Round 2, baby!
I don’t think we deposed enough of them to count
🤨
Ay yo where them board of directors at?
Need more Green Marios to attend board meetings.
I’m all in favor of shitting on UHC, but ABA for autism is rather problematic, so they’re actually on the same page as the autism community on this one.
EDIT: For those unfamiliar with it, it’s basically the autism equivalent of gay conversion therapy, trying to convert autistic children to neurotypical behavior. It’s not good for the autistic person’s own mental health.
I am an autistic person with an autistic child. “Therapies” that try to get us to act like you should be illegal. And stupid, we evolved as part of humanity for a reason.
I masked my whole life, I don’t want my kid to be forced to as well.
Cure ableism not Autism.
I’m autistic as well, although I was not diagnosed with it as a kid (they only diagnosed me with a “learning disability” rather than the complicated soup of neurodivergences I have).
I’ve been lucky to not have to mask much in my life (although I do some, for sure). It’s a tragedy that most autistic kids are treated worse than I was. I think they all deserve better.
We kept hearing this as well, but our personal experience has been the opposite. I think ABA therapy has changed dramatically over the years and shouldn’t be generalized as such. ABA seeks to understand behavior and includes that which is unseen. Specific therapists have certainly been problematic over the years though.
The proof will be in what your child tells you, when they feel able to do so.
I’m on the fence here, but I think this might be an oversimplification. One of their key challenges was inability to communicate, and it was grossly affecting their happiness. Young children should never be that sad and depressed. Parents have to infer a lot of information, and this increases by several orders of magnitude with ASD children.
We’re obviously pro-autism, as pretending someone’s brain chemistry is not real benefits no one. ABA has helped overcome mole hills before they become mountains.
ABA was highly recommended for my 3 year old, but we did some research and were put off by some of the horror stories. My local school system fortunately has a 3K program for children with developmental disabilities so we decided to just lean on that and revisit our ABA decision later if needed
I’ve seen firsthand ABA help plenty of high intensity Autistic children. When a kid is maturating in class constantly or doing tons of self harm, you need to try psychological methods to change that behavior. The equivalent of gay conversion therapy? I have never seen such a whackadoodle take.
While ABA is not without its criticisms, especially for cases where the kids are already better able to function day-to-day and ABA is used to strongly encourage masking (back in the day they’d literally just beat kids down with both carrot and stick to get them to pretend to be “normal”), getting severely affected kids to engage and talk is basically what it’s best at, and yeah, you don’t just get “better” from ASD.
Fucking horrific by UHC, as usual, and you know ABA is not the only care getting this kind of “analysis.”