define ABA as a whole. There's so many other, so much more nuance and so many other things to consider. So I think that's a really excellent point in terms of how our structures and our systems are set up to get your your hours and and your supervision in, it's very much set up in a way that funnels you in this linear fashion toward kind of being a one-trick pony or learning only under one method. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, for sure. I think like even with like when we think about like teaching to test, teaching to assessment, right? Like we we don't always understand that, like, yeah, the goal is equal with skill training, right? But like your goal isn't to repetitively teach the child. State, right? Like, how can you invoke some of those shaping of like vocalizations, potentially do a sound inventory, kind of go a little bit deeper, right? Like people don't actually oftentimes read the manual, they just go based off of what their experience hours taught them. Um, and so that's why I appreciate some of the like more advanced assessments that's coming out, right? Like peak having like a PCA that's separate from the curriculum, because a lot of times people just teach to test, and then you can't teach to the PCA, you have to use the curriculum, so it takes away the ability for people to just kind of like color code authoration over authorization. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

No, that's it's it's interesting too. I'm thinking about that word cult that's used, because in some ways I'd almost be proud description. Yeah, no, it's so much is it's uh there's so much depth to that because in some ways I'd be proud that the people that we train do ABA the way that we want it to be done, because that's why we created the company, because we don't feel like the mass ABA is doing it the way that we want it to be done. But at the end of the day, that does mean they're doing it the way we want it to be done, and they're being trained on we're a smaller cult. Yeah, we're a smaller cult, right? No Kool-Aid. Um, but yeah, that's that's an interesting thought. And the people that train under our guidance, like you said, teaching to the test, the test is gonna talk about what is differential reinforcement or what is the FR1 schedule or whatever, but they're not gonna talk about how to get to that, or even a coex, right? They're not gonna talk about how do you train a coex. Do you sit down at a table and with a card and say, ball, ball, ball? Do you train it more naturalistically? Like, how do you train it? And we're gonna have some ideas on how to do things. And my guess is that the people that we train are gonna go into the field doing it the way that we want to do it. So it is it is very, very interesting because clearly we'd be happy with doing it that way because we think it's right, that's the way that we would do it, but that doesn't mean that it's objectively right, right? Yeah, for sure. So that's that's an interesting term that you use, and I'm kind of marinating on that.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

That's gonna be very useful. And I think that again, as we scale, you and I are gonna find ourselves in that discussion. So, like, I I I I feel very proud that RBTs that have come to us from other big box agencies to use that term specifically, very much enjoy then the open-endedness of our approach. Then I would also contend that I would feel a little bit concerned about somebody that trained with us first, who would then venture into a more rigid structure. It's not gonna work. No, they would be lost because they would be way too open-ended.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

But or like even teaching, like I don't think we've probably ever done a DTT trial, like as DTT would be done at our company. But not to say that it wouldn't be valuable to somebody that we're training to say, here's what DTT is, try it. Now you can juxtapose it to the more naturalistic ways that we do it, right? Right. And now you have the experience so you can understand it, giving like the whole menu of options. But like you're saying, almost everybody, including us, that menu's gonna be only a selection of things that they want to do. That's very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Yeah, we talk, I mean, if we talk DTT now, we're just talking about that historically in terms of a of what a trial looks like, and then we talk about the statistical significance behind the model.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

And then we say, do it and play.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Right, do it as you play, right? Open-ended in a child-directed fashion, and then as you build, you'll see the rapport building, and then before you know it, you'll get there, and the child will just gravitate to you, which is gonna be a perfect time to say, Okay, let's sit down and do this and be a little bit more adult directed. And then even then, you know, any three-year-old is gonna let you know that no, I want to do this, I don't want to do that. And how are you gonna hit your targets given that setting, right? Or given that circumstance.

Teaching To The Test In ABA

SPEAKER_02 6:50

And I think that's where ABA has historically had some trouble in saying, you know, I'm gonna prompt everything into how I envision it, and somewhere in there, I might be violating somebody's assent or not gaining somebody's assent, or ignoring the fact that they're withdrawing ascent. And I think, yeah, that it was it was easy for us to get into trouble that way. We we said a lot there. I don't know if you you want to unpack any of that for us, Asia. You I think you had some some thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I just think that like when it comes down to like organizations, I think like when I when I use the term code, I think like as organizations begin to scale, it's a little bit harder to stay to that nucleus, right? And so like you have more BCBAs that's coming with a different set of experience. And so they're all there layers in, you know, to offer what does a feedback loop look like as far as like the development of this curriculum? You have someone that comes in at a larger scale, right, as a quality assurance individual who's gonna overlook some of these things. And so those practices are kind of oftentimes built in to kind of fix and solve an ability of someone to be like super rigid of like this is my only way.

SPEAKER_03 7:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

More like when you think of like the smaller owned like companies that's maybe been less than 15 years in tack and you haven't necessarily grown or have no desire to scale. And all of the people that came in for the last eight years were an RBT, then moved to BCBA. Those are the ones that I think we need to really examine and kind of look into, right? And the reason being is because sometimes it's not because you are, you know, hoping to create this layer of inefficiencies. And like sometimes it really works because that clinician owner does understand a science, but that's not the story for every BCBA owner, right? Like some of them maybe got into the space because they were not making it at some of the other agencies because they were unethical, and then they open up their own branch and then they just bred multiple unethical BCBAs underneath their tenure, right? And so sometimes it's a beautiful thing when there's a clinician's own. I mean, I'm really close friends with a chick who is in her, like, I think it's her 10th year of ABA servicing, and I know her mission, I know her passions, right? And so for her, that's not the case. And I don't see anything unethical happening within her organization. But is that the case for like the place where I worked at that was really, you know, smaller based with all of the people having that same mindset that it's okay for this child to engage in 200, you know, body flops. We did all that we can do. Like we're just gonna take these wins because she can identify colors and call it a date. Like, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

That's tricky because when we try to evoke the BACB into the matter, they'll typically respond. We've had experience with this, is they do not opine into workplace specific workplace matters, right? So the BACB, there's not really like a license. There, there's a certified certifying body in California, there's not a licensing body. And the BACB doesn't really, unless it's like a gross violation of ethics, they don't really tell people how to run their own business. And like you're saying, when you have a lot of mom and pop shops, the oversight really isn't there, and you can run into a lot of really good situations, and then you can run into a lot of questionable situations. And at the end of the day, the people that receive both of them are not gonna say that Joe Joe Schmo's ABA wasn't good, I need another ABA. What they're gonna say is ABA doesn't work, and it's gonna be a tarnishment on the field as a whole, not that individual's you know, representation of what they thought it would be. I do have a question when I switch gears, but let me pass it to you before we do that.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Well, I I think uh Agent makes an excellent point there. And then uh the more I guess that the more tight-knit your systems seem, you know, especially if they're erroneous or misled, from the outside, it can still seem like a really, you know, watertight system. Like, wow, they really have their operations in order and they really know their systems and their curriculum, but it could all be rotten from the core and and just being replicated over and over and over. That's dangerous. So, I mean it it so it makes an argument for streamlining and and really uh I guess tight trading and having tight systems, but then this is where continuing education has to come in, right? You that has to keep evolving. That means that the flavors hopefully can be a little bit different, and you can have BCBAs who are practicing with two distinct styles but still hitting the ethics as they should, and then hopefully still producing outcomes for their particular patients or clients. That's I mean, that's a tall order that takes a lot of that professional development. The bigger you get, the harder it is to diversify those trainings, to incorporate more people's viewpoints. You just wanna, you know, like you're like an octopus and you've got tentacles way out there, and you just need them to do what you taught them to do and do it over and over again, and that can, you know, be a lot of trouble. Once it goes awry, it's just gonna continue to replicate trouble. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

And then, like, even taking it like a notch further when we talk about like client outcomes. Do they have client outcomes in questionable clinics? Absolutely. Like, you're gonna have client outcomes at times. Is it you know to the benefit of the child? Maybe, right? However, like there's also a lot of damage and trauma that also is paired with those outcomes. And so just taking that into consideration, I think a lot of times people lean on like these are the outcomes that I'm getting. And it's like, at what cost did you achieve those outcomes?

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Your example's perfect, right? So, how functional or socially significant does naming your colors become when you're otherwise slamming your body 200 times in a day? How do you access that skill? What relevance does it have to your environment? Probably not much.

SPEAKER_03 12:36

Yeah, defining those metrics of success. It actually goes back to what you were saying earlier before I changed gears. You were talking about your daughter being such a strong-willed individual and self-advocacy. And I think that's something that I can speak for our company specifically. Like, we really try to promote that and try to promote assent.

Company Culture And The Small Cult Problem

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Looking back, I've been in the field almost 20 years now. You know, we look at the the difference between self-advocacy and protest. And my contention, the difference between self-advocacy and protest is who's doing it, right? If I'm doing it, it's me self-advocating it. If you're doing it and I don't want you to do it, it's protest. And so often, you know, if I look back, maybe your daughter even dealt with this 10 years ago of when people are trying to self-advocate and say they don't want to do something or things like that, we look at that as protest, and that's a maladaptive behavior, and we need to stop that. And when me as the instructor, I tell you need to do something, you need to do it because I'm an instructor. And that can go down some interesting, almost leading to trauma traumatic roads where we're not listening to the client. Whereas hopefully now, more so when people are advocating, yeah, it might not be the best thing for me as an instructor or teacher, whatever, you know, think about teachers. They've got, you know, 15, 20 students, and if I've got one student that's self-advocating, it's like, oh, now I've got to deal with this person. But that really is a strength in that individual, not necessarily the deficit we would have historically looked at it as because it got into our way versus what they're trying to express. Yeah. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that before we change gears a little bit, but I'm sure your daughter's she would have a lot of thoughts on that because she seems very good at self-advocating.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yes. And then on the the opposite side of the coin, right? My older daughter, who I told y'all are it's like polar opposites from Sage, hearing a like person of authority tell her, like, don't do that, or like, don't, you know, talk back or like just do what I'm telling you to do, she's absolutely gonna listen and she's not gonna like go against the grain in any way, shape, or form. Whereas Sage is gonna hold her line, right? And so, like, depending on which child or which individual you're kind of like, you can be diminishing it, you can be punishing that behavior, and the likelihood of them doing it again is lower. I mean, so like depending on the child, like if you are considering their self-advocacy as a process, they may also feel like, well, maybe I should have viewed it a different way, and they start to shift their own perspectives and internalize some of those things.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Yeah. And I'm sure there's times, like you said, it's a double-edged sword, right? I'm sure there's times as a parent, you've been in a hurry or something, and you've been like, come on, stage, we gotta go. And then she's like, Why? I don't want to go. You're like, This, oh, this isn't the time to self-advocate, right? Because it's infringing on what you need to get done in that situation. But on the flip side, like you're saying, with your older daughter and and persons of authority and just kind of blindly listening, you know, we've we've heard a lot of trauma stories and that individuals with special needs, sometimes on the spectrum, have really high rates of abuse as they get older, because some of them have learned that people of authority, you just need to listen to them and not question what they're telling you to do. And a lot of times the person of authority is some person in your house telling you what you need to do, and then that could be a teacher, that could be whatever, and then they don't question it because they've been told you can't question it, and that can also lead to some undesirable outcomes. So, kind of going full circle into what you said about what is success of a treatment, kind of depends on what that metric is. I could get somebody to learn their colors or numbers or something and be like, look, this person can do that, it's been successful, but now this person is just kind of trained and they're not able to advocate for themselves. We talked about that, we just had a review for our first RBT, our her annual review, and she was talking about we asked her various successes over the years, and the success that she highlighted was one specific client that was kind of compliance trained, and she got him to self-advocate, and she's like, he's just such a different person.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

You can see it in his mood, and he's so much more empowered because he had been, you know, just complying, complying, just this simple compliance, and and you could tell that he was frustrated with it because he was showing signs of it and self-injurious signs of it. So he would, you know, do something self-injurious and then comply with your command. And it's like, this doesn't look right. What why is why does this keep happening? This doesn't look right. And yeah, it was I was very proud of very proud of our RBT Allison. Shout out to Allison. The moment, the day, first day she met him, she said, I that's gonna be my thing. I I need to make sure he can say no. And yeah, now he's saying no and making requests.

SPEAKER_03 17:09

So that's amazing. And even though that might make her life difficult in the moment, that might make her parents' life, the his parents' life difficult.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Yeah, it likely can't likely complicated or created a new circumstance for his parents where before it was like go do this and he would do it. Yeah, now the idea is that wait, now he's not complying. Is he misbehaving? Or back to your and Aja's original point, he's advocating for himself. Yeah, he's letting you know what he wants, and that's a really good thing, right? It might make life a little bit harder, it might lead to some sloth moments where now you're waiting for him to do something and you got yourself into this, but that should lead to a more rich, more significant interaction with your environment.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Any thoughts on that or anything you want to add before we change gears a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

One thing to add is that like I think it's just critical to fully understand like the lifespan of the client. I think that oftentimes we are trying to get them to the next stage of life. And like, what does that look like? We talk about like clients that move from early EI into school age servicing, and like you you can totally point out a child who was quote unquote successful in ABA, right? Because they are the most like poised in the classroom. They're like sitting straight up oftentimes, right? And they're like looking around their peers are nowhere on that magnitude of compliance, right? And so, like sometimes it's like, do we like when we look at like a normative scale, what exactly are we gauging as quote unquote normal and atypical? Because when you see those individuals, you'll see like so many pockets of individuals in classrooms that are not as rule governed and not as compliant. And it's okay for them because society calls them neurotypical. But for a child who has ASD, it's oftentimes frowned upon if they do just like the smallest thing that's not compliance-based. And so when we start to look at like what does it look like for that five-year-old who then turns 15, I think the story totally changes, but oftentimes VCBAs don't span through the lifespan of the child until they don't get to see what it's like to be an adult on a spectrum or what it's like to be beyond the age of 25, right? And still have to face some of the daily challenges.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

That's that's an excellent point. That's an excellent point. I think we even run the risk of overscrutinizing some of the kiddos we work with in that respect because we we we provide a more limited scope of what's appropriate or what a range of appropriate behaviors. Again, it's that straight line again. No, only this is the correct behavior for this consequence. And yeah, a normal range is a range. There's a wide variety, a right wide array of behaviors that can be acceptable toward some level of reinforcing or punishing consequence.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

So I want to change gears a little bit to something that seems kind of like your your biggest thing that you talk about. And you talk about kind of cultural competency or ABA, autism, just kind of all of that within black communities. So let me open up the floor to you. I know that's things you've

Naturalistic Teaching, DTT, And Assent

SPEAKER_03 20:10

done presentations on, whether you want to talk about maybe the biggest roadblocks that we face in ABA, just anything, and then we can kind of take it from there, pass it to you for your soapbox of autism in black communities, ABA in black communities, mental health in black communities, whatever, whatever you want to, wherever you want to go with this, Asia. Let me pass it to you on your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Well, I think this is a tough one because like sometimes you speak on these areas and there's clinics that never seen a black individual come through their intake, right? And so, like, I think for some individuals, they can say, like, oh no, we're totally, you know, diverse and we totally understand how to be multicultural. But if you place them in an area that's more densely populated with more diverse perspectives, you see it, the gamut kind of run. I think that like oftentimes like New Orleans is considered a melting pot of cultures. And so you do see clinics that have a wide range of individuals that come through inner haircut goal looks totally different for a child that's black than a child that's of another ethnicity. And so, what is it like to teach haircutting to a child that's entering a barber shop versus a salon, right? Those nuances are extremely important when you're programming for these kids. And sometimes it does take individual studying to figure out what it looks like if you also haven't experienced that environment. And oftentimes we don't see that. It's not taught, right? The removal of DEI type of conversations that's like specific to those things are more so now embedded because of like current political states. And obviously, the BACB took their stance on what that looks like for continuing education. And so I think when we look at like what does it look like to be Black in America, also tying in what law enforcement looks like to those individuals, and how comfortable are you removing your political stance to have an unbiased conversation with your client who may be facing these challenges? I think all of that nuance is something that we don't discuss more of within the space, even down to like even like an education and academic basis, like school settings, there isn't like talks of like financial literacy, talks of like what is it like to kind of embark on these different money goals. And in ABA, when you're dealing with a teenager, you're dealing with someone who's entering college, understanding like rate lining still to this day exists, right? Like what your friend received on their credit report and what you received on your credit report are gonna be two different things, solely based on your address of your parents' home, right? There isn't enough conversation surrounding like what is it like to be black in America, and then just being black and autistic in America, right? And so all of those nuances are near and dear to my heart. I think that those are areas that I think is like something that needs to truly, truly be studied more of.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Go ahead. Well, I mean, there's there's so much to discuss there. Even coming so we've been, you know, talking about very popular term right now, this idea of ascent. You mentioned some other situations where it's very easy to use the right language politically to make yourself look good, and then as soon as it's not so popular, you know, you you withdraw on that, and I'm kind of taking a little bit of a jab at the board there indirectly. And I think that's a really uh important thing to think about. So, like, even for me, if I want to be child directed and you know, ascent-based, but I walk into a household of a certain cultural background, that may not be the disciplinary expectation. Uh, I can walk into households of a certain cultural background where there's going to be a high academic achievement that's expected. And and I'm sitting there having to, you know, contend with that in terms of what skills I'm going to be then trying to teach this child, which behaviors I'm trying to promote. And and that can be a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

So you're trying to focus on toileting or self-advocacy, and they're like, no, they need to sit down and do their homework.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Right. Well, they're not going to sit down and do their homework until we get, you know, take some care of some of these other pieces. What is your best advice to younger professionals, younger BCBAs? You you got to get well-versed on this. Yes, reach out and talk to people, and then in that moment, what's the best thing for you to do when you know that you might be out of your scope? How do you check yourself to say, hey, am I within my scope here? Yes, I might be a big bad BCBA, just passed the exam, I've got a nice big salary. But at the end of the day, I may not know squat about what I'm doing here. You know, what's what's your how do you how do you help younger professionals gauge that and understand where we are limited in our scope and then where we need to educate ourselves? And does that mean we have to step back from those situations, or can we still engage in those situations where we're a little bit out of our scope, but are ready to learn? You know, I threw a lot at you there. I'll I'll let you uh unpack it for us.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Yeah, I think that where our industry is at currently, in a state of infancy, I don't think we're there. I don't think there are resources available to young professionals that say this is how you remove yourself from a case. We are talking about an industry where the owners of the industries are not clinicians, they do not have ethical obligations. And so even if you raise your hand and you say, I don't want this client, chances are your job security is at risk, right? And so there isn't a world where a BCBA can say, this is my competency area, this is the area of focus that I specialize in. These are the clients that I can see. Other branches of psychology are a little bit more advanced. And so when you're picking a therapist, you can see their focus areas and their specializations. In ABA, you do not. They have this blanketed perspective that a BCBA is competent across all areas when the reality is they are not. And so I think that as our field continues to grow, I think the onus is really on all of us, right, to create these different regulatory practices beyond the BACB, because the BACB is only a licensure board. I served as a subject matter expert for the BACB for a couple of terms and so totally understand that like their parameters around like what they have to figure out legality-wise and governance-wise. And so understanding that that is a government-based entity in one way, shape, or form, it's not necessarily tied to the government, but the licensure boards are tied to the government and that it's more so beyond us as clinicians and more so as lobbyists figuring out how do we change these bylaws? How do we make sure that these things are coming into place for the places and states that are licensure regulated? Um, obviously, there are so many states that's not regulated by licensure practices, and so they are leaning on a BACB. But I think the understanding of what the BACB is is so critical to them understanding that that is not a regulatory board. They are not gonna step in and help in those regards, and it's only so much they can do when agencies are not owned by a clinician.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

I think so. Competency, it's it's an interesting juxtaposition between competency and almost discrimination, right? To say that I'm not competent, I don't feel I don't say I don't feel comfortable might not be the best term, but like I don't feel competent to be able to work with these individuals because I'm unaware of their culture or things like that. And obviously, the you could get some cultural training that to help you be more aware. Um, it sounds like you provide trainings like that, which would be super useful. That that's an interesting juxtaposition or fine line between saying that you're not competent, so I can't work with, or I currently don't feel comfortable to work with this family because I don't feel competent versus being discrimination, being discriminative based on somebody's ethnicity or something like that. What are your thoughts on kind of that that line and navigating that, Asia?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah, I think that that's more of an America issue, right? Like I think it only becomes a problem when it's black versus white. I think if it's a Spanish entity or, you know, like a Hispanic child who you say I don't have the linguistics to understand and advocate and communicate with their family members, it's completely fine. You aren't competent in that area, right? Whereas if it's white BCBA who's saying, I'm actually I'm not competent in the area of teaching, like hair, you know, hair skills or like understanding like the nuance of like braids and different things that maybe mom wants to put in her child's head, right? It becomes like, oh, she's racist, she doesn't want to work with a child that's black. And so I think it's more of an American, American issue surrounding like race differences and seeing like the variance of like maybe a white practitioner excluding or saying that they're incompetent and like dealing with a child who's of African American, a black descent, but in other areas, like a Pacific Islander, right, or an Asian family, those just fall under like competence and like you know, they don't they try to consider like, can I go into this home? And if a parent offers me something I shouldn't refuse because of this culture, and there's nuance invariances surrounding like different culture sets outside of being black, but when it comes down to being black, it's more of a it the culture isn't held at the same regards as other cultures, if that makes sense. There is like no acknowledgement that ebonics, you know, is a second language, right? Like people don't consider that a second language because it's been like polarized by pop culture, and so they're like all teens speak like that. No, actually, like adults and elders in the black community speak Ebonics, right? It's not a pop culture thing. This is the day-to-day lives of these individuals. And so when it comes down to being black, your culture isn't as regarded as others. There isn't a AAVE secondary language unless you're diving into black studies.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

And so, from my understanding of what you said, that was really, really enlightening. I think Mike and I both are like, wow, that's a that's a really good perspective. By so people taking cases as to not want to seem like you say racist or discriminatory could inadvertently actually being being more racist or discriminatory by not referring it out or admitting that we don't have competency. So is that am I understanding you correctly? So saying that I don't have competency and I might not be the best person for this case would actually be not racist or not discriminatory versus taking on a case that you don't understand the culture for. Is that accurate? Am I understanding your perspective correctly?

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Yeah, I think that's accurate. Like, even when I look at like one of my closest friends, she's white, but at the end of the day, like she's white. We grew up together, but we're totally different, right? Like my church experience is different from her church experience. She can't tell my daughter like anything that she hasn't really lived through and experienced. And so her teaching, like McKenzie's gonna be like her teaching her life's perspectives. And like, yes, it's amazing to have like different life perspectives. But if a family coming and they're saying, I want my child to be embedded in my everyday life and embedded into my community setting, really asking yourself, can you offer that child the ability to meet those standards? If you literally have never experienced those walks

Self Advocacy Versus “Protest”

SPEAKER_00 31:30

of life, there's just common things within the Black community. Like we we talk about like games like Black Heart Revoked, where like there's different commonalities, like universally, that like some black people can fill in the blank for intraverbals, like you know, the different things, like when you say like different like church sayings, like some black people, irregardless if they grew up in Atlanta versus New Orleans, can like end the statement. Whereas like for a white person, you ask them that same introverbal, they cannot fill in that blank, right? And so when you talk about like teaching introverbals and fill in statements, maybe they don't want their child to understand nursery rhymes, they want their child to be able to answer when the congregation says, you know, when God is good, right? Like certain things, like certain like colonial quisms that like people take for granted. Like we like my my I always joke with my husband. I always tell him, like, he's not black, he's literally like a white man trapped in a black man's body. But so like his like defense, like he was raised, like his stepdad was a white male, and so like certain aspects of like his day-to-day life is not gonna be the same as mine.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

That's that's really that's interesting. I think now adding another layer to that. So you being in Louisiana, your access to BCBAs might be a smaller pool than California. And I'm going back to when your daughter was originally getting diagnosed, smaller pool than California. And then you said, I think you refer to yourself as a a meta a Medicaid mom. Is that what so now your pool is even smaller, right? Versus somebody, say, in California, maybe in a more affluent area that has access to medica uh private medical insurance. So you're already at a smaller pool, and potentially a good part of that already small pool might be people that don't have competency in working with certain cultures. So now it's like, well, what what do we do? Because if this one BCBA who is does have availability to work with me and accepts Medicaid, doesn't accept me, even though they might not have competency, it might be six, eight, twelve months, it might be three years before I get somebody, it might be never before I get somebody that has availability to take my case that has competency in this. So now that's a tricky situation. What are your thoughts on navigating that situation?

SPEAKER_00 33:57

I think it depends on like family need, right? Sometimes the need is less about cultural variance and more about behavioral reduction, and behavioral behavioral reduction is a little bit more like I would say universal as far as like certain things. Again, there are levels where being a black male, it's perceived sometimes that maybe aggression is a little bit more severe than it actually is, right? And so there's that nuance. But if it's like a child who maybe is like level one or level two, and their, you know, things are more so conversational or communication barriers. Are you okay with the type of curriculum that these individuals are able to offer you? Within, I think, all of the school settings, there's always gonna be a layer of like academic development that's gonna come to play. But I think as a whole, anytime there is a Medicaid recipient, you're gonna have a limited pool size of practitioners available to you. We just have to do more advocacy of explaining to people within HBCUs and Black campuses that this is a route to take. Oftentimes it's not spoken of. Um, that's not something you hear about in the branches of psychology. It's like something that is oftentimes a field that people stumbled upon. It's not a field that people widely know. And so figuring out how we can be more aware of like forwarding like a future aspect of like bringing more individuals into the space that is African-American descent or black descent.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

So in a more specific circumstance, say yours, where your daughter was receiving services from a professional who didn't reach the level of understanding of, say, her ibonics use and saying, I'm gonna keep correcting you on your your language use. Do you think that situation is at all salvageable? Meaning if that professional is able to listen to you and say, Oh, okay, well, thank you for pointing that out. What how do you how do you think I should work with this? Do you think that's enough of a starting point? And it's it's it's it could work out, or do you think it just takes a lot more training and time than that or exposure? I mean it's gotta start somewhere. You don't want your kid to be the the the the test the test subject. But again, I think you you know you stood in a place there where you could have provided a lot of cultural competency. It's not your responsibility though. What's that's a quandary? Yeah. Give us your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Yeah. I think when we look at like the medical field as a whole, so we'll take a step and zoom out beyond ABA. I think that there is such a negative type of history when it comes to the medical industry and black people as a whole. Um, we're talking about individuals who potentially have a grandparent or a great grand that's not, you know, passed away, that's still alive and well and can speak to whether or not they have a trust in the medical model. Like we're talking about an industry that just recently realized that black kidneys and white kidneys are literally the same thing, right? That black people are not stronger than white people. And so when you think about like the medical history of what it looks like to be black in America, I think that you have to like really tie into like what's culturally appropriate for you, especially if like the person that's also supplementing care from like a stakeholder perspective is a grandparent. I know my mom was alive and well during segregation. She was in fourth grade, right? And so, like her perspectives of the medical model is going to be different from someone who maybe has a mom or a grandparent that's in their 40s, right? My mom had me when she was older. And so I grew up in like a household where both of my parents were older and experienced a level of segregation and was a part of those movements. Plackerman's Parish was one of the last desegregated parishes in the United States. And so thinking about those variances when you are dealing with different children, I think is super imperative. And yeah, on a on the flip side, we can say like early invention is so impactful, but we also touched on like what does it mean for that trauma to like roll over into them being able to emerge into their communities.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Can you speak a little more on that? That that's really uh like the I remember during COVID, I think COVID was a really interesting uh socioeconomic or socio-political example of that. That that I think there was different like between white and black people in terms of the amount of people that got the COVID shot, or like trust in the medical system, right? Like I I heard a lot about that in some of the podcasts that I would listen to about that just inherent distrust, and it raised my awareness of like, oh, there was a lot of medical malpractice done to a lot of different nationalities that I was not even aware of, because that's not taught in history books. But going into like the the distrust, but also so we work with all sorts

Lifespan Outcomes And Defining Success

SPEAKER_03 38:40

of different nationalities. San Diego's also like a melting pot nationalities, and one of them that we work with a lot is you know, Filipino individuals, and some things that I've heard from parents of that nationality is that when they talk to either their family or they go back to the Philippines, they can't like talk about their child having autism because they're gonna get judged on it and it's like not okay, and their parents are gonna, you know, think a certain way of them because they don't have the awareness of what autism is, and people m their parents might think they've been a bad parent, which has caused their child to have autism. So there's a lot of different things that they have to think about within their cultures that I wouldn't have to think about in my culture if I had a child with autism. So can you speak to that, you know, in your experience or maybe for the larger like culture of kind of what it's like having a child with autism, what that might look like in your culture, and and things that parents might run into, and suggestions for parents running into those things on what your recommendation would be.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

I think it's tough because I think when we look around, specifically for my family, you know, my family didn't have like individuals who are older and had a diagnosis that like grandmother just figured out. But in my children's biological dad side, like when I think about like what their family dynamics look like, there were like several older individuals who probably had an intellectual disability that they never called autism, right? And so like they are living and thriving, and like, yeah, could they have improved or been in a better position? Absolutely, but they just kind of like dealt with the cars as they came. Individuals in that sense of like understanding it. Like, even though like grandparents may say, like, oh, you don't have to kind of like get them services, like they're gonna be fine. Look at your uncle, you know, like he had like some of the same things, like how y'all say like that said, like, I wasn't talking until I was four, they'll be okay, right? Like having that understanding that, like, yes, there is that aspect of things, but then like research also tells us a story that like early intervention is gonna be like the most pivotal, you know, time to get them help and get them servicing. I mean, so even if that looks like the study that oftentimes did not include your demographic, it's okay to be a part of the new research that's looking at and exploring whether or not it's gonna be helpful. Again, we run a risk of individuals being like, you know, testers of a theory that this is gonna be helpful. Because even when we look at the DSM V, it did not include several Black individuals and like what was the ratio of individuals with ASD. It also did not include female populations as much. And so I think like when we're looking at it from a research perspective and really looking into more longitudinal studies, we have to be able to pull in more demographics because oftentimes, like if it is a parent that's a little bit more intellectual versed in research, they can pour in and lean into the fact that, like, my child wasn't a part of this number. How can you truly help my child without that added research? We talk about being a field that's evidence-based and research-based, but it's only evidence-based and research-based when you actually look at the demographics that the original study served.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

That's a great point. Not just sample size, but uh sample diversity is a really interesting point that I don't think gets spoken about nearly enough. So, in your own personal experience, you also kind of had to come back to your family then, and you mentioned it, provide a make them familiar with these techniques and procedures, and just talk a little bit more about that. What was the biggest obstacle? And sort of was there anybody in your family who was a little bit more uh in denial in terms of the diagnostics, maybe leaning more into the traditional discipline side? What what were the barriers you faced in your own personal journey and for lack of better phrasing, educating your family and saying, hey, you you might have a little distrust on this, you might not be familiar with this, but this is what's happening. And luckily it sounds like your mom was kind of your advocate in the sense that you'd been telling her, and then she got a chance to then take a look and go, Oh, wait, I I was you were right, I was ignoring you or I wasn't believing you. Yeah, this is a little bit different. So maybe that helped, and uh, in your particular case, that might not be the case for other individuals who are otherwise harboring or trying to deny, not just for themselves, but for their families, just because they're afraid of the the stigma. How was it? Tell us a little bit about your personal experience there. What did you have to teach your family members?

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Yeah, I

Cultural Competency In Black Communities

SPEAKER_00 43:10

think it's an ongoing study. I think it's like ongoing, like learning pockets for my mom. I think that while she understands that Sage has ASD, sometimes she still struggles to fully understand like what that diagnosis means in full. I also say that to state that like I am a first-time graduate within my family, and my mom has an associate's degree, but it took her a really long time to achieve that associate's degree. We're talking about someone who in fourth grade had to experience desegregation. And so her educational foundations are not as strong, right? And so I think that like all of those layering impacts, just like the understanding of like reading comprehension skills, reading like medical terminology, AVA jargon is extremely hard to understand and is extremely hard to break into. layman's terms, it's a it's a really, I think, tough spot for families who do not have beyond a 10th grade reading level to really be able to grasp like what all of these different practices and and and works looks like. Right. And so I think for her, it's an ongoing battle for, you know, my brother, even my husband at times, like understanding that like certain things is is just a part of like the ASD diagnosis and like what does that mean? What does that look like? Right. Because like again, there are areas where Sage may exhibit the same symptoms of like a 12-year-old that's neurotypical because her level is level one. And so there is like a thin line between like where some of her deficits can come into place in her everyday lives, but it's not always obvious to others. And so for me, I think it's been an ongoing battle. I think for someone whose child is level three, a lot of times like people within the black community turn into more of like this ableism mindset where they kind of just be like, oh, this is how they are and they don't try to offer them the ability to fit into you know neurotypical settings or they discount what they could be or what they are capable of. And so in that sense it stifles their level of growth because they aren't offered the opportunities to truly grow. And so it's it's going to be different, right? Every ASD individual is going to be completely different than another. And then we also have to tie into the fact that like beyond ASD, what does it look like to grow up in your particular household? What does your culture look like? Because every household has its own culture irregularity if you're black, white, Asian, right? And so figuring out like what is each family's like common goals and core values is going to be key. I think that that has been where I stood true to like, okay, this is what I want for Seed. How can I make sure other people understand what I want for her as well as what she wants for herself.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

That's perfect. I think taking that approach that you just mentioned there, anybody can can definitely continue to promote their to expand their cultural competency. And I I like the way you put that if you just walk into every situation to meet those individuals where they're at then you're giving yourself a chance to understand those uniquenesses and then you might have a chance to uh educate yourself a little further on on the various cultural nuances that that exist that could then really improve your effort and your treatment your intervention and hopefully your outcomes for the that particular circumstance that's awesome. I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

It's tricky because like you've talked about it on so many levels and I want to see if I can articulate this. So on the client level you talked about like the haircutting program or something like that. Somebody coming from a culture that doesn't understand might try to have the client or you talked about it with your daughter in speaking as well have a client try to present a certain way or talk a certain way which would now add another level of masking on top of the already general ASD level of masking that people on the spectrum might do. And then you've got the next level up from that the parent which is going to be interesting I in my parent group I share this this article which was written by I don't know probably 15 years ago now but it was called Strangers in Our Home. I'm not sure if you've ever seen that article but it was a mom talking about her first experience of getting ABA therapy and how it was awkward and very humbling and her child was the most important thing in her life and she had to admit she didn't know how to really respond because she didn't know what autism was. She was trying all her traditional parenting strategies and they weren't working so for her to take a step back and say I need help as a parent like was very humbling and like very trustworthy having to be very vulnerable that's a better word than trustworthy for somebody coming into her house. Now you add another variable of that someone coming into your house being of a totally different culture than you as a parent like I'm sure that's got to be very challenging of now I've got to trust this person. Do they even understand my life my my church my routines where I go where I don't go like why should I trust them? How do they know how to teach me how to raise my son or daughter better? So you've got the child level then you've got the parent level and the solution is like you said having more cultural competency but also people of that culture of all of the different cultures being able to work with people within that culture which you're you've talked about it's not there's not a huge representation of black individuals in ABA right now and hopefully that'll change which goes to the last piece that you said about kind of the the cult and who's going to train them. Well even when we do start to get more individuals of different ethnicities and cultures in ABA like you said we're still in our infancy so are the people that are going to train them going to train them in ways that are going to train their intuitions out of them into the cult that whatever the organization is that they're training. So it's it's really interesting and I think there's a lot of obstacles and a lot of barriers there where people like yourself are uniquely suited to step in and be mentors and say hey like you can do ABA this way. You don't have to do it in a different way. I am from the culture I'm from a similar culture of you and like let me train you how you can do ABA to best meet the people of the cultures that you're working with I think it's there's like eight steps in this ladder and you're very uniquely suited to to train individuals that can relate to parents that can give more culturally appropriate behaviors to the kids that we're working with which at the end of the day is who we're trying to serve.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

That's I hope you can get your word out there and how can people find you do you offer mentorship or or how can you train the next generation of professionals so that they can be most culturally competent for the people that they serve yeah so I am working on rebooting my on-demand mentorship where originally it was designed for the RBT that's going on a track to become a BCBA as a minority because that's another story right for another day. But I think that like figuring out how we can kind of get more parents involved has always been key to me. I'm a part of a golfing group down in New Orleans where the parents really like pour into the community as far as like parent resources and figuring out how we can kind of meet families where they're at within the city of the greater New Orleans area. And so figuring out how we can kind of like scale that a little bit more on a larger scale is really critical for me because I think that oftentimes like we don't hear about the stories of individuals more are as prevalent when you know black kids are being disproportionately targeted and they they carry a comorbidity of like a disability like ASD or we don't hear about like the the parents that are trying to figure out how to aid their child when maybe they also potentially had ASD but it was missed because their parents weren't educated at the time to understand that they too have ASD. There's so many layers I think within like each intricate community. And so my website is seizing se I zig 611.com where you can kind of reach me, connect with me on those contact forms, always open to dialogue and discussion surrounding like parent advice even like for individuals that aren't able to afford those services that also offer like discounts to single parents and single moms. And so always looking to reach down and reach back to pour into those families.

SPEAKER_03 51:37

So I have a um like I mentioned in in my parent curriculum the the first week now all I do is give parents resources from you know we have regional centers here in San Diego activities that they can do just all sorts of parenting resources. So if you don't mind maybe I'll include season611.com is another resource that parents could reach out to you if you know they they find that that need is is there for them. Do you do CEUs or anything like that? Have you or are you planning on doing it? Because I would love to send some of our professionals to watch a CEU so that they can be more culturally competent.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Yeah I have a ton of different CEUs that I've done in the past this last year I would say I took a little bit of a sabbatical and so you'll see my LinkedIn is a little bit more bare the last year. I had to do just a little bit of resittering of figuring out like as far as priorities. Like at one point I think I was at a space in my career where I was like every opportunity that I want to take advantage of it. I think this past year I've been a little bit more selective with my time and my just impact and journey as a whole. And so there's a ton of different things. I think the the best one may be like a trauma is a couple on behavioral live where if you search Asia Johnson um it'll have like trauma informed care on there. Catalyte is an agency that I did a talk about Ebonics and kind of trace back to like the trans and Atlantic slave trade of like what does it look like for language to be lost. And so a lot of different CEUs over the years I can give you all a list of those.

SPEAKER_03 53:08

Yeah we'll put those in our if you can

Mentorship Resources And Closing Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 53:10

send those to us on email we'll put those in the description of the episode we would love to have those and I would love to be able to train our or provide the staff the opportunity to get access to those that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

Well we we warned you that this time would fly you we we are so appreciative to have an opportunity to speak with you today. Like Dan mentioned you are uniquely skilled and qualified and uh we're grateful for the information that you're putting out there and certainly grateful for all that we gleaned from you today. So thank you so much. I'd like to do a few closing points just to set up for our taglines.

SPEAKER_03 53:44

And we'd love to have you you back on we just scratched the surface level of a lot of these discussions today we'd love to have you back on and dig a little deeper another time if you're willing to and anything that ABA on tap can ever do for you just let us know.

SPEAKER_02 53:56

All right. So what I've got for everybody is expand your cultural competency consider the self-advocacy aspects of noncompliance take it easy on the ABA Kool-Aid and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Thank you so much Asia we appreciate you thank you bye always analyze responsibly 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