Podcasts about lovaas

An episode that's breaking barriers in discussing neurodivergence and disability rights.Here's what's in store for today's episode: * Today, Matt and Angela discuss the "Make America Healthy Again" executive orders, the concept of "wellness camps," and their harmful impact on the neurodivergent and disabled communities.* We then explore the history of neurodivergence during the Nazi era, the horrific treatment neurodivergent people endured, and how Hans Asperger used Asperger's syndrome to separate autistic individuals deemed worthy of survival from those who were not.* The reality is, you can't "cancel" autism or neurodivergence—it's genetic and an inherent part of who we are.* Our hosts dive into the topic of internalized ableism within the neurodivergent community, particularly its prevalence among those with lower support needs.* Additionally, we discuss the issues with ABA and behaviorism, as well as Lovaas's role in both gay conversion therapy and ABA.* We also discuss Elon Musk—while he is autistic, he is not part of the autistic community or culture, as he does not embrace or support autistic ideals.* Our hosts examine the increasingly alarming policies of this administration, emphasizing that supporting it is a statement against the well-being and rights of autistic people.* This administration is actively working to dehumanize transgender people, and there is a significant overlap between the trans and disabled communities.* We discuss how autism levels are inherently biased, often correlating with one's ability to contribute to capitalism.* Disability is the one minority group that everyone will eventually belong to—at some point in life, everyone will experience disability.* Level three autistic people are often infantilized, while level one autistic people are frequently asked variations of, "Have you just tried suffering?"* We also explore the historical context of the "vaccines cause autism" myth—reminding everyone that autistic people have existed long before vaccines!* Finally, we discuss the importance of community during these times and the need to move away from relying on traditional systems. “People are ‘the parasite class' - because unless you're independently wealthy and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and have millions or billions or trillions of dollars, you are somehow a drain on the ‘great system' that is the United States.” - Matt“That's how neurotypical people lead their lives. Neurotypical people don't have an inner monologue. Neurotypical people are not pattern-followers. Neurotypical people trust the people above them socially to do what is in their best interest. These executive orders protect neurotypical people by getting rid of us pesky neurodivergent people that are somehow eating up neurotypical resources.” - Matt“We need people who will support us in the community, because we all need support. All humans need support. We are not individual islands. We all need to rely on each other, because the traditional systems will not take care of us.” - MattDid you enjoy this episode? We explore how autism and neurodivergence are deeply embedded in the world around us, from harmful policies to the biases within autism levels. Tune in as we unpack how society's treatment of neurodivergent and disabled individuals shapes our lives, and why supporting certain systems can harm our community. Let us know your thoughts in the comments, and use #AutisticCultureCatch to share your perspectives on the episode!Show Notes:https://www.facebook.com/drangelakingdon/posts/pfbid0MUr89WMxZoonBTaBwef2yAtGyQFTrB8etJbjC7XoobJF8iRjP3ghr3TdoHdaCPRDlhttps://autisticadvocacy.org/2025/02/asan-condemns-announcement-of-presidents-make-america-healthy-again-commission-and-harmful-ideas-about-autism-and-other-disabilities/Related Episodes:Fighting Internalized AbleismReady for a paradigm shift that empowers Autistics? Help spread the news!Follow us on InstagramFind us on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyLearn more about Matt at Matt Lowry, LPPJoin Matt's Autistic Connections Facebook GroupLearn more about Angela at AngelaKingdon.com Angela's social media: Twitter and TikTokOur Autism-affirming merch shop This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.autisticculturepodcast.com/subscribe

We believe more is better, and that if we do more, our child with Autism will be ‘okay' or won't struggle as much. I debunk the myth that more intervention is better and explore the dangers of the 1987 Lovaas study. I'm showing you why higher amounts of therapy may not be helpful to your child, how your well-being matters more to your child than speech or behavioral intervention, and the importance of trusting your instincts and expertise. Get full show notes and more information here: https://theautismmomcoach.com/123

Read the longform article at:https://gettherapybirmingham.com/healing-the-modern-soul-part-2/   The Philosophy of Psychotherapy The Corporatization of Healthcare and Academia: A Threat to the Future of Psychotherapy The field of psychotherapy is at a critical juncture, facing numerous challenges that threaten its ability to effectively address the complex realities of the human experience. Chief among these challenges is the growing influence of corporate interests and the trend towards hyper-specialization in academic psychology, which have led to a disconnect between the profession and its roots, as well as a lack of understanding of the physical reality of the body, anthropology, and the history of the field. In this article, we will explore the ways in which the corporatization of healthcare and academia is impacting psychotherapy, and argue that in order for the profession to remain relevant and effective, it must embrace a more holistic and integrative approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and spirit. This requires a renewed commitment to developing a coherent concept of self, a shared language and understanding of implicit memory, and a vision of psychotherapy as a means of empowering individuals to become more effective at being themselves in the world and, in turn, better at transforming the world for the better. The Corporatization of Healthcare and Academia The influence of corporate interests on healthcare and academia has had a profound impact on the field of psychotherapy. The pressure to maximize profits and minimize costs has led to a shift away from comprehensive diagnosis and towards a reliance on quick fixes like medication and brief, manualized therapies. This trend is particularly evident in the way that psychiatry has evolved over the past few decades. Psychiatrists used to spend an entire hour with their patients doing psychotherapy, but now the majority of the profession relies solely on drug therapy. In fact, a staggering 89% of psychiatrists used only drug therapy in 2010, compared to just 54% in 1988 (Mojtabai & Olfson, 2008). Patients are often left feeling frustrated and unheard, with many giving up on medication after their psychiatrist writes a script in the first and last five minutes of their first session. The same forces are at work in academia, where the cost of education has skyrocketed and the focus has shifted towards producing "products" rather than fostering critical thinking and innovation. Adjunct professors, who often lack the expertise and experience to teach psychotherapy effectively, have replaced tenure-track faculty, and students are graduating with a narrow understanding of the field that is ill-suited to the realities of private practice (Collier, 2017). The result is a profession that is increasingly disconnected from its roots and the physical reality of the body. Anthropology, humanities and the history of the profession, which offer valuable insights into the nature of the human experience and the evolution of psychotherapy, are largely ignored in favor of a narrow focus on cognitive-behavioral interventions and symptom reduction pushed largely to help psychopharm companies' bottom lines (Frances, 2013). The current academic publishing system is also broken. Academics work hard to come up with original ideas and write papers, only to give their work away for free to publishers who make trillions of dollars in profits while the authors get no compensation (Buranyi, 2017). Peers often cite papers to support their own points without actually reading them in depth. And the "best" journals frequently publish absurd psychology articles that would make you laugh if you said their main point out loud, but hide their lack of substance behind academic jargon (Sokal, 2008). Meanwhile, students spend years in graduate school being forced to research what their advisor wants, not what's truly innovative or needed to advance the field. After a decade of study and compromise, the pinnacle achievement is often creating a new 30-question screener for something like anxiety, rather than developing therapists who can actually discern and treat anxiety without needing a questionnaire. The system fails to properly vet or pay therapists, assuming they can't be trusted to practice without rigid manuals and checklists. This hyper-rationality, the madness arising from too much logic rather than too little, is very useful to moneyed interests like the Department of Defense in how they want to fund and control research. Large language models and AI are the pinnacle of this - spreadsheets sorting data points to mimic human speech, created by people so disconnected from a real sense of self that they believe you can turn people into robots because they've turned themselves into robots (Weizenbaum, 1976). But psychology and therapy can't be reduced to hard science and pure empiricism the way fields like physics can (at least until you get to quantum physics and have to rely on metaphor again). We can't remove all intuition, subjective experience and uncertainty (Rogers, 1995). The reproducibility crisis in psychology research shows the folly of this over-rationality (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Studies that throw out any participant who dropped out of CBT treatment because it wasn't helping them are not painting an accurate picture (Westen et al., 2004). Developing a Coherent Concept of Self A History of the Self Our understanding of the self has evolved throughout history: Ancient Greek Philosophy (6th century BCE - 3rd century CE) Socrates introduces the idea of the self as a distinct entity, emphasizing self-knowledge and introspection (Plato, trans. 2002). Plato's concept of the soul as the essence of the self, distinct from the physical body (Plato, trans. 1997). Aristotle's notion of the self as the unity of body and soul, with the soul being the form or essence of the individual (Aristotle, trans. 1986). Medieval Philosophy (5th century CE - 15th century CE) St. Augustine's concept of the self as a reflection of God, with the inner self being the source of truth and self-knowledge (Augustine, trans. 2002). St. Thomas Aquinas' synthesis of Aristotelian and Christian concepts of the self, emphasizing the soul as the form of the body (Aquinas, trans.1981). Renaissance and Enlightenment (16th century CE - 18th century CE) Descartes' famous "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"), establishing the self as a thinking, conscious being (Descartes, trans. 1996). Locke's idea of the self as a blank slate shaped by experience and the continuity of consciousness (Locke, trans. 1975). Hume's skepticism about the self, arguing that it is merely a bundle of perceptions without a unified identity (Hume, trans. 2000). Romantic Era (late 18th century CE - mid-19th century CE) The self is seen as a creative, expressive force, with an emphasis on individuality and subjective experience (Berlin, 2013). The rise of the concept of the "self-made man" and the importance of personal growth and self-realization (Trilling, 1972). 20th Century Philosophy and Psychology Freud's psychoanalytic theory, which posits the self as composed of the id, ego, and superego, with unconscious drives and conflicts shaping behavior (Freud, trans.1989). Jung's concept of the self as the center of the psyche, integrating conscious and unconscious elements (Jung, 1959). Existentialism's emphasis on the self as a product of individual choices and actions, with the need to create meaning in a meaningless world (Sartre, trans. 1956). The rise of humanistic psychology, with its focus on self-actualization and the inherent potential of the individual (Maslow, 1968). Postmodernism's deconstruction of the self, challenging the idea of a unified, coherent identity (Jameson, 1991). Contemporary Developments (late 20th century CE - present) The influence of neuroscience and cognitive science on the understanding of the self as an emergent property of brain processes (LeDoux, 2002). The impact of social and cultural factors on the construction of the self, with the recognition of multiple, intersecting identities (Gergen, 1991). The rise of narrative theories of the self, emphasizing the role of storytelling in shaping personal identity (Bruner, 1990). The influence of Eastern philosophies and contemplative practices on Western concepts of the self, with an emphasis on mindfulness and interconnectedness (Epstein, 1995). Psychotherapy and the Concept of Self Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) - Psychoanalysis: Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, conceived of the self as being composed of three elements: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id represents the primitive, instinctual drives; the ego mediates between the demands of the id and the constraints of reality; and the superego represents the internalized moral standards and values of society. Freud believed that the goal of psychotherapy was to bring unconscious conflicts and desires into conscious awareness, allowing the ego to better manage the competing demands of the id and superego (Freud, trans. 1989). Carl Jung (1875-1961) - Analytical Psychology: Jung, a former collaborator of Freud, developed his own theory of the self, which he saw as the central archetype of the psyche. Jung believed that the self represented the unity and wholeness of the personality, and that the goal of psychotherapy was to help individuals achieve a state of self-realization or individuation. This involved integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche, including the persona (the public face), the shadow (the repressed or hidden aspects of the self), and the anima/animus (the inner masculine or feminine) (Jung, 1959). Alfred Adler (1870-1937) - Individual Psychology: Adler, another former collaborator of Freud, emphasized the importance of social relationships and the drive for superiority in shaping the self. He believed that individuals develop a unique lifestyle or way of being in the world based on their early experiences and relationships, and that the goal of psychotherapy was to help individuals overcome feelings of inferiority and develop a healthy, socially-oriented way of living (Adler, trans. 1964). Fritz Perls (1893-1970) - Gestalt Therapy: Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, saw the self as an ongoing process of self-regulation and self-actualization. He believed that the goal of psychotherapy was to help individuals become more aware of their present-moment experience and to take responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Perls emphasized the importance of contact between the self and the environment, and the need to integrate the different aspects of the self into a cohesive whole (Perls et al., 1951). Internal Family Systems (IFS) - Richard Schwartz (1950-present): IFS is a more recent approach that sees the self as being composed of multiple sub-personalities or "parts." These parts are seen as having their own unique qualities, desires, and beliefs, and the goal of IFS therapy is to help individuals develop a greater sense of self-leadership and inner harmony. The self is seen as the core of the personality, with the capacity to lead and integrate the different parts (Schwartz, 1995). As Schwartz writes in the introduction to his book on IFS, the model was heavily influenced by Gestalt therapy and the work of Carl Jung. Schwartz aimed to create a non-pathologizing approach that honored the complexity and wisdom of the psyche. IFS shares Jung's view of the self as the central organizing principle, surrounded by various archetypes or subpersonalities. It also draws on the Gestalt emphasis on present-moment awareness and the need for integration of different aspects of the self. However, IFS offers a more user-friendly language than classical Jungian analysis, without the need for extensive explanations of concepts like anima/animus. In IFS, a patient can quickly identify different "parts" - for example, a protector part that taps its foot and bites its nails to avoid painful feelings. By directly engaging with and embracing that part, the patient can access the vulnerable feelings and memories it is protecting against, fostering self-compassion and integration over time. The IFS model is an example of how contemporary approaches are building on the insights of depth psychology while offering more transparent, experience-near practices suitable for a wider range of patients and practitioners. It reflects an ongoing effort to develop a cohesive yet flexible understanding of the self that remains open to unconscious processes. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) - Aaron Beck (1921-2021) and Albert Ellis (1913-2007): CBT, developed by Beck and Ellis, focuses on the role of thoughts and beliefs in shaping emotional and behavioral responses. CBT sees the self as being largely determined by the individual's cognitions, and the goal of therapy is to help individuals identify and modify maladaptive or irrational beliefs and thought patterns. CBT places less emphasis on the unconscious or intrapsychic aspects of the self, and more on the conscious, rational processes that shape behavior (Beck, 1979; Ellis & Harper, 1975). Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) - B.F. Skinner (1904-1990): ABA, based on the work of Skinner and other behaviorists, sees the self as a product of environmental contingencies and reinforcement histories. ABA focuses on observable behaviors rather than internal states or processes, and the goal of therapy is to modify behavior through the systematic application of reinforcement and punishment. ABA has been widely used in the treatment of autism and other developmental disorders, but has been criticized for its lack of attention to the inner experience of the self (Skinner, 1953; Lovaas, 1987). What is Self? One of the key challenges facing psychotherapy today is the lack of a coherent concept of self. The self is a complex and dynamic entity that is shaped by a range of internal and external factors, including our experiences, relationships, and cultural context (Baumeister, 1987). Unfortunately, many contemporary models of therapy fail to adequately capture this complexity, instead relying on simplistic and reductionistic notions of the self as a collection of symptoms or behaviors to be modified (Wachtel, 1991). To develop a more coherent and holistic concept of self, psychotherapy must draw on insights from a range of disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and the humanities (Sass & Parnas, 2003). This requires a willingness to engage with the messy and often paradoxical nature of the human experience, recognizing that the self is not a fixed entity but rather a constantly evolving process of becoming (Gendlin, 1978). The psychoanalyst Carl Jung's concept of the self as the central archetype, connected to the divine and the greater unconscious, offers a useful starting point for this endeavor. Jung believed that by making the unconscious conscious and dealing with ego rigidity, individuals could embody a deeper sense of purpose and connection to the universe (Jung, 1959). While we may not need to fully embrace Jung's metaphysical language, his emphasis on the dynamic interplay between conscious and unconscious processes, as well as the importance of symbol, dream, and myth in shaping the self, remains highly relevant today (Hillman, 1975). Other approaches, such as Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and somatic experiencing, also offer valuable insights into the nature of the self. IFS sees the self as a core of compassion, curiosity, and confidence that is surrounded by protective parts that arise in response to trauma and other challenges. By working with these parts and fostering greater integration and self-leadership, individuals can develop a more coherent and authentic sense of self (Schwartz, 1995). Similarly, somatic experiencing emphasizes the role of the body in shaping the self, recognizing that trauma and other experiences are stored not just in the mind but also in the muscles, nerves, and other physical structures (Levine, 1997). Models like IFS, somatic experiencing, and lifespan integration are appealing because they see the self as a dynamic ecosystem that is always evolving and striving for integration and actualization (Boon et al., 2011; Ogden et al., 2006; Pace, 2012). They don't try to label and categorize everything, recognizing that sometimes we need to just sit with feelings and sensations without fully understanding them intellectually. Lifespan integration in particular views the self as a continuum of moments threaded together like pearls on a necklace. Traumatic experiences can cause certain "pearls" or ego states to become frozen in time, disconnected from the flow of the self-narrative. By imaginally revisiting these moments and "smashing them together" with resource states, lifespan integration aims to re-integrate the self across time, fostering a more coherent and flexible identity (Pace, 2012). In contrast, the more behavioral and manualized approaches like CBT and ABA have a much more limited and problematic view. They see the self as just a collection of cognitions and learned behaviors, minimizing the role of the unconscious and treating people more like programmable robots (Shedler, 2010). If taken to an extreme, this is frankly offensive and damaging. There has to be room for the parts of the self that we can feel and intuit but not fully articulate (Stern, 2004). Ultimately, developing a coherent concept of self requires a willingness to sit with the tensions and paradoxes of the human experience, recognizing that the self is always in communication with the world around us, and that our sense of who we are is constantly being shaped by implicit memory and other unconscious processes (Schore & Schore, 2008). It requires remaining open to uncertainty and realizing that the self is never static or finished, but always dynamically unfolding (Bromberg, 1996). Good therapy helps people get in touch with their authentic self, not just impose a set of techniques to modify surface-level symptoms (Fosha et al., 2009). Understanding Implicit Memory Another critical challenge facing psychotherapy today is the lack of a shared language and understanding of implicit memory. Implicit memory refers to the unconscious, automatic, and often somatic ways in which our past experiences shape our present thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Schacter et al., 1993). While the concept of implicit memory has a long history in psychotherapy, dating back to Freud's notion of the unconscious and Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, it remains poorly understood and often overlooked in contemporary practice (Kihlstrom, 1987). This is due in part to the dominance of cognitive-behavioral approaches, which tend to focus on explicit, conscious processes rather than the deeper, more intuitive and embodied aspects of the self (Bucci, 1997). To effectively address the role of implicit memory in psychological distress and personal growth, psychotherapy must develop a shared language and framework for understanding and working with these unconscious processes (Greenberg, 2002). This requires a willingness to engage with the body and the somatic experience, recognizing that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are deeply rooted in our physical being (van der Kolk, 2014). One way to think about implicit memory is as a kind of "photoshop filter" that our brain is constantly running, even when we are not consciously aware of it. Just as the center of our visual field is filled in by our brain based on the surrounding context, our implicit memories are constantly shaping our perceptions and reactions to the world around us, even when we are not consciously aware of them. This is why it is so important for therapists to be attuned to the subtle cues and signals that patients give off, both verbally and nonverbally. A skilled therapist can often sense the presence of implicit memories and unconscious processes long before the patient is consciously aware of them, and can use this information to guide the therapeutic process in a more effective and meaningful direction (Schore, 2012). At the same time, it is important to recognize that implicit memories are not always negative or pathological. In fact, many of our most cherished and meaningful experiences are encoded in implicit memory, shaping our sense of self and our relationships with others in profound and often unconscious ways (Fosshage, 2005). The goal of therapy, then, is not necessarily to eliminate or "fix" implicit memories, but rather to help individuals develop a more conscious and intentional relationship with them, so that they can be integrated into a more coherent and authentic sense of self (Stern, 2004). The Future of the Unconscious Many of the most interesting thinkers in the history of psychology understood this symbolic dimension of implicit memory, even if their specific theories needed refinement. Freud recognized the dynamic interplay of conscious and unconscious processes, and the way that repressed material could manifest in dreams, symptoms, and relational patterns (Freud, trans. 1989). Jung saw the unconscious as not just a repository of repressed personal material, but a deep well of collective wisdom and creative potential, populated by universal archetypes and accessed through dream, myth, and active imagination (Jung, 1968). Jung urged individuals to engage in a lifelong process of "individuation," differentiating the self from the collective while also integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche (Jung, 1964). Reich connected chronic muscular tensions or "character armor" to blocked emotions and neurotic conflicts, pioneering body-based interventions aimed at restoring the free flow of life energy (Reich, 1980). While some of Reich's later work veered into pseudoscience, his core insights about the somatic basis of psychological experience were hugely influential on subsequent generations of clinicians (Young, 2006). More recently, emerging models such as sensorimotor psychotherapy (Ogden & Fisher, 2015), accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP; Fosha, 2000), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR; Shapiro, 2017) aim to access and integrate implicit memories through body-based and imagistic techniques. By working with posture, sensation, movement, and breath, these approaches help patients bring nonverbal, affective material into conscious awareness and narrative coherence. Process-oriented therapies such as Arnold Mindell's process work (Mindell, 1985) offer another compelling framework for engaging implicit memory. Mindell suggests that the unconscious communicates through "channels" such as vision, audition, proprioception, kinesthesia, and relationship. By unfolding the process in each channel and following the flow of "sentient essence," therapists can help patients access and integrate implicit memories and in turn catalyze psychological and somatic healing. These contemporary approaches build on the insights of earlier clinicians while offering new maps and methods for navigating the realm of implicit memory. They point towards an understanding of the self as an ever-evolving matrix of conscious and unconscious, cognitive and somatic, personal and transpersonal processes. Engaging implicit memory is not about pathologizing the unconscious so much as learning its unique language and honoring its hidden wisdom. At the same time, this is tricky terrain to navigate, personally and professionally. As therapist and patient venture into the uncharted waters of the unconscious, it is crucial to maintain an attitude of humility, compassion, and ethical integrity (Stein, 2006). We must be mindful of the power dynamics and transference/countertransference currents that can arise in any therapeutic relationship, and work to create a safe, boundaried space for healing and transformation (Barnett et al., 2007). There is also a risk of getting lost in the fascinating world of the unconscious and losing sight of external reality. While depth psychology and experiential therapies offer valuable tools for self-exploration and meaning-making, they are not a replacement for practical skills, behavioral changes, and real-world action. We must be careful not to fall into the trap of "spiritual bypassing," using esoteric practices to avoid the hard work of embodying our insights and values in daily life (Welwood, 2000). Ultimately, the future of psychotherapy lies in integrating the best of what has come before while remaining open to new discoveries and directions. By combining scientific rigor with clinical artistry, cognitive understanding with experiential depth, and technical skill with ethical care, we can continue to expand our understanding of the self and the transformative potential of the therapeutic relationship. As we navigate the uncharted territories of the 21st century and beyond, we will need maps and methods that honor the full complexity and mystery of the human experience. Engaging with the unconscious and implicit dimensions of memory is not a luxury but a necessity if we are to rise to the challenges of our time with creativity, resilience, and wisdom. May we have the courage to venture into the depths, and the humility to be transformed by what we find there. Empowering Individuals to Be Themselves The ultimate goal of psychotherapy, in my view, is to empower individuals to become more effective at being themselves in the world and, in turn, better at transforming the world for the better. This requires a fundamental shift in the way that we think about mental health and well-being, moving beyond a narrow focus on symptom reduction and towards a more holistic and integrative approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit. To achieve this goal, psychotherapy must embrace a range of approaches and techniques that are tailored to the unique needs and experiences of each individual. This may include somatic therapies that work with the body to release trauma and promote healing, such as somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, or EMDR (Levine, 1997; Ogden & Fisher, 2015; Shapiro, 2017). It may also include depth psychologies that explore the unconscious and archetypal dimensions of the psyche, such as Jungian analysis, psychosynthesis, or archetypal psychology (Jung, 1968; Assagioli, 1965; Hillman, 1975). And it may include humanistic and experiential approaches that emphasize the inherent worth and potential of each person, such as person-centered therapy, gestalt therapy, or existential psychotherapy (Rogers, 1995; Perls et al., 1951; Yalom, 1980). At the same time, psychotherapy must also be grounded in a deep understanding of the social, cultural, and political contexts in which individuals live and work. This requires a willingness to engage with issues of power, privilege, and oppression, recognizing that mental health and well-being are intimately connected to the broader structures and systems that shape our lives (Prilleltensky, 1997). It also requires a recognition that the goal of therapy is not simply to help individuals adapt to the status quo, but rather to empower them to become agents of change in their own lives and in the world around them (Freire, 1970). Therapists as Agents of the Post-Secular Sacred One way to think about this is through the lens of what depth psychologist David Tacey calls the "post-secular sacred" (Tacey, 2004). Tacey argues that we are moving into a new era of spirituality that is grounded in a deep respect for science and reason, but also recognizes the importance of myth, symbol, and the unconscious in shaping our experience of the world. In this view, the goal of therapy is not to strip away our illusions and defenses in order to reveal some kind of objective truth, but rather to help individuals develop a more authentic and meaningful relationship with the mystery and complexity of existence. This requires a willingness to sit with the discomfort and uncertainty that often accompanies the process of growth and transformation. It also requires a recognition that the path to wholeness and healing is not always a straight line, but rather a winding and often circuitous journey that involves confronting our deepest fears and vulnerabilities (Jung, 1959). Therapists of Agents of the Post Secular Sacred Riddle in the Garden by Robert Penn Warren My mind is intact, but the shapes of the world change, the peach has released the bough and at last makes full confession, its pudeur had departed like peach-fuzz wiped off, and We now know how the hot sweet- ness of flesh and the juice-dark hug the rough peach-pit, we know its most suicidal yearnings, it wants to suffer extremely, it Loves God, and I warn you, do not touch that plum, it will burn you, a blister will be on your finger, and you will put the finger to your lips for relief—oh, do be careful not to break that soft Gray bulge of blister like fruit-skin, for exposing that inwardness will increase your pain, for you are part of this world. You think I am speaking in riddles. But I am not, for The world means only itself. In the image that Penn Warren creates in "Riddle in the Garden" is a labyrinth leading back to the birth of humans in the garden of Eden.  Life itself is a swelling of inflammation from a wound or a need in both blisters and in peaches. You cannot have one part of the process without accepting all of it. The swelling in the growth of the fruit is also the swelling in the growth of a blister of pain. The peach must swell and become a sweet tempting blister or else no one would eat it and expose the "inwardness" of the seed to grow more trees.  exists to be eaten to die. We eat the peach to grow the next one. Not to touch the “suicidal” peach is not to touch life itself. For to live is to be hurt and to grow. To touch the peach is to become part of the world like Adam and Eve found out. It hurts it blisters us turning us into fruit.  For Penn Warren it is the separation of the self from the world of divine connection with nature that creates our need for meaning. This need is the reason that patients come to therapy. God tells us that “I am the lord your God” but Penn Warren tells us “I am not”. For “The world means only itself”. This process only has the meaning that we allow ourselves to give it. This is not a riddle, Penn Warren tells us.  It is only something we have to deal with but cannot not solve. The world means only itself. There is no gimmick or solution to the problem of being human.  In other words, the process of becoming more fully ourselves is not always easy or comfortable. It requires a willingness to confront the pain and suffering that is inherent in the human condition, and to recognize that growth and healing often involve an alchemical kind of death and rebirth. But it is precisely through this process of facing our fears and vulnerabilities that we can begin to develop a more authentic and meaningful relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us. Ultimately, the goal of psychotherapy is not to provide answers or solutions, but rather to create a space in which individuals can begin to ask deeper questions about the nature of their existence and their place in the world. It is to help individuals develop the tools and capacities they need to navigate the complexities of life with greater courage, compassion, and wisdom. And it is to empower individuals to become more effective at being themselves in the world, so that they can contribute to the greater whole and help to create a more just, equitable, and sustainable future for all. The Future of Psychotherapy The corporatization of healthcare and academia poses a serious threat to the future of psychotherapy, undermining its ability to effectively address the complex realities of the human experience. To remain relevant and effective in the face of these challenges, the field must embrace a more holistic and integrative approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and spirit. This requires a renewed commitment to developing a coherent concept of self, a shared language and understanding of implicit memory, and a vision of psychotherapy as a means of empowering individuals to become more effective at being themselves in the world and, in turn, better at transforming the world for the better. It also requires a willingness to engage with the full complexity and paradox of the human experience, recognizing that growth and healing often involve a kind of death and rebirth, and that the path to wholeness is not always a straight line. As the psychologist Carl Jung once wrote, "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." Psychotherapy and the Dialectic of Self and World As we have explored throughout this essay, the self does not exist in a vacuum, but is always in dynamic interaction with the world around it. Our sense of who we are, what we value, and what is possible for us is shaped by a complex interplay of internal and external factors, from our earliest experiences of attachment and attunement to the broader social, cultural, and political contexts in which we are embedded. In many ways, psychotherapy can be seen as a process of exploring and working with the dialectical tension between self and world, between our innermost longings, fears, and aspirations and the often harsh realities of the environments we find ourselves in. When we enter therapy, we bring with us not only our own unique histories, personality structures, and ways of being, but also the internalized messages, expectations, and constraints of the world around us. For many individuals, these internalized messages and constraints can feel suffocating, limiting their sense of possibility and agency in the world. They may find themselves feeling stuck, trapped, or disconnected from their authentic selves, playing roles and wearing masks that no longer fit who they really are. In the face of external pressures to conform, to achieve, to fit in, the self can become fragmented, disempowered, or lost. The task of psychotherapy, then, is to help individuals rediscover and reclaim a sense of self that feels vital, authentic, and empowered, while also developing the skills and capacities needed to navigate the complexities of the world with greater flexibility, resilience, and integrity. This requires a delicate balance of supportive and challenging interventions, of validating the individual's unique experience while also gently questioning and expanding their assumptions about what is possible. On one end of the spectrum, an overly supportive or myopic approach to therapy can run the risk of enabling individuals to remain stuck in limiting patterns and beliefs, reinforcing a sense of helplessness or dependence on the therapist. While providing a warm, empathic, and nonjudgmental space is essential for building trust and safety in the therapeutic relationship, it is not sufficient for fostering real growth and change. Individuals need to be challenged to step outside their comfort zones, to experiment with new ways of being and relating, and to take responsibility for their choices and actions in the world. On the other end of the spectrum, an overly challenging or confrontational approach to therapy can be experienced as invalidating, shaming, or even retraumatizing, particularly for individuals with histories of abuse, neglect, or marginalization. Pushing individuals to "toughen up," to adapt to oppressive or toxic environments, or to simply accept the "reality" of their situation without questioning or resisting it can lead to a kind of false or forced adaptation, a loss of self that is no less harmful than remaining stuck. The key, then, is to find a middle path between these extremes, one that honors the individual's inherent worth, agency, and potential while also recognizing the very real constraints and challenges of the world they inhabit. This requires a deep understanding of the ways in which power, privilege, and oppression shape our experiences and identities, as well as a willingness to grapple with the existential questions of meaning, purpose, and authenticity that arise when we confront the gap between who we are and who we feel we ought to be. In practice, this might involve helping individuals to: Develop a clearer and more coherent sense of self, one that integrates the various parts of their personality, history, and identity in a way that feels authentic and meaningful to them. Identify and challenge limiting beliefs, assumptions, and patterns of behavior that keep them stuck or disconnected from their true desires and values. Cultivate greater self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-acceptance, learning to embrace the full range of their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with curiosity and kindness. Develop the skills and capacities needed to communicate effectively, set healthy boundaries, and navigate relationships and social situations with greater ease and confidence. Explore and experiment with new ways of being and relating in the world, taking risks and stepping outside their comfort zones in service of their growth and healing. Engage critically and creatively with the social, cultural, and political contexts that shape their lives, developing a sense of empowerment, agency, and social responsibility. Connect with a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, and spirituality, one that transcends the ego and connects them to something greater than themselves. Ultimately, the goal of psychotherapy is not simply to help individuals adapt to the world as it is, but to empower them to become active agents of change, both in their own lives and in the larger systems and structures that shape our collective reality. By developing a stronger, more integrated, and more authentic sense of self, individuals can begin to challenge and transform the limiting beliefs, oppressive power dynamics, and dehumanizing narratives that keep us all stuck and disconnected from our shared humanity. In this sense, psychotherapy is not just a personal journey of healing and self-discovery, but a deeply political and moral enterprise, one that calls us to envision and create a world that is more just, compassionate, and sustainable for all. As therapists, we have a unique opportunity and responsibility to support individuals in this process, to bear witness to their pain and their resilience, and to help them find the courage, clarity, and creativity needed to live a life of purpose, integrity, and connection. As the existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once wrote, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." By creating a space for individuals to explore and expand their capacity to choose, to respond to the world with authenticity and agency, psychotherapy can play a vital role in the ongoing dialectic of self and world, of personal and collective transformation. 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The title of Joe Veneziano and Dr. Shannon Shea's research article, They Have a Voice, Are We Listening?, caught my eye and I had to read it. These two BCBAs met at a Journal Club and connected over the need to shed light on the history and nuance of ABA and Behavior Analysis.With the field growing and opinions of professionals being so diverse, educating incoming BCBAs on the history of behavior analysis is crucial. Their paper examines “indistinguishability” and its implications by defining “indistinguishable” in behavior analytic terms. They write about well known studies, such as the Lovaas seminal paper (1987). There are many critiques of ABA in the field and in the in the media today. Is it evil or bad? Is it perfect? Neither is true, but the field and practice of behavior analysis rely on the lens of the research you undertake.Together, we discuss the importance of evaluating research critically and understanding the difference between pseudoscience and robust research. We also highlight the need for an emphasis on the underrepresented voices of autism, including queer individuals, POCs, and women. Research and an open mind are crucial to the success of ABA and the impact it will have on individuals receiving it. As quoted in their article, “Go forward with empathy and cultural humility.”#autism #speectherapyWhat's Inside:Understanding the history of Applied Behavior Analysis.Evaluating research critically is necessary to get the best understanding.Pseudoscience vs. robust research.Emphasizing underrepresented autistic voices.Mentioned In This Episode:They have a Voice; are we Listening? - PMC Join the ABA SPEECH Connection Membership 

¡Buenas, equipo! ¡Y Feliz Navidad! En este día tan especial no podíamos faltar a la cita con nuestro regalo en forma de podcast navideño, con los amigos de PAQUETES y un ‘Cómo me hice del Barça' muy especial: - BLOQUE I (1:19): Nos vuelven a visitar los amigos del podcast de Paquetes, Iñaki San Román y Álvaro Velasco, para hablar de sus libros, ‘El álbum de Paquetes' y ‘Penalti Pop', y hacer un ranking de peores técnicos en la historia del BARÇA. - BLOQUE II (48:33): En ‘Cómo me hice del Barça' charlamos con Víctor Rodríguez, director clínico de Lovaas Foundation, un centro que ofrece programas de intervención para niños con Trastorno del Espectro del Autismo. - BLOQUE III (1:17:12): Y Juanma, Sergi y Gerard cierran con un Termómetro de cedidos edición primer tramo de temporada ¡Esperamos que os guste y que disfrutéis de las fiestas! *Si quieres tener acceso a todo nuestro contenido exclusivo, puedes hacerte fan en el botón azul de ‘Apoyar' a partir de 1,49€… ☕️ Pero si solo quieres apoyarnos de manera puntual porque te hacemos pasar un buen rato, puedes invitarnos a un café: www.ko-fi.com/teambarcapod ▶ Aquí encontraréis las listas de reproducción de nuestros distintos programas: https://linktr.ee/teambarcapod - Ayúdanos a conocerte mejor respondiendo nuestra Encuesta de Team Barça Podcast: https://bit.ly/EncuestaTBP ⚽ Fantasy de TBP en Biwenger: https://bit.ly/LigaFantasyTBP ⚽ Porra de TBP en KickTipp: https://bit.ly/PorraTBP Y uniros a nuestra Comunidad de Discord: https://bit.ly/DiscordTBP Y nuestro grupo en Telegram: https://bit.ly/ChatTBP --- Twitter: twitter.com/TeamBarcaPod TikTok: tiktok.com/@teambarcapod Youtube: youtube.com/@teambarcapod Twitch: twitch.tv/teambarcapod Instagram: instagram.com/teambarcapod Facebook: facebook.com/teambarcapodcast oyentes@teambarca.com Música: www.jamendo.com

This week Simon finally gets his papers together and talks at the microphone about ABA. In the exploration of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), it's crucial that we trace its historical roots and the path it has taken in the realm of autism treatment. Initially hailed for its scientific validation, ABA's techniques and approaches have been a double-edged sword. Over time, many have raised concerns about the therapy's abusive aspects, particularly the methods that prioritise compliance over understanding, potentially suppressing the unique perspectives and behaviours of autistic individuals. These concerns have birthed controversies that have persisted, fuelled by the perception that seeks to 'normalise' autistic people, rather than embracing and understanding their intrinsic differences.In an attempt to provide a comprehensive view of ABA's evolution, I've delved deeply into authentic autistic voices. Using primary sources, including firsthand accounts from the autistic community, alongside traditional scientific papers, it offered me a rich tapestry of insights. It's paramount that as we critically assess therapies like ABA, we ground our understanding in both empirical science and the lived experiences of those directly impacted. Doing so helps us recognize and challenge the embedded notions in our society that still, unfortunately, view autistic individuals as "less than" or outside the so-called norm.I used dozens of sources in preparation for this episode and will publish links and article references via our Twitter feed in the coming days. As ever we thank you, our loyal listeners for sticking with us. We would love to hear from you and our Twitter is open @AtypicalThePod for messages and comments. Have a topic you would like us to cover, or do you fancy joining us for a natter, maybe tell us about your area of interest or expertise and share these things with everyone. We would also recommend our friend The Autistic Women for another great view on living with autism and our friends at the All Bets are Off podcast who cover addiction.

Devon Ramey joins us to talk about their paper, Defining and Measuring Indices of Happiness and Unhappiness in Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.   Show Notes   Remember to join us on Facebook to suggest articles to review and questions for authors. https://www.facebook.com/BApractice Acknowledgments Host and Executive Producer: Cody Morris, Ph.D., BCBA-D, LBA https://salve.edu/users/dr-cody-morris Assistant Producers Jesse Perrin Sarah Sudhoff Shayne Rivard Hannah Grey Organizational Support ABAI https://www.abainternational.org/welcome.aspx Behavior Analysis in Practice Editor, Stephanie Peterson, Ph.D., BCBA-D, LBA https://www.abainternational.org/journals/bap.aspx Music Cruising Altitude by Jim Carr and his band New Latitude http://www.newlatitudemusic.com Link to Article Defining and Measuring Indices of Happiness and Unhappiness in Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (springer.com) References   Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M., & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91–97. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1968.1-91 McConachie, H., Mason, D., Parr, J. R., Garland, D., Wilson, C., & Rodgers, J. (2018). Enhancing the validity of a quality of life measure for autistic people. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 48(5), 1596–1611. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3402-z Parsons, M. B., Reid, D. H., Bentley, E., Inman, A., & Lattimore, L. P. (2012). Identifying indices of happiness and unhappiness among adults with autism: Potential targets for behavioral assessment and intervention. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 5(1), 15–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03391814 Ramey, D., Healy, O., Lang, R., Gormley, L., & Pullen, N. (2019). Measuring mood as a dependent variable in behavioral interventions for individuals with ASD: A systematic review. Review Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 6(3), 255–273. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-019-00169-8 Ramey, D., Healy, O., & McEnaney, E. (2022). Defining and measuring indices of happiness and unhappiness in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 16(1), 194–209.https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-022-00710-y Schwartz, I. S., & Kelly, E. M. (2021). Quality of life for people with disabilities: Why applied behavior analysts should consider this a primary dependent variable. Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 46(3), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1177/15407969211033629 van Houten, R., Axelrod, S., Bailey, J. S., Favell, J. E., Foxx, R. M., Iwata, B. A., & Lovaas, O. I. (1988). The right to effective behavioral treatment. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 21(4), 381–384.https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1988.21-381

Hour 43 of The Autism Network Podcastathon World renowned autism expert Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh gives the definitive talk about potty training. World renowned autism expert Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh answers viewers questions in real time about all aspects of potty training. Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh is a visionary in the field of autism spectrum disorders and has spent 40+ years helping individuals and families to overcome challenges in order to lead their best lives. She is an outspoken advocate for those on the spectrum, fighting for them to have access to interventions that are compassionate, fair and meaningful. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and renowned behaviorist who has been at the forefront of acknowledging and treating medical issues as an essential component of successful autism treatment in addition to top quality intensive behavioral intervention. Watch Ask Dr. Doreen Live on Tuesdays at 1pm ET, 10am PT on the Autism Network, YouTube, Twitter or FaceBook. Ask Dr. Doreen questions on TikTok. Dr. Granpeesheh began her studies in autism as an undergraduate at UCLA earning a bachelor's degree in 1984, and a Master's degree in psychology in 1987, followed by a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA in 1990. While completing her degrees, Dr. Granpeesheh worked with Dr. Ivar Lovaas on the groundbreaking outcome study published in 1987 which showed a recovery rate of close to 50% among the study's research participants. Dr. Granpeesheh built on Dr. Lovaas's work, developing the CARD Model, which is a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to treating autism. In 1990, Dr. Granpeesheh founded the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, also known as CARD. Under Dr. Granpeesheh's 30 years of leadership, CARD became one of the world's largest providers of ABA-based treatment for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. With over 260 locations throughout the United States and internationally, CARD employed over 6,000 highly skilled professionals, and was a leading employer of Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) providing behavioral treatment to thousands of families worldwide. CARD's highly regarded behavior management and skill acquisition programs were the culmination of decades of research in the field of autism treatment. As part of the nation's third largest non-governmental organization contributing to autism research, CARD researchers published groundbreaking studies that contributed significantly to the field of autism treatment research. In 2011, Dr. Granpeesheh founded Autism Research Group, a nonprofit organization whose mission was to identify and conduct treatment research that improves the quality of life for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. To increase access to evidence-based treatment, Dr. Granpeesheh founded Skills™, an innovative web-based platform that optimizes treatment programs for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Skills™ provides comprehensive assessment and curriculum, positive support planning for challenging behavior, progress tracking, and treatment evaluation. and enables healthcare professionals, teachers, parents, and/or caregivers to design and manage comprehensive, individualized treatment programs for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder as well as tracking progress in real time by collecting and uploading data electronically. From 1990 to 2019, as CARD's CEO and chief clinician, Dr. Granpeesheh developed extensive state-of-the-art training programs for CARD's clinical employees, parents and caregivers, and school personnel. As demand for CARD training programs increased, Dr. Granpeesheh established the Institute for Behavioral Training which provides web-based and in-person training programs targeting the specific training needs of school districts, parents and caregivers, physicians, and autism treatment providers. Dr. Granpeesheh has been a member of numerous scientific and advisory boards including the US Autism and Asperger's Association, The Autism File Journal, Autism 360-Medigenesis, the 4-A Healing Foundation and the Defeat Autism Now coalition. In addition, Dr. Granpeesheh has served on the National Board of Directors of the Autism Society of America (ASA), the practice board of The Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) as well as the Autism Human Rights and Discrimination Initiative Steering Committee, the Early Intervention Taskforce of the Senate Select Committee on Autism and Related Disorders and the Oversight Committee of the Department of Developmental Disabilities. Resources:  https://www.autismnetwork.com/category/ask-dr-doreen/ https://www.tiktok.com/@askdrdoreen https://www.instagram.com/askdrdoreen/  

Hour 3 of The Autism Network Podcastathon Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh shares essential information about anxiety, particularly as it relates to autism.  Viewer questions are encouraged. Autism expert Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh gives the definitive talk about anxiety as it relates to autism.  Anxiety has a great deal to do with a person's ability to cope, learn, and grow.  Masking the anxiety is not always the answer.  Listen as Dr. Doreen talks about successful ways to treat, and overcome the debilitating side of anxiety, so we can productively get back to learning and living. Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh has dedicated over forty years to helping individuals with autism lead healthy, productive lives. She is licensed as a psychologist in California, Texas, Virginia, Oregon, Colorado, Michigan and Arizona and holds a Certificate of Professional Qualification in Psychology from the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards. She is a doctoral level Board Certified Behavior Analyst and is licensed as a behavior analyst in Arizona, New York, Nevada, Louisiana and Virginia. Dr. Granpeesheh began her studies in autism as an undergraduate at UCLA earning a bachelor's degree in 1984, and a Master's degree in psychology in 1987, followed by a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA in 1990. While completing her degrees, Dr. Granpeesheh worked with Dr. Ivar Lovaas on the groundbreaking outcome study published in 1987 which showed a recovery rate of close to 50% among the study's research participants. Dr. Granpeesheh built on Dr. Lovaas's work, developing the CARD Model, which is a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to treating autism. In 1990, Dr. Granpeesheh founded the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, also known as CARD.  Under Dr. Granpeesheh's 30 years of leadership, CARD became one of the world's largest providers of ABA-based treatment for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. With over 260 locations throughout the United States and internationally, CARD employed over 6,000 highly skilled professionals, and was a leading employer of Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) providing behavioral treatment to thousands of families worldwide. CARD's highly regarded behavior management and skill acquisition programs were the culmination of decades of research in the field of autism treatment. As part of the nation's third largest non-governmental organization contributing to autism research, CARD researchers published groundbreaking studies that contributed significantly to the field of autism treatment research. In 2011, Dr. Granpeesheh founded Autism Research Group, a nonprofit organization whose mission was to identify and conduct treatment research that improves the quality of life for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. To increase access to evidence-based treatment, Dr. Granpeesheh founded Skills™, an innovative web-based platform that optimizes treatment programs for individuals with autism spectrum disorder.  Skills™ provides comprehensive assessment and curriculum, positive support planning for challenging behavior, progress tracking, and treatment evaluation.  and enables healthcare professionals, teachers, parents, and/or caregivers to design and manage comprehensive, individualized treatment programs for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder as well as tracking progress in real time by collecting and uploading data electronically. From 1990 to 2019, as CARD's CEO and chief clinician, Dr. Granpeesheh developed extensive state-of-the-art training programs for CARD's clinical employees, parents and caregivers, and school personnel.  As demand for CARD training programs increased, Dr. Granpeesheh established the Institute for Behavioral Training which provides web-based and in-person training programs targeting the specific training needs of school districts, parents and caregivers, physicians, and autism treatment providers. Dr. Granpeesheh has been a member of numerous scientific and advisory boards including the US Autism and Asperger's Association, The Autism File Journal, Autism 360-Medigenesis, the 4-A Healing Foundation and the Defeat Autism Now coalition.  In addition, Dr. Granpeesheh has served on the National Board of Directors of the Autism Society of America (ASA), the practice board of The Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) as well as the Autism Human Rights and Discrimination Initiative Steering Committee, the Early Intervention Taskforce of the Senate Select Committee on Autism and Related Disorders and the Oversight Committee of the Department of Developmental Disabilities. In 2008, Dr. Granpeesheh produced and co-directed the documentary “Recovered: Journeys through the Autism Spectrum and Back”, a film about 4 children diagnosed with Autism who, after three years of intensive intervention, recovered and now lead productive and healthy lives. This documentary received significant recognition including “Best Documentary” in the Director's Chair Film Festival, official selection in the Victoria Independent Film Festival and special recognition in the ReelHeART International Film Festival of Toronto. As one of the foremost experts in autism diagnosis and treatment, Dr. Granpeesheh has appeared on numerous TV shows including Dr. Phil, the Doctors, Fox and Friends and other notable news segments to shed light on and answer questions regarding autism. In August 2009, her research entitled “Retrospective Analysis of Clinical Records in 38 Cases of Recovery from Autism” was published in the Annals of Clinical Psychiatry, showing that recovery from autism is possible with early, intensive intervention using ABA. This study echoed the results of Dr. Lovaas's earlier study and garnered Dr. Granpeesheh the prestigious George Winokur Clinical Research Award. In 2014, Dr. Granpeesheh co-authored the book Evidence-Based Treatment for Children with Autism, a comprehensive description of the model of treatment she developed over her 30 years of leadership at CARD. She has also authored over 50 peer reviewed publications on subjects concerning the diagnosis and treatment of Autism. In 2015, Dr. Granpeesheh co-authored a series of 4 articles that were published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics. These articles were the culmination of work from several think tanks concerning the early diagnosis and treatment of autism and continue to define the guiding principles of therapeutic process for medical and psychological professionals today. Dr. Granpeesheh is co-founder of The Autism Media Network which hosts “Autism Live”, the number one video podcast in the field of autism education. Since 2012, Dr. Granpeesheh has broadcast the “Dr. Doreen Show” on Autism Live, a weekly interactive web show providing support, resources, information, facts, entertainment, and inspiration to parents, teachers, and practitioners who work with individuals on the autism spectrum. Through the Ask Dr. Doreen Show, hundreds of families have been able to call in or write in and gain immediate guidance on various issues pertaining to their children. In 2022, Autism Media Network launched “Stories from the Spectrum” the first show to be entirely produced, directed by and featuring individuals on the spectrum of autism. In 2020, Dr. Granpeesheh retired as CEO of CARD and continues to contribute to the autism community as founding member and president of Autism Care Today (ACT), a nonprofit organization that she co-founded in 2005. ACT builds awareness and provides grant funding to families struggling with autism.  In addition, Dr. Granpeesheh remains a member of the Finance Committee of The Association for Behavior Analysis International, sits on the board of advisors of the Board of Psychology of UCLA, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence. In 2020, the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis honored her by establishing the “Doreen Granpeesheh Fund for the Interdisciplinary Approach to the Treatment of Autism”, whose objective is to support educational pursuits that complement the behavioral treatment of autism with knowledge and expertise from related fields and with consideration of the individual as a whole. Dr. Granpeesheh remains committed to improving treatment efficacy by expanding the knowledge of behavior analysts to include a broad understanding of the diagnostic criteria, dietary protocols, and biomedical interventions currently in use for the treatment of autism. Awards and Accolades: 2007: The Autism Society of America's Wendy F. Miller Professional of the Year Award 2009: American Academy of Clinical Psychiatrists: George Winokur Clinical Research Award 2009: Autism Around the World: Appreciation Award 2010: Recognition by Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa for 20 years of commitment and dedication to the treatment of autism. 2010: Recognition and gratitude by Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger for provision of support and treatment for those affected by autism in California. 2010: Autism Around the World: Appreciation Award 2011: Universal Love Foundation's Parent of Distinction Award 2012: Recognition from The Senate of the State of California Taskforce on Equity and Diversity, for exemplary leadership and inspiring contributions in promoting equality for all individuals who are overcoming the challenges of autism spectrum disorders. 2013: National Association of Professional Women for Outstanding Excellence and Dedication to Her Profession and the Achievement of Women 2014: Parenting Arizona: Raising the Bar Award 2015: The San Fernando Valley Business Journal's Women in Business Lifetime Achievement Award 2015: The NW Autism Foundation Champion of Autism Award 2015: Innovations in Healthcare Abby Award Finalist 2017: CODiE Best Solutions for Special Needs Students Award 2019: Autism Care Today's Denim Diamond and Stars Visionary Award 2021: Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis: Award for Enduring Programmatic Contributions to the Field. Resources: https://www.autismnetwork.com/category/ask-dr-doreen/ https://www.tiktok.com/@askdrdoreen https://www.instagram.com/askdrdoreen/

It's that time of year again folks. If you're new to the show, every year, I get together with my friends from ABA Inside Track for a Year in Review show, and this year was no different. In this podcast, we went over a handful of happenings in the world of Applied Behavior Analysis.  In this episode, we covered: The changes in leadership of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and the Association for Professional Behavior Analysis. What shows from each of our pods resonated with our respective audiences. Whether West Coast or New England IPAs are best (c'mon, is this even worth talking about?), including an impromptu short history of American Craft Beer.  Other questions from the audience. The passings of Tameka Meadows, Beth Sulzer-Azaroff, David Jarmolowicz, and Dale Bretthower. With regard to the latter, I would like to say that I wish we had more time to elaborate on the contributions of these behavior analysts. We were pressed for time, not only for recording, but also in terms of show preparation, and I apologize if that segment of the show fails to live up to the standards you've come to expect from Behavioral Observations.  We also fielded a great question from long time listener, Penny Holloway. Again, time did not allow us to do her question justice, but if you listen to the very end of the show, I do my best to address it, and I hope you get a chance to check that out.  Huge thanks again for the ABA Inside Track crew, along with Alan Haberman for being such great conversational partners. I look forward to sharing more fun discussions with you in 2023 and beyond!!! Here are the links to some of the things we discussed: Inside JABA 13 (John Borrero and Linda LeBlanc). Inside JABA 2 (Big Idea Papers). Session 205 (Matt Brodhead/Ethics and the use of Punishment). Session 201 (Holly Gover/Preference for Contingent Reinforcement). Session 180 (Merrill Winston/Why Your Behavior Plan Stinks). Inside JABA 10 (Rajaraman/Austin/Trauma Informed Behavior Analysis). Apollo Case Study Series. For Kids With Severe Behaviors, Hospital ERs Increasingly Becoming De Facto Homes. ABA Inside Track - Facilitated Communication. ABA Inside Track - A Call to Action re: Rekers and Lovaas. Session 122 (Justin Leaf/The Case Against Social Stories).

In Episode 61, Ben chats with Dr. Josie Collins from the Tizard Centre at the University of Kent.  Dr. Collins' conducts research on adults and youth with intellectual disabilities in the criminal justice system. In this conversation, Ben and Josie talk about her work in the detection and prevention of abuse in adult residential settings and the development of the Adapted Firesetting Assessment Scale.    Continuing Education Units (CEUs): https://cbiconsultants.com/shop BACB: 1.5 Learning  IBAO: 1.5 Learning QABA: 1.5 General    The Behaviour Speak Podcast Episodes Referenced: Episode 46 - Rocco Catrone: https://www.behaviourspeak.com/e/episode-46-using-relational-frame-theory-to-tackle-stigma-toward-persons-with-disabilities-with-dr-rocco-catrone Episode 48 - Christine Bigby: https://www.behaviourspeak.com/e/episode-48-group-homes-for-people-with-intellectual-disabilities-with-christine-bigby-msw-phd   Web Links: Ray Miltenberger on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=11-KrNYAAAAJ&hl=en Tizard Centre: https://www.kent.ac.uk/social-policy-sociology-social-research/tizard Thanos Vostanis: https://www.kent.ac.uk/social-policy-sociology-social-research/people/1682/vostanis-athanasios-thanos Jonathan Beebee: https://pbs4.org.uk/about-us/behind-pbs4   Articles Referenced: J. Collins, M. Barnoux & P. E. Langdon (2022) A preliminary firesetting offence chain for adults with intellectual and other developmental disabilities, Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, DOI: 10.3109/13668250.2022.2037186J. Collins, M. Barnoux, P.E. Langdon (2021) Adults with intellectual disabilities and/or autism who deliberately set fires: A systematic review, Aggression and Violent Behavior,Volume 56 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101545 Collins, J., & Murphy, G. H. (2022). Detection and prevention of abuse of adults with intellectual and other developmental disabilities in care services: A systematic review. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 35( 2), 338– 373. https://doi.org/10.1111/jar.12954 Collins, J., Langdon, P. E., and Barnoux, M. (2022) The Adapted Firesetting Assessment Scale: reliability and validity. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 66: 642– 654. https://doi.org/10.1111/jir.12950. Collins, J., Barnoux, M., Baker, P. (2021) Managing challenging behaviour using applied behavioural analysis and positive behavioural support in forensic settings: A systematic review. International Journal of Positive Behavioural Support, 11 (1). pp. 15-41. Rekers, G. A., & Lovaas, O. I. (1974). Behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 7(2), 173–190. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1974.7-173   

This is the 12th episode of our Move Your Mind limited construction series. We will be interviewing a range of people from the industry and having conversations around the state of mental health in the industry.Australia loses one construction worker every two days to suicide & more than 20% of the construction industry are shown to have had a mental health condition. These figures are made even more compelling as it is an industry that employs 10% of the working population. We feel this podcast will play an important role in creating conversations and awareness. Sandra Lovaas was appointed Executive General Manager People and Culture of Lendlease Construction Australia in 2017 and is based in Sydney.You can learn more about Lendlease here: https://www.lendlease.com/au/...Thanks for listening! We would love your support so we can keep growing this show! Please sign up to nickbracks.com to receive a free chapter of my book. We would love you to subscribe, review, share and comment on the podcast to help us make a difference!The Move Your Mind book & Audiobook is now Available in stories Australia wide and online globally! You can find free chapters & order here: Move Your Mind Book or on my site: nickbracks.comYou can also sign up to our new Move Your Mind community group here: moveyourmind.me or here: Move Your Mind Community We have also relaunched underBRACKS with $1 from every pair going towards mental health. You can find them here: www.underbracks.comYou can find all of the other links here: https://linktr.ee/nickbracks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This two-part episode features Ben chatting with long-time Autistic advocate Terra Vance. We dive into all sorts of topics from banning ABA, ABA as abuse, systemic racism, and ableism, facilitated communication, ABA reform, and so much more. Terra's perspectives are her own and she shares some useful resources and evidence to back up her ideas.     Continuing Education Units (CEUs): https://cbiconsultants.com/shop BACB: 1.0 Learning  IBAO: 1.0 Learning QABA: 1.0 General   The Behaviour Speak Podcast Episodes Referenced: Episode 45 - Tiffany Hammond (note Ben's perseverative error when calling her “Harrison” instead of “Hammond”): https://www.behaviourspeak.com/e/episode-45-advocating-for-systemic-change-with-tiffany-hammond-of-fidgets-fries   Web Links: Neuroclastic: https://neuroclastic.com Samantha Craft's Checklist of Autistic Traits: http://www.myspectrumsuite.com/samantha-crafts-autistic-traits-checklist Terra Vance on Psyc Central: https://psychcentral.com/blog/aspie/2019/04/why-your-aspergers-nt-relationship-is-failing https://psychcentral.com/autism/conditions-associated-with-autism https://psychcentral.com/blog/aspie/2018/09/allism-spectrum-disorders-a-parody https://psychcentral.com/blog/aspie/2019/03/271 Tiffany Hammond's New Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Day-With-No-Words/Tiffany-Hammond/9781736949795 Oswin Latimer: http://oglatimer.com Tiffany Joseph: https://www.instagram.com/nigh.functioning.autism/?hl=en SLP-ABA Special Interest Group (SIG): https://www.behavioralspeech.com Institutional DARVO: https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineDARVO.html Institution for Organizational Courage: https://www.institutionalcourage.org   Articles Referenced: Lovaas, O. I. (1987). Behavioral treatment and normal educational and intellectual functioning in young autistic children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55(1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.55.1.3 Rekers, G. A., & Lovaas, O. I. (1974). Behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 7(2), 173–190. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1974.7-173 Pritchett, M., Ala'i-Rosales, S., Cruz, A. R. et al. (2021). Social justice is the spirit and aim of an applied science of human behavior: Moving from colonial to participatory research practices. Behavior Analysis Practice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-021-00591-7   Research Gathered by Terra Peer-Reviewed Research on Autism as Neuromotor Disorder: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kPZfljxQv4zR1p6ngQLPLaSbabkkuX4CnXOcm_nFOto/edit?fbclid=IwAR13rRiVousoxbcBZoAPDC9mX3QdQVmV6FuioV0Z4GuL-e0mUZodWQeFf8c Peer-Reviewed Research on Neuromotor Disinhibition: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10mAw9TT5KwFm6sh7W3teKZDWk3yATP5MbFWS8CayauQ/edit?fbclid=IwAR3GNWXON3UP1Odrxgt65KZS-_9uthYULV90t45YSSESq5bYjxEDRxD0q5o A Selection of Peer-Reviewed Publications Supporting the Use of FC and RPM: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xcxHoYcYVkNzGA6Kv1tP7xG3LCKWELfHZwG7twOZUcU/edit?fbclid=IwAR0-4QoDDCLCpo2T2m4u2A6EMJi-H2nX702N_eEpcGJ-j0z-cBP2hQqCoi8

This two-part episode features Ben chatting with long-time Autistic advocate Terra Vance.  We dive into all sorts of topics from banning ABA, ABA as abuse, systemic racism, and ableism, facilitated communication, ABA reform, and so much more.  Terra's perspectives are her own and she shares some useful resources and evidence to back up her ideas.     Continuing Education Units (CEUs): https://cbiconsultants.com/shop BACB: 1.0 Learning  IBAO: 1.0 Learning QABA: 1.0 General   The Behaviour Speak Podcast Episodes Referenced: Episode 45 - Tiffany Hammond (note Ben's perseverative error when calling her “Harrison” instead of “Hammond”): https://www.behaviourspeak.com/e/episode-45-advocating-for-systemic-change-with-tiffany-hammond-of-fidgets-fries   Web Links: Neuroclastic: https://neuroclastic.com Samantha Craft's Checklist of Autistic Traits: http://www.myspectrumsuite.com/samantha-crafts-autistic-traits-checklist Terra Vance on Psyc Central: https://psychcentral.com/blog/aspie/2019/04/why-your-aspergers-nt-relationship-is-failing https://psychcentral.com/autism/conditions-associated-with-autism https://psychcentral.com/blog/aspie/2018/09/allism-spectrum-disorders-a-parody https://psychcentral.com/blog/aspie/2019/03/271 Tiffany Hammond's New Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Day-With-No-Words/Tiffany-Hammond/9781736949795 Oswin Latimer: http://oglatimer.com Tiffany Joseph: https://www.instagram.com/nigh.functioning.autism/?hl=en SLP-ABA Special Interest Group (SIG): https://www.behavioralspeech.com Institutional DARVO: https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineDARVO.html Institution for Organizational Courage: https://www.institutionalcourage.org   Articles Referenced: Lovaas, O. I. (1987). Behavioral treatment and normal educational and intellectual functioning in young autistic children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55(1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.55.1.3 Rekers, G. A., & Lovaas, O. I. (1974). Behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 7(2), 173–190. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1974.7-173 Pritchett, M., Ala'i-Rosales, S., Cruz, A. R. et al. (2021). Social justice is the spirit and aim of an applied science of human behavior: Moving from colonial to participatory research practices. Behavior Analysis Practice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-021-00591-7   Research Gathered by Terra Peer-Reviewed Research on Autism as Neuromotor Disorder: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kPZfljxQv4zR1p6ngQLPLaSbabkkuX4CnXOcm_nFOto/edit?fbclid=IwAR13rRiVousoxbcBZoAPDC9mX3QdQVmV6FuioV0Z4GuL-e0mUZodWQeFf8c Peer-Reviewed Research on Neuromotor Disinhibition: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10mAw9TT5KwFm6sh7W3teKZDWk3yATP5MbFWS8CayauQ/edit?fbclid=IwAR3GNWXON3UP1Odrxgt65KZS-_9uthYULV90t45YSSESq5bYjxEDRxD0q5o A Selection of Peer-Reviewed Publications Supporting the Use of FC and RPM: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xcxHoYcYVkNzGA6Kv1tP7xG3LCKWELfHZwG7twOZUcU/edit?fbclid=IwAR0-4QoDDCLCpo2T2m4u2A6EMJi-H2nX702N_eEpcGJ-j0z-cBP2hQqCoi8

In 2020 the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis posted an Expression of Concern regarding Rekers & Lovaas (1973) as a step in acknowledging behavior analysis's complicity in the pseudoscience of conversion therapy. This week we're joined by special guests, Drs. Sarah Campau and Matthew Capriotti, as well as Book Club Guy, Alan Haberman, to talk about what comes next. We review the controversy over the original paper, discuss public policy around supporting the LGBTQ+ community, and start planning how behavior analysis can kickstart new research that benefits sexual and gender minorities. For more on the history of conversion therapy, Dr. Campau suggests the UnErased podcast. This episode is available for 1.0 LEARNING CEU. Articles discussed this episode: Conine, D.E., Campau, S.C., & Petronelli, A.K. (2022). LGBTQ+ conversion therapy and applied behavior analysis: A call to action. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55, 6-18. doi: 10.1002/jaba.876. Capriotti, M.R. & Donaldson, J.M. (2022). “Why don't behavior analysts do something?” Behavior analysts' historical, present, and potential future actions on sexual and gender minority issues. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55, 19-39. doi: 10.1002/jaba.884 The Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior & LeBlanc, L.A. (2020). Editor's note: Societal changes and expression of concern about Rekers and Lovaas' (1974) behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis Behavior, 53, 1830-1836. doi: 10.1002/jaba.768 Rekers, G.A. & Lovaas, O.I. (1974). Behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 7, 173-190. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1974.7-173 If you're interested in ordering CEs for listening to this episode, click here to go to the store page. You'll need to enter your name, BCBA #, and the two episode secret code words to complete the purchase. Email us at abainsidetrack@gmail.com for further assistance.

This month, we're terrified of our riches in special guests as we discuss controversy, literacy, and advocacy. First, Dr. Denise Ross-Page and Dr. R. Douglas Greer join us to review how behavior analysis can promote effective practices in teaching reading and literacy. Next, Dr. Sarah Campau and Dr. Matthew Capriotti join us and Book Club Guy, Alan Haberman, to discuss their recent papers making a call to action for behavior analysts to step up in our efforts to speak out on ABA historical harms to the LGBTQ+ community and speak up for improving support for sexual and gender minority issues. Finally, we're all shocked that people are STILL TALKING ABOUT facilitated communication! Almost 30 years after its debunking, we decided to remind everyone that it doesn't work and limits the expression of people with disabilities. Could talking about ABA be more fun than gorging on Halloween candy? Articles for October 2022 ABA and Literacy w/ Dr. Denise Ross-Page + Dr. R. Douglas Greer Gentilini, L.M. & Greer, R.D. (2021). The effect of the establishment of conditioned reinforcement for reading content on second-graders' reading achievement. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 14, 141-160. doi: 10.1007/s40617-020-00511-1 Hernandez, Donald J. (2011). Double jeopardy: How third-grade reading skills and poverty influence high school graduation. The Annie E. Casey Foundation: New York, NY. Hugh-Pennie, A.K., Hernandez, M., Uwayo, M., Johnson, G., & Ross, D. (2021). Culturally relevant pedagogy and applied behavior analysis: Addressing educational disparities in PK-12 schools. Behavior Analysis in Practice. doi: 10.1007/s40617-021-00655-8 Ross-Page, D.E. & Greer, R.D. (in press). An introduction to a strategic science of teaching. In D. Ross-Page & R.D. Greer (Eds.),When text speaks: Learning to read & reading to learn (pp. 1-21). Sloan Publishing. A Call to Action on Rekers and Lovaas w/ Dr. Sarah Campau + Dr. Matthew Capriotti (feat. Alan Haberman) Conine, D.E., Campau, S.C., & Petronelli, A.K. (2022). LGBTQ+ conversion therapy and applied behavior analysis: A call to action. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55, 6-18. doi: 10.1002/jaba.876. Capriotti, M.R. & Donaldson, J.M. (2022). “Why don't behavior analysts do something?” Behavior analysts' historical, present, and potential future actions on sexual and gender minority issues. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55, 19-39. doi: 10.1002/jaba.884 The Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior & LeBlanc, L.A. (2020). Editor's note: Societal changes and expression of concern about Rekers and Lovaas' (1974) behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis Behavior, 53, 1830-1836. doi: 10.1002/jaba.768 Rekers, G.A. & Lovaas, O.I. (1974). Behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 7, 173-190. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1974.7-173 Facilitated Communication Travers, J.C., Tincani, M.J., & Lang, R. (2014). Facilitated communication denies people with disabilities their voice. Research and Pactice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 39, 195-202. doi: 10.1177/1540796914556778 Eberlin, M., McConnachie, G., Ibel, S., & Volpe, L. (1993). Facilitated communication: A failure to replicate the phenomenon. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 23, 507-530. doi: 10.1007/BF01046053 Montee, B.B., Miltenberger, R.G., & Wittrock, D. (1995). An experimental analysis of facilitated communication. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28, 189-200. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1995.28-189 Roane, H.S., Kadey, H.J., & Sullivan, W.E. (2019). Evaluation of word recognition following typing produced through facilitated communication. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 52, 1107-1112. doi: 10.1002/jaba.587

In this episode, we talked to our good friend Cody Lovaas about cantaloupe juice, spirituality, break ups, surfing, transient rooms, San Diego doors, social engineering, Jason Mraz's support, high school crushes, fleeting feelings, hungover music video shoots, scarcity mentalities, ichthyophobia, wellness, Wim Hof, his song "All Around Me" (with Bahari), and working together to co-produce "Rocket". Discord: sleepinglionmusic.com/discord (Edited by Mason Maggio)   

This week we are excited to welcome Dr. Eric Larsson to the podcast to talk with us about Medical Necessity in the field of ABA. Dr. Larsson is a Licensed Psychologist and Board Certified Behavior Analyst and holds the position of Executive Director of Clinical Services at the Lovaas Institute Midwest. He has been providing intensive early intervention services since 1976 and has supervised such services since 1983. He regularly consults on the development of Medicaid and insurance coverage for intensive early intervention and is recognized worldwide as an expert in the areas of early intervention, autism, disability rights, and more. Medical Necessity in autism care is important as it increases access to services through insurance coverage, improves prognoses, and increases family buy-in. Download the podcast today to learn more!  Learn more about the Lovaas Insitute Midwest: CLICK HERE Take advantage of nation-wide and local resources:  Autism Speaks  The ARC   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, google podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.  

Conversion therapy and ABA unfortunately have a past that is intertwined based on the similarities of research lines and methods used. It is important for behavior analysts to be aware of this past, as well as the ongoing issues and topics swirling around this matter. Past a conversation about the harm of the past, however, is a call to future action. Capriottie & Donaldson, 2022 continue the conversation of a retraction vs. an expression of concern by giving some context to the circumstances revolving around the original Reekers and Lovaas publication as well as the retraction process as a whole. In addition, they also focus on action steps that behavior analysts can step and give a great list of future research recommendations. Some research topics include the application of brief habit reversal to pronoun usage and behavioral skills training for corrective feedback to bigoted comments. Encouraging and providing options for research in this area will reduce the response effort associated with starting a new research line. Hopefully, the maintenance of this conversation will lead to real social change within our field. Capriotti, M. R. & Donaldson, J. M. (2022). “Why don't behavior analysts do something?”1 Behavior analysts' historical, present, and potential future actions on sexual and gender minority issues. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55(1), 19-39. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.884

In this episode, I sit down with Landa Fox, a board-certified behaviour analyst and certified sexual health educator.  We have an amazing discussion about a range of topics related to sexuality and sexual health.   Continuing Education Units (CEUs): https://cbiconsultants.com/shop   Show Notes: Alexia Stack Podcast Interview: https://www.behaviourspeak.com/e/episode-2-trauma-informed-supports-for-autism  Hilary McClinton and Nicole Shallow Podcast Interview: https://www.behaviourspeak.com/e/episode-4-solutions-for-sleep-with-hilary-mcclinton-bcba-and-nicole-shallow-bcba Sexual Behavior Research and Practice Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/558576094164806  Sunday Night Sex Show Sue Johansen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Night_Sex_Show  August Stockwell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/august-stockwell-phd-bcba-d-06229ab2  Sexual Health Educators Certification: https://www.optionsforsexualhealth.org/sex-ed/shec  Rekkers and Lovaas: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311956; https://anchor.fm/beautiful-humans/episodes/Ep-30-Retract-Rekers-and-Lovaas1974-with-Dr--Austin-Johnson-emtvna/a-a51i6po  Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality Conference: https://www.sexscience.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=173936&module_id=452759  Scarlateen: https://www.scarleteen.com  Sex and Disability: https://www.springer.com/journal/11195  American Journal of Sexuality Education: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wajs20/current  Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality: https://utpjournals.press/loi/cjhs  Journal of Sex Research: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hjsr20/current  Sexuality Liberators and Movers (SLAM): https://www.stephaniespeakshere.com/the-s-l-a-m-conference  British Columbia Ministry of Education Learning Standards: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/resources-for-teachers/curriculum/bc-performance-standards  American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists: https://www.aasect.org Island Sexual Health: https://www.islandsexualhealth.org  Shift: https://shift-education.com  GF Strong Sexual Rehabilitation Team: https://www.brainstreams.ca/resources/returning-to-life/sexual-health-rehabilitation-service-gf-strong  Dave Hinsburger Trainings: https://diverse-city.com  Hand-made Love/Finger Tips: https://diverse-city.com/online-store-2/dvds  Melissa Pintor Carnagey: https://sexpositivefamilies.com/about 

We sat down with Dr. Austin Johnson is a BCBA, School Psychologist, and Assistant Professor at UC Riverside. We connected with Dr. Johnson after he wrote a formal response to JABA/SEAB's Statement of Concern, where he laid out the significant problems in the statement. We have been working with Upswing Advocates behind the scenes to push for the retraction of this article. Dr. Johnson along with the Upswing Advocates voices’ are uplifted on this eppy. This is a heavy episode, but a necessary one. Take in bites or take it in at once, we just ask that you take it in. Share this episode with fellow colleagues. As always, we hope that you enjoy the conversation, as much as we enjoyed recording it. Please follow us on FB @BeautifulHumansCast or IG @BeautifulHumansChange

The latest issue of JABA starts off with an editorial by the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior's (SEAB) board in which it issued a statement of concern for the controversial paper titled, Behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. This paper described a case study conducted by George Rekers and Ivar Lovaas, and was published in the pages of JABA in 1974. To get right to the point, let me read you the editorial's abstract: In an early study in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Rekers and Lovaas (1974) evaluated the Behavioral Treatment of Deviant Sex-role Behaviors in a Male Child. They investigated the use of reinforcement and punishment to target non-gender conforming behaviors of a 5-year-old male child. This study was considered by some to be controversial and concerning, even near the time of publication (Nordyke et al. 1977; Winkler, 1977). The concerns focused on the ethicality of selecting non-gender conforming behavior as a target response and the use of punishment for this type of response, particularly at the behest of parents when the young child was not seemingly distressed. The study has subsequently been used as empirical support for conversion therapy creating concerns about misinterpretation of the original article and harm to the LGBTQ+ community. This editorial reviews the concerns originally presented by Nordyke et al. and Winkler and issues an official Expression of Concern about the various harms that have been associated with this paper. I first heard about this paper many years ago, but it was to my attention again at the 2019 NH ABA conference. At that event, Dr. Sarah Campeau did a great job reviewing this paper, along with cataloging the devastating effects the study had on the participant later on in his life. So in this episode of the podcast, Drs. Linda Leblanc and Henry Roane discuss the rationale behind the statement of concern. In doing so, they talk about why the statement was written now versus earlier in the history of JABA, and what exactly a Statement of Concern is, and why issuing the statement was the specific action taken instead of other options, such as retracting the paper altogether. We also get into the actual shortcomings of the study, particularly in light of the ethical and moral standards of modern times. Linda and Hank close the podcast by giving some advice for practitioners on how to respond to concerns of stakeholders if or when they bring up this or other studies that are not consistent with more modern ethics and values. I should also note that our Zoom connection was spotty here and there, and I apologize if it interferes with the audio quality that you've come to expect from the show. That said, I don't think it poor connection detracted from the substance of the conversation. Dr. Roane is a new voice in the Inside JABA Series, so by way of introduction, Hank is the Gregory S. Liptak MD Professor of Child Development in the Department of Pediatrics at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse NY. In this capacity, he serves as the Chief of the Division of Development, Behavior and Genetics where he directs medical and behavior analysis clinics that provide treatment services for children affected by autism and related disorders. Hank is also the Chair of the Behavior Analysis Studies program in the College of Health Professions at Upstate. As we mention during the conversation, Hank is also the Treasurer of SEAB. In keeping with the previous Inside JABA Series podcasts, there are no ads or sponsors on this episode. However, this episode is eligible for BACB Continuing Education. We also felt that the conversation touched on many code elements in the Professional and Ethical Compliance Code, and as such, it can be counted as an Ethics CEU. Lastly, 50% of the proceeds from sales of the Inside JABA Series CEUs are donated to SEAB. So for more information on the Inside JABA Series CEUs, or any other CEUs that are available through Behavioral Observations, click here. I've also set up a Link Tree across all my social media platforms where you can access all the different podcast offerings, including episode shownotes. For example, if you follow the show on Instagram (@behavioralobservations), just go to the link in the bio, and you'll have many podcast-related links at your fingertips. Here are the links to the resources that were discussed in this episode: Editor's Note: Societal changes and expression of concern about Rekers and Lovaas' (1974) Behavioral Treatment of Deviant Sex‐Role Behaviors in a Male Child. The Rekers and Lovaas (1974) study. Nordyke, Baer, Etzel, and LeBlanc (1977), response to Rekers and Lovaas. Winkler (1977), response to Rekers and Lovaas. Rekers' response to Nordyke et al. and Winkler (1977). The Anderson Cooper four-part expose on the long term effects on the participant in Rekers and Lovaas. Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) website. Retraction Watch. CEU opportunities from Behavioral Observations. BOP linktr.ee (clearinghouse of podcast-related links).

This next chapter has a special guest appearance by the one and only Dr. Ronald Leaf! Ron Leaf was an instrumental part of the UCLA Young Autism Project and the 1987 outcome study. During this chapter Justin, Joe, and Ron will discuss what happened at the UCLA Young Autism Project and what it was like working with Ivar Lovaas. In doing so we will also be dispelling some common myths about UCLA, Lovaas, and behavioral intervention. The three co-hosts will also discuss how current intervention compares to past intervention and ways to continue to improve the field of ABA and the lives of individuals diagnosed with ASD.

This week's episode of The Road Trip Playlists Podcast is with Cody Lovaas. Cody has been writing and performing music at an early age. He was discovered by Jason Mraz at a random open mic night when he was 14. Since then, Cody has released a number of successful songs and amassed over 60 million streams. We talk about his songwriting, meeting his idol Jason Mraz, and moving to LA and living on a pull out couch. All of this and more in this episode of The Road Trip Playlists Podcast. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

When you’re first introduced to the autism field, whether you’re a fresh-faced professional or a confused parent, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed. There are so many different autism models to focus on – how are you supposed to know what to choose? My interviewee, Tracy Vail, is an expert on many different methodologies and will be able to lead you through the autism treatment maze.

Hoje vamos falar um pouquinho sobre a história do autismo e sobre os primeiros estudos que demonstraram a eficácia da intervenção ABA. Referências Linstead, E., Dixon, D. R., Hong, E., Burns, C. O., French, R., Novack, M. N., & Granpeesheh, D. (2017). An evaluation of the effects of intensity and duration on outcomes across treatment domains for children with autism spectrum disorder. Translational Psychiatry, 7(9), e1234-e1234. doi:10.1038/tp.2017.207 Lovaas, O. I. (1987). Behavioral treatment and normal educational and intellectual functioning in young autistic children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55(1), 3-9. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.55.1.3 McEachin, J. J., Smith, T., & Lovaas, O. I. (1993). Long-term outcome for children with autism who received early intensive behavioral treatment. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 97(4), 359–372. Wolff, S. (2004). The history of autism. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 13(4), 201-208. doi:10.1007/s00787-004-0363-5

Image credit: Elco van Staveren   Special education is heavily regulated to protect the rights of eligible students to individualized educational planning, but complying with the regulations is easier said than done. The operational design of most public schools is over 150 years old and based on the mass production mentality of a factory, having been created during the Industrial Revolution. By contrast, the applicable special education laws were first passed in the 1970s, accounting for only the last 1/3rd of the current American public education system's history.   Trying to implement the individualized educational planning called for by special education law in an environment created for the purpose of mass instruction is like trying to build a custom piece of furniture on a moving assembly line. In the early days of special education, this meant removing students from the general education setting to special education classes, effectively choosing to build a custom piece of furniture in a specialized workshop rather than on the pre-existing assembly line.   The problem, however, is that pieces of furniture do not have civil rights. It's one thing to segregate inanimate objects according to how they are constructed. It's another thing to segregate human beings according to whether they need changes in how they are instructed due to disability.   Because special education students have legal protections against being segregated out of the general education setting simply for having a disability, integrating individualized educational planning into a mass instruction environment becomes that much more complicated for special education students who are educated with their general education peers for all or part of their school days. The complexities of individualizing educational programs for each student are seemingly infinite, given all of the relevant disability-specific considerations plus all of the ecological factors involved in each instructional setting.   However, science - specifically research conducted by educational psychologists and their colleagues - has been attempting to keep up with the demands created by various types of unique student needs, including disabilities of all kinds. While it all hasn't been figured out for every situation by any stretch of the imagination, there is still a wealth of information from education research that never makes its way into the classroom, much less into individual IEPs.   That's a problem because Title 34, Code of the Federal Regulations, Section 300.320(a)(4) mandates the application of peer-reviewed research to the design and delivery of special education on an individualized basis, unless it's not practicable to do so. No one has yet defined what "practicable" actually means, so it's still up for debate.   The history of how all this science ended up being codified within the implementing regulations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has been summarized in our last blog post, "The Fundamental Flow of IEP Creation," so I won't repeat it here. You can review the impact of PARC v. Pennsylvania in that post to inform references to it, here.   The point is that the applicable science has always been written into any serious redress to the educational needs of students with disabilities after having been deprived educational benefits by the public school system. In PARC v. Pennsylvania, a psychologist with extensive experience working with children with intellectual disabilities and an attorney committed to representing the interests of children with intellectual disabilities were jointly appointed by the federal court to serve as special masters to oversee the implementation of appropriate interventions to students with intellectual disabilities in Pennsylvania's public schools as part of the settlement that was negotiated between the parties. The settlement included federal court oversight by way of the court-appointed special masters.   The historical foundations of the requirements for measurable annual goals in IEPs pursuant to 34 CFR Sec. 300.320(a)(2) and the application of the peer-reviewed research to the delivery of special education as mentioned previously can be traced directly back to PARC v. Pennsylvania. There has never been a time when the law did not expect the delivery of special education to be informed by anything other than evidence-based practices developed from the peer-reviewed research.   From the moment the first laws were created to provide special education to all eligible children in the United States, science was built into its design. Federal Supreme Court case law has established that Congress expected procedural compliance with the IDEA to all but guarantee compliance with the substantive requirements of the law when it authored and passed what is now the IDEA. Specifically, the case law states, "...the Act's emphasis on procedural safeguards demonstrates the legislative conviction that adequate compliance with prescribed procedures will in most cases assure much, if not all, of what Congress wished in the way of substantive content in an IEP." (Board of Educ. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176 (1982))   Congress intended for the applicable science to guide the special education process for a number of good reasons. First, using science means using what everybody can agree actually works under a given set of unique circumstances, to the degree such is known. There is evidence - proof - that under the explicit conditions that were tested, a particular method of intervention works or doesn't.   Because every special education student presents as a highly unique individual such that their learning needs do not conform to conventional instruction, they require highly individualized instruction that is tailored to each of them, respectively. There is no one-size-fits-all method of intervention proven to work in special education contexts. What is proven to work is writing up a unique program of instruction for each individual student. That is the evidence-based applicable science, that is the bottom line requirement of the applicable federal law, and this has been known and federally regulated since 1975.   This, therefore, begs the question as to why so much of special education is based on subjective opinions, ballpark estimations (often underestimations), and fad theories about learning rather than science. There's been a lot of research into why the research isn't being promulgated for use in public education and politics has a lot to do with it.   Applying the research means upgrading facilities, retraining teachers and their support staffs, buying new materials, and paying for more specialists. Further, it's often necessary to purchase all of the research materials necessary to inform any kind of evidence-based program design and hire someone who knows how to translate the research into a data-driven educational program. For highly paid top agency administrators who get compensated on the basis of how much money they don't spend rather than how many students they do get educated, applying the research means spending money, and that's no way to get a raise in that kind of institutional culture.   Another concern of many public education agencies is accountability. When using evidence-based practices in the delivery of special education, one can't ignore the body of research that supports that the data collection and analysis methods used in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) are the most reliable methods of data collection and analysis used in any special education context (Drasgow, Yell, & Robinson, 2001; Kimball, 2002; Yell & Drasgow, 2000). The problem for some education agencies is that valid data collection means all their missteps will be captured by the data. If they aren't actually implementing the IEP as written, the data will reflect that, exposing the agency to legal consequences.   People often mistake ABA for a treatment for autism, but this is not the case. It is true that behavioral interventions using ABA can be effective at addressing behavioral challenges with students who have autism, as well as any other human beings with behavioral challenges, but it can also be used as an instructional methodology and as a tool to determine if learning has occurred and, if so, how much. That is, it is excellent at measuring progress towards a clearly defined outcome, such as a measurable annual IEP goal.   The Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC) data collection methods used in ABA naturally lend themselves to measuring progress towards IEP goals. This is how it works: a stimulus (Antecedent) is presented to which the student responds with a specific Behavior, which immediately results in an outcome (Consequence) that either increases the likelihood of of the behavior happening again (reinforcement) or it doesn't (absence of reinforcement or punishment).   Most people in special education are at least familiar somewhat with using this approach to dealing with inappropriate behaviors. You don't want to deliver a reinforcing consequence when an inappropriate behavior occurs. Instead, you want to reinforce a more appropriate replacement behavior that still meets the student's needs; the behavior was happening for a reason and you can't leave its function unaddressed or a new behavior will just develop around it. Treat the cause, not the symptom.   You only resort to punishing the undesired behavior when reinforcing the desired behavior is not sufficient at extinguishing the undesired behavior. Presenting reinforcement for doing what is expected and withholding reinforcement for doing what is not expected is usually a pretty powerful strategy for positive behavioral interventions.   When using ABC data collection and analysis on the fly during instruction, your thought process is a little different. When you're looking at whether a student is learning from the instruction you are providing, especially when working with students who have significant impairments that limit their expressive communication skills, sometimes it's the raise of an eyebrow, the turn of a head towards you with eye contact, or the smile or grin that tells you whether or not you're getting through. There is still an Antecedent (the delivery of your instruction and/or check for understanding), a learning Behavior (the student's response to your instruction and/or check for understanding, whether verbal or not), and a Consequence (praise for learning or encouragement for trying) that increases the likelihood that the student will remain engaged and continue to participate in the instruction.   When using ABA-based data collection methods to measure for IEP goals, so long as the goals are written as math word problems based purely on observable learning behaviors, it's pretty straight forward. Take for example this goal, which is purely made up for illustrative purposes: "By [due date], when given 10 calculation problems using multiplication of double digit numbers per trial, [Student] will calculate the 10 problems with at least 80% accuracy per trial in at least 9 of 10 consecutive trails within a semester, as measured by work samples."   This is easy. There are 10 problems per trial. The student needs to get at least 8 out of 10 problems right per trial (measure of accuracy) in at least 9 out of 10 consecutive trials (measure of consistency) within a semester (measure of time) in order to meet the goal. Nothing is left to guesswork. Everything is represented by an increment of measure.   What ruins a goal out of the gate is basing any part of it on internal thoughts and feelings experienced by the student. Never start a goal with language like, "... when feeling anxious or angry ..." or "... when presented with a non-preferred task ..." You can't trigger the onset of measurement based on something you can't observe. You only know what the student is thinking or feeling once they express it in some way.   There is no way to get in front of the student's expression of their thoughts or feelings to prompt their behavior in an appropriate direction because there is no way to know what the student is thinking or feeling before they act. Other people's thoughts and feelings, including those of special education students, cannot be observed or known by other people. No credential in special education imbues special education personnel with clairvoyance. By the time you know what the student is thinking or feeling, it's too late to influence how they act on those thoughts or feelings; you only know because they've already acted.   The same goes for preference. Preference cannot be observed and it can vary from day to day, or even moment to moment, for a lot of special education students. What is preferred at one time will often not be preferred at others. Eventually it is possible to have a good idea of what is not preferred by a student, but then confirmation bias can enter the picture and you see what you expect to see, not realizing you're prompting it according to your preconceived expectations.   What makes more sense is to write goals that do not target what are referred to in ABA as "private events," but rather to expected behaviors. For example, a common behavior targeted in the IEPs of students with challenging behaviors is work refusal, which is to say non-compliance with task demands. A teacher will assign a task and, if the student is non-compliant, they will either passively sit there and just not perform the task; do something else passive instead, like doodle or read a book; engage in distracting or disruptive behavior, like play on their phone or talk to their neighbors; or engage in outburst behaviors, possibly accompanied by leaving the room (eloping).   It's usually pretty easy to figure out if there is a pattern to the types of tasks assigned and when non-compliance occurs such that preference can seem easy to identify. But, trying to rely on that for the purpose of measurement is like trying build a house on shifting sands because someone's preferences can change so quickly.   The language that I see most commonly used in goals that work around the issue of private events reads more or less like this: "By [due date], when assigned a task, [Student] will either initiate the task, ask for help, or request a 2-minute break within 60 seconds of the task being assigned in at least 8 of 10 consecutive opportunities as measured by data collection."   This makes things easy. Regardless of whether the student has a personal preference or not for the task being assigned, they will either start the task, ask for help with the task, or take a short break and get it together before they come back to the task.   Some students have processing speed delays that interfere with their ability to get started right away. They need extra time to process the instructions so they understand what you want them to do. Sometimes that extra little break is all they need to get there independently. It just takes them a little longer to think it through and make sense of what you want from them before they know what to do and can start. Other students get emotionally overwhelmed and just need to go get a grip before they tackle the expectations being placed on them. Yet others take longer to stop one activity and transition to another one. That short little break can buy them the time they need to process the mental shift of set and orient themselves to the new demands being placed on them. Other times, students just don't understand the expectation being placed on them and need clarification.   In any event, if there's a problem, the goal provides a solution; otherwise, the student just needs to perform the task as assigned. Further, the language of this example goal can be modified for a student to provide for alternative acceptable responses and/or a different response time.   With respect to measurability, there is no guessing about what anybody is thinking or feeling in a goal formatted this way. Measurement is triggered by the delivery of a task demand (the assigned task) and is based on whether any of the described acceptable outcomes occur within 60 seconds. All of the elements of the goal are measurable.   Further, a goal written this way follows the ABC format of ABA. First an Antecedent is presented (the task demand), then one of three acceptable Behaviors (task initiation, request for help, request for break) occurs, then an appropriate Consequence (completion of the task, delivery of help, or receipt of a short break) is immediately forthcoming. Everything that needs to be measured can be observed. The observable criteria are easily represented in increments of measure. It's black-and-white without making any assumptions about a student's thoughts, feelings, or preferences.   So, having said all of this, how does this get us to the point of the article, which is how parents can successfully advocate for the application of the peer-reviewed research to the design and implementation of their children's IEPs? Well, first, I needed to be clear as to what I mean by applying the peer-reviewed research, hence everything I just got through explaining.   Parents first need to understand what they are asking for and how it impacts the design and implementation of their child's IEP. Further, any professionals reading this for the purpose of further developing their skill set may not have all the background information necessary to make sense of all of this, either.   A foundation first had to be laid. Having now done that, parents need to keep the information I've just shared in mind when participating in IEP meetings and reviewing IEP documents for appropriateness.   If you live in a consent state like California, I usually suggest signing only for attendance at the meeting and taking the document home for review before signing agreement to any of it. In California and other states, you can give partial consent to an IEP and the education agency has to implement the consented-to portions without delay while the non-consented-to portions remain subject to IEP team discussion and negotiation.   Anything that can't be resolved via the IEP process must go to due process for resolution, whether you are in a consent state or not. Just because you are not in a consent state doesn't mean that an education agency won't change the language of an IEP at your request. An IEP meeting would likely be called to discuss your concerns and, if you back them up with facts and logic, the education agency isn't going to have a good reason to say, "No." Not everyone is outlandishly unreasonable in special education; there are some definite bad apples, but they don't account for the entire barrel. Due process is your only resort if your efforts to resolve things at the IEP level are not met with success and your child is increasingly compromised because of the unresolved matters.   If you are unfortunate enough to have to rely on due process to see things resolved, the fact that your denied requests were supported by facts and logic will only help your case once you get in front of a hearing officer. Understanding the underlying arguments of what makes something legitimately measurable and the federal requirement that special education be delivered according to what science has already proven works makes you a far more informed IEP participant than at least some of the other people at the table.   As a parent, the more you can support your requests and arguments with peer-reviewed research, the better. Once you frame your requests according to the proven science and make it as black-and-white as possible, you eliminate all kinds of silly arguments. This means not only asking for goals that are truly measurable, though that goes a long way towards solving and preventing a lot of problems, but also understanding the nature of your child's disability(ies) and what the research says can be done to teach to learners with such needs.   Gathering the necessary research data to inform a request for a particular assessment, service, curriculum, methodology, technology, or placement requires accessing the peer-reviewed literature and understanding what it means. A lot of it is really dry and technical, as well as expensive. This isn't a burden parents should have to take on, but if it's one that they can take on, it will only help them become better advocates for their children. Google Scholar can be a good place to start.   In truth, it should be education agency personnel doing this research, but if parents want to see the science applied, they may have to push for it, themselves. Parents can also submit published research articles to their local education agencies that appear to apply to their children's educational needs and request that the approaches used on those articles be used as part of their children's special education programs, including being written into their children's IEPs. If the local education agency declines to honor any request, 34 CFR Sec. 300.503 obligates it to provide Prior Written Notice (PWN) explaining why to the parents.   Conversely, if the education agency proposes a particular approach and the parents are unsure about it, the parents can request an explanation of the peer-reviewed research that underpins the education agency's offer. Either it honors the request or it provides PWN explaining why it won't. If it's the latter, it better be one heck of a good explanation or it will only reveal that the education agency has no research-based explanation for its recommended course of action, giving the parents a good reason to dispute it.   If what you are asking for as the parent is backed up by facts, logic, legitimate measurement, and credible research that all directly apply to your child, and the education agency still says, "No," then you will either end up with no PWN because the agency doesn't want to put the denial in writing, which violates the law and only makes your case stronger in hearing, or you will end up with a PWN full of malarkey that won't stand up in due process. If what you are asking for makes total sense and the education agency won't do it or something else equally or more appropriate, the education agency will have some explaining to do in hearing.   So long as what you are asking for is necessary for your child to receive an appropriately ambitious amount of educational benefits (meaning as close to grade level or developmental norms as possible), there's not a lot of good reasons for a public education agency to turn down your request. It's illegal for the public education system to use fiscal considerations to determine what should be in a special education student's IEP.   Just be sure to submit all of your requests for changes to your child's IEP in writing. It is the education agency's receipt of your written request for changes that triggers the PWN requirement. In the instance of requesting assessments, many states allow for a public education agency to decline to conduct assessments for special education purposes upon parent request, but the agency must provide PWN when doing so. For more information on special education assessments, see our previous post, "The Basics of Special Education Assessments."   If it doesn't decline a parent's written request for assessment, the education agency must provide the parent with an assessment plan to sign that authorizes the agency to conduct the requested assessments. State law regulates the provision of assessment plans; in California, local education agencies have 15 calendar days to get an assessment plan to the parent, regardless of who made the referral for assessment. Submitting the request for assessment in writing is not only important for triggering the PWN requirement if the request is declined, it's also important in establishing when a state-mandated timeline starts counting down.   You as a parent can encourage the application of science in special education by insisting upon it. If you live in California or another consent state, you can use your authority to withhold your consent to anything that looks sketchy in an IEP being given to you for your signature. You can consent to instruction in the areas targeted by IEP goals but not to using the language of the goals for the purpose of measuring progress if they aren't actually written in a measurable way. You can consent to everything in an IEP except a change in placement. If you can't resolve all of the issues you have with an IEP this way, those left unresolved become due process issues.   Even if you are not in a consent state, you can still make the record in writing that you disagree with the sketchy portions of your child's IEP, explain why using math and science, and request appropriate changes. The local education agency will likely call an IEP meeting and change those things it's willing to change and give you PWN on those things it is not willing to change. The things left unresolved at that point are due process issues.   Understanding how to use math and science to solve everyday problems is a solid skill to have, but not everybody has it. It's a skill necessary to developing a sound IEP for any special education student. Parent education can be provided as a related service under a student's IEP if the purpose of the parent education is to help the parents understand their child's disability and/or to help them be equal participants of the IEP team. There is absolutely nothing wrong with parents asking to be trained on how to write measurable annual goals and the IEP process in general as part of parent training as a related service under their child's IEP. Parent training is specifically named as one of many possible related services that can be provided to a student with an IEP by 34 CFR Secs. 300.34(a) and 300.34(c)(8)(i)).   If you're distrustful of the quality of instruction you might get from parent training through your child's IEP, you may have to result to self-education by reading everything you can find about your child's disability, as much of the peer-reviewed research about instructing learners with the types of needs your child has as you can digest, and simplified reports of the research findings in trusted publications from credible sources. You may need to periodically consult with experts for hire, but what you invest in informing yourself you may save many times over by preventing yourself from getting duped.   The bottom line is that parents can protect their children's right to evidence-based special education planning and implementation the more they understand how to use measurement and evidence in the planning and implementation processes. By knowing what to look for, they know what request when they don't see it. Informed parents can monitor the situation for education agency compliance.   In those areas where parents have not yet mastered the knowledge necessary to know whether an approach is appropriate for their child or not, they are encouraged to ask questions like, "Can you explain to me how this fits my child?" and "How can we measure whether this works in a meaningful way?" By shifting the burden back onto the education agency to explain how and why its recommendations are supported by the peer-reviewed research and written in an appropriately measurable manner, parents rightly shift the burden of applying the science to the appropriate party.   Parents are not, and should not, be required to become experts in order to participate in the IEP process. But, for the sake of protecting their children's educational and civil rights, and their own rights to meaningful parent participation in the IEP process, it behooves parents to become as knowledgeable as possible. It's more difficult to get tricked or misled the more you know, and the more dry and technical you can keep things, the less hysterical drama you're likely to experience in dealing with your local education agency.   References:   Drasgow, E., Yell, M.L., & Robinson, T.R. (2001). Developing legally correct and educationally appropriate IEPs. Remedial and Special Education 22(6), 359-373. doi: 10.1177/074193250102200606 Kimball, J. (2002). Behavior-analytic instruction for children with autism: Philosophy matters. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 17(2), 66-75. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F10883576020170020101 Yell, M. & Drasgow, E. (2000). Litigating a free appropriate public education: The Lovaas hearings and cases. The Journal of Special Education, 33(4), 205-214. doi: 10.1177/002246690003300403

Image credit: Alan Levine   One of the situations I commonly encounter in working with students with special needs and their families in the public education system is a phenomenon that I've come to refer to as "school-hopping." Sometimes, parents who do not understand why their children are struggling assume that the problem is with the school, and, very often, there is a problem at school. But, quite often, the real issue is that the school is responding poorly to a disability-related need experienced by the student, so it's not just that there is something wrong at the school, there's something wrong with how it is responding to a special need that requires unique accommodations.   Put another way, there are two problems to resolve: 1) how to address the student's unique needs in an educationally appropriate and legally compliant way, and 2) how to address the internal problems at the school that are preventing this from happening. Parents will sometimes jump from a charter school to a district-run independent study program to a home-school group to a ... you name it ... trying to find the right fit for their child.   The problem with doing that is, unless a parent knows what specifically to ask any school to do for their child, they're just rolling the dice with every school change and hoping this one will finally be the one that fits. The whole purpose of special education is to impose structure on how education is tailored to each individual student. That way, it shouldn't matter so much where they are so long as the supports and services described by the student's individualized program are being delivered in that setting.   The guidance to the school site personnel as to how to do this comes in the form of a legally enforceable document called an Individualized Education Program (IEP). An IEP is created by a team of individuals described by federal law (34 CFR Sec. 300.321) according to specific criteria, also described by federal law (34 CFR Sec. 300.324). What the IEP says it what the responsible public education agency must do for the student for whom it is written.   It doesn't matter how many times a student with special needs changes schools if the IEP that follows them is garbage. Even when a student changes to an entirely different public education agency, the incoming IEP is what informs the new school team as to how to support the newly incoming student with special needs. If the IEP does not describe appropriate supports and services, then the new school is legally obligated to implement the garbage that the IEP describes, instead.   My point, here, is that changing schools under these kinds of conditions tends to just make things worse. Every school change means at least some part of a kid's file, if not the whole thing, gets lost in transit between one public education agency and the next. Assessment reports and old IEPs disappear from the record with frequent moves and school changes, so those items aren't there to inform a records review like they normally would as part of a new assessment conducted by a new education agency.   That makes it very hard for the new school to know where to begin with a new student with special needs. The parents are hoping the new school will somehow magically fix everything but each successive new school gets put further and further at a disadvantage as to where to even begin every time a new change in schools happens and records have to be shuffled around again.   I have yet to figure out why so many people start at the end rather than the beginning when it comes to individualized student planning. Placement - that is, the type of classroom setting(s) in which a special education student receives instruction - is determined by the IEP team as the last matter of properly conducted IEP planning for very important, logical reasons. There are a whole lot of other decisions that have to be made, first, before a placement determination can be made.   IEPs start out with identifying a student's present levels of performance, which seek to answer the questions, "What can the student already do?" and "What does the student still need to be taught relative to the grade-level standards and/or developmental norms?" On the basis of the answers to those two questions, goals are written that target measurable, annual outcomes.   The goals describe what the IEP is supposed to make happen. Until you know that, you don't know what all you need to actually educate the student.   For this reason, the IEP team next determines what services are necessary to see the goals met. On the basis of the frequency, duration, and location of the services necessary to meet the goals, in combination with the student's right to experience the least amount of segregation away from the general education population as possible, educational placement is then determined.   Parents who school-hop interfere with how the federally mandated process is supposed to work, usually without realizing the harm they are doing. Until the IEP describes goals in each area of unique student learning need in meaningfully measurable ways, it doesn't matter where the student goes to school; following a bad IEP in a new, good setting will still go wrong.   That said, I've seen plenty of situations where changing schools, even moving to entirely new school districts, has saved a kid's life. The challenge, though, was to get the IEP as good as we could get it before the student changed schools so the new, receiving school had something worth implementing once the student started attending there.   And, in California, where I do most of my work, whether a special education student moves during the school year or summer break has bearing on what is enforceable in terms of a transfer IEP. This added layer of complexity, which isn't the same in all the other States, makes the timing of everything that much more imperative when it comes to changing to a different school district or charter school. Parents who school-hop in California can do even more harm than they realize because of the odd State laws about transfer IEPs.   What's often more heartbreaking are families that are school-hopping because their child has never been offered an IEP and when they've asked about it, they've been shot down by school personnel who insist that their child would never qualify. In reality, it can be the case that the school personnel are just waiting for the family to pick up and move the student, again, at which point whether or not the student needs an IEP won't be that particular school's problem, anymore. There are unfortunately those in public education who will facilitate eliminating a problem rather than solving it, even if it comes at the expense of a child.   Parents who school-hop can call unnecessary attention to themselves as easily exploited by school staffs who would rather see them move along to the next school than stick around and insist that the current school do its job. At some point, school-hopping parents have to figure out that the school-hopping isn't working and, instead, they need to stand in one spot, dig in their heels, and get a decent IEP from whatever agency is responsible right at that moment. That might mean filing a lawsuit just to get an initial assessment, but if that's what it takes, that's what it takes.   Without a legally enforceable IEP document that describes something worth enforcing, no placement can be made to work. Federal law mandates that the education rendered to a special education student be in conformity with that student's IEP (34 CFR Sec. 300.17). If the IEP is garbage, then the school is legally obligated to implement the garbage until such time as the IEP can be made more appropriate.   As a parent, your number one objective when it comes to advocating for your child with special needs is to make sure that the services and supports provided are actually appropriate to your child's needs. Just having a document that says "IEP" at the top of it doesn't magically bestow educational benefits onto anybody. The contents of the document matter and, as a parent, you need to know how to look out for language in an IEP that could undermine your child and any exclusions of language that are important to meeting your child's needs from the IEP. More harm can be done by what is left out of an IEP than what is put into it.   Once you understand why placement is the last decision that should be made by an IEP team, you can understand why changing placement when things aren't going right doesn't always make sense. Unless you've got an amazing IEP and the people at the school site just aren't implementing it as written, there's a really good chance your problem is with the plan more than the placement.   Plans of any kind fail for only one of two reasons: 1) design flaws, or 2) implementation failures. Design flaws can sometimes only be identified when you try to implement the plan and something goes wrong. If you never implement the plan according to its design, you'll never know if the design was flawed or not because you weren't following it in the first place. If the design is great, but no one is following it, what's the point?   This analysis of plan success and failure came to me by way of my training in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), which, by the way, is a science, not a treatment methodology. There are a lot of ABA-based treatment programs out there, but those programs are not what actual ABA is. They are based on ABA, some with more scientific rigor than others. The actual science of ABA can be applied to anything that behaves, including animals, plants, and computers.   From the absolute, parsimonious perspective of ABA as a science, everything is based on objectively identified behaviors, only, which are framed in quantifiable terms and rendered into emotionally neutral pieces of data. Further, not only is data taken on how the individual responds to efforts at changing its behaviors, data is taken on the fidelity with which those implementing the plan are actually adhering to it.   Taking data on the fidelity of the implementation of the program design is one of the most critical pieces of the science that often gets left out of school-based ABA-type programs. It's my assumption that this is for political and/or preemptive legal defense purposes because no school district that I know of wants data taken on the degree to which their staffs are actually adhering to any part of the IEP.   That's way too much accountability on the record and way too much risk of it capturing somebody doing it wrong that could then be used to prove a denial of a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) in hearing by the parents and achieve an order for compensatory education to make up for the lost instruction. Even though the science is abundantly clear that ABA data collection methods, when followed according to the science, are the most accurate, reliable, and valid data collected in the public education system for special education students (Drasgow, Yell, & Robinson, 2001; Kimball, 2002; Yell & Drasgow, 2000), I have yet to see that degree of scientific rigor applied to any part of a student's IEP in the public schools, whether it's through their measurable annual goals or any behavior plans that their IEP might contain.   As parents, your primary goal has to be the quality of the IEP's design because, if it doesn't describe what your child actually needs, it doesn't matter where you try to implement it and no placement will just magically fall in love with your child and imbue them with knowledge through emotional osmosis. Hope is not a strategy. Pursuing a scientifically informed, legally compliant IEP is a strategy that gives you way more likelihood of having a meaningful say in the quality of your child's education, regardless of where they attend school.   References:   Drasgow, E., Yell, M.L., & Robinson, T.R. (2001). Developing legally correct and educationally appropriate IEPs. Remedial and Special Education 22(6), 359-373. doi: 10.1177/074193250102200606 Kimball, J. (2002). Behavior-analytic instruction for children with autism: Philosophy matters. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 17(2), 66-75. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F10883576020170020101 Yell, M. & Drasgow, E. (2000). Litigating a free appropriate public education: The Lovaas hearings and cases. The Journal of Special Education, 33(4), 205-214. doi: 10.1177/002246690003300403

Episode 8 baby. Feeling Great. We are back and excited to have one of our faves, Lauren Milburn on the show. She is opening up to us about her personal experience with eating disorders. Society has made it hard AF to live up to the expectations of what women should look like and apparently CARBS are BAD. GTFO. Healthy eating and exercise is the answer and Lauren is the epitome of that. We think this is a kick ass topic and something that everybody should listen to. As always we keep it real, raw, and relatable. Love ya, Mean it. Show Notes: Readings Go follow @letters_and_lifting Private Events Anderson, C. M., Hawkins, R. P., Freeman, K. A., & Scotti, J. R. (2000). Private events: Do they belong in a science of human behavior? The Behavior Analyst, 23(1), 1-10. Snyder, K., Lambert, J., & Twohig, M. P. (2011). Defusion: A behavior-analytic strategy for addressing private events. Behavior Analysts in Practice, 4(2), 4-13. Taylor, I., & O’Reilly, M. F. (1997). Toward a functional analysis of private verbal self-regulation. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 30(1), 43-58. Eating Disorders and Behavior Analysis Beatiz Meyer, S. (2008). Functional behavior analysis of eating disorders. Journal of Behavior Analysis in Health, Sports, Fitness and Medicine,1(1), 26-33. Lappalainen, R., & Tuomisto, M. T. (2005). Functional behavior analysis of anorexia nervosa: Application to clinical practice. The Behavior Analyst Today,6(3), 166-177. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/RFT Blackledge, J. T. (2003). An introduction to relational frame theory: Basics and applications. The Behavior Analyst Today, 3(4), 421-433. Harris, R. (2006). Embracing your demons: An overview of acceptance and commitment therapy. Psychotherapy in Australia, 12(4), 2-8. Harris, R. (2013). The illustrated happiness trap: How to stop struggling and start living. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, Inc. Torneke, N. (2010). Learning RFT: An introduction to relational frame theory and its clinical application. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling and Start Living Russ Harris Lifting and Behavior Analysis Moore, J. W., & Quintero, L. M. (1997). Comparing forward and backward chaining in teaching Olympic weightlifting. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 52(1), 50-59. Right to Effective Treatment Van Houten, R., Axelrod, S., Bailey, J. S., Favell, J. E., Foxx, R.M., Iwata, B.A., & Lovaas, O. I. (1988). The right to effective behavioral treatment. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 21(4), 381-384.

Cody Lovaas - Love No More (Live) - We Found New Music With Grant Owens by WE FOUND NEW MUSIC

Cody Lovaas - Finally Fallen (Live) - We Found New Music With Grant Owens by WE FOUND NEW MUSIC

Cody Lovaas Interview - We Found New Music With Grant Owens by WE FOUND NEW MUSIC

Early detection and treatment of autism is key in aiding your child/student’s growth and recovery. Dr. Mary Barbera interviews Dr. Megan Miller, who depicts her journey into the world of autism, and offers valuable insight when traditional methods may fail.

Summary: Dr. Deborah Jones — better known around FDSA as Deb Jones — is a psychologist who specializes in learning theory and social behavior. An early innovator in the use of clicker training, she has owned and worked with a variety of breeds and has earned top-level titles in agility, rally, and obedience over the last 25 years. At FDSA, Deb offers a wide range of popular classes, including a number of excellent foundations classes. Her focus is on developing training methods that are enjoyable and effective for both the dog and the trainer. Links mentioned: Deb's Website - www.k9infocus.com Deb's Class on FDSA Next Episode:  To be released 7/27/2018, featuring Sue Ailsby, talking about Rally.  TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we’ll be talking to Dr. Deborah Jones -- better known around FDSA as Deb Jones.   Deb is a psychologist who specializes in learning theory and social behavior. An early innovator in the use of clicker training, she has owned and worked with a variety of breeds and has earned top-level titles in agility, rally, and obedience over the last 25 years. In 2004, Deb worked with agility trainer and World Team member Judy Keller to develop the FOCUS training system. FOCUS stands for Fun, Obedience & Consistency lead to Unbelievable Success. Deb has also worked with Denise Fenzi, co-authoring the “Dog Sports Skills” book series, and authored several other books, with more in the works! At FDSA, Deb offers a wide range of popular classes, including a number of excellent foundations classes. Her focus is on developing training methods that are enjoyable and effective for both the dog and the trainer. Hi Deb! Welcome back to the podcast. Deb Jones: Hi Melissa. Thanks for having me back again. It is always fun to be here and get a chance to chat with you. Melissa Breau: To start us out, can you just reacquaint listeners with the furry friends you currently share your household with? Deb Jones: Of course. I never pass up an opportunity to talk about my pets. First of all, there’s Zen. Zen is my nearly 11-year-old Border Collie, and it’s impossible that he could be nearly 11. I tell him every night that he needs to stop getting old right now, because I’m not going to allow it. Zen is perfect in practically every way. He’s fun, he’s smart, he has done a lot in his life, and he still enjoys a lot of things, like hiking with me. The second dog I have is Star. She’s a 7-year-old black-and-white Border Collie. Star has done quite a bit of demo work in classes, as well as we are starting out on working nosework, doing nosework with her as well. She’s also another hiking buddy of mine. Tigger is the 2-year-old tiny little Sheltie. He really belongs to Judy Keller, but I get to share him. Tigger is fun and he’s funny. He’s very fierce for someone who weighs 7-and-a-half pounds, and he tells you all the time that he’s the biggest dog in the house. And finally, we also have Trick, the kitty. Tricky is now about 8 years old, I think. Trick has been in a lot of videos. He loves to train just as much as the dogs do, and he’s actually a whole lot of fun to train and a challenge. It’s different. It’s not quite the same as training dogs. But every time you get ready to tape a video, Tricky is here, so he usually gets involved in some way or the other. So that’s our household right now. Melissa Breau: I asked you on today to talk about something we haven’t talked about before on the podcast: teaching people. Professional dog trainers are typically training people to train dogs, not actually training the dogs themselves, and even those who aren’t professional trainers often find themselves asked for advice, or maybe they just want to be a positive ripple in their area. Based on your background, you seem like the perfect person to ask, plus I know you have a class coming up on the topic. I think most of our listeners probably realize you teach for FDSA, but some of them may not realize you also taught psychology at Kent State University for 20 years. Did you always want to be a teacher? What got you started on that path? Deb Jones: I’m actually pretty surprised that this topic of teaching has not come up until now. It seems to me it’s pretty central to everything we’re doing here at FDSA, so I’m really excited about starting a program for teachers. Let me go back a little bit and talk about my background in teaching, and give you first of all a personal confession is that I never wanted to be a teacher. That was so far away from anything I ever thought I would do with my life. It was never any kind of consideration for me. There were some, I think, pretty clear reasons why that was the case. I grew up fairly isolated. I was an only child, I lived way out in the country, we didn’t have a lot of people around, but we did have a lot of animals. Especially across the street from us there was a large farm. They always had chickens, pigs, and lot of horses. So I spent lots of time over there with the animals, and I interacted with the animals very easily. With people not so much. So that started out my idea of spending time animal training, because I was simply much more used to them and more comfortable being around them. Also something that I know about myself and I’ve come to learn over the years is I’m a pretty strong natural introvert. I’m relaxed and comfortable alone or with a small number of people around. When you start to get a large group of people, that takes a lot of energy from me in terms of interaction. It’s just not quite so natural for me to interact with large groups, which is pretty funny considering that I teach very large classes sometimes. That was not at all what I would ever have guessed I would have done. It’s something that I learned how to do over the years. It became a role that I could play. But it’s not who I am. There’s a big difference between the role of what we’re doing and our personality, and it’s very clear to me that I’m not a natural teacher, but I could learn how to teach very effectively, and I think it’s something that anybody can learn how to do, if that’s what you want. I never chose to teach when I went college. I didn’t go back to college until I was about 30 years old. I went back as an adult and I had no idea what I was going to do. My plan was to take one college class and see what it’s like, and that one class happened to be Intro Psychology. So I took my psychology class and that was it — I was hooked. That was the thing I was most interested in. All through undergrad I never really thought about what I would do with this degree, except I realized a bachelor’s in psychology doesn’t get you anywhere. You really have to go on to graduate school, and you really need to get a Ph.D. And so I thought, OK, I could do that. I liked a lot of things about research, so I figured I’d be a researcher, and I saw myself working alone in a lab somewhere, spending a lot of time doing my own individual work and then socializing with people every once in a while. I didn’t really see myself interacting with large numbers of people on a daily basis. Since I was older when I went back to college, I got to know my professors a little better maybe than some students of a traditional age might have, and they were really, really influential in my decision on what to do and how to go about approaching my career. There are two in particular, Marion Cohn and Anne Crimmings, who were the psychology professors that I worked with as an undergrad, and they both encouraged me strongly to go on to graduate school. In particular, Marion was a really strong influence on me. She was a behaviorist. She trained under somebody named Ivar Lovaas. Anybody in the ABA world probably recognizes the name Lovaas, who pioneered doing behavioral work with people with autism. So she was very much influential in the fact that I knew I wanted to go into something that had to do with behavior and that everything I found there made a lot of sense to me. So I headed off to graduate school. I had no plans to teach. Again, I thought I would be doing research. But once I got to graduate school, they have an expectation of your work for them. You will work for them 20 hours a week in addition to your class load, and you’re going to be assigned to be either a research or teaching assistant. What I discovered was that research assistantships were harder to get, and usually that happened for the upper-level students. I was pretty much told, “You’re going to be a teaching assistant,” and it was not a happy day for me. That was not what I wanted to hear. It got even worse, though, because I was going to be a teaching assistant for a statistics class, and I don’t like statistics. There is nothing about it that I cared about in any way. I squeaked through it as an undergrad, but I never felt confident in it or felt like I understood it. I just managed to get an A somehow, and it seemed to me like it was luck as much as anything else. Since stats didn’t make sense to me, I didn’t want to do it. I’m going to have to teach something I don’t understand, and the final straw there was that it was going to be an 8 o’clock lab, an 8 a.m. lab, and I’m like, I hate everything about this. There was nothing that sounded like a good plan. I seriously considered dropping out of graduate school. I’m glad I didn’t, but at the time it did not seem like this was going to lead me anywhere down a career path that I wanted to go. Just the opposite. It seemed like it was taking me away from what I wanted to do. But in the end of it, what happened was I learned a really, really important lesson, and that was that in order to teach something, if I had to stand up in front of a group of people and be the expert on something, I really needed to understand it completely. In order for me to understand statistics, of all things, I needed to break it down into tiny little parts and basically split it, is how we talk about it in training now. I needed to split it down, and it needed to make sense to me first before I could use it to make sense to anybody else. I spent a lot of time that first year learning statistics myself. I would take the lesson I learned the night before and present it to my class the next morning. What happened was my students liked it and they did well. They liked the way things were broken down. They liked that things were very clear and understandable to them. As we know, many times you get a professor who really understands the topic, but they can’t make it understandable to the student. With my own struggles I was able to do that right off the bat. I was able to find ways to make it understandable to others. We keep it sort of a secret among teachers that many times we’re barely ahead of our students in the material. We may have been reading that textbook right before we went in the classroom to teach it. So you become, again, play your role. You become good at projecting confidence, even when you may not totally have it. But that’s part of the teaching role that we take on. I finally did get away from teaching statistics in grad school. I got to teach a lot of other classes as well, though my career in teaching altogether I taught statistics every single semester for 20 years. It kept me employed because nobody else wanted to do it. It became very easy for me to do over time, and they were very popular classes, so I always had full classes, which was good. But I taught a lot of other classes in grad school. Once I got my master’s, I taught at a few different area colleges and I started to feel like I was getting control of this, or understanding how to develop material and how to teach it. Of course, when I decided to get a job, then I found out that any job I got was going to be mainly teaching. If there was any research involved, it was going to be minimal. Academic jobs at the time I was looking were very competitive and hard to get, so I was lucky that I had a good friend, Lee [Fox], who is going to be teaching this teaching class with me at FDSA, and I’ll talk about her more in a bit. I was lucky that she had gotten a job at Kent State a few years before me and come up here. So she knew about the opening, she connected me to an opening here, I got the job at Kent State, I decided I’d probably stay for a year or two. Twenty years later, here I am, just retiring from Kent State. So things kind of take on a life of their own. But I’ve been really happy here. I moved from the big Kent campus down to a regional campus called the Stark campus, which is in Canton, Ohio, where my classes were small, I knew most of my students, I had good colleagues, so it’s been a really good career and a really good experience. But I was ready to get away from it. Probably for about the last four or five years I’ve been really done with college teaching. It takes a lot of energy and it does burn you out over time. At the same time I was also starting to teach more and more for FDSA and I saw a couple of things. One of those is that, gee, this thing is going to continue growing. It’s not going to be something that lasts for a year or two. It just keeps expanding, and FDSA has a lot to offer the dog training world. I knew I wanted to get more and more involved here, but I still had a full-time job there, so finally I was in a position, luckily, that I could make the decision to focus my teaching efforts more at FDSA and go ahead and retire from Kent State. That was a long-winded way of telling you where I came from. Melissa Breau: I think that’s all good. You mentioned a bunch of things in there, though. One of the things you talked about were some of the skills that go into being a good teacher, and obviously there’s a difference between being given a job as a teacher and really learning how to teach. Can you identify what some of those skills were? What skills do teachers need that someone might not think about until they are actually in that role? Deb Jones: There’s a lot of on-the-job learning typically involved in teaching, and that’s not always a good thing. In fact, we’d be much better off to have more preparation, but we don’t get that often. We get knowledge of the material. So you come in to teach something, you’re teaching it because you know it, because you understand it, or you do well at it. If we switch from college teaching to talk about dog trainers a little bit — we understand how to train an animal. Once you get that, people are going to encourage you to teach others, which is a good thing. We should share that knowledge. We shouldn’t keep it all to ourselves. But if you’re only good with animals and you don’t know how to teach people, it’s not going to go well for you. People skills, being able to communicate very clearly and effectively with the person, because animals come with people attached. Whether we like it or not, we need to work with the person to change the animal’s situation or to change their behavior. So learning how to communicate with another human, as opposed to communicating with an animal of any species, is much more difficult. People are more complicated, much more complicated. I’ve also come to see that our job is not just to present information. We really are there to motivate and support students, much more than just give them info. That is probably one of the biggest things I’ve learned over my career is that I need to be, and I am now more than I was, a motivator and somebody who’s there for support when the person needs it. As a teacher, being able to take theoretical information, and an understanding of that information, and make it into something that the student can use and apply right away. Some of us are good at book learning. That’s why I’m an academic, because I like that kind of stuff. But if I give all that to my students, I’m going to overwhelm them very, very quickly. So I need to be able to take what I know from theories and pull out the important pieces of information and use those appropriately. I don’t want to overwhelm students. We don’t want to flood students with new information, and that easily happens sometimes, especially with new teachers. You tell them everything, and everything is too much. In college teaching we’re still in the model of lecture. I lecture to you, you listen to me, and then I test you on what you remember from the lecture. That’s the whole mode. It’s not really the best model for learning, probably, but it’s a very strong tradition of that in academics, so that’s not going to go away anytime soon. But in dog training it’s different, because if I lecture my students for very long, they’re bored and they’re finished. I need to be working with them. I need to take information and make it into something that you actually physically do. That can be hard, because I do things without thinking about every little detail and every little step, and when I have to think through that, all of a sudden something that I thought was very simple to teach takes ten times longer because I have forgotten all those details that go in along the way. I think we’re really good at FDSA with this is we approach students differently. It’s not “the instructor has all the power, the student has none” relationship and all the information flows from me to you. It’s much more interactive, it’s much more about the information flow coming from the student as well. I learn as much as I ever teach a lot of people. And it’s much more about how to support our students and help them, as opposed to just give them information. I think those are very different things that we’re doing here with dog training than I do in college teaching. Melissa Breau: How did you learn some of those skills? Where did those abilities come from? Deb Jones: We learn on the job, which is not the best way. Trial and error. When I first started teaching at Kent State, when I got hired at Kent State, one of my first classes was 500 people. It was 500 people, Introductory Psychology class. That’s daunting, and nobody tells you what to do or how to do it. You are basically left on your own: “Here you go, here’s your class, teach Intro Psychology.” And I’m like, OK, I know Intro Psychology, but I’m standing on a stage in an auditorium, which is like my worst nightmare ever, trying to figure out how do I keep these people interested, how do I give them what they need to know, and how do I control this group? Because now I’ve got this large group of people I have to somehow control. So it’s very much sink or swim, trial and error, and I don’t think that’s a good way to do it at all. And so what happens? Some people do well. Some people learn how to teach, they figure it out, they thrive, they have a career out of it. But other people don’t. They hate it, they do poorly, either they quit or they find a way to avoid teaching as much as possible, which is actually true of many college professors. They teach as little as they possibly can. If you have somebody to support you and mentor you, that can be helpful, but that’s not something always that occurs. It’s not a big deal in most colleges. They’re more interested in research than in teaching. Teaching is seen as something we have to do, but that’s not their focus for a lot of people in college. You’d think it would be, because that’s what a university is all about, but oftentimes it’s much more about doing research. So there’s not much effort put into supporting teachers, or showing people how to teach, or giving instruction. So we tend to model, I think, mostly after how we were taught. You probably had a professor that you really liked, and a professor that you felt like you got a lot from their class or classes. And that’s what we tend to do — we model after them. That’s good if you had a great professor, and if that happens to work for your personality and for your topic, but it doesn’t always work out quite that way. That’s one of the reasons, I think this is the main reason, we thought about first offering a class on how to teach. Because it can be a very painful, difficult experience if you don’t know what you’re doing, and hopefully we can save people from some of that. You can learn from our pain. You don’t have to have your own. We can show you and help you along the way, and that’s why we’re doing this. Melissa Breau: I think a lot of dog trainers, when they decide to become professionals, like you’re saying, they jump right into it, so it leads to a bit of flying by the seat of their pants, for lack of a better term. I’d love to hear a little bit about how much of teaching can be, or has to be, that ad hoc, that fly by the seat of your pants, and how much it really requires careful planning and should require that careful planning. What’s the balance like there? Deb Jones: That’s an excellent question, because I think everything requires planning. I’m not a big believer in spontaneity. Part of that is my personality, but part of it is also my experience of teaching for about 25 years now. Very few people … now there are some who can be spontaneous and it goes really well, but they’re not a lot. For most people, when you’re spontaneous, things start to go off the rails pretty quickly. It’s also frightening, it’s pretty scary, to not have a plan, so I’m a total big believer in planning. You may be very good at what you do with animals, but you may need much more work on how do I take that and make it into something that is going to be understandable to humans. Lots of times, students never see the preparation stage of teaching. They have no idea it exists, because it’s invisible. They don’t know how much work we put in behind the scenes before we even get to interacting with them. I know you’ve taught a class or so, and you’re going to be teaching classes, and you know now a little bit about how much work goes on before you ever get there. There’s a lot that needs to be done. We don’t just jump into class on the first day and go, “Ah, I wonder what I’m going to do today.” I know what I’m going to do for the entire session. I have it all planned out, and even if my plan falls apart somewhere along the way, at least I had a plan to start with. I often in my college classes make up a schedule, I always make up a schedule, for every day of the semester for the four months that we would be there. I knew exactly what I was going to do before the class ever started. Whether or not I stuck to that plan is something else. That’s where the spontaneity might come in, where I have to change things because I moved faster or slower than I thought I would, or I needed some more time to talk about a particular topic. So I can change things as I go along, but I need the plan first. That, to me, is just vitally important, and for all the good teachers I know, that is the case. They know what they’re doing. They always know every single day. It’s not, “Huh, I wonder what I feel like teaching this morning.” It’s very much “This is where we go now in the lesson plan.” It helps a lesson plan to be sensible and to be logical and to build one thing on the next. If you’re just jumping around from one topic to another, that feels disjointed and people don’t like that so much. So more planning never hurts. This is what I always say: Plan everything. You can never over-plan. It’s fine. Do as much as you think you need to do. Then, once you have the plan, now you can be flexible. Now you can be a little more spontaneous, if you see the need arise. But don’t just go into it cold, because that’s unlikely for most people to end well. Melissa Breau: That leads directly into what I was going to ask you next, which obviously, no matter how much planning you do, there are going to be times when you have to think on your feet and you have to respond when something unexpected happens, especially if you’re dealing with a dog training class in person, where you have students and you have their dogs and you never know exactly what crazy things could enter somebody’s head, or a dog’s head, in a given moment. How did you learn to handle that aspect of the job — handling the unexpected — and any advice you have, of course. Deb Jones: What do they say, “Expected the unexpected.” Things are going to happen that you could never have planned for or predicted. That’s always very, very true. Things that in your wildest dreams you would not have imagined they’d occur, happen, and I think with new teachers we’re terrified of those possibilities. We’re very worried that something is going to happen, out of my control, I’m not going to know what to do about it. And it will. There’s no question it will. So what do you do? You can panic. You can kind of lose your ability to think and process information. I’ve had that happen now and again. I’m thinking about instructors in early teaching of anything. You’re often worried that you’re going to get questions that you can’t answer. That’s an interesting fear to have, because it is reasonable. There will be questions that I don’t know the answer to because I don’t know everything in the world. I have no idea what the answer might be to certain questions. But I usually can figure out where to find that information. It might not be something I can answer right away, but just that fear that people are going to ask me something I don’t know — I don’t worry about that so much because usually my answer to that is something like, “Well, that a really interesting question and I haven’t really thought about that. So let me think about it a little bit and we can talk about it later, or let me go do some research on it and next time we’ll discuss it.” So you don’t have to answer everything right now. You don’t have to know everything in the world, even about the topic you’re teaching. You can only know your part of it. There’s nothing wrong with that when it happens, and it will happen. The other thing that sometimes happens that’s unexpected is you made your plan for class, you know what you’re going to do, you’ve got it all figured out, and when you get there, that plan is just not right for that group. It may be that my material is too simple, and my group is beyond where I thought they would be. The more likely the problem is my material is too complex, and the group is not ready for this level of material that I was planning to give them and talk about and work on that day. You have to be able to figure out when do I need to go back and go to an easier level, or when do I need to add some challenge that I wasn’t necessarily expecting I was going to have to do here. So my lesson plan is sort of a suggested outline for what is going to happen in a class. That can always be changed. If I have that dog that does something I didn’t expect, either good or bad — either they do much better than I thought they would, or they’re nowhere near ready to do what I had planned for them that day — that’s when I do have to be flexible and be spontaneous. We develop, as we go along with training, ways to deal with that: What am I going to do when I get into that situation? Let’s say you have the dog and the owner that show up to your advanced class and they’re not advanced. They’re barely beginners, and somehow they ended up in your advanced class. This happens all the time. So what you planned for them to do is absolutely not possible for them. Now the question is what do you do at that moment? We want to very quickly drop back down to the level where they can be successful and start them there. That’s all you can do in the moment is to give them something to work on that they can succeed with. Trying to hold them to the same level as everybody else in the class is just never going to work. It’s going to be frustrating for all of you. After the fact, it might be they don’t really belong in that class, but that’s not something to address immediately. You can address that privately at the end of class. Maybe that the class is not right for them, they don’t have the background or the skills that they need, but we can’t derail the whole lesson and say, “OK, because Joe and Fido are having this problem with reactivity and it’s an agility class, we’re all going to stop and I’m going to work with him on this problem.” We can’t do that either. We have to think constantly about the group. What is the group here to be taught? What did I say I was going to teach? I have to do that. Like I say, I can try to alter things as much as I can for somebody who’s not quite fitting, but in the end they may or may not be right for that particular class. We can’t be all things to all people all the time, and we can deal with that after the fact. The other issue, the opposite issue of that, is you get somebody in class who is well advanced of what you’re teaching. This can be disconcerting, especially if you’re a new instructor, because now all of a sudden the student knows more than you do, and you don’t know what you have to offer them. In these cases, with experience, you start to learn to add challenges for those students who are ready for them as part of what you’re doing in the class. Judy used to complain when she had her first agility dog, Morgan, who was Mr. Perfect. Morgan did everything right all the time. Morgan would do an agility sequence perfectly, and they’d be, “That was great, OK, next.” And then the next dog comes up and they’re having trouble, so they get three or four tries at the agility sequence and much more of the instructor’s time. When you get something like this, you’re not real happy if you’re the person who has the perfect dog, because you haven’t been challenged in any way, and you really haven’t gotten the time from the instructor that you should have. So knowing I have to give the same amount to each of my students and I have to meet them or start where they are. Even though I have this general idea of where they ought to be, I’m working with them from where they are right now, which is exactly the same thing we do with dogs. We work from where they are right now. It’s the same with people. Melissa Breau: As somebody who has taught in both a traditional classroom setting and who has taught people to train their dogs, what similarities or differences pop out at you? Deb Jones: This is a really interesting distinction to make between teaching my college classes and teaching my dog training classes because I’ve done both for over 25 years. In terms of preparation, I think they’re pretty much the same. I prepare the same way no matter what the topic is that I’m teaching, whether it’s dog training classes or college classes. Some of the issues you’re going to see that are similar include just dealing with people — interpersonal issues, group dynamics that you have going on. How do I deal with this large group of people effectively? Most of us don’t know naturally how to do that, so that’s something we learn. In dog training, though, it’s interesting because you would think you’re training the dog. That’s what it’s called. It’s called dog training, so our focus is on training the dog. But we all know, who have taught for any time at all, what you’re actually doing is teaching the person to train the dog. So I, as the instructor here, have a double job. I’m teaching a person, also making sure the dog gets trained at the same time. Many dog trainers would say, “The animal is easy, the person is hard,” and that’s probably true. I feel like I could train the dog very quickly, but that’s not the job. The job is to teach the person to train the dog, and that’s not going to be as quick and easy. If you’ve ever learned how to ride a horse — I spent a lot of time when I was younger with horses and riding horses and at stables — oftentimes when you take lessons, what happens, you get a new person who’s never ridden a horse before, and we give them what’s called a school horse. The school horse is usually the one that’s going to be very easy. That horse is experienced. It knows what’s going on. The person knows nothing, but at least the horse knows. And so the horse is pretty easy going, it’s used to beginners, it’s not going to hurt anybody, everything will go along OK. As you get better as a rider, you get the horses that are less trained or more difficult to work with. We don’t do that with dogs. We don’t have school dogs. I think that would be a really good idea, if you had these well-trained dogs that people could practice on before they work with their own. I think that would make things simpler. But we don’t have that. We’re teaching a person and an animal brand new things at the same time, which makes it difficult. We’re also teaching … in dog training, the difference is that’s a physical skill, and it involves a lot of motor skill, and it involves timing, observational skills. These are things I don’t teach in college classes. I teach information. I teach material. I talk about academic stuff out of books, theories and ideas. That’s very different than teaching somebody how to click at the proper moment. That’s a whole different set of skills. Or how to manage a clicker and your treats and your dog and your leash and all those things at one time. This is a lot of mechanical stuff that we work with when we’re teaching animals different behaviors. And again, things I don’t think about. I just do them. So when I have to start to think about how to explain it to somebody, then I have to break it down into tiny little parts. I remember when I first started thinking about teaching FOCUS. I didn’t know how I taught FOCUS. I just did. I just somehow had it with my dogs. There were a lot of things I was doing, but it took me a while to think through all those and to actually be able to verbalize them to other people, because I felt like it’s just what you do, it’s just how you are with your dog, it’s how you live with your puppy. But clearly it’s not, because everybody wasn’t doing those things. Once I started to verbalize it, it just kept growing and growing. It’s like, I do a lot of things I never said or I never even recognized. That’s a lot of what happens in dog training. We have to go, we do this and it works, but how do I tell you to do the same thing? We get students … because we’re working with physical skills, we all end up with students who have difficulty with those skills, who have trouble following direction, or who have some sort of issue with something that I might think is simple. I might say, “Turn to your right,” and to me that would be a simple cue that I would give a person, but that might be very complicated for them. They might struggle with the difference between left and right. So I have to break it down and make it easy enough for that one particular person in my class, and then I have, say, ten of those people, and I have to do that for every single person that I’m working with. Those are challenges, those kinds of things that I didn’t see in college teaching. I just had a group of people sitting in chairs, looking at me. I got to talk to them, which was fine, which was easy, but you didn’t get that intense one-on-one that you do with dog training. Melissa Breau: To kind of flip the switch there, you talked about “The animal is easy, the person is hard.” What are some of the similarities or even the differences, I guess, between teaching your actual dog and teaching those human students? Are there things that stand out? Deb Jones: I think there are a lot of similarities. I mean, the general rules of learning still apply to everybody. I always say they apply to all species, and I don’t say “except humans.” They apply to all species. We all learn in the same way, and we all also need to consider motivation, emotional responses, and reactions to things. I need to consider those in my human students as well as in my animals, and sometimes as teachers we forget about that stuff. We think about it with the animals, but we figure the people must be motivated or they wouldn’t be there, so they must be able to figure it out and they want to do it. But not always. We can have a big effect on their emotional responses and on how much they try and how hard they work. Lots of times, something I see that is challenging with people in animal training, and especially for those of us who are positive-reinforcement-based trainers, is that what I’m teaching you pretty much contradicts your previous learning. It does not agree with what you think you know or what you know about dog training, and what I’m telling you is completely different. So we’re getting into space here where we have to be very, very careful. Even if I’m just implying everything you’ve done up to now is wrong, just listen to me and I’ll tell you what’s right, people don’t like that. They become defensive. They go, “No, wait a minute. I know what I was doing. I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” or “The fact that you’re implying I was doing something wrong is bothersome.” So we have to be very delicate in how we present information that we know is going to disagree with the way that they have always done things. The last thing we want our human students to do is become resistant to learning our ideas. We want them to be open to it, so we need to be very, very careful that I’m not implying to you that everything you’ve done up to now is wrong, thank goodness you found me, because otherwise you’re just messing up left and right. That’s not going to go over well. When you first learn about positive reinforcement training and you’re so excited about it, it’s easy to let that creep in, that this is the right way, everything you’ve been doing is the wrong way. We need to be careful about that as teachers, or we’re not going to convince anybody if we take that approach. Also with humans what I’ve come to see is it’s not my job to convert anybody to believe what I believe about animal training. I feel very strongly about the way I train and teach, and I feel like it’s the right way to go about it. But my job is not to convert the world. My job is to do what I do to the best of my ability. When somebody’s ready to hear what I have to say, they’ll be there. They’ll find me, and then they’ll be ready to make the changes that are necessary. But I’m not going out, pulling people in, trying to make them see how right I am. I think that is something that just turns people away from us, so we need to be careful about that. Melissa Breau: You mentioned that students sometimes are at different places in their learning, and I’m curious how, when professional trainers are dealing with a new class, I think they often struggle with this idea of how you break things down into tiny pieces so the dog can be successful without frustrating their human learners. Do you have any advice or suggestions around that? Deb Jones: Oh, of course I do. I definitely do. This is something I think about a lot. As animal trainers, we’re always talking about the importance of splitting things down into small pieces and making it easy for our animals to learn. We know that lumping things together is going to lead to confusion and frustration. It doesn’t help in the bigger picture. We apply that to animals pretty well, but oftentimes as instructors we have difficulty applying that to our human learners. One of the problems I see here is that our human students come in with unrealistic expectations about how much progress they’re going to make in a class or over the course of a session that you have. They expect a lot more than is realistically possible. I think one of our jobs as instructors is to help them set those expectations more realistically. They want to see some big change right away, and we know that it’s not about big change. It’s about a whole lot of little tiny bits of incremental change that eventually lead to the bigger change. So one of our first jobs, I think, is to convey this information to them, that what you’re seeing here, this is progress. This is what we’re looking at, how do we know it when we see it, and then they can start to look for it a little more as well. The other thing that often happens in classes, and it’s often with new instructors, is that you just feel like you have to give your students everything you know. Give them so much information that it becomes overwhelming to them, and they tend to shut down and stop hearing you pretty quickly. You can only process so much information at a time. We want to tell them everything, we want to give them everything they need to know, but we need to edit that. We need to keep that to a point where it’s enough for now and I can give them more later, so enough to be successful, and then we can build on that in the future. But when we flood people with large amounts of information, it’s not useful to them in any way, and it does make them feel overwhelmed and frustrated, so that’s not helpful as a learner. If you have students in class, as I sort of mentioned this already, lots of different places, some are more advanced than others, finding the level of material and difficulty to give them can indeed be difficult. You’ve got the new pet person in a class along with the experienced dog sport trainer. How am I going to make them both happy? That’s a big challenge, and you’ll probably never feel like you do it perfectly. Perfect and teaching do not go together. Those are not two words that happen. We do our best. We do our best every single time we teach. Later on, you’ll think, Oh, I wish I’d said this, or Oh, I wish I’d done that instead. Next time. Now you know. Next time you can do it that way. But we learn more, we do better. We don’t expect ourselves to be perfect all the time and hit it exactly right for every single class. You’ll have absolutely great classes and then you’ll have absolutely awful ones, and it may or may not have much to do with the material at all. Back to this idea one more time, because I’ll say it again because I think it’s important: More material is not better. It’s flooding. New instructors go into too much theory, too much detail. Narrow things down for your audience. What do they need to know right now? I think that’s the best way to find a balance here. If you have somebody who you really feel like is interested in more and wants to learn more, or is ready to learn more, then you pull out the extra stuff you have for them and give them a little extra instruction in that and give them a little extra challenge. Melissa Breau: I think that so often new instructors are a little bit … I don’t want to say unconfident, but to a certain extent it’s, OK, I’m going to prove you can trust me by telling you all the science that I know to prove that I know the science, so that we can do this thing and it’s going to work. But obviously that’s not, like you said, more information is not better. Deb Jones: Right, and the science is something we can talk about with our colleagues. We’re behavior geeks, a lot of us. That’s why we do this. We love to talk about the science of things. But we have to know our audience. Is my audience one that wants to talk about all this science or not? So save that for the right situation. Melissa Breau: For those who are listening who maybe don’t actually plan to become a teacher, but inevitably, as positive trainers, they find themselves questioned about their training and their techniques, do you have any advice for ways that Joe Schmo or the average positive trainer can maybe bridge that gap and help educate others around them? Deb Jones: Yeah, this is going to come up for you. If you train with positive reinforcement, people are going to be curious, especially if they’ve had more traditional training techniques. That’s all they know, so they’re going to want to know what you do. I’d say a few things that I think can be helpful here. First of all, your first job is to be a good example of positive reinforcement training. Nobody expects you or your dog to be perfect. I know I and my dog are far from perfect in our training. Many positive reinforcement trainers actually have very challenging dogs and that’s why they made this switch to more positive reinforcement, because they found it worked better for them. So you don’t have to be perfect, but do your best to actually train your dog so that they’re a good example of what you can do. If you can get a lot of hands-on experience with more dogs, that’s all the better. There are a lot of people who are very good at the theory and the science, and they understand it cognitively, but they can’t apply it to their own animals or to anybody else’s. I’ve seen that more than once, where somebody talks a very good talk, but when you see them try to train an animal, they haven’t bridged that gap yet. They’re not capable of taking from one to the other. When I first started teaching at Kent State, there was another professor who’s very well known in the world of learning theory. He’s written textbooks on learning, and he came to one of my dog training classes. He was my worst student. He was terrible. He understood the theory better than anybody in the room. That didn’t help him when it came to the hands-on stuff. So I think just because we like the theory and we think all that part of it is interesting, we also need to have a lot of hands-on training of a lot of different animals. So train your own dogs. Train any dog you can get your hands on — your family’s, your friends’, the neighborhood dogs. Train. If you can find a good positive reinforcement trainer to apprentice under, do that. The more animals you can work with, the better. Volunteer at a shelter, do rescue work, lots of dogs. The more dogs, the more you will learn, there’s no doubt about it. You can’t really teach other people until you’ve had a wide variety of experiences. Working with one type of dog does not always translate into helping people with other problems and issues. So getting that variety in. I think one of the best things that ever happened to me was training so many different types of dogs so early in my dog training career. I got a little bit of everything, and I got to see the differences as well as the similarities. Then, once you’ve got that as a positive reinforcement trainer, when people ask you for advice and information, this is kind of a dangerous moment because we want to help so much. When somebody asks me for help, I want to help them. I want them to take my advice, I want my advice to work, I want everybody to be better, I want everybody to be happy. But that’s not always how it ends up working out. People often ask you for advice, and do they take it? No, they do not. Or they apply it very poorly. Or they mix it with something somebody else told them to do and it doesn’t work out. Especially if it’s family, then almost always they’re not doing what you tell them to do, because you’re family, what do you know? So my general rule for other people asking for help and advice and information is I don’t put more effort into solving their problem than they are putting into it. Oftentimes we put so much into it to try to get them fixed. That’s not my job. My job is to give advice. If I choose to — I don’t have to, but if I choose to — my role is to give advice. I’m not responsible for their issues. I like to give enough advice that they can find more help, they can find more hands-on help. And maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but again, I have to let them be responsible for that. I can’t take responsibility for everybody who has a problem and comes and asks for help with it. So don’t get too invested in any one single person. Have an idea of how much time am I willing to spend working with somebody, especially if they’re not paying you. How much time are you willing to spend, because if they’re not paying you, often they think it’s not very valuable, and then they don’t take you very seriously. Melissa Breau: I mentioned earlier, and it’s come up a couple of times, that you have a class coming up on all this, so I wanted to talk about that briefly. What led you to create the class, and maybe if you can share a little on what it will cover, that kind of thing. Deb Jones: Sure, yes, I’m very excited to talk about this. This class, and actually we have a series of two set right now and maybe a third one, enough material for a third one sitting in the works somewhere. About two years ago, my friend Lee and I went to Florida for a vacation. You wouldn’t think we’d be talking about teaching when we’re on vacation, but we are. My friend Lee is also a social psychologist. She’s the person who got me the job here at Kent State. We were roommates when we were in graduate school. We’ve known each other for a long, long time. I’ve probably known her longer than I’ve known any other friend, as far as I can remember, except from high school. Lee and I went on vacation together, and we were talking about the fact that I was looking forward to retirement at some point, hopefully in the not too distant future. Luckily, that worked out really well for me and I was able to retire, but what would I do? She actually asked the same thing. She did not choose to retire, and part of the reason is she doesn’t know what she would do. I said, “There has to be something we can do together that would be interesting to us and that would use our skills.” What do we know how to do? We know how to teach. That’s what we do. Between the two of us we’ve been teaching for something close to 55 or 60 years, if you add it all together. That’s a lot of teaching. We started talking about this, and I had also been talking about the classes at FDSA and how much I enjoy online teaching, and I see that as the big wave of the future. In fact, most colleges now have a lot of online classes as well. Lee and I have both taught online classes at Kent State too. But we saw that, again, nobody tells you how to do it. There’s no sort of teacher training happening. So here’s an area where there’s a need that’s not addressed, and this is something we thought we could do. We started talking about it, and we had, like, an 18-hour drive home from Florida. We started taking notes, whoever wasn’t driving was taking notes, and talking about it helped us pass the time, anyway. But by the time we got back, we had an outline for a class pretty easily. From there, we started to get more specific and spent some time together last summer working on pulling together actual lesson plans and getting much more thoughtful about, OK, we took this vague idea, now what are we really going to do with it? Melissa Breau: Do you want to just share a little bit on what type of material you’ll be covering in the class and who should be a really good fit, if they’re interested? Deb Jones: Yes. As I said, we have two classes planned right now. The first one’s completely done. We’re just finishing up some of the videos on that. The second one’s written. We’ll still have to do the videos that we’re going to do for that one. Possibly a third going on here. Our focus is on how to teach, not on what you teach. Not on the content, but on the process. This could apply to any area of training, whether you’re interested in teaching classes in agility or obedience or nosework or rally. Whatever the dog sport or activity, pet classes as well, whatever the dog sport or activity, it’s going to be how do you approach and teach something. Not exactly what to do — that’s your part of it to bring to the table is the information itself. As always, of course, we’re splitting it down into little parts, as we would do in beginning stages for anybody, teaching being not a natural thing for most people. Now there are a few people who are very extroverted who enjoy talking in front of groups, but most of us do not. Most of us find it somewhat aversive and difficult. But if you’re going to do it, you need some practice at it, and you need to be able to have a safe place to practice and get some supportive feedback. That is what we are planning to offer. Breaking it down into some little pieces, having you work on small assignments that take a minute or so to present and to show, and then letting us give you some feedback on the clarity of it, what might be changed, just as we do with all FDSA classes, how can we make this better, what can you do to improve this thing. Of course, there’s no formula for teaching. Everybody can approach it in different ways and be successful at it. But we are going to give you some structure and some guidelines for what has worked well for us over time. Let’s see … what can I say? Most people … I talked about being stressed, so how can we deal with that? We deal with stress by being prepared. So preparation. The class will give you, hopefully, confidence. If you take this class, you go through the materials, you work through the exercises, we have both written and video exercises to do. Once you work through those you’ll come to get more comfortable teaching something, presenting something. We put you under a little bit of time limitation in terms of how long you have to present certain information, which forces you to narrow it down and to not get too big, and that’s a really important thing. So we’re going to work on those kinds of exercises, thinking about what you’re going to teach, how are you going to convey to your students it’s important, how are you going to start at the level that the student is at. We go through talking about these kinds of questions and how we start our interactions with students, how we basically start to get them to buy into what we want them to do. Practice … something that, as dog trainers, those of us who train and teach have done a lot is I have a demo dog, and I’m demonstrating with my dog while I’m explaining to the class what’s going on. That can be really, really hard to do. That in itself you’re asking somebody to do two things. I’m asking you to pay attention to your dog and use the proper mechanics to get them to do this thing, and at the same time pay attention to an audience who’s watching you do this and tell them exactly what you’re doing as you go through it. Something that sounds easy like that, it’s not so simple in the beginning. If they’re both difficult for you, you’re going to become flustered. If you’re good at one, and typically we’re pretty good at the dog part, then we can concentrate on the other. But putting those kinds of things together in terms of having a demo dog and how useful they can be for certain things, and how to do and talk about what you’re doing at the same time. Something that we’ve added in here that I don’t think a lot of dog trainers think about at all, but I believe it’s really important — we think about it all the time in academics — is where do you get your resource material and where are you getting your information from? In college, of course we have textbooks or journal articles, and so that’s where we get the information that we teach, and then we supplement with many other things. But in dog training, where is our information coming from that’s going to be our class? Lots of stuff in dog training is common knowledge, public knowledge, and you can’t always figure out where this idea or this technique came from. But when we can, when we can know something, when I know where I learned something, or I know somebody who is working with this and has done a certain application of it, we want to give them acknowledgement and say, “OK, I learned this from …” and “Here’s another way you can use it that I saw in a video by …” whoever is doing that. So we talk about giving credit, we talk about finding valid and accurate sources, we talk about avoiding plagiarism, things that we think about much more in academics than the dog training world, but I think it has a place. The other thing that, at least in this first set of classes, we’re going to address is how to take on that role. I mentioned teaching being a role, so how to take on that role of teacher so that it’s still authentic to you, that you’re not being fake about it. It takes part of your personality and also then takes on the necessary demands of the role of being a teacher. How do you combine those things together? Because I say all the time I’m not a natural teacher, but I do it well. How do I do it well? I figured out how to mix these two together. So that’s something we’re going to talk about and have people work on as we go through the course as well. Of course, we’re trying not to overload people in the first course, so in the second one we get more into things like how do you develop a syllabus and lesson plans for a six-week class, how do you deal with challenging students — I won’t say difficult — challenging students to manage, and group dynamics, classroom setups, things like that. Of course I’m going to say, who should take this class, I think everybody. But particularly if you’re instructing anybody, even if you’re instructing one other person, knowing how to do that well, I think, is a really important skill, and if you are ever intending to teach a group, I think it will be really, really helpful. You’re adding the teaching skills set to your training skills set and that can be a very valuable thing to have. Melissa Breau: Absolutely, and it sounds like it’s a very full, chock-full class of lots of different bits and pieces. I’ve got one last question for you here, and it’s my new “last interview question” for everyone who comes on. What’s a lesson you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Deb Jones: Oh, there are so many lessons. The thing I would probably say here right now, the thing that I’ve learned, is that we’re never done learning. There’s absolutely no end to how much we can learn as dog trainers. No matter how much you think you know, there’s always something more out there. These days I define somebody as an expert, and I think somebody who’s an expert in what they do, they’re still learning. They’re a lifelong learner. So if you’re an expert, you should still be learning as much as a beginner does. Melissa Breau: I like that, and it’s very on theme for us today. Deb Jones: Yes, it is, actually. Excellent. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast Deb! Deb Jones: Thank you Melissa. I always enjoy it. Melissa Breau: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in! We’ll be back next week, this time with Sue Ailsby to talk about training for Rally. If you haven’t already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today’s show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

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