Year in Review 2023

It has been an incredible run for ABA on Tap in 2023! Mike and Dan take a moment to recap all our discussions and themes. They give some hints about what is to come in season 5. Most importantly, Mike and Dan give THANKS! to all of you out there who collaborate with us and  support the show  in any way. ABA on TAP appreciates YOU!

Enjoy this well-rounded ale and CHEERS to the new year and season 5 of ABA on Tap. Always analyze responsibly.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find the best recipe to brew the smoothest, coldest, and best tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA brew, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_01: 0:51

All right, all right, all right. Welcome to another installment of ABA on Tap, our last episode for our fourth season. I am Mike Rubio, along with Dan Lowry. Mr. Dan, happy to be here. Great to see you, brother. How you doing, man? I'm doing okay, man. This is exciting. It's not that we, you know, we certainly do some prep work here for ABA on Tap, and then there's these episodes where we're just going to get to riff, and it's cool. So I'm really excited about it. Congratulations to you, to us, end of our fourth season. It's been exciting. It's been... Very constant growth from the very beginning over four years now. This is our 36th episode. We're a little late on finishing this season because this is early January that we're recording, but that's okay. Holidays. We will kick right into another episode for the fifth season here later this month, which means we have to double up this month. And we'll see. I think we're going to aim for 12 again, 12 episodes this year, like we did this past season. So it's exciting. It's exciting.

SPEAKER_02: 1:54

Really looking forward to 2024 on YouTube. On a variety of fronts.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58

So Buzzsprout does this cool, cool thing for us, which is they do a backtrack. They give us some stats for our podcast. And we're going to use those to guide us today just because those were pretty fun. Now, they did the stats appropriately before the year was out. Okay. Yep. So they said that we did 10 episodes. Okay. But we're actually going to end up doing 12 episodes for this season. Again, we're running a little late on this one. So congratulations to us. Again, up to the one-a-month pace. Maybe we'll pick that up. We'll see. We'll see.

SPEAKER_02: 2:30

That's the goal.

SPEAKER_01: 2:33

Now, another interesting thing that came up here on this backtrack was this idea of what cities we are getting downloads in. Not surprising, right? San Diego. Sunny, sunny San Diego. Our hometown. America's finest city. America's finest city indeed. Also most expensive. America's finest and most expensive city. And most well informed about ABA from ABA on tap. Clearly the most well informed city in the United States with regard to ABA on tap. The front runner. So we thank all our hometown supporters for helping us out. Please do hit us up on Facebook. Give us a call. Send us a message. We want to hear more from you. So if you're local and And you're listening. It means we can invite you into the studio and have you join us and lend a little bit of your content and expertise. Stay classy, San Diego. Stay classy, San Diego. Indeed, indeed. We're going to have to do some more Ron Burgundy references here, I think. He just opened up a can of worms there. Absolutely. Now, we're going to mention our top five cities with San Diego as the frontrunner. I'm going to skip to number four. Is that correct? No, to number three, actually, only because it kind of falls within the domain of San Diego County. Big shout-out to Chula Vista.

SPEAKER_02: 3:48

Chula Vista, thank you very much. Chula

SPEAKER_01: 3:51

Vista, yes, sir. Chula Vista, California, coming in at number three of our most popular cities, at least for our downloads. So thank you. And again, you're local, so please hit us up. If you're a local ABA professional here in Chula Vista or the surrounding San Diego area, let us know. Let us know you're listening. Let us know your thoughts. Give us your questions, your ideas. We want to have you on. We are getting ready for the fifth season to have many, many more guests.

SPEAKER_02: 4:16

Yes, absolutely. We're excited about that. So we would love to have you. Anyone come and, yeah, talk about a topic that is of interest to them. And, yeah, we would love that to happen.

SPEAKER_01: 4:27

Yeah. So let's see. We are going to look, and I'm going to talk about number two and number four on the list of most popular cities only because they are both cities in Kentucky. We're talking about Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, and we're pretty sure we have one person to thank for our popularity in those particular cities, in that particular part of the Midwest. Is that the Midwest? South? Midwest, south-ish. Probably south-ish. My geography is failing me here. But Jennifer Stevens. Big shout-out to Jennifer Stevens. Much love, Jennifer. Thank you very much. She has taken full advantage of... I guess our friendship, our connection here. She reached out to us on Facebook, like we're encouraging the rest of you to do, and just had some good things to say, some good feedback. Not always necessarily positive, glowing feedback, but very candid feedback about the topics we were talking about. Much appreciated. Yep, and with her own opinion. So we know she does a lot of good work out there in Kentucky, has a lot of people collaborating with her, so we're very happy to know her, to have had her on the I'm going to jump forward to our top five episodes. Just so happens that... The one featuring Miss Jennifer Stevens, Mrs. Jennifer Stevens, was the number one. So again, big shout out to you, Jennifer, for helping us out.

SPEAKER_02: 5:53

Thank you very much for being an honorary auxiliary member here of ABA on Tap.

SPEAKER_01: 5:57

Which means we will be asking you to come back on the show here for season five. We already have a couple of topics of interest that you've been sharing, so thanks in advance for those. And then we're going to end up, wrap up the list. We've got number one, San Diego. Number two, Lexington. We'll be right back. Clarksville, Tennessee.

SPEAKER_02: 6:22

Shout out to Tennessee. Go Vols.

SPEAKER_01: 6:25

Go Vols. There we go. Jumping right into the fanship here. I don't believe we've ever heard from anybody in Clarksville, so we're going to encourage Clarksville. Step up. You guys made our list. You're obviously supporting us. We are super appreciative. It's been such a gradual build, such a nice steady gradual build for us to be wrapping up our fourth season and know that there's a Nice, beautiful group of ABA professionals or parents or people with interest in ABA out in Clarksville, Tennessee that are making our list. So please reach out to us. Let us know what you're doing. Let us know more about what you think about the show. And thank you for showing up on our list of top five cities. Shout out to Clark. All right. Year in review here. Moving forward. We talked about states. Mr. Dan, we have reached 23 countries. with ABA on tap. Very, very proud. Of course, the front runner on the list, good old U.S. of A. We just mentioned those top five cities. Again, thank you for making the United States the top country in terms of ABA on tap downloads. Number two, Dan, you want to guess? Well, because I'm looking at the screen right now. Nobody knew that. You could have pretended to guess, Dan.

SPEAKER_02: 7:43

I would have guessed Mexico or Canada due to proximity, but it's actually not either one of those. It's actually Germany. Shout out to Germany out there giving that ABA in Europe. So thank you for all of the listens. We would love to have anybody from Germany come on the tap. The time difference will make it work. But yes, thank you for all of your viewership support And

SPEAKER_01: 8:07

shout out to Germany. Germany. Now, you were right in terms of proximity. Maybe we have to start translating the tap into Spanish. Sure. I am a fluent Spanish speaker. You, however, are not. So that might be tricky. That's

SPEAKER_00: 8:22

right. That's right. You've got a little

SPEAKER_01: 8:24

bit... So we're going to have to get a little bit... A little more representation in Mexico. As you can see, Dan is promoting a little bit of Spanish there. But the third... country on our list is Canada. Thank you so much to our neighbors in the north. Take off to the great white north, Canada. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your listenership. Love

SPEAKER_02: 8:47

to have you on the tap as well. I'm sure that you'll be able to bring a lot of positive behavioral intervention support, so

SPEAKER_01: 8:52

thank you very much. Now, as we talk about Canada, we have to take a second, or if not a minute, to shout out our dear colleagues at 3Pi Squared. I believe they reside somewhere remote up there in the Northeast, maybe as far as Canada, I would say. Yes,

SPEAKER_02: 9:08

yes, it is.

SPEAKER_01: 9:09

And as we're on the topic of 3 Pi Squared, just again, a quick shout out to what they're doing in their ABA business leadership effort and really helping professionals around the world at this point, I imagine, certainly a lot of people in the United States and surrounding areas like Canada, to ensure that they're opening up successful ABA businesses and, most importantly, doing so with the highest ethic in mind from the beginning. So it was a pleasure to go on to their podcast. We need to make sure that we return the favor and have them join us for an episode soon. During season five. So

SPEAKER_02: 9:44

absolutely an amazing platform, an amazing group of people. Very refreshing. And yeah, can't shout them out enough. Thank you. Thank you all for allowing us on your podcast and developing a relationship over the last year to April and Steven and the whole three pie square team. Amazing.

UNKNOWN: 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 10:01

I can't think of the word I'm using. I'm trying to use totally professional organization and individuals.

SPEAKER_01: 10:08

Yeah, it's been a real pleasure getting to know them and felt supported by them from the beginning. Really, really feel fortunate and blessed that they reached out. They found us on Google, and we couldn't be happier. If there were more people like

SPEAKER_02: 10:22

themselves, like the Jennifer Stevens, I think we would have so much more ammunition against those ABA detractors like Alfie Cohen, Chloe Everett, people like that. the good people in the ABA field, such as those three that I mentioned, and many, many more. Shout out to them.

SPEAKER_01: 10:39

While you're talking about that, let's promote their 3 Pi Squared podcast. Their Facebook page is the ABA Business Leadership page, if you want to look at that. But their podcast, specifically the 3 Pi Squared, on which they had Oswin Latimer as a guest. So the idea of, excuse me, Them really working to clean up the name and some of the controversy around ABA from people that received ABA as kids who are now adults and really... you know, clamoring, really lending a lot of harsh criticism at times. Clearly, Steve and April are working on that front and inviting folks like Oswin onto the podcast to talk about these things and really try to make a connection. So we are going to be trying very hard to do some of that season five. Believe us, we've tried already. And we just don't have any takers. So anybody out there who's a detractor, a harsh critic of ABA, we invite you. It's not to come on here and argue. It's to come on here and have a healthy disagreement and hopefully arrive at some good solutions.

SPEAKER_02: 11:42

Absolutely. We want to give you a platform to voice your opinions so that other people can see it more so than a Facebook comment section and so we can learn. And if your goal is maybe an anti-ABA proponent or like Mike, you said an ABA detractor is to Hopefully better the field of ABA. Come on, let us know what we can do better, and we will likely look to learn from you.

SPEAKER_01: 12:06

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, moving forward in our list of countries here, very surprising, number four. Way out

SPEAKER_02: 12:13

there.

SPEAKER_01: 12:13

We've got listenership in China, my friend. Shout out to China. So anybody listening out there, please, would love to know how we're helping you, how the information that we're purveying, how our opinions might be playing out, hopefully with benefit in your daily lives as we're informing you. Would love to hear from any folks out in China. Absolutely. And would love to, again, just like Germany, I'm sure there'd be quite a time difference, but we would be glad to collaborate and have you join us and let you know know how this information is boding well for you halfway around the world here, if not way across the world. Absolutely. All right. And then lastly, on our list of countries, we want to thank here for their listenership. We went from the Great

SPEAKER_02: 12:57

White North to the Great Down Under.

SPEAKER_01: 12:59

The Great White North to all the way down under. We are spanning the globe, sir. I'm going to spare you a bad Australian accent. You know what? Everybody appreciates that. I'm going to do the same. I'm going to do the same and spare everybody a really poor Australian accent, but will not hesitate to say thank you Thank you to everybody out in Germany, Canada, China, Australia, and many other countries that we're not mentioning now based on the stats that Buzzsprout gave us. We want to keep the list to the top five here, but I know we've got listeners out in Africa, plenty of places where people are tuning in, and we could not be more appreciative. So thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for supporting us get to this point. It's exciting. Absolutely. All right, sir. Moving on here to the top five episodes, and I think this is where we might be able to riff a little bit more on some of the topics that we covered, some of the themes we discussed, and then start giving a little preview as to what we're thinking about for season five. We mentioned this already. Actually, maybe this time we'll start with number five and work our way up. Okay. So the fifth most popular episode for season four of ABA on Tap is... entitled, RBT, person or service? Yes,

SPEAKER_02: 14:17

still a question that I think we think about very often.

SPEAKER_01: 14:23

I think we're going to be talking a lot about this particular theme throughout season five. It's come to our attention given our personal work, our professional careers, and some transitions that we've faced over the past year that have certainly brought about their own challenges. One thing that really came to our attention is the need to take better care of the registered behavior technician. Absolutely. These are the individuals that do the frontline work. So when you're out there and you're making a recommendation for three days a week, you know, six hours a day or six hours a week, those three days a week, you might be there one of those days as a to do supervision or whatever the case may be. But those other three days, there's gonna be a registered behavior technician who is implementing the programming, who is managing the brunt of the challenging behaviors, who is working as the intermediary with the programming yourself and the parents and family. People that are very, very important to our field. In fact, doing the majority of Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 15:34

I think in this episode you used the Chick-fil-A analogy, and if we're talking about that, these are the people that are actually making the burgers or making the sandwiches, so you can have the best recipe in the world, you can have supervision, but at the end of the day, you're going to be eating the sandwich of whoever made it for you. Using that analogy, that's the RBT. So making sure that these people are well taken care of because at the end of the day, they're going to be the biggest representation of your ABA company.

SPEAKER_01: 16:04

And just to revisit some of those things. Yeah, no, for sure. Just to revisit those things, too, and some of the things that were discussed during that time. And reiterate, by no means are we being disparaging to anybody who makes a sandwich, who takes care of you as you go through the drive-thru. That's a very important job. But the The point we did make is that it seems as though we can provide a level of importance in financial security. 2024, California just enacted a new law raising the minimum wage for fast food workers, knowing that there's a need. And health care workers, kind of interesting. Health care, oh, funny, and we're talking about that right now. One of the biggest battles that we have, knowing that if you're working at a restaurant, particularly a fast food restaurant, since we're using that as the example here for the analogy, is you've got a constant flow of business. So there's all And one of the things that we're facing that's very difficult in ABA services is your RBT having their client session scheduled. The calendar is set. Inevitably, kids get sick. Families get sick. So there's cancellation of sessions, and it's been the standard in the field to not cancel sessions. pay those professionals during that time because they're not having direct contact or face time with the client, which means that as an entity, as a business entity, you cannot bill for those services. So the idea that as a business you would pay an employee who didn't bring any revenue in based on their work is quite a challenge. So it makes sense. There's a logic to it from a financial perspective. At the same time, the idea that you're ready for work You've gotten up. You've gotten dressed. You're at the office. You're ready. You went. You saw your first client. You got paid for that. Now your second client cancels. And there's a good chance that you're out of luck. You're no longer getting a wage for those next two hours. And certainly that's going to affect somebody's livelihood, especially here in San Diego. We mentioned the most expensive city in the United States. You're making$20,$25 an hour. You're hoping for those eight hours of pay. And RBT's are not always able to achieve that just based on the logistic.

SPEAKER_02: 18:16

Yeah, trying to make it a livable career. Like you said, I think that's the big thing that we're talking about. about and we'll continue to discuss as we move out of our previous position where we had an insurance funding source that basically gave us clear creative freedom to do what we want into another company that's more probably akin to how ABA is run throughout the country where the funding sources have a huge say into programming and things of that nature. One of the things that A lot of the funding sources are saying is you can only provide your services at like a 20% maximum supervision level. And as a result of that, that means 80% of the time that the services are gonna be provided, if not more, it's just gonna be that RBT there in the house. I believe the BACB mandates 5%, recommends 10%. And a lot of the funding sources are capping it at 20% supervision. So again, at the end of the day, no matter how much BCBAs want to develop an amazing program, it's that RBT that's there with that client the majority of the time without anybody else there. And that's the face of the service. But not only that, that's the face of ABA. So when we talk about some of the detractors and things like that, at the end of the day, the majority of that's going to come down to the RBT and making sure that we can provide a service that that we're proud of at the end of the day, I think, is really important. And that's why we really wanted to focus on that RBT.

SPEAKER_01: 19:56

And again, I think it's going to be a central focus throughout season five, only because it's such an important topic. It really is at the center of everything we do, like you were just explaining. One of the things that becomes, go ahead, sorry.

SPEAKER_02: 20:11

And kind of alluding to what you said, too, when you talked about the funding structure, Who's going to pay for those cancellations? Who's going to pay for that drive time? Right now, it's basically the responsibility of the company because there's no reimbursement for that on the insurance level, which can lead to people... clamping down a little bit on those things, which is completely understandable, especially when the margins for insurance aren't that big to begin with. And now you're having to not only do small margins on the billable hour, but now figure out how to do the unbillable hour. So that's going to be something that we may talk about in the future and something that's going to be maybe the next frontier of ABAs, looking at these rates which haven't been adjusted yet. A lot of them I've heard basically in 10 years haven't been adjusted as inflation goes up three to, I think it was 7% last year and back down to three. As inflation keeps going up, the reimbursement rates aren't going up. So figuring out how we can support these RBTs on the company level or more important, the reimbursement level.

SPEAKER_01: 21:17

I think that's such an important discussion on many fronts, and I'm trying to sort this out in my head quickly. Number one, there's an assumption in the field of ABA services right now that an RBT is on their way to becoming a BCBA. So that immediately says that the RBT position cannot become a skilled position over a great deal of time. It's almost like saying that as a nurse in the medical field at a hospital, the assumption is that you're going to be a doctor at some point. You cannot be a nurse for the rest of your life. You have to be a doctor. And unfortunately, the pay structure for RBT reflects that. It parallels that. There is no way, at least as far as I'm concerned or as far as I understand, there is no way that you can be a career RBT. And I think that's a mistake. I think that's a problem in the field. And

SPEAKER_02: 22:08

the challenging thing too with the nurses are like, for example, when I had my motorcycle accident, I wasn't planning on going to the doctor that day, right? But there had to be nurses there waiting for that situation when somebody would come in. You can't just have somebody come in and then call all the nurses and you have to have people there. being compensated for non-billable time for the service to be effective. And because it's only being compensated for billable time right now, not to mention the travel, not to mention the cancellations, it's really hampering the service.

SPEAKER_01: 22:41

So now, that really translates into a lot of different things in terms of the way ABA companies structure their logistic. So we can talk about block scheduling. We can talk about people that go as far as saying, no, based on the empirical validation in the literature, we require 25 hours of services, or we won't even consider you as a client. And we talked a lot about that during that episode, kind of back and forth and trying to understand why people impose these regulations, why they run a certain logistic, and I think that you're answering that with regard to reimbursement rates and what it comes down to with the RBT. So the idea that, again, living in the most expensive city in the United States, no change in the rates over seven to ten years with a three to seven percent inflation, especially over the last year, it doesn't work out when you're not guaranteed those eight hours of of pay, of your hourly wage, because, you know, is this going to happen? Naturally, your client got sick. We work with kids. We work with kids that go to schools. Then there's vectors abound. So, yes, flu season, cold season, COVID season, you know, sort of a modern-day malady, that's going to have an effect. So as an RBT, as a young professional, you're excited to have gotten your degree, and here you're working in the field that you got your degree in, but the pay doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02: 24:10

Yeah, if a reimbursement rate is, you know, pick a random number,$50 an hour, and, you know, 10 years ago it was also$50 an hour, but the minimum wage was$12 to$15 an hour, where now, you know, RBTs are much higher than that, say$25 an hour, you've just gone from having a three times margin to less than a two times margin, providing the same service, but... You know, that's something that we're dealing with. And you also mentioned kind of the change in service delivery as a result of that. I know a lot of places go clinic only or promote primarily clinic, and that's something that I think you and I had a cause for pause in the beginning, but maybe we're coming around on a little bit just as we look at the financial ramifications of that. But that is in some ways going against that seventh dimension of ABA, right? Generality. ABA has always been in the home. Why? Because that's where the issues are. So now it's like, how do we maintain our ethics of maybe doing a clinic session where we're not having to compensate people to drive? Because while they're driving, they're not providing services and they're being compensated additionally while making sure that we are somehow able to generalize that in practice. in the home and make sure that our services are rendered in an ethical fashion.

SPEAKER_01: 25:32

It often goes the other way, too, with insurance is certain restrictions or constraints on even how your goals are written to ensure actually even the regulations citing specifically where the service can take place with regard to the proximity of the home. So the idea that we're even having to consider specifying that certain goals are being worked out in the backyard Ever fear that the funding source then might say, no, things aren't happening in the home. So you've got this weird mix of approaches or solutions that are being implemented here as a service provider. Well, these are the reimbursement rates. The idea that I'm going to pay a competitive hourly wage as well as now reimburse mileage, well, that's cutting into the margin now, right? The idea that you can successfully operate a business and be profitable If not solvent, at the very least. So, okay, let's bring it on to the clinic-based session. Now you've got overhead with your lease and having to pay for that facility and having to stock that facility with materials that are educationally and instructionally appropriate for a variety of ages and needs. So you can go that route. And again... You know, all of it being affected by what the funding source is saying. So on-site sessions being reimbursed differently from sessions at home, sessions in the so-called community. At which point are you in the community the moment you step out of your front door? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 26:57

Well, we had the discussion, and I think we can speak to TRICARE because all of their stuff is publicly accessible about that, not allowing the backyard sessions or having to require additional approval for that. Well, a lot of our kids love to go in the backyard. So if we can use that as a motivator, if we can, you know, they want to go in the backyard in the summer, but now we're not allowed to do that because of a funding source for whatever reason specifying that that's no longer in the home. That's the backyard. So kids may be wanting to run out the backyard, and now we're having... 20-minute tantrums, which are now getting into our therapy session because we're having to block the kid from going into the backyard because if we go into the backyard, that time's no longer reimbursed. Again, one of those situations where insurance is dictating the service to the providers who theoretically know how to provide the service best.

SPEAKER_01: 27:46

And as we say this, we're lending an individual anecdote, something we heard about that did transpire here locally for us. Not sure how that transpires across the country. Not sure if it was that one particular reviewer or... TRICARE IN THAT CIRCUMSTANCE THAT THEN IMPOSED THAT PENALTY, IF YOU WILL, FOR SAYING THAT WE WEREN'T PROVIDING SERVICES IN THE HOME. AND THAT REALLY SPEAKS TO THE VAGUERY OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM, KNOWING THAT UNFORTUNATELY, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, IT IS THE JOB OF THOSE PARTICULAR INSURANCE EMPLOYEES TO RECOUP Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm sure they've also heard about some outlandish things that people on our side of things are doing, which is why these restrictions get imposed. It always only takes one person to break the rule, to be fraudulent somehow. And then next thing you know, all of us are working under a constraint, which really affects our outcomes.

SPEAKER_02: 28:56

It's that chicken or the egg, right? Are ABA companies asking for a lot of hours because the rates are so low, so they have to do it to make it financially viable? Or are insurance companies setting the rates low because ABA companies are asking for a lot of hours, right? It's that circular, like

SPEAKER_01: 29:13

Skinner would say, it's a circular argument, basically. Yeah. Well, if you ask the insurance company, they're going to say, well, look at how many hours you guys asked for. You ask our RN, well, given the reimbursement rate, we kind of feel it kind of behooves us sometimes where we feel compelled to stay solvent, to stay operable. to have to make certain recommendations. So it does go back and forth. And at some point, somebody just has to figure out, take accountability, and say, hey, listen, this is a competitive rate. reimbursement rate based on how much your professionals need in any given part of the country to live comfortably, to have a decent livelihood, a respectable livelihood, and then we can go from there. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 29:52

it's interesting. I know we've talked about rates a lot, so I won't beat it up too much, but as we talked about in an episode, we went to a company and based on some things outside of anyone's control, the rate got cut by more than half, and the insurance company was like, Tough luck. Deal with it. Deal with it, basically. And the funny thing is, is if there were a lot of providers, ABA is in some ways a saturated market, but I'll speak for San Diego. Everybody has long wait lists. So the insurance companies... Six to eight months. Yeah, six to eight. Well, one of the biggest companies isn't even accepting people anymore. Their wait list is so long that they're saying, yeah, we're not even putting you on a wait list. So I just bring that up because of the... I forget the word I'm trying to look for here, the laissez-faire attitude, for lack of a better term, by this insurance company, at the end of the day, that's just going to affect their clients. That's just going to affect the people that have that insurance because those people are not going to be able to get services because everybody has a wait list. Those individuals are not going to be prioritized because they're the reimbursement is so low. I mean, literally, from one day to the next, our rates got cut in more than half.

SPEAKER_01: 31:14

Just to wrap this up, we took a good chunk of time here on the fifth most popular episode because it's so dense, right? But the idea that one of the things we used to be able to do with our old reimbursement rate was guarantee hours. The idea that if you come to work, you wake up, whether you see a client or not, you're going to get a certain amount of hours paid to you because you need to live, and you need to live comfortably. What that did over the past eight years, or a little bit more for you, was it was an astounding low rate of turnover. It's like I've never seen before, which if you look at the rest of the ABA field currently, that is a huge problem, which then affects continuity of service, and we come full circle. person or service?

SPEAKER_02: 31:58

Yeah, that's the question, right? And I think we talked about the RBT being a person, because at the end of the day, the RBT is the person. A lot of it is service oriented, and I think the field wants to look at it fairly interchangeably. But as you bring a substitute or a new person onto a case, there is going to be a learning curve. And that curve is going to be done at the expense of the child because now the new person has to learn. So that's where that turnover really comes in and negatively affects the therapy, the ABA that's provided. The last thing I'll say, too, when we talked about guaranteed hours is we run a lot of social groups. Historically, with guaranteed hours and a higher rate, we were able to provide a lot of planning time for those social groups to make sure that they were fruitful. That's not anything that's reimbursable for any insurance is that planning time on the RBT level. So I don't know how these insurances expect an RBT to come in and plan a group for, say, 10 or 12 kids that's gonna be fruitful for all 10 or 12 of those kids. And again, the insurer might just be like, well, The company's got to figure out that and front that money. But that's tricky, and I think that can be a little bit utopian.

SPEAKER_01: 33:13

I've been a little bit critical at times, rightfully so, about all our laminated square pictures with weird icons. I'll bring those up now because guess what, insurance company? It takes time to put those together. It takes a lot of time to put those together. It takes money. It takes planning. So it is astounding to me that the field in general, and unfortunately we can be guilty of this too in terms of service providers, if we just look at the numbers and the reimbursement, the notion is, the premise is that you don't need to plan or prepare for these client sessions, and nothing could be further from the truth.

SPEAKER_02: 33:50

And if it's just a service, when is that RBT going to prepare? If everything... Only face-to-face time is billable. How is that supervisor going to debrief the RBT prior to the session so that they come in most informed? Are they going to do it during the beginning of session because that's when it's billable? Well, that's coming out of the client's therapy time. Something has to give.

SPEAKER_01: 34:11

Yeah, that's really difficult. And again, these are very logical problems, very easy to identify. but because the ball is rolling and the service is being provided with a good deal of success, thankfully so, but there's money being made. So then there's no problem. It's not until the money, until it hits the pocketbook, that people start paying attention. And that's the problem here. So we don't want to do that. We don't want to get to the point where RBTs, well, we've gotten to that point, where it's hard to hire RBTs. It's hard to maintain them. It's hard to retain them. And that's going to affect continuity of service, which gives people like Chloe Everett, or the future Chloe Everetts of the world, a really good reason to complain about what we did if every time she's having a session, somebody new is coming in. Yep. There's no rapport, no continuity, no consistency. That's difficult.

SPEAKER_02: 35:02

Could it be done? Yes. Could RBT just be a service? Yes. But at the end of the day, it's that person delivering the service and that person is who the client is becoming attached to or responding to.

SPEAKER_01: 35:13

Well, that was a dense one and only number five. I'm actually going to jump very quickly to number one only because I think it relates to From five to one. All right. In relation to what we were talking about. We'll bookend them. Yeah. What we were talking about here with the RBT person or service and all the themes that come up, and now looking at revisiting 40 hours of service with Jennifer Stevens, which was our most popular episode of the season. Thank you again, Jennifer. Yeah. Well, and again, she does a really good job of trying to manage all this. finding creative ways to get people onto her site to give services, finding creative ways to send professionals, if not herself, out to remote areas of where they live to provide now longer sessions because you have to. You're not going to drive an hour and a half somewhere to sit for two hours and do a session and drive back an hour and a half. So that's a difficult constraint. The idea that now an RBT is driving a distance... Getting there, having to do a session for three, four hours to make it time effective. And then again, back to the notion that, well, you didn't even have time, you have no billable time to prepare for those three or four hours. You just got to go do it.

SPEAKER_02: 36:33

Shout out to Jennifer. It was really also refreshing to hear somebody share our sentiment on some of these kids being over-therapized and a business owner sharing that. I think it's just really refreshing. Oftentimes in the field, owners can only be concerned with the bottom line and how do we maximize revenue. It was really refreshing to speak with Jennifer and acknowledge that as a business owner herself, but spending as much time focused on how she can deliver quality services as she does thinking about how we can maximize the money brought in.

SPEAKER_01: 37:08

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's a tough task. It's a tall order to do this. We understand why... I mean, we certainly understand the empirical validation of 40 hours or 25 hours, but then the idea that if you're not giving 40 or 25 hours, then it's not going to be effective. That's a tough... Question. Let's talk about that a little bit. And who's giving it? The parents, the school? There you go. RBT person or service, do you have a consistent RBT providing a quality service over time? And if you're not doing 25 hours a week, so let's say that you're a family, maybe out in Clarksville, Tennessee. We'll call him Clark. Yep, your boy Clark. Your son Clark needs services, right? And somebody says... 25 hours or we don't take you. Maybe there's not a lot of service providers in the area. So you go ahead and you sign up for 25 hours a week. Let's say that that gets given Monday through Saturday. It's four hours a day at the very least of therapy. Now we understand the intensive nature of ABA. That's good at the start. I wonder what those service providers say once they start fading. What is the fading solution? I've never spoken to or at length to any of those people. If you're listening, please come on the show and explain to us how you fade then. If 25 hours has to be delivered, and that's what the empirical research says, the validation says in terms of the effectiveness, what did the research say about an effective fading plan? Well, that's not necessarily covered in that. So it's a very convenient argument for us to make from a fiscal perspective, that you require these 25 hours, but what if the family can't afford it? We're talking 25 based on an episode that was hearkening back to 40 hours. So we've already reduced it by 15 hours here. Can you imagine 40 hours across six days a week? That's

SPEAKER_02: 39:11

a full-time job. Considering the adult has to be there, you said parent affording it, so that adult will not be able to work. There's a lot of other collateral... Things that are going to be involved that, short of just seeing dollar signs and seeing margins, I think go by the wayside and have effects on relationships. If there's turmoil in the relationship, that's going to affect the service delivery. If people aren't able to fiscally take care of their family that's going to affect the relationship and that stress and that's why in the parent groups that we do the first parent group now as I've learned we've done these parent groups for eight years if not more the first parent group I do now is just all on resources because if these parents are so stressed out they're not it doesn't matter if we do two hours or 42 hours they're just so stressed out they're figuring out how they can you know get food on the table how they can have some semblance of a relationship with their significant other. So many of those things, when we're talking about 40 hours, yeah, this might benefit your kid. Well, are we looking at all of the variables, or are we only looking at me delivering an SD to a kid over 40 hours?

SPEAKER_01: 40:21

Again, interesting challenge that we all have to face, the idea that it could be very lucrative, even with... current reimbursement rates that we all agree need an increase, but the notion that now you're signing people up consistently for 25 hours, yes, that very quickly arrives at your solvency from a business perspective, but then to the rest of what you're saying, how does that affect the family? What does that say in terms of the intensity of our service, how we fade it? And then back to what we were talking about earlier, how do you plan for 25 hours a week of services when the funding source isn't necessarily reimbursing for that or making any sort of accommodation for that.

SPEAKER_02: 41:01

And if we're, let's say these kids are going to school, hopefully they're not because then it would be a little bit more ethical. But if these kids are going to school and then having four to six to eight hours of ABA a day, then who's presenting those SDs? Well, probably we are. That's going to be a much harder thing to fade if the child's only responding to the SDs presented by the therapist and not being exposed to all the environmental SDs that we want that child to eventually respond to so that we can fade out. Because at the end of the day, I mean, our success is designed obsolescence.

SPEAKER_01: 41:33

That's right. If we're successful, then it should be a quick fade. Even if you start at 25 hours, then the next... The next step is 20, and then 15, and then 10. And again, I'd love to hear from any providers out there who start at that level how it is they approach the fading piece, knowing that the initial premise is, if you're not getting 25 hours a week to start, it's not effective. Okay, well then... What if you can't do 25 hours a week? That means that you're SOL and now your child won't improve. I think we disagree. I think any level of ABA intervention, especially with quality parent education and knowing that the parent can now carry out those extra hours of intervention, so to speak, or interaction, better yet, outside of our direct service, that is the key here. Which leads me, I'm skipping around the list, leads me to our third most popular episode. All right, we'll do odd numbers first. For 2020, we did. Five, one, and three. Parenting styles. Yep. Which is something that's very important. Really harkens back, we actually use these... themes and these concepts to explain the way ABA gets pervaded at times, knowing that we have had a very authoritarian tradition in terms of really imposing certain demands, we've been using those words, imposing demands or placing demands on our clients, and seeing how that translates then into how we are teaching ABA to our parents, how we're educating them, how we're influencing or taking into account their own parenting style, Having taken Diana Baumrin's original model of authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and negligent categories of parenting, which have now been expanded and varied in many, many different ways. Commando parenting and collaborative... Shout out to our boy for that one. Shout out to our boy Pop Pop out there, if he's listening. Hello to he and his mom, good, good people. But yeah, sort of him bringing our attention to it too and saying, hey, wait a minute, you didn't mention this idea of collaborative parenting, which I think you and I consider the authoritative aspect of parenting, the idea that there's a little bit of back and forth. I am the authority figure... as the parent. However, it doesn't mean that I always impose my will on you, the child. Something that, again, translates to the service relationship, the idea I'm here in your home. You've often asked the question, what gives us the right to come into your home and demand these things from you? And that is, you know, that's a good question to answer. And then as we come in here to help you, how is it that we demand or better yet collaborate with you to lead you towards socially significant improvement, whatever that might mean.

SPEAKER_02: 44:15

Yeah, yeah. I think moving into 2024, too, we can kind of relate it to the parenting styles. We can talk about the ascent model, maybe have Rosa, one of our colleagues, who's been big on that, kind of the opposite side of the authoritarian spectrum of things. And going back to relating this to that 40 hours, I think it's a huge difference with parenting styles or therapy styles. If We're doing a whole lot of child-directed therapy, and that kid is really enjoying their four-hour home session versus if it's really authoritarian, which ABA has been historically. And I think even a lot of the people that think they're not being authoritarian are actually being authoritarian. And it's four hours of presenting SDs and first thens, and if you don't do it for me, I won't do it for you. That can be an issue. I'm relating back to that parenting style, that authoritarian piece. I was talking about it in my parent group yesterday. It's always interesting. Sorry, two days ago. It was Sunday, not Saturday. It's always interesting to see the parent. Oftentimes, it's the dad, but it can be either parent that does the authoritarian thing and says need, because that can be aggressive communication. I was talking about the levels of communication from withdrawal, passive, assertive, aggressive, and assaultive. saying you need to do something is aggressive and also falls on the authoritarian side of things. It's very interesting to watch parents that use that communication style and say you need to do something, and then the kid doesn't do it. And now there's this really interesting impasse of, oh, crap, what do I do now? I said they need to do something, and in my head they listened and they said, yes, I'll do it, and now they're not doing it.

SPEAKER_01: 45:57

So you reminded me here as you were talking about that battle, the first thens, those things that are very common SDs in our field, and immediately you made me think of do this, which leads us to our fourth most popular episode for our fourth season, 2023. Shout out to you, Mike, because this is a term I wouldn't have known about. Oh. Thank you, sir. Well, I'll let it speak to my ongoing or my continuing education. I'd love to say that I invented this concept. I did not. I'll quote Pat Fryman, who I admire very much. And he likes to say, I never had an original idea. I've never had an idea of my own. And he likes to talk about how he might have an idea. And he's very excited about it. And then he goes into the literature and the lit review. And inevitably, somebody else has mentioned that already.

SPEAKER_00: 46:53

So

SPEAKER_01: 46:54

this is one of those situations here with reciprocal limitation. And I guess a quick shout out to the Brooke Ingersolls and Laura Schreibens of the world, who have made a good name for themselves in providing not just good services, but really doing really, really solid research to back those services up and to back up their procedures. But reciprocal limitation is something that became very near and dear to our hearts, especially over about the past five years. In looking at those common things, those strains technologies, if you will, that we use in ABA that have become a stronghold and then looking at those and saying, maybe those don't always fit. Maybe those fit from an authoritarian perspective when we were thinking about, and pardon my expression here, but thinking about these disabled children that need our help, that we need to rescue, so therefore they need to do what we tell them to do. So this idea, again, and not that NVI or nonverbal imitation really hits all of those points, but again, a very authoritarian approach to imitation, imitation being a very important part, a very important kernel for learning. So reciprocal imitation really opened our minds up to a new flow, to a new way of interacting that was beyond the idea of do this, you imitate, I consequate or reinforce. reciprocal imitation really opened it up to a much more play-based, collaborative, child-directed approach to balance out our traditional adult-directed or so-called structured approaches. So I was very happy to come upon that and read about it and then, better yet, be able to work with such a strong team of people to make it come to fruition. What I love about it, too, is that unlike some of the old protocols of nonverbal imitation and do-this, Every time I see an RBT work with a reciprocal imitation, their own play style shines through. They can be themselves. It's no longer just this strict recipe of SD, response, consequence, they get to play... Much less linear. Yes. Oh, much less linear. Much more of an interaction.

SPEAKER_02: 49:01

Yes. Absolutely. Much less of the authoritarian, do this for me, but it's more do this with me. And if you're doing this with me, then I have to be doing it with you as well. So Going back to the actual child-led piece and that reciprocal imitation is the next step from contingent imitation, again, following the child's lead. A lot of times people think they're doing child-led therapy, but sitting down and being like, okay, we're going to play with the trains now the way I want to play with it, isn't as child-led as you probably think it is. Maybe the kid wants to spin the wheels, so we might imitate that for a little bit. really reciprocating and making that, again, I just want to use collaborative, collaborative therapy. How can I work with you? How can I really, and it's that ascent piece too, if you're not vocal, if you are vocal, it's easier. If you're not vocal, how can I think about what you're trying to tell me and what you're trying to do and give you the opportunity to do that, obviously within reason, rather than me just constantly telling you what to do and how to do everything throughout session.

SPEAKER_01: 50:00

I like the way you phrased that too, that exchange of I am following your lead And therefore, I am motivating you to at some point follow my lead. When you've got that exchange back and forth, what you're creating, especially with younger clients, is an environment of play. And we know how important that is, certainly important to us here at ABA on tap in terms of driving, really being the motivating operation for most of our clients given their age. I say that knowing that as they get older, we still have this notion of more authoritarian approaches being more important from a disciplinary perspective. I can't wait to explore this idea of play. People think of play as frolic, as the work of children, but play also means a certain mastery, right? If you're playing chess, and you're a chess master, there's no joke about play there. There's some real serious work being done. So I can't wait to take this idea of early intervention and play as a motivating operation and really expand it to every other age group, knowing that every human animal, just about every animal that I can think of in the animal kingdom, has some semblance of enjoyment, some notion of enjoyment that comes through play.

SPEAKER_02: 51:10

Absolutely. Yeah, well, I mean, I was at the Wild Animal Park a couple weeks ago, and they have the tiger cubs there, and that's all they were doing. was playing and running around and absolutely and I think we've seen that in juxtaposing individuals who've had more of the authoritarian ABA which might actually be these individuals might be following instructions quicker and kind of following their RBT but there's almost like a like a glaze on these individuals that they're following. And we've literally been able to see this firsthand for some of the individuals who've been exposed to some of our therapies that might seem a little bit more rowdy, for lack of a better term. But at the end of the day, these individuals are able to express themselves and able to access their environment much more freely than individuals that have been more exposed to more of the older school ABA that are listening and are just kind of always waiting for that Well, if you

SPEAKER_01: 52:06

think of the bidirectionality of what we're talking about here with reciprocal imitation, it's I imitate you, you imitate me. Exactly. The old nonverbal imitation models is you imitate me. That's it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:16

Absolutely. You said bidirectionality, too. I was with a client on Tuesday or something like that, and we had a schedule for this client, right? This is a six-year-old vocal client, and we had a schedule for them working on... doing different activities. And we got to one of the activities, and he's like, I want to do this first, which was not next on the schedule. say we were on number four and the thing he wanted to do was number five. And it was very interesting. I had to kind of take a step back and think for a second because we're trying to promote flexibility with him on the schedule, right, and moving things on the schedule. And almost our initial reaction, I could see that RVT's initial reaction was going to be like, nope, we do number four first and number five first and then number five afterwards. And I was like, hang on. You want to do number five first? We'll do number four after. And he was like, okay. So then we just flipped it, right? It's so interesting how... When we want the kid to be flexible, then flexibility is of paramount importance. But when the child wants us to be flexible, no, no, no. We have to do it our way. So that just really highlighted it for me on Tuesday with the schedule.

SPEAKER_01: 53:23

Back to that authoritarian style, which there is a time and place for. And again, back to that dance between the adult-directed and the client-directed modes, right? It's got to be a back and forth. And you're absolutely right in terms of that bidirectionality. We want them to be flexible. but we might not be modeling it all the time. Absolutely. There could be a really good reason why you wouldn't skip a certain item on the schedule, but if there isn't a good reason... then why make that the sticking point, right? And again, I think everybody has to look at their own individual situation and circumstance if they're experiencing what you're talking about. But the notion that more traditional approaches would say, no, from an authoritarian perspective, this is the schedule. I picked it. It's adult directed. You follow this because I'm the one giving the treatment. So unless you follow what I'm telling you to do, you're not going to get better. To now a more newfangled approach in saying, wait a minute, or to use your word, collaborate Wait a minute, there's certain volition or agency, whether we see it as idiosyncratic or whatever we might want to call it with regard to the diagnostic traits, there's still volition and agency being expressed. If a child is throwing things, if they're throwing a tantrum, You love to talk about this, Dan, and I love the way you do it. What is that communicating versus how is that impacting me negatively in a way that now, from an authoritarian perspective, I have to fix it? What is it communicating versus how do I get it to stop? Oh, that's a great way to put it. What is it communicating? How do I get it to stop? And then in the middle, how do I collaborate with it? How do I interact with it towards getting it to stop or getting it to change to something that meets the child's needs as well as my need for quiet or calm or order or whatever it is as the adult?

SPEAKER_02: 55:08

It's always that when those behaviors are happening and you're saying WTF, right? It's always that WTF. What the function is happening. What's the function? because I think we were talking about joint attention around that time. I've been doing a lot of trainings recently, and in my functional communication training slide, I have some slides that discuss that typically communication in ABA has been taught through manding, right? Because that's what's been most functional. Because a lot of the individuals that we work with struggle with theory of mind, so they may not comment. So what's functional for them, what might be reinforcing, might be if I say the word car, I get a car. Versus if you say, good job, that's a car, maybe with theory of mind I thought you already saw the car. So typically communication has been taught through manding. That's what PEC's always been about, right? Manding. You give me a picture, I give you something, it's transactional, it's manding. And I have a cause for pause now. I need to rewrite this slide or I need to figure out a way to communicate it better because with your joint attention piece is now making commenting valuable. Once they can get joint attention, now commenting is valuable. So to say that individuals on the spectrum learn better to communicate through manding, might be a misinterpretation of how we've implemented things based on the way that we've implemented

SPEAKER_01: 56:27

it. That's an excellent point, and I think that the logic there was manding being one of the very first things that children communicate, asking for things even if they're crying, right? Sure. So again, really clean logic there, and then it fell short at some point because we need to continue advancing those concepts. That's the philosophic doubt is what we did today that worked, Tomorrow, we should be able to make it better. It's assuming

SPEAKER_02: 56:51

what's valuable is them getting something, but is there a way for us to make ourselves more valuable? And we've tried to explore that a lot.

SPEAKER_01: 56:56

The idea of the tangible reinforcement versus the idea of reciprocation, right? You're... You're doing something. I'm imitating you. You're imitating me. What we're saying here is that should be inherently reinforcing.

SPEAKER_02: 57:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 57:09

A lot of times our relationships have become very transactional. That's a really good way to put it. All right. Well, wrapping up here, these hours fly by. This hour flies by for us, and we've gotten good at this. The second most popular episode, so we've got number one, revisiting 40 hours featuring Jennifer Stevens. Number three was parenting styles. Four, reciprocal imitation. Number five, RBT person or service, and then ending in a very unorthodox fashion with number two, which was autism acceptance and ABA. We actually got a little bit of heat and kickback on our social media for some of the comments on this. One of those opportunities where we were a little daunted by some of the comments we received, certainly engaged those people in clean conversation, invited them on to the show, and they ghosted. It

SPEAKER_02: 57:58

was too traumatic for them.

SPEAKER_01: 57:59

And

SPEAKER_02: 57:59

again, I really want to emphasize that if it was too traumatic for for you or your son or your daughter receiving ABA therapy. Clearly, ABA is still a very prevalent therapy. So come on, tell us how it's too traumatic so we can really blast it out and hopefully make the therapy better and less traumatic for those in the future.

SPEAKER_01: 58:19

Yeah, and we do understand that, right? And the idea that you're lending harsh criticism to somebody based on what they do, and then they're inviting you to come and talk about it. So we understand that not everybody's going to be a taker. At the same time, to your point there, we need to learn Absolutely. And I can see a problem with that. I certainly understand the problem with that. So for any future takers or people that want to lend us criticism, if we invite you on, please know, again, we're not here to argue. We want to be here to healthfully disagree and hopefully come up with good solutions for everybody. Even better. Even better if we can arrive at agreement, right? Now, we took this episode from an online publication. I'm not remembering exactly. It was somebody's blog, I believe. who was talking about autism acceptance and autism awareness month, I guess, which was April, if I'm not mistaken. And this particular individual was actually writing about how ABA couldn't be salvaged. ABA was inherently evil. I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that as we close here.

SPEAKER_02: 59:35

It's interesting because obviously as any market becomes more popular, has more longevity, it becomes more efficient and becomes better. So I would hope the way that ABA is being implemented is better now than it was in, you know, 85 when Lovaas published his article over the last, 40 years, I would hope that we are able to be more efficient. We're able to know what we're doing a little bit better. As any market matures, it does become a better market. But as we've talked about, there are certain obstacles that are now present that are I guess for lack of a better term, obstacles. As we've spent a lot of time talking about the rates, the funding insurances, how it's implemented and how it's mandated, a lot of these people are almost trying to mandate that it's done in an older way. And they're almost actively blocking innovation, which is challenging because as anything continues to progress, people continue to innovate. The problem is, are the people that are paying for the service actively blocking this innovation? which is then kind of putting us back into a circle and lending credence to these people that are saying, well, when we say, well, yes, we're doing ABA better, they're saying, well, that's not what I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:55

Well, that's interesting the way you put that, because there are a lot of pressures in how we do things or how we define our goals, right? So the idea of socially significant change, now looking into standardized assessment and milestones, us coming up with goals like you will learn words. And I think what we've learned from assent approaches and a more modern take from the neurodivergent community is that that authoritarian stance in and of itself can be a problem.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:24

So the idea that we're coming in here and saying, no, you will learn how to use words that I understand versus I'm hoping that I can teach you some level or help you learn to learn some level of vocal communication because that would make it easier for me and others in your surrounding to understand knowing that as an ABA professional or as a services professional that's here to help, I'm going to be looking at everything you're doing to communicate to see if we can't expand and vary on that in a way that also becomes universally accessible to those around you. So I think that's a new attitude, at least for me, that I did take away. I won't lie. At first, a lot of these detractors, a lot of these comments from the neurodivergent community, they were a little hurtful, maybe even a little bit annoying. I'm not going to lie to you. But the more carefully I listened, the more I learned. The more I learned about how to improve what I'm doing, the more I took on that fresh perspective and started going, yeah, you might be right there. We do do that, and I see how if you're saying that that's not cool for you, well, that's not cool for you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:30

Exactly, and you're saying use these words that we understand. Well, they're using a lot of behaviors that we understand, like maybe escaping. We're not listening. I understand you don't want to do it, and we're not listening. We're going to say the only way we will listen is if you do it in this exact way. Back to that authoritarian approach back to lending some credence into what you said and you said one more thing earlier and that'll be this will be kind of my closing comment on the autism acceptance and ABA piece the kiddo that we talked about his mom would come to my parent group and she brought a really good point about that you know fixing my kid and that how in the beginning she kind of felt that like how do I fix my kid and she was able to share some perspective now that my kids It's not broken. I don't need to fix my kid if... And we would do it talking about some of the autism slides and the autism cure slide. A lot of the parents that we work with, if you could cure autism, if you figured out what it was and you could do some sort of brain injection or something and cure it, a lot of our parents wouldn't want to do that because it would change their kid. There's nothing broken. There's nothing that needs to be fixed. It's just a different way of kind of interacting with the world. And I think that really was... gave me a little bit of an epiphany. And as we talk about autism acceptance, it's accepting who they are, not making them become who we want them to be so that we can accept them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:53

So that is to say that any animal, human or non-human, can present behaviors that are going to be challenging for other organisms in their environment. And that's what we're talking about here. And it's really easy to take a diagnosis then or diagnostic criteria and say, well, that challenging behavior is happening because of That diagnosis, knowing that, again, back to the original premise, any animal, human or non-human, is going to present behaviors that are going to fit better or worse into their environment and lead to certain consequences. And this will be my closing point here is that's what I've learned throughout all this is, again, right back to what we do, analyzing behavior, not from a right or wrong perspective, but from a significance perspective, and more importantly, one that can jive socially for not just the individual we're working with, but for everybody in their surroundings, knowing that the world isn't perfect anyways.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:50

Yep, absolutely. So any other things from the Buzzsprout page here?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:56

No, let's see. Again, their stats only log 10 episodes because we were a little late on these two, but we're talking about nearly 5,000 downloads in 23 countries. Yes. 10 episodes, 664 minutes, probably more like 12 episodes. And I'm going to say almost 800 minutes that we're going to hit here. We can't thank you enough, whether you're in Kentucky or Clarksville, Tennessee or Germany or China. We cannot thank you enough for taking the time to listen for all the feedback we're receiving. We hope to get much more feedback from across the world. Please don't be shy. Reach out. Come on. We really want to get some guests on our show. We certainly have plenty of people that are lined up. We can never have too many. So we want to have a waiting list. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:47

Very excited for 2024. Season 5 is going to be the best season yet. More guests, more episodes. Very much looking forward to it, Mike. Well, with that, Happy

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:58

New Year and

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:58

always... Channelize responsibly. Cheers.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:01

Cheers. ABA on Tap is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.