New Endeavors and Updates

In the past two years there have been a lot of changes. Not just with my personal endeavors, but in society as a whole. While I'm not going to get into all the nuances and shifts in our American society, I do want to address some personal changes that are coming, not only for me, but for my blog.

As you know, I've switched gears from being in the classroom full-time with children, to working in a clinical capacity with adults. This shift came 7 years ago, and I couldn't be happier. However, in the past few years, another shift has began to take place. As a clinician of behavior analysis, I have seen my fair share of criticism of ABA. At first, it was painful and my responses (though not made publicly)  came from a place of grief, defensiveness, and shame. I first read about the criticism of ABA over  years ago, and my immediate reaction was to shut it out completely. Make statements such as "That person must have had a bad ABA provider", or "ABA has changed so much - that's not my ABA." The reality was, I was missing the point entirely, and instead of learning more from those with lived experiences, I chose to close my eyes and ears, and pretend it wasn't happening. Flash forward to 2020. In the midst of all the turmoil in our society (read: human and civil rights violations, killing of unarmed black Americans, protests, etc.), I began to read and consume more and more from those of different experiences from mine. And of those differing experiences, I came back to the anti-ABA conversation. If I've learned only one thing in the past several years, it's that we won't do better until we listen to each other. And that includes those with different life experiences from us. Thus, I began to close my mouth and open my ears to the experiences of those in the anti-ABA movement.

In the past two years, I have shifted my stance on many areas I didn't think twice about before. For example, my posts about Behavior Charts, which I posted a follow up to to really drive home my support of them. There are many ways my practice as a behavioral clinician has changed, but the most pertinent way is how we view disabled people and "disability" as a whole. My entire profession has been centered around ensuring disabled people "blend" in with the "normal" people. Sure, we didn't call it that, but our behavior goals, strategies implemented, the terminology we use ("treatment", "disorder", "appropriate", etc.) imply otherwise. While this post isn't meant to cover all of the nuances of this movement (that will be for another time), I needed to address this and discuss how things will be changing.

I will not be removing old content of mine, but instead will add a disclaimer to the top of my posts indicating where I currently stand on issues discussed. This is a way to provide education for people while still holding myself accountable.

Additionally, this blog will provide resources, posts, information, etc. on ABA Reform (which I will discuss in a later post), in addition to other random content that I want to post (such as DIYs, updates, recipes, posts on wellness topics, etc.), because I moved from an education blog to more of a lifestyle blog a long time ago and that still brings me joy.

It will take me time to go through my old posts, add disclaimers, and write any updates, but I appreciate your patience. This has been a long two-year hiatus and I am slowly finding the energy to come back and do what I used to thoroughly enjoy. I hope you stay for the next leg of this journey.