ABA ADVISORY--Stop Tracking, Start Supervising: With Kamila Iacob and MentraTrack, Part I

ABA on Tap is proud to share a pour with Kamila Jacob (Part 1 of 2):

In this episode, we're joined by Kamila Iacob, BCBA, the co-founder of MentraTrack, to discuss the past, present, and future of ABA supervision. Tired of the administrative burdens and disconnected systems plaguing fieldwork, Kamila channeled her clinical expertise into creating a platform that empowers both supervisors and trainees. We’ll explore how MentraTrack moves beyond just tracking hours to focus on the soft skills that truly define a competent BCBA.

Episode Breakdown:

• The Problem with Paperwork: Kamila shares her personal journey from BCBA to tech innovator, detailing the pain points of fieldwork that led her to develop MentraTrack. Learn how she identified the gaps in traditional supervision models and how her platform was built to address them head-on.
• From Compliance to Competence: Discover why Kamila believes that "checking boxes" is not enough to prepare future BCBAs. We'll dive into the importance of developing clinical judgment, ethical reasoning, and professional communication skills that are critical for success in the field.
• AI in Action: We’ll explore the AI-powered features of MentraTrack, such as the SMART Goal Generator and Assessment Tool, and discuss how technology can make supervision more personalized and effective. Kamila offers a glimpse into how these innovations help supervisors focus on coaching rather than compliance.
• A Better Way Forward: Kamila outlines her vision for the future of ABA supervision—one that is scalable, connected, and focused on growth. She provides advice for both trainees navigating their fieldwork and supervisors looking to enhance their mentorship.

MORE ABOUT KAMILA:

Kamila Iacob, M.A., BCBA, LBA, is the co-founder of MentraTrack, a digital platform designed to streamline fieldwork, supervision, and compliance for professionals in applied behavior analysis (ABA). With extensive experience as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and former Clinical Director, Kamila is committed to improving the quality of supervision in the ABA field.

Motivated by her own experiences and observations of the challenges faced by both supervisees and supervisors—including disorganized tracking, compliance anxiety, and time-consuming paperwork—Kamila was inspired to build a more efficient and supportive solution. MentraTrack evolved from this need, providing features that go beyond simple hour logging to enhance the entire supervision process. This includes real-time compliance checks, AI-powered goal generation, and competency tracking.

Kamila is a passio

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:10

Welcome to ABA on Tac, 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 Tac. 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_02: 0:50

Alright, alright. Welcome back to yet another installment of ABA on tap. I am your grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, along with Mr. Dan Lowry. Mr. Dan, good to see you, sir.

SPEAKER_06: 1:01

Good to see you in person with the guest in person.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03

It is a first. It is a first. We want to uh give our uh a shout out to our colleague Matt Story for hosting the uh live recording. We tend to do a lot of work on Zoom because the people we talk to are far, far away, and today we realize that our guest was local, so why not uh get to to sit uh with her in person and and have a chat? Um, you know, every every time I get to the uh end of my two-year, my research, there's always a few units that are kind of difficult. And uh that's ethics and then what else? Supervision. And I I get the feeling that our guest today is gonna be able to provide us a lot of supervision insight. And I'm excited for that because it's uh one of those areas that I think is it's difficult to develop, difficult to expand on. You run the risk of kind of hearing similar themes and topics all the time. So super excited to see what we get into. Uh so without further ado, uh, we'd like to introduce Camila Yaqub. All right. Thank you so much for taking time out of your weekend. Lovely Sunday afternoon. It's beautiful outside. So we're gonna try to make this a really intriguing two-hour conversation and move forward from there. But thank you for joining us. Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_00: 2:21

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here in person. Usually, podcasts, like you mentioned, we do it on Zoom. So it's really great to be here in person.

SPEAKER_02: 2:30

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. We'd like to start with the origin story. We find that most of the people we talk to, even if they're doing something different in application, we've all gone through a similar experience and we we kind of like to share that. Really provides a foundation for the rest of the conversation. So tell us what got you started in ABA from the very beginning, and then what got you to where you are now, and then we can dive into your current projects and sort of examine everything from the beginning uh to the end and in between.

SPEAKER_00: 2:59

I love that. I also love hearing people's origin story too. So I'm excited.

SPEAKER_02: 3:03

Cool, we'll we'll share some of ours.

SPEAKER_00: 3:05

Um, well, just like anyone else, I started as a BT. Um, I was at a psychology undergrad program, they required internships. Some were doing paid internships, so we're doing non-paid, and I found one that was paid, so I was really excited about it.

SPEAKER_06: 3:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 3:21

Actually, my husband told me about ABA because he had done ABA very, very, very long time ago, and it was very different back then. So it was really interesting to hear his story too. Um, so I was a BT, I worked at a clinic. I thought it was amazing to work with children on the spectrum and find it so rewarding on the skills that they're learning and being able to work with parents. I thought that was so interesting. There was nothing like it. I get to meet the parents and the children. Um, it was at a clinic, and then I had some hope home sessions as well. Moved on to getting my RBT certification because the company really wanted their BTs to be RBT certified. Sure, sure. Then from there on, my husband got a job in Washington. It was a great opportunity. Moved there, continued on as a BT. And then I knew, I just from the beginning, I knew I wanted to be a B C B A. Like the first day I went into session. I'm like, I'm gonna be a BCBA.

unknown: 4:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 4:20

So it was really exciting to kind of go from the clinic setting to an all-in-home sessions, which was in Washington. Um, started my grad school program, moved on to the student analyst role. That was, I would say, a big part of my experience because I had really, really great supervisors and then not so great supervisors. Okay. Um, but the great ones made me a better clinician, and I'm forever grateful for that. Um, during my student analyst work, I really wanted to focus on parent training, and I wanted to make sure parents really understood what we were doing when we were going into the home. And even I remember my BCB, she had like 20 years of experience on me. It was the best compliment I've ever had. And she told me, Camilla, you were meant to do parent training. Oh, nice. And I just thought it was so sweet, but in my mind, I thought this was normal. I thought this is what everyone does when they go into ABA, right?

SPEAKER_06: 5:22

One would think, one would think. Yeah, one would hope. One would hope.

SPEAKER_00: 5:25

Yeah. So I was heavily involving parents every session, parent training. We would do check-ins, quizzes. I started creating like little curriculums. I got really passionate about it. Um, and then, you know, they started telling about staff training, right? I think you're ready to train some newer BTs as well because you're doing so great with parent training. So then they moved me on to um training newer BTs. And in Washington, they don't have a mid-tier position that you can really bill for. Um, so it was under admin and they let me know it's gonna be very low pay. Are you okay with it? I'm like, of course, this is my experience. I need to learn. Um, but I remember back then a lot of student analysts weren't happy about it, right? They're like, but I'm doing the experience and I want to get paid for it at a higher rate. Um, and I know in California it's a little bit different because we have the mid-tier model here. So I focused on training new BTs, and then I would always focus on parent training, and a lot of them would come back and say, I haven't talked about parent training with my supervisor. That's interesting. Am I supposed to be doing parent training? So then I felt bad. Like, oh my gosh, I'm training them something that they haven't gotten an opportunity to discuss with their supervisor. So then we realized, specifically in the region that I was in, it was so small, and we were just growing and growing and growing. I ended up taking on parents who were on a wait list, and I would conduct parent training with them to kind of get them started. Best experience ever. Um, and then I got certified, became a BCBA, um, got thrown into cases really fast. My supervisor was like, here you go. Here are your cases. I won't be here to supervise you anymore, but I will be here if you need me.

SPEAKER_06: 7:16

So you figure it out now.

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

Yeah, it was an interesting experience.

SPEAKER_02: 7:20

You seem to be good at your job. So now we're gonna do less for you, throw you right in. I mean, yeah, yeah, I've seen the story so many times, and it's it's interesting because you know, for somebody that that's interested and dedicated and really willing to do the work, you'd think you want to invest more time in those younger professionals, but it ends up being, you know, the need it looks like you're good. Go do your thing, and that means you know, we're off. We're off.

SPEAKER_00: 7:43

Yeah. And I have a lot to say about that one. Supervisors only provide positive feedback. So we can't wait to hear it. Yeah. So, you know, and I I think there's also this idea of because you're certified, you're okay to be on your own. But I still think to this day, actually, a lot of newly certified BCBAs need a lot of support.

SPEAKER_06: 8:05

They don't think they do, though, because they know everything.

SPEAKER_02: 8:08

That's Dan's Nobody knows more than a new BCBA. That's Dan's favorite joke. Well, nobody should get paid more than a brand new BCBA. That's true.

SPEAKER_07: 8:19

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02: 8:22

All right, we digress.

SPEAKER_00: 8:25

Um, so yeah, I became certified. And again, I still was taking on those parents that were on a wait list, and it was such a great opportunity for these families because they had the foundational knowledge of ABA and what to expect. I heavily studied the Ruby curriculum, so I would do the Ruby curriculum with them, and then I would also continue that with them as we would start on sessions too. And I just I loved parent training. Like I told them if you have a difficult family, I will work with them because a lot of the times it's not you against them. They're still the expert, right? This is still their child. And I didn't have a kid back then, but I just understood what it would be like, right? We're not there 24 hours a day, we're there maybe three hours a day, if that. It's a really long session now that I think back.

SPEAKER_06: 9:14

Not for a lot of providers, but I would agree 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 9:17

Yeah, I remember I was doing those three-hour sessions. I'm like, oh, it's a workout.

SPEAKER_06: 9:21

Then I hear people doing five, six-hour sessions, and I'm like, I have no idea. I was burnt at three.

SPEAKER_02: 9:27

I'm doing a lot of BCBA direct these days. There's a four-hour session that I have with two siblings. That like you said, it's a workout. After afterwards, I'm I'm tired. I'm tired. There's no other way to put it, right? I'm exhausted mentally, I'm exhausted physically. They're younger. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:43

Especially when you put in a lot of passion and excitement. You're like, that was a workout.

SPEAKER_02: 9:47

Yeah, yeah, I feel it.

SPEAKER_00: 9:49

Um, so then the second piece of that is I my job is to supervise BTs, right? So the first thing I would look at is okay, are they a brand new BT or are they an experienced BT? Because um, yes, my approach will be different. However, I still want to make sure that they're competent enough to run a session and be comfortable to come to me, being able to run parent training sessions because that was important to me. As much as I loved having those meetings too, I want the BT to be involved with the parent just as much as I am, because they are there in the home a lot more than I am. So, you know, I've learned a lot about personality. So that was a really fun thing for me to learn is okay, every person has a specific personality that you're going to learn, right? And some BTs are very open to working with clinicians, whether it was a transfer case or a brand new case. And some are closed-minded, right? Or some have very specific ways that they want to run things. But I'm not going to take that against them, right? They might not know or have enough information to know what else we can try. Or just because the other BCBA has tried this way and it was probably working for a long period of time. How can I work with this BT, not to just say I'm going to change your mind? How can we work together to let's try this together and see if that works, right? So I really love the mentorship part of supervising BTs and I was nowhere near ready to sign those supervision agreements.

SPEAKER_07: 11:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 11:22

They asked me, they said, they say, can you be my supervisor? I want to do my field work. I said, no, I I want to get my experience of supervising BTs first.

SPEAKER_07: 11:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 11:31

So I waited a little bit until I signed those contracts just because I wanted to make sure that I felt confident in even signing those contracts and providing them the mentorship that they needed. Because when it comes to field work, it's a law. And I think that's something that a lot of clinicians don't understand. Um, they think it's just hours and meetings. It's so much more than that, especially for my experience. Yes, I had an amazing BCBA that supported me through my field work experience. But then I also had one that was like, sure, just do that and I'll sign your hours. And then we never talked about it. And I had so many questions, and those questions were not answered. So I I was honest with my BTs. I said, I'm sorry, I think you can find another supervisor at this time. I have, you know, her that she can sign your hours. She had like five years of experience. I'm like, she's she's been doing this, she's you know, she can sign your contract. Um, so I waited, and then um we wanted to move back to SoCal because I miss the sun so much. Washington was rough. Yes, it's the gray, it's not so much the rain, it's it's the gray. Yeah, and then yeah, we have some hard rain days, but it was it was just rough not having sun.

SPEAKER_06: 12:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:42

So we decided to ordered the sun up for you today.

SPEAKER_06: 12:46

Yes, thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00: 12:48

So beautiful today. Um, so we decided to move to San Diego, love it here. Um, went into a clinic uh that did both in-home and clinic, and that was one barrier notice at the clinic was they were not running parent training sessions. Imagine that. So that was interesting. And I was going out of my way to meet with the parents, and I remember someone came up to me and said, Why are you meeting with them outside of the clinic? They're coming here to pick up the child, just talk to them here. That's not enough for me. I need like 45 minutes or an hour to review everything. So sometimes we would split the sessions and go into their homes, or I would have a video call chat with them as well. Um, and then that's where I was ready to sign the supervision agreement, and I felt confident that I'm able to support the trainees collecting their fieldwork hours. So I heavily focused on that, loved it. It was amazing to just see them grow. I had one that I started from the beginning that passed their exam. So it was really rewarding. I'm like, I went through this with you. Yep. Yeah. And then somewhere in the middle or somewhere really early on. And the way that I work or the way that my personality is, I like to be challenged. I wanted something more. So I went and took um a clinical director job. So I transitioned, very big change. I still thought I was very new, right? I didn't think I was prepared. However, when I was interviewing, I was not interviewing for the clinical director position. So it was really interesting. It was just a VCBA position.

SPEAKER_06: 14:27

Oh, wow. Yes. Okay, but they offered you the clinical director. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 14:31

Um, and I still love her to this day. She mentored me the whole time I was there in my clinical director position and just really believed in me as a clinician. And she told me that just because I was certified this year doesn't mean that I don't have the experience to support staff or parent training, and that's something that they were looking for. And just something you someone that was passionate and really wanting to provide the best care for children as well.

SPEAKER_06: 14:58

So that's a lot of it, honestly, like the passion and the desire. Like you can teach the educational skills, but passion's important.

SPEAKER_00: 15:04

Yeah, absolutely. So I took that on. It was hard work for sure. I learned a lot. Um, there were things that I never experienced before, clients, families. That's where I really focused on mentorship with trainees. I oversaw so many trainees, mid-level supervisors, new BTs, experienced BTs. I did some of the training, and then I was focusing on the parent training at the same time, and then, you know, all the other clinical director tasks that you have to do on top of that. It's a lot. Um, so and I loved it, really passionate about it. I really enjoyed it. Um, but we wanted to start a family, and um, um at the end of my maternity leave, you know, I she was four months old, and I looked at her and I was like, I don't think I can put you to daycare. I just I knew I always wanted to be a mom and I just I loved it so much. And my husband and I were trying to figure out okay, well, maybe we'll just switch back and forth between meetings. It's not possible with the four-month-old.

SPEAKER_06: 16:08

Not as a clinical director.

SPEAKER_00: 16:09

Yeah, and I was working really long hours, like 12 hours some days. So it was a lot. Um, so I put in my resignation and I stayed home with her.

SPEAKER_02: 16:20

They were bummed.

SPEAKER_00: 16:21

They they were sad, but I was What can we do for you, Camilla?

SPEAKER_02: 16:25

What it's a raise. You need a raise. If the issue is out, it's always money. Money is the issue. Money. Not that not that you're working 12 hours a day. When it sounds like they were pretty uh kind about it. They weren't making you work 12 hours a day. You wanted to put that with it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:42

I mean, it was my choice, right? There's certain days that I chose, or like if I started my day later, like when I'm 36 weeks pregnant, the last thing I want to do is an 8 a.m. meeting.

SPEAKER_07: 16:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 16:53

I'm like, can we push that to like 9 a.m.? Um, so during that time, I told my husband, you know, I I've been feeling really inspired. I'm really, I really want to provide something for the field. And he's head of engineering at a visual ed tech company. Um he's extremely intelligent and I know he can build something. He just it's time, right? So he told me, you know, let's talk about it, let's see what we can do. Um, he knew my passion and he was like, But I know you, you probably have a hundred ideas, you don't just have one. So we narrow down to one. I said, I want to do something with parent training, but there will be time for that and it will happen. Um and I totally forgot to mention after my clinical director role, I took on a parenting specialty part-time job. I've just kept blabbering on. But actually, just really quickly though, it was at a mental health company and it was the best experience I ever had when it came to parent training because these parents had no experience in ABA, they didn't know what ABA was. A lot of their children were diagnosed with other diagnoses, not just autism. It was the best. Um, we tried to make it work, it was about two hours a day, uh part-time remote. And my husband would watch my toddler. Um, and I got harder when she got older. She knew I was in the home.

SPEAKER_06: 18:19

Right. So they get mobile. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 18:22

And at the same time, around Christmas time, we were developing Mentor Track. So he told me, I think it's time that you focus on Mentor Track. And I, you know, I will continue to support you. And it was just the best decision I ever made because we created something amazing. Um, I just had to put that in there because it's if you're glad you did think about parenting specialty services, you think of just towards an ABA company, right? But this was such a unique experience, and I I loved it and I wish I could continue to do it, but it's just not the timing is not right right now.

SPEAKER_02: 18:56

When you might think specific to autism, or so you're you're opening it up a little bit more, and we like that. We like to talk about that stuff.

SPEAKER_06: 19:04

Yeah, but kids without autism also need support sometimes.

SPEAKER_02: 19:08

Apparently. Camilla's gonna tell us all about that a little bit. Who knew? You've given us a ton to unpack, Mr. Dan. You've been busy on social media over there. Uh, what kind of questions did you come up with?

SPEAKER_06: 19:20

Social media, you mean taking notes? So I do want to go all the way back, but before we go all the way back, you said that um you're explaining ABA to parents. How do you explain ABA to parents? Like what pretend I'm a parent. Like, explain ABA to me. What do you say?

SPEAKER_00: 19:36

So, one of the things that I focused on is remove the jargon.

SPEAKER_06: 19:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 19:40

They they don't care about your terminology just because you're studying it and you're learning it right now. That's the last thing that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_06: 19:46

But it sounds so fancy.

SPEAKER_00: 19:47

It does. And I love it.

SPEAKER_06: 19:49

You need more syllables. More syllables.

SPEAKER_00: 19:51

There was moments where I would say a word, then I go, you know what? Let me go back. Um, let me rephrase that because this is what it actually means. And I think I'm confusing it. Am I confusing you? And they would look at me, I'm confused.

SPEAKER_02: 20:05

See, now you find it super smart. I'm gonna say super smart jargon, and then I'm gonna explain it in a super smart way. That's awesome. Won't find that in any book.

SPEAKER_00: 20:14

Yeah, right. Yeah. To to me, the best way to explain something to a parent was to me, rapport is so important, but I would use my husband as an example, like random friends. I would use random examples at a grocery store to apply what I'm explaining to their child. They're more likely to understand that versus me saying something from the Cooper book.

SPEAKER_07: 20:36

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 20:36

Um, so it's a lot of real examples, um, adult examples, and then being like, okay, now we can kind of change that into a child example. Like, do you understand? Like when I would explain sensory, right? Because they would say sensory is just hand flapping and turning and rocking. No, it's so much more than that, right? Um we have other senses. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 20:58

Imagine that.

SPEAKER_00: 20:59

Yes, yes. So that's how I would explain it.

SPEAKER_06: 21:01

Okay. Yeah, that was always a challenge, I feel like we so Mike and I've been in the field for he was my original supervisor. So it's 20 years together. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:13

That's amazing. I'll enter my this so this fall, I just entered my 29th year, I guess. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 21:22

We have a lot of experience.

SPEAKER_02: 21:23

In or around the field. Child, child development and uh special ed and ABA. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 21:28

We relate so much to what you're saying. Um, because the last company, well, the company before the last one, the last one fought out that company. We kind of had free reign um for eight years-ish, somewhere.

SPEAKER_02: 21:40

Yeah, somewhere in the better part of ten years, probably.

SPEAKER_06: 21:43

Yeah. Um, so we were Mike was director of early child. Early child development. I don't even remember what my title was, director of operations or somewhere in that lane. Um, but we created parent training curriculum because we just saw it was so important. We created parent groups, which I ran for the better part of eight years. It was exciting. We ran some in person and then COVID hit, so it kind of went to live stream. Um, but there was just so much dynamism, and it's so cool to see parents like in a in a room and just being able to share examples and things like that. Because especially newer parents, they just a lot of times got a diagnosis. They've got a child, they a lot of times it's either their first child or certainly their first child with autism. They don't know if it's quote unquote normal what their child's doing. They just have all these questions, and if we hit them with these big terms, it doesn't help anything. So hearing another parent be like, Yeah, my child used to do that too, was just so so nice and so empowering for these parents. And we did that. Um, we started dad's groups because usually it was moms, and they were like, you know, you my husband needs to hear this, and I go home and I'd tell him, and he doesn't listen to me. So you gotta tell him. So we would do dad's groups, and that was that was super cool and and really enlightening. And it was it was actually really cool because I mean, we'd have a lot of military in San Diego and things like that, and you would see these these dads that were like, you know, military dads and would been to war and stuff like that would talk about my child's first IEP was the hardest thing I've ever been to. And it's like, wow, that's that's cool. And hearing it from their perspective, right? Because traditionally we would just hear the situations from the mom perspective, and we'd hear from the dad's perspective, like, yeah, I just got I was working all day and I got home and I wasn't part of the session, but my wife's mad at me because I don't know what to do. I'm trying to help out. So I'm just sharing this for you because we've been huge into the parent involvement and we thought it was something that's been lacking for a long time. So we really relate to that at our new company. We have one parent group that started, we do it on Mondays. Um, it's one of the things that some of the parents that knew us from our previous company were so excited. Um expansion is so important. Um, so many parents, not as much anymore, but still sometimes they will call and they'd be like, Well, you know, I've heard somebody gets 40 hours. Will you give my kid 40 hours? And it's like, no, we we won't, but we'll give you as many hours as you want as the parent because you're gonna be with that kid. We're gonna be with them a couple hours a day. You'll be with them a lot longer. So it doesn't matter whether we give them two hours or 12 hours in a day, you're still gonna be with them way longer. Yeah. So yeah, we've been a huge proponent, and it's awesome to hear kind of your journey because we really vibe with that.

SPEAKER_02: 24:14

I'm gonna date myself here, but I'm from back in the day where you'd go in for the intake evaluation, and one of the questions was Do you have a space in your home that's isolated so that we can do our discrete trial training? Meaning we're gonna exclude you from the beginning, mom and dad. Because a lot of it was logistics, a lot of it was behavior management. We've got a young BT, and yeah, if mom and dad are around, it's gonna be a lot harder to gain this instructional control idea.

SPEAKER_06: 24:45

And then they tantrum, and now that's attention-seeking control.

SPEAKER_02: 24:48

And that's uh and that must be we're back to the diagnostic traits as opposed to the idea that this is a five-year-old and you're forcing them to do something, and they're advocating for themselves, and you're failing to reinforce that aspect of it. So it's come a long way, and I'm I'm happy to see that, especially given that uh I come from more of a developmental track. So uh without getting too far into my background, I did really well uh early on after undergrad as a young professional in this developmental lab school where it was idyllic and everything was built for two to five year olds and got good at handling the uh four to five-year-old boys' behavior, running around in packs and terrorizing the girls. I could get them to sit at snack and listen. That does that stops at five? I don't know. I don't know if it stops at five. All I know is it stopped at five there.

SPEAKER_03: 25:34

I don't know if it stops at four.

SPEAKER_02: 25:36

So so you're speaking for yourself.

SPEAKER_03: 25:39

Yeah, absolutely. Kaylee would say it's still it never leaves.

SPEAKER_02: 25:43

So so I had colleagues go, hey, you know, you you should really look into that. You're you're good with uh with behavior. And I, you know, took a shift over to a job at a non-public school, and it was just a stark contrast. It was crazy from environment to environment, and being like, what why is this so sterile? How come there's no materials available? Oh, because they throw them. So you your answer was to remove them completely. When do they come back? Never. Well then how do we ever resolve the behavioral issue? So, I mean, again, I'm skipping a lot of details there, and I think that we just do a lot of very restrictive things sometimes in the name of behavior management. You're talking about something much more open-ended. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 26:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 26:23

So the one of the first things you said, I think you said your husband was in ABA before you, right? Uh I think you said it was very different then. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00: 26:32

Well, the way that he explained data collection to me um didn't seem like there was a lot of data collection. Okay. Um, and he's five five years older than me. Yeah. Um, he told me one of their sessions was at a basketball court, which I love, environmental play. We love that. Um, being able to have that freedom, right? Not be so restrictive, always in the home. I also love community outings, they're the best. Grocery stores were gonna work on it. Um, so just the way they explained to me, and then certain like terminology and certain behavior modification, um, it just wasn't quite there. It was just very um loose and flexible. And when I told him this is what we do at the clinic, and he was like, This is very different, and it's a lot more developed. Um, and I'm I'm trying to think how long ago that was. It had to be when he was in high school, I want to say, or maybe straight out of high school. Um, but it was just very different than we were doing because when I started my BT role, it was data collection, very strict, right? This is what we're gonna do, and um, these are the behaviors we're going to work on, and these are the interventions. And then you have these parents. He I don't he never did parent training. I don't think he met the parents either. Uh it seemed like a very different setting that he was doing, but they called it ABA.

SPEAKER_07: 27:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 27:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 27:58

It's interesting how that that's uh all evolved, right? So I know that um where we first started, there was a lot of teach influence in that ABA. I think a lot of that's also become pervasive. So a lot of the the visual icons, things that um I think have been adapted. It's not to say that it's not ABA or can't be used uh you know to to uh strengthen a contingency or whatnot, but um yeah, it's been interesting to see that throughout our career. Um and we've become maybe a little bit more uh so the idea of structure, I think, is something we like to talk about. Which you're mentioning again, going back to our start, right? We had the uh the huge uh three ring uh three-inch uh three-ring binders that looked like underbridged dictionaries, uh that just had copious amounts of papers and and stuff that um, in my opinion, really detracted from the interaction. So you it was like the uh texting and driving, right?

SPEAKER_07: 28:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 28:54

So it's really terrible interaction. And then yeah, you can go too far to the other side and you're not collecting data. Talk to us a little bit about the the uh the middle ground, uh the the right amount and what your opinion is on that.

SPEAKER_00: 29:06

Yeah, yeah. So when I was in Washington, I I had a BT that was very much focused on data, and this doesn't mean they shouldn't be, right? We need data, we need to analyze the data, right? But it was at the point where it was taking away from the interaction with the child, and I noticed that and I let her know okay, you tracked your data, let's go back and connect with the child, right? We need to always be pairing. Pairing is so important, it's not something that you just do at the beginning. Pairing is constant, same with the parents as well. So, the way that I would train BTs and work with them is yes, some of them have iPads. I did pen and paper when I was in Washington. It was really hard graphing that.

SPEAKER_06: 29:51

Um, we did that for years and then we were transferred to the Excel sheet for the report, and man.

SPEAKER_02: 29:57

And you couldn't connect the dots freehand, had to be a ruler. That's true. It had to be around. Otherwise, apparently it throws off your entire function.

SPEAKER_06: 30:04

It's like if you don't do 10 trials.

SPEAKER_02: 30:08

It made no sense to me mathematically, but man, if you didn't do it, you were in trouble. So negative reinforcement all around. I'm doing it. Get off my back. Anyway, continue.

SPEAKER_00: 30:18

Um, so the way that I would work with BTs is my goal is I don't want this session to be so, I'm gonna use the word rigid and structured, right? There can be some structure. I want the child to enjoy their session. That's my number one goal. I want them to be excited to see the BT. And sometimes that might not be the case with the older clients, right? They might say, oh, you again. I'm like, I'm sorry, I know, I know you don't want to see me, but I have some fun games we can play today, so maybe you'll forgive me. But um, for the BT to know how can we balance the session out so it's not so rigid. There's some BTs that are so heavily focused on flashcards, and they think that they can only run that program through a flashcard. Flashcards are great. My toddler loves them, and then the next day she hates them, right? That's normal too. So I would try to focus on the balance of can we teach this another way? It's not more work, it's more fun. It's it could feel also more natural for BTs. And I had BTs that were very transparent with me and said, I've only done flashcards with my previous supervisor, and we sit at the table and we do work for an hour, two hours. And then the only break that the child gets is from that table, but that break, they're not even interacting with the BT because they're working for the break to remove the BT?

SPEAKER_06: 31:41

Isn't that weird? You talked about data, right? So historically, the way ABA sessions would work, right, is we would run our programs and then we would take data while they're on a break. So we then just remove ourselves from all the fun stuff. Or the we present the not stuff fun stuff, and then we take the data and then they do the fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 31:58

It's so motivation is only extrinsic, motivation is only tangible. There's no way our interaction could have been motivating after a set of promos. It's called rapport.

SPEAKER_07: 32:09

Is that what rap rapport?

SPEAKER_06: 32:12

Is that what we call it? Or with flashcards, we deconstruct their whole environment and then we put it into flashcards. It's like we can't we can't play in the environment. We gotta take the picture of the car and put it on a flashcard. Oh, and then they can identify the flashcard, but not an actual car. I like um you use the word structured, both of you did, but you've kind of changed your terminology. Um, I think, and it's been a pretty effective uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 32:35

Yeah. We talk about um adult directed versus child directed. Uh and I that resonates with me. And I think it it creates a conversation for that dance. Um I I'm very keen on early intervention, even pre-diagnostic. Uh so for me, coming from a developmental background, that child-directed play-based orientation is key. Um there's almost no other way to start, in my opinion. And then the idea that once you do that enough, guess what happens if you are respectfully in a child's space over time and talking to them and showing them stuff? One day you're gonna show up and they're gonna get right next to you, and then that's your cue. Now you might be able to direct something that you've planned. I like the way you described it too. It's not just that you come in there completely willy-nilly, but there's a certain um, I guess, ego you have to put aside when you've overly structured your session and you get there, and a four or five, you know, four or five-year-old, six-year-old completely sabotages it as they're built to do, whether they have autistic autism or not, that's what young kids are supposed to do. Oh, this is your plan. Let me try to completely mess it up and then let's see what you do in response.

SPEAKER_04: 33:43

And Mike has a four-year-old of his own.

SPEAKER_02: 33:45

Yeah, I do. I do have I have I have 19, 16, and 4. So I've yeah, I had to have the what do you say then? I had to have the four-year-old to bring up my chops. I was getting a little rusty. So I had to get another child to make sure I could I could stay honest with my chops. But no, I I I like that, and it's hard to teach that um to RBTs, for example. That's difficult. A lot of them will say it's a lot harder. And it's like, well, you either put in all the thought process on the front end and then realize that you're gonna have to improvise a little bit, or maybe get overly authoritarian in your session, and then you're having behaviors that may or may not be related to the actual child. They might be telling you no on something and you're just not listening because your plan is so nicely structured. And then on the other end, you you can be ready when they're not interested in 50 things you brought. What's 51? You're gonna have to come up with something, right? In order to get back into to build that rapport, to let them know that you acknowledge their negation. Oh, you're not you you're saying no. I'm gonna listen, I'm backing up. That's part of rapport too. I'm gonna I'm gonna pay attention to what you're saying. Yeah, and then I'm gonna express interest in what you're doing, and then maybe I have to figure out how that stimulus fits into my plan in terms of these goals that I have to take data on.

SPEAKER_00: 35:01

Be a little more creative.

SPEAKER_02: 35:02

It's and and I can see where it's a little more difficult. Yeah. What I like about the uh more open-ended child directed piece um and some of the techniques that we've um you know taken from other brilliant people, uh, is how much we've created a situation where the BT is forced to pay attention. So things like contingent imitation, we're gonna do what the child's doing within reason and respectfully. We're gonna linguistically map what's happening in the environment and what we're doing. And those two things serve one purpose. I don't want you to take data on that because you're the one that's throwing out the behavior. But you can't contingently imitate or linguistically map without paying full attention to that child and their surrounding environment. And it works. Again, you now you the creativity maybe comes a little more easily because you understand what makes them tick, what they don't want to do. Uh, you get to learn what everybody else has forced them to do. That's right. I was working with a uh a child just this past week, and uh the concern was um getting, you know, uh through challenges with homework or academic tasks, right? And we were doing just fine, and the parent walks in, and immediately the child shuts down and she starts offering very rightfully so, very logically, offering correction and all these grammatical rules, and you know, telling me, you know, you were supposed to make him read that sentence before he had to do. And it's like, he was actually answering the questions, okay, and now he's shutting down. And I, you know, had a conversation with that parent saying, You're not doing anything wrong. However, is he doing what you would expect him to do after you put forth your help? Well, no, he just withdraws. Okay, so who needs to change here? He wasn't doing that with me. It's not to say that I was doing everything perfectly, or we all were also lacking the reinforcement history. But that's what we're seeing here is you showed up and it was like, oh no. And I think a lot of it, too, without being able to quantify it, the child was just afraid to let uh to see their parents' disappointment. So that was part of their frustration. I could see immediately where she corrected him, and he was like, Oh, like I didn't want you to correct me, and then let me try again quickly. And oh, I got it wrong again. So you just saw this decline. It was like, okay, yes, he's gonna change his behavior, but guess who gets to change it first?

SPEAKER_00: 37:17

There's history, but yeah, yeah. That's a hard one for parents.

SPEAKER_02: 37:22

Yeah, he was doing so well for you, and then I came in. I know, weird, right? I I wonder what it was. Let me do a quick analysis here. That's a mighty you. And again, the great mom, great responsive parent. Not, you know, you look at the whole scene, and it would be easy to go, wow, that child has discipline problems. I don't know. Maybe, I don't know, maybe yes, maybe no, but they were responding differently just two minutes ago, and now we've got this reinforcement history that kicked right in. Yeah. And there we go. I mean, you you get to deal with this stuff all the time. How how do you you know talk to a parent who immediately says, Oh, you're saying it's my fault? Right? I'm sure you've heard that before. Oh, wait, you're saying I but my child's the one that has the diagnosis and the behavior issues, they need to change. You're saying that that's the parent?

SPEAKER_00: 38:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 38:16

Talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 38:18

It's a hard one. And you know, I had parents cry during parent training sessions, and I had parents straight up ask me, like, so is this my fault? Right. And I'm not gonna go and say, Yes, this is your fault.

unknown: 38:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 38:33

Um, I'm like, okay, I how do I explain this in a professional way? But I also need to be empathetic too, right? To their situation. So the way that I have conversations with families, it's I I haven't seen a lot of clinicians do this, and I heavily focused on training this to my trainees, is you need to be transparent, honest, kind, but you can still be firm, kind but firm, right? And that's some of the approaches that I took when I did parenting specialty courses as well. Um, we don't need to yell to give an instruction, it's just as effective if we go there eye-level, eye to eye, and calmly repeat that instruction, right? And a lot of parents don't know that. So, with families, when they either disagree with a parent training intervention or they feel like they've done something wrong, I focus on what can we do next. Let's not focus on the moment right now, especially when they're frustrated. Well, first I want to make sure they're calm down and I highlight the positives that their child has done, right? And I explain the science behind it in a normal way where they can understand, right? The history of reinforcement, um, the way that the dad has responded, the way that mom has responded, right? And then focusing on yes, we have data to support that when he does this and you respond this way, this is what happens. We come back and we look at the data in the best way possible where the parent understands. And sometimes I had parents that say your data is not correct, right? So then you have to have a different conversation outside of that, and it's almost like a two-hour meeting because now you have a parent who doesn't believe your data, right? And that's a hard one. And that's okay. I think there are some parents that don't want to change their own behavior, and that's not something I can do, right? That's really hard. Um, I try and I do my best, and I'm so proud of the ones where I have been able to help support change their behavior so that they're able to better support their child, but there are some parents that I haven't been able to because they would come back and say, I'm not doing that. I'm going to continue using timeout. This is what we do, right? And this works. And then I always come back to the behavior is continuing to happen. Right. Has it been successful? Let's talk about that a little bit more. Um, so you know, again, being very calm, passionate, respectful, I always come back to it. Is your child? You are the expert. I'm not here sitting telling you what to do. I'm here to help you and support you. I want to work together, right? Can we try this for two weeks, one month, three months, and then come back? And if it's still not working, we will re-evaluate and we will look into something else. We will look at the data, we will be here. Just because I tell them to run an intervention doesn't mean that they will agree to do it or does not mean that they're happy to do it. I've had some parents that say, I guess I could do that, but I'm not really happy to do it, but then we're not gonna do it. Right. I it needs to feel not just natural, but I mean it's so unnatural for some parents to do certain things, right? And they're like, I've never done this before. And I always come back to in ABA parent training, it's not just parent training and ABA. I think of it as so much more.

SPEAKER_07: 41:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 41:50

And that's what I loved about the position that I did uh at the mental health company, is it was amazing. It was all telehealth. Like to see the parents graduate. I never met the kid ever. They worked with a therapist, an LMFT. I collaborate with the LMFT once or twice a week. Okay, it was amazing. I got so much insight. It was beautiful. And I got to understand, you know, if they had depressive symptoms, my intervention changes, right? Because I have to stay within my scope and follow my ethics and make sure that I'm doing things correctly. We had clients that were suicidal, so interventions were very different and modified. And for parents to come back and say, I wish I knew more about like just being a parent because that's what they ended up learning too, right? I know that was a very long answer to your question, but that's great.

SPEAKER_06: 42:43

That was great. You covered a lot of ground. Yeah. We actually changed uh so we used to call it parent training when we first did it, and we changed it to parent education. Um that was a good idea. Parent education and ABA almost specifically. Yeah, parent ABA education, yeah. Because I mean, I I'm not a parent and I would run a lot of these courses, and who am I to train anybody on how to be a parent?

SPEAKER_02: 43:01

Um the way you would put it too in the beginning, right? Like, hey, you're it because usually the the kid was in group and then the parent would drop them off and they would come sit with us, and it was like, Your your kid made it here. They're dressed, they've eaten, they've maybe brushed their teeth a few times this week. We don't need to train you on that. You know how to be a parent. Your child is safe and sound.

SPEAKER_07: 43:21

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 43:22

You're saying there's some behaviors that create challenges for you, your child, perhaps your family. Maybe some of those are exhibited in schools. And I think it was a very important distinction. Um as you were talking, one thing that that resonated with me is we're always we're always under this impression that something's wrong and needs to get fixed. Yeah. And I think that that that is not entirely untrue. However, if you lead with that, it might cause a lot more frustration. I in the way you were um talking about addressing parents and and sort of the empowerment process you go with them, uh, it it just made me think, you know, so much of the interventions that um we offer parents sometimes want them to be hacks. And we can do that, and but if all you're doing are behavioral change hacks, you're not gonna get through the actual process. And again, that's what you're talking about is what I'm telling you to do may not change the behavior in that moment. It may not lead to the desired behavior in that moment. I'm asking you to put it forth. It makes me think of I'm currently doing some PT for a torn rotator, and it's very uh analogous. I was talking to my physical therapist, and she was like, Yeah, if you don't do the work, it's not gonna get better. And if you do a little bit of the work, you'll notice a little bit of improvement. Uh, and hopefully that's enough to make you propel forward, or it might hurt and be sore enough that then you don't do it. And I was like, that's exactly what I have to do with clients and parents, right? Because we want this magic wand, we want this trick, but that's not what it is. And I think a lot of um the ABA that I was exposed to early on was a lot about just making the crying stop. And I think we've learned so much more about that. And it's not to say that you want the crying to endure, but the idea that you're just gonna flip a switch and make it stop, that's not not the case. Not the case.

SPEAKER_00: 45:09

I've I've told parents, this is my favorite thing to say. My job is to not make your child stop crying, they will always cry.

SPEAKER_06: 45:17

Sure. There's a there's a quote that we um that we put in our project. We're doing a proje for parents, and uh one of the quotes is your job isn't to make the child not have a tantrum, it's for you to not have a tantrum while they're having a tantrum.

SPEAKER_00: 45:30

Yes. Reaction. Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 45:32

Let's uh let's uh I'm gonna have to skip into this just because you mentioned that I I like to say here on the show and everywhere else, and to the parent I was talking to last week, these things I'm telling you, I can preach them all day long. And then I have to go home to my four-year-old. Um, share with us a little bit about that. So the staying calm. You it's a great idea. It's it's perfect in theory, it's exactly what we're supposed to do. And then you go have to go home to your your child. What's what's your success rate? How does that work for you?

SPEAKER_06: 46:05

How much better did nobody's perfect child make you a parent training? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 46:10

Yeah, yeah. I would say it definitely made me more passionate, if not. I I don't know how else to explain, but when I had my daughter and I was doing the parenting specialty um position, I would always use examples with my daughter, and that always helps during parent training, right? And she's so little too, and they're like, well, it's not like she can do much, but it's so much beyond of just behavior management, right? A lot of the work that I focused on, I think you pointed this out a little bit, is connection is so important between a parent and a child relationship. And that's something that um unfortunately I didn't see in some of the sessions, whether I was in a clinical director position, the parenting specialty position, and the parent would mention, I don't really play with them because they don't ask me to play with them. And, you know, a lot of the times we figure out there's no one-on-one time with your child. And we have these, you know, I would start with, let's start with five minutes a day. And then I the parent comes back, oh my gosh, it was amazing. It was so great. And I'm like, okay, great, let's do 10 minutes. You're doing great. Move on to 10 minutes, and then we get up to 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_06: 47:16

But don't you have to do five minutes across 10 sessions before you can move on? Oh, what?

SPEAKER_02: 47:23

Percent correct, right? 80 80% across the cross.

SPEAKER_06: 47:25

It's got to be 80% across three people. You can't move on before you do it.

SPEAKER_02: 47:28

Two environments.

SPEAKER_00: 47:30

Very specific. Oh no, now we failed the program.

SPEAKER_02: 47:33

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 47:34

Now we can't do anything.

SPEAKER_02: 47:35

Now the RBT doesn't know how to run this. This is so well planned, nobody knows how to execute it.

SPEAKER_00: 47:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so I I definitely think having her is and it's amazing because there's certain situations. I mean, she's tantruming right now, I'll be honest. Right. She has her tantrum. No, right now she's sleeping.

SPEAKER_02: 47:59

Your spidey sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 48:01

She might tantrum when she wakes up.

SPEAKER_02: 48:02

My four-year-old might be throwing a tantrum right now.

SPEAKER_00: 48:06

Um, and the like even when I would take read rant I read a lot of like parenting books and stuff and podcasts. I love listening to podcasts. And I always come back to, I don't want the child to learn something from yelling or punishment, right? And that's what a lot of parents come to me too, is they say, Well, they did this and I'm not happy with it and I'm so disappointed, so I sent them to their room. That's what they wanted. They wanted to go to their room when we, you know, determine later on that's what happened, right? Um, so with her, the biggest thing I try to remember is I need to stay calm and I need to stay present, right? She cannot communicate to me right now. She has phrases that she's saying and it's great, but can she communicate when she's really upset and frustrated? No, she's crying. She does this thing where she drops to the ground and does like the Superman, and then she looks up to see if I'm looking, and I'm there. I'm making sure she's safe and she's okay.

SPEAKER_06: 49:05

Um the Superman.

SPEAKER_00: 49:07

It's so interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 49:09

That's when you flail your arms and legs at the same time on the cape when she does Superman.

SPEAKER_06: 49:13

That was you could have put a towel on her.

SPEAKER_02: 49:19

In the moment interventions here on ABA on tap. What do you do when your child tantrums and throws his books on the floor and flails dummy down? Give him a cape. Give him a cape.

SPEAKER_00: 49:28

Watch me send you a picture of like your interview.

SPEAKER_06: 49:31

Please do, please do.

SPEAKER_00: 49:32

Um, so I I remember that, and I, you know, I think about I I'm not gonna ignore certain behaviors just because she's misbehaving, and I'm quote quoting, right? She's not misbehaving, she's truly having a hard time. Like with Legos, for example. We were doing Legos, she does like the huge Legos, it's so exciting. She can stack them and play with them. But um, there was a piece that I was taking apart, and she got really frustrated. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, that was completely my fault. Versus, I think of situations when I was a BT and my supervisor would tell me, Oh no, now remove the token because he cried because you did this, but it was my fault.

SPEAKER_06: 50:13

Well, they need to say, I want Lego. It has to be those three words before you can stop ignoring them.

SPEAKER_02: 50:20

Well, the Lego would have to be a separate icon, you put it onto the center strip.

SPEAKER_06: 50:25

Correct.

SPEAKER_02: 50:25

And it can't be can I have Lego.

SPEAKER_00: 50:27

And we can't accept pointing either. Nope. Apparently.

SPEAKER_02: 50:30

Not if you're running PEX. No. No, you can't. Your data will be skewed. Yeah. We get a little facetious here with the old school ABA. Yeah. No, for just a just a tiny bit. Yeah. Um, I I really want to highlight the importance of what you're saying with she's truly having a hard time versus misbehaving. Um, I don't know if there's anything else you can lend. I mean, uh that's such a hard concept to try and um understand, to relay to parents, the idea that you talk about this very well. Crying as communication. Now, crying is a stimulus that's gonna alert us instinctively as parents that there might be something wrong that we have to fix. Child might be in danger, which you know, without these larger foreheads, maybe that would be the case every time. But now we can work ourselves up into that frenzy. Socially, we can look at it as misbehavior or a lack of discipline, and you're saying the child's truly just expressing what they feel in that moment, that's the way it sounds, and you gotta work to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 51:35

Yeah, is that yeah, yeah. And I I have that's a hard bargain to sell.

SPEAKER_02: 51:39

That's not easy to sell.

SPEAKER_00: 51:40

Oh, it is. And I mean, I had BTs that would say, but you're reinforcing it.

SPEAKER_02: 51:45

Ooh, right?

SPEAKER_00: 51:47

I'm a BCBA and the BT is telling me that. I'm like, but they truly want their mom. It's like a three-year-old. They're saying, I want mom. So we're just going to say no to mom. And this is before I even had a kid, too.

SPEAKER_02: 52:00

What a great quandary, right? Do I do I reinforce the communication or do I punish the tone? Is what the BT is saying there. And logically, anybody who's sticking to discipline is gonna say, Well, you punish that tone. And it doesn't matter if what the words they said were appropriate. They screamed when they said they said it the wrong way. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 52:21

Yeah. I always tell parents, we'll work on the tone later, like when I would work with teenagers. I like that. Um, and even when I was doing remote, one of the moms told me, like, she did it, but she rolled her eyes and walked away and told me she was gonna go to her room. I'm like, that's amazing. We we worked on this, we talked about this. Her room is her safe space. Did she do what you asked her to do? And we also worked on the way mom delivered instruction. Mom did amazing. I was so proud of her. I'm like, I wish I was there. And then I was like, but did she do it? She said, Yes, but she rolled her eyes. We'll work on the rolling eyes later. And then I have this conversation about she's a teenager. It's going to happen. I roll my eyes and I'm an adult. You can't ask me to not roll my eyes in certain situations. It's going to happen.

SPEAKER_02: 53:08

Look, mom, you probably said something pretty ridiculous as far as your teenager was concerned. You may not think it was ridiculous. Yeah, we did. And that's okay. Yeah. My I've got one at home with a 16-year-old, and I I'm the worst. I am I can't say anything funny or accurate.

SPEAKER_00: 53:27

So no jokes.

SPEAKER_02: 53:28

I don't know what I'm talking about. I can make the jokes, she's just not gonna laugh.

SPEAKER_00: 53:32

Oh I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02: 53:34

Oh no, uh, no, there it is.

SPEAKER_07: 53:38

I was like, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_02: 53:42

Um, so so basically Camila's saying, let's reinforce eye rolling, is what she's saying. It's it's okay if your teenage is eye-roll. It's such a hard thing to explain to people. Um, because we the the general mantra of discipline is punishment. I'm gonna raise my voice, I'm gonna yell at you, I'm gonna threaten to take something away. And and we, you know, we come along with this great reinforcement uh sure you know platform, and that that's hard. That's hard. I think as a parent, and you might begin to feel this you give an instruction once, twice, three times, and your child defies you. And there's a there's there's a personal feel to that. Why you little you can I'm the one that's in charge here. Now you come in and you're teaching parents, you gotta put that aside. Easier said than done. Any tricks you've got for that, any good phrasing you've got for that. What have you learned for yourself about that in terms of like, did you really just turn away from me and your how old's your child?

SPEAKER_00: 54:46

She's 17 months. Oh, there's plenty of sex. No, so much.

SPEAKER_02: 54:50

Oh, she's she's in the no phase.

SPEAKER_00: 54:52

That's what it started so early. It started at 15 months, and I'm like, That is early. Is this normal? And I'm like Googling too. I'm like, I know about child development, but this is like a lot. You're saying no a lot. That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02: 55:03

That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_00: 55:03

Oh, yeah. She started with the shaking head no, which I'm like, yeah, great. We we worked a lot on sign language, and then she started saying no at 15 months, and I was like, Does she know what she's saying no to? And then it kept going, and now it's a lot of no, like it's even like I'm playing with her and I could no, I haven't even done anything yet. Um, I I do give her choices. No. Like, okay, and then sometimes I'll ask her, like, hey, do you want this snack? No. Like, okay, well, these are the snacks I have for you. And I'm really big on like, I'm not gonna keep offering you more and more snacks. I gave you choices, and this is what I'm going to offer you at this time. But she she's okay, she gets through it. Um it's interesting because there's certain things that I think of like, oh, this is so ABA, but it's not, it's such a normal thing to do, right?

SPEAKER_02: 55:55

I love that because you're right. You you are noticing a contingency that you're putting forth. Yeah, so it's very true.

SPEAKER_00: 56:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 56:03

And then I like the other side of it too. Like even with behavioral challenges, being able to explain to parents, um, this isn't, I'm not a diagnostician, this isn't necessarily the autism. This is just your five-year-olds. Now, there may be language delays, communication difficulties that exacerbate this. I understand that. However, and it's hard to tease that apart. This this is normal. All five-year-olds will tantrum at least once a day between one and five minutes per the literature, right? Yeah, this is normal. Well, and in our case, but they have autism. So normalcy within the autistic diagnosis behaviorally, that's a hard sell for parents sometimes. I gotta do a little quick uh disclosure here, a story with my four-year-old. Um, we go do the grocery shopping every Saturday morning, and it's always a uh discussion. So, yes, you're gonna be able to buy a toy today. No, today is not a toy day. Okay. We're getting closer. It's fall now. We can start pitching the holidays. Oh, put that on your list.

SPEAKER_00: 57:09

Okay. So yesterday, take a picture.

SPEAKER_02: 57:11

Oh, save our favorite right now. I didn't I didn't have a we could only take a picture in our minds when I was young. Now you can actually take a picture. Um, so yesterday was a uh we're gonna go to the do the grocery shopping, and then we're going to the mall to pick up some of mom's jewelry, um, and there's stuff there that you're gonna want. So you're gonna have to choose. If you buy something at the grocery store, there's a lot of conditions here, then there's nothing to buy at the mall, right? It's a four-year-old, so she decided to get something in the moment at the grocery store. It's exciting, it's right there. Something she'd been waiting for. We made it clear. Okay, good. Now that means when we go to the mall, of course, four-year-old, you're gonna stick to the deal. You're not gonna want something else, of course, right? Prefrontal cortex. We we've I've primed her behaviorally. So of course, this is you did the first thing. Now we're ready. Yep. I did the conditionals. You bought this, you can't buy that, right? Of course, it's gonna work beautifully. Camila said it would during our parent training session. So it's not gonna go wrong. The child's not gonna explode and cry all the way out of the mall after we know. So that's what she did.

SPEAKER_06: 58:21

Of course.

SPEAKER_02: 58:21

So right, two B C BA parents and a school psychologist. Of course. She's gonna be she's gonna behave perfectly, right? As I'm sure as we walked out of the mall, every parent in that mall was like, well, look at that bratty child who's probably used to getting whatever she wants all the time. See how it's hitting the ego already? So we were driving in the car back home, and this resonated with me with what you were saying, and I started getting a little bit upset. It's it's I don't want to hear the smoke alarm, right? That's that's the uh example I use. That's the smoke alarm, and I'm fanning it, and it won't go off. And I'm really frustrated because I don't want to hear that sound anymore. And then she started saying, but I really want it, and you're driving away, and some other kid's gonna buy it. And in that moment, I was like, wow, that's a that's really sad. Like, I get it, I get it. Now, it it didn't completely make my irritation go away, but at least I had enough empathy to not raise my voice, yell back, all the things that I can tell parents all day long. But in that moment, I had to remember, and it was it was me listening to the words. I didn't like the sounds she was making, and I usually tell her that those sounds are rough right now, you're okay. And then she was like, you know, she started communicating with the words, and I was like, okay, kids.

SPEAKER_00: 59:39

You connect. I see. Oh, look at that connection before correction.

SPEAKER_02: 59:44

Connection before correction. That's a we're gonna run with that one. Yep. You've published that one yet? You gotta copyright that sucker. That's got a TikTok video written all over it. Are you kidding? That's gonna go viral.

unknown: 59:56

What are we doing?

SPEAKER_02: 59:58

No, that's fantastic. Yeah, I you. I think it's really important to embrace those things. And again, I I talk about the 80-20 rule, right? Or 90 10. I think that there's gonna be a margin of error where you get to show your kids that I too have emotions and I lose my cool. But you know, if you're going over that 20% mark, maybe you need to reconsider and and pull back on some things. And my teenagers have taught me a lot about that as of late. The the pullback, the I really want more time with you. You guys are moving in different directions. I've raised you to be independent, and now I'm trying to stifle your independence and getting mad when you tell me you're gonna go do something else. That doesn't make any sense. But without you know, sitting back and using that introspection, yeah, you you you might fail the connection. And the connection might not mean time together all the time. It means in that instance, in that circumstance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:52

Over time, build the relationship and trust will come.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:56

Yeah, it's hard. And I will end with that chuckle because this concludes part one of our interview with Camila Jakob. Please do return for part two and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:13

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.