Putting the 'U' in Behaviour: The Art of the Behaviour Lifestyle with Shouberte Abreu (Part I)

ABA on Tap is proud to spend some time with Shouberte Abreu (Part 1 of 2):

Grab a seat and pour yourself a cold one! In this episode of ABA on Tap, hosts Mike Rubio and Dan Lowery are joined by Shouberte Abreu, a powerhouse in clinical ABA and Founder of Behaviour Lifestyle. In addition, the crew is pleasantly surprised by a bonus guest, Dr. Scott O'Donnell. 

Shouberte takes us beyond the laboratory, sharing her journey from navigating tough supervision to becoming a leading mentor, author, and Infant Toddler Developmental Specialist. We are tackling the real-world applications of ABA, focusing on compassionate care, family training, and how to teach "the art of you" to our learners.

In this "pour," we’re serving up:

• The Path from RBT to BCBA: Real talk on field challenges, the importance of supportive supervision, and navigating the independent field work route.
• Family Guidance & Training: How to educate and support parents to implement effective strategies in the home.
• Compassionate Care: Blending clinical rigor with empathy to create meaningful, individualized programming.

Whether you are a new RBT looking for mentorship or a BCBA refining your clinical approach, this episode is filled with practical insights to help you grow.

Tune in, drink up, and always analyze responsibly!

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:01

Welcome to ABA on tap. I'm Mike Ribio with Dan Lowry. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly. All right, all right. And welcome back to yet another installment of ABA on tap. I am your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, along with Mr. Dan Lowry, Mr. Dan, exciting day to day.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

Well, we have two guests, a surprise guest, a returning guest, and a new guest. So we are super, super stoked about this. It's rare that we get that.

SPEAKER_06 0:51

Surprise guest.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 0:52

That's key today. We were very pleasantly surprised. Our main guest today, I guess, our new guest today, is somebody who, and we've had this before, who's done everything we've done and then is now pursuing advancement of the field and different arenas. We're talking about behavior as a lifestyle, perhaps, and then something that's very near and dear to my heart in looking at developmental framework and milestones and how that plays together or should interplay together well with our applied behavior analysis practice. We jumped right into this discussion and she didn't realize that we weren't recording, so we apologize for that. We're gonna hope she keeps her enthusiasm and her vigor. Today's guest is Schubert Abreu. I immediately enjoyed the nickname Shubi, so if it's okay with you, I'm gonna run with that one because that just has a nice ring to it. Welcome. Thank you so much for some of your time on what I'm sure is a beautiful Sunday afternoon over in your neck of the woods. How are you doing today? Talk to us.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Dan, for having me. Yes, I am Shubi.

SPEAKER_06 2:04

My nickname, Shubert Abreu, is my perfectly French.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Thank you for having me. And um, and it's wonderful to be on ABA on top. And also thank you for Suzanne, who's actually been the one sending me those invites, invitations with ensuring the days, the times that work for me. And so thank you for having me once more.

SPEAKER_06 2:30

You're you're very welcome again. Thank you for your time and a shout out to Suzanne for sure. She took our little outfit and has uh transformed it in terms of guest scheduling and other things, working on branding and other things that you were talking about already. But yeah, we're very grateful to have Suzanne. Glad to have made this connection through her, and you guys are very well connected. We'll get to that. But what we like to do is go back to the beginning. We find that as behavior analysts, as people in general, there's always a very interesting backstory that is somehow related to what we're doing now. So take us way back to the beginning, Shubi, and tell us a little bit about your origin story and kind of bring us up to the current, and then we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Well, I'm just a girl and living in Miami and a behavior analyst. And so uh the way uh Suzanne is wonderful, and in the way I met Suzanne, I was looking to, you know, build my website. My website is actually behaviorlifestyle.com and it's with an IOUR. And I I had an IOR in mind, and I said, you know, let's have an IOUR in mind because it's it would, I want, I always envisioned having to help people outside of the country as well. That's why IOUR stand more like, you know, it can be British or it can be in from the UK, whatever language, English. So I said, you know, having an IOUR sounds much more broad in terms of it can feel like to speak to to people who attend and and visit the website, it can feel like to them, oh, this is this feels like this is not only an American company where they will actually just help people in just uh United States. So I this is why the you'll if you type behavior lifestyle, it'll be with an IOUR. And Suzanne, when I did my website, Suzanne was the one behind it. She, with the brand, the logo, the colors, and everything, she was behind it. I explained to her, I said, you know what, this is what I want my logo to look like with an eagle and a and a couple of books, where the eagle is you fly as high as possible, which represents that my business will go as high and will be successful, and books representing knowledge. And so she she had she was like, Okay, she envisioned it and she sent me a couple, and she was like, What do you think? Actually, I fell in love with all of them. The colors, I don't know if you guys know that there's psychology behind colors too. And so the colors like you have red, which represents passion, and green, which represents earth and all of that. And so I said, you know what, let's just go with a few colors like blue and a green and orange. And this is exactly what my colors are. And and she was like, Okay, let's do it. And it stands out so beautiful so well. And when you look at it, it's like, really, if you were to get AI to have the logo kind of you know animate itself, you're seeing the eagle really flying high with the books. It's beautiful, and shout out Suzanne, yes, and she came up with a list of all the things I need to do because I didn't know what to do, where to go, if I should go to Sunbiz to register my business, what to do, IRS, all of that. And so she sent me like a document, a word document step by step. The first thing you need to do is this, the next thing you need to do is that. When I got it done and I had like my IRS number and all of that, I was like, Susan, I got it done. Thank you. And Susan was like, Oh my gosh, you got all of this done and within like a few weeks. Wow, Subert, you go. This is yeah, I she said the passion I have for doing things and getting things done is unbelievable. And she was like, I love working with you. And I was paying Suzanne, and she was there, and she was always the consultant for me. And this is how we met. So I've met a couple people on um in LinkedIn mostly. This is where I have most of my connections. And would I say that behavior lifestyle today is what brings me to formulate SIBA today, which is the Society for the Expansion of Behavior Analysis? Yes, because my website right now is not as successful, however, the learning mechanism, all of the things and the failures that I've learned from it, took me to know how what to do without contacting anybody when I first was putting forms into place and inviting people and having the first, our first uh, I don't know if uh Dr. Scott remember, our very first meeting together. And I was like, Dr. Scott, I saw Dr. Scott on LinkedIn, and we saw people were leaving the job. They were leaving ABA. They were some people were like, you know what, I've been in the field for a decade, five years, 10 years, and I want to give up. And Dr. Scott, who I thought was a behavior analyst, I read his profile and he was saying things about ABA and how he wants to change too, the trajectory of our field. And so I said, you know what, Dr. Scott, how about we be founders and do something about the science? I said, you know, that's my website, and hey, I've learned a couple of things, let's put it into works. And Dr. Scott was like, okay, hey, let's do it. And I just woke up on a Saturday, went to Suzanne. I said, Suzanne, you're gonna help me with this. And Suzanne was like, What's what's the next project? What is it? What's going on? And I told Suzanne, okay, my next project is I want to do something like a nonprofit, and I want to ch to expand where we are going to advocate for all of those subspecialties. And Suzanne was like, with a couple other people, they were like, This is you know, this is a lot. You're asking, that's a lot of work. And I don't know, even know what that much work entails. And this is how when I launched, I did the first form, launched it to the public. Dr. Scott was one of the very first people I can say, pioneers of really SIBA, and and formulated a lot of things with me where we became the really the founders of SIBA because I learned from my failures, my success, and everything from Suzanne with Behavior Lifestyle, my own company.

SPEAKER_06 9:23

Wow. So our surprise guest today, you've you've already alluded to several times, Dr. Scott O'Donnell. What sir, what a pleasant surprise it was to see your name pop up on the screen. We weren't aware that you were gonna grace us with your presence. How are you doing, sir?

SPEAKER_03 9:38

You're gonna get tired of me eventually.

SPEAKER_06 9:40

I don't know, I don't know if that's possible, man. I don't know if that's you pop up on my email, on LinkedIn, Dr. Scott said this, Dr. Scott said that. You're commenting all over the place, man. No, it's a real pleasure. I'm so glad that you're able to take the time to talk with us. So you gave us a a good highlight, Shubi, of of your current. Where did it all start for you? Tell us a little bit about you know, sort of your first experience in ABA. What did that look like? Some of those successes, some of those failures that I'm sure you've probably built upon.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Well, well, uh before I got into the field, I was a speech language therapist at first.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

So I I worked in an elementary school, and I was seeing children from the ages like three, four until the ages of like nine, ten years old for elementary. And so what transpired is, and it's it's a long story, I was not reinstated to continue and work because I had just my bachelor's. And so that kind of pushed me into going in and and trying to see if I can obtain my master's degree. And what happened is the the school principal, although I was doing a great job, was saying, it's time for your master's. It's either you go and get your master's and whatever else or in speech. And so I was like, you know what, what what can I do? So I graduated, and my I, me and my cousin, we graduated in communication sciences and disorders, which is what the science of the field is to become an SLP. And when we graduated, we were looking for schools and everything, and the schools were asking for it. I forgot the name. And okay, and I was like, I don't want to sit for an exam or a test for me to be accepted. And so I was like, you know, we graduated, we looked into something called ABA. I had no idea what ABA was called, what that stands for, what that is. The my cousin actually did more of the research, and she said, Look, this look at the field, this field, this is what that is. And they make a lot of money in that field. That's how I got in, really. They said they make a lot of money in that field, really. And I was like, What? Oh, they make more money, and she was like, They make more money than SLPs, and I was like, What? Um, so I was like, Okay, then let's let's go. And we went to a professor, and we needed letter of intent, all of that. You need to get into accepting acceptance for college, and so I I went to my professor, wonderful professor back then, and wrote me a letter and everything. I submitted all of the requirements, and I got into Nova Southeastern University, and that's how I pursued ABA, but it was not just ABA, it was with it was counseling with the concentration of ABA. And so I went to school and everything, and when I finished, I was a BT. Then you had to. That's when the BACB came up with that. It was a BT back then. You didn't have to be RBT. Then they came up with the upgrade of, you know, you need to become an RBT. And I sat down and I was RBT for years. I had a hard time even passing the exam and stuff. So I was like, you know what? Let me go for child development. So I went for child development, and I had the knowledge and I had learned modules. I ended up working at the University of Miami in the pediatric center, uh, being a child developmental specialist. And with all of these knowledge and everything of what I know with children and everything, I was like, I need to study one last time and really put my effort into it. So I got married and I took four to five months off. No work, nothing. My husband was just supporting me. And I said, I need to pass this exam. And I was just studying 2, 3, 4 a.m. in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Yes. And then I, this is how I ended up becoming like a licensed beaver analyst and pass and everything. And then with that, by passing within a year and a half, I was like, okay, I need to have my own business and this is what I'm seeing in the field. Within all of that, I saw so much in the field where I felt like the reasoning for me not passing was because I did not have the best analyst to teach me, to sit down and say, okay, this is what all the things that you need to study. This is like the questions, the kind of questions they ask. This is the trick to the questions, how to remember it, where I'm paying money where where I'm working, I felt like was supposed to be the support system. But I was paying my own money to study notes ABA to a whole lot of all those other companies that people have to pay so they can pass, not the ABA company itself that you're working for. So my own supervisor is supervising me for me to get more of that direct, which is what they call the restricted, I guess. And the unrestricted was not being met. So this is why I had a hard time passing. So I have to meet with students and other people in groups for me to study and pass. And this is why I came with behavioral lifestyle. It if you read my bio in behavioral lifestyle, it says I even mentioned that I did engage in the hardcore of passing and I could and that the I want to help for as cheap as possible. And I help giving four to five sessions a month that you don't hear of for only $100.

SPEAKER_05 15:42

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

For me to teach people internationally. And at times I say, okay, it can be $120 depending on the region, but $100, $120. And out of that, I would tell other analysts, hey, if you are, if you have a session and stuff, you want to take a session or two, I'm going to pay you, just give me maybe $10 off of that or $20. Real story. Suzanne knows it. Suzanne knows it. Contact Daniel Zimmerman, he knows it. Deanna Lise knows that. So I did it as cheap as possible. And the ones here in the US, because the money and the currency is different else with you know other countries, it's harder. So I did it for the US only $300. And what I was getting out of that was only $90 for me and $210 for the analysts who were seeing the person. So when you when you hear it from other companies, are they doing doing it this way? No. So I wanted to help. And this is where my passion, my care, and love came from because of what happened to me. And I wanted it to be different for out for outsiders and other people. So they can pass.

SPEAKER_06 17:00

You you raise a very interesting premise. Another way that I can that I can pitch that is I like to say with the RBTs, right? So you can you can train, help somebody study toward their 40-hour competency. They can pass that. And then for a BT in the field of autism intervention, the way it exists now, them passing that assessment to get credentialed and actually knowing how to administer or run an effective session are still two things that are super far apart. And I think you're talking about the same thing with the idea of restricted, unrestricted hours in your candidacy, is we have all of this academic, more classroom-oriented knowledge, right? And then certainly you can capture a certain amount of application on those pages and in those discussions. And then for a whole lot of us who are gaining their supervision sort of in vivo through some level of employment, most a lot of us are maybe the the most of us doing it through some sort of autism intervention. Again, that that gap exists between being able to answer a really tough question on the board exam and then being an effective supervisor, being an effective trainer for an RBT, actually being an effective interventionist yourself. Um I've very grateful for the past 18 months of our experience in starting our agency because I said it's time to get back in that game. I've been a supervisor for a long time. So now we're starting small, which means I'll do a lot of the direct hours. It's incredibly taxing, it's incredibly challenging. It's there's an art form to it, and again, I am it's not every day that I'm reaching back to some sort of academic resource, you know, to the Cooper book to look at that. Yes, once in a while I have to go back and remember some things in terms of what I'm trying to implement. But then again, there's a real separation from that. What do you think you're able to do differently in your more direct contact with these people to prepare them in that study? How do you address that gap, I guess? And I can tell just from your passion and and your engagement that people are gaining a whole lot from that direct interaction. Uh, tell us a little bit more. I mean, without giving away the secret recipe, what's what's the sauce here?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Well, I know mo m many people actually, because internationally, I support them a lot because the BACB did retract themselves. And uh so many of them were coming towards me more so than people who wanted to become BCBAs. And so QBAs from the QABA board, people who wanted to who were candidates wanted to become QBA or QASPS or ABAT, which is the kind of aka almost for RBT. And so they then the QASPS is the BCABA. So what they were doing is they're coming at me. Oh my gosh, I we where I work, we don't really have a lot in the country. And I want to be, and we have people being diagnosed being on the spectrum, and they're saying we the ones, the very small amounts that we have actually cannot even really provide much help or supervision or whatever because they are already BCBAs, and so because of that, retraction is like it's been a mess. So, what I do is I would I have like some kind of a sheet where they follow the analyst, they follow that. Okay, when we have a student, the curriculum for that is not to just teach you or have mock exams or quizzes or whatever to quiz you and teach you. It we are teaching you how to really become an analyst, how to have a caregiver parent training, which college, school, campus, some of them did not teach how to provide a one-hour or two-hour caregiver training. What that entails, that's what we do. What it what that entails when it comes to when you are building a 155, that CPT code, what they will actually require of you, how to word it. I also train on how to provide the supervision. What do you say? Do you use any motivational interviews, any of those tricks, any of those things to the trainees, like the supervisees, the RBTs, the BTs that you have. I teach them the trick about, you know, once you do pass, it doesn't stop there. It's how do you bill, what that entails. And I even teach about the the how to write because sometimes they say, Yeah, we learned this in, you know, with just doing practice, but sometimes. The practice of writing a treatment plan sometimes is not from the beginning to end for a student analyst. They tell them to do portions. It's like, okay, hey, help me do the data analysis part where you're interpreting the graphs and then they're done. And then but they and a different time is okay, help me to do the BIP, then they're done. But then when you do it in chunks and pieces, they don't really know what comes first from the very beginning of the treatment plan and what comes at the end. And so I will kind of put like a thing, like a mock of from beginning to end, this is what you put. I can have students who can vouch for me on this, who can tell you I actually have one of them right now is in Africa and it's the South Africa. And she has about like what one hour left from me to finalize and go and finish and go and sit for the exam. So that's what I teach. I don't really teach more so, oh, besides the terms and knowing all of that, how do you really apply those terms? How do you really really use it? What are really the antecedent interventions on that bit? What does that really look like? That's what I teach. That's the difference.

SPEAKER_04 23:17

How different would you say that ABA looks in South Africa or other countries that you work with than you would than it looks here in the States? I mean, the principles are the same, but I imagine based on cultural differences and nuances and ways that it's funded. Yeah. Can you can you speak to some of the differences about how it's delivered in the different countries?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah. With the South Africa, I review girl that I have, woman that I have, sorry, with her, when I review everything, I tell her this is how we do it in the US. When I review everything, I say, I am not quite knowledgeable in the way it's done with you. And at times she tells me this is what it's how it is, how it looks like, how they term certain things. And I say, well, if this is how they term it, this is what it means for us. But the way they term it, if this is how it is for you, then write it, write it this way. Okay. Stick to it. They don't really have like a CPT code in the way we we use it. Like they don't have like the 151, which is the assessment, or the one five, two, the supporting assessment for the student analyst, or one five, five for the the supervision and program modification. They don't have it worded in that way because they say sometimes most of it is money coming from the pocket of those people. Like it would be from the consumer itself. The parents are the ones either paying for it or they give that family some kind of a percentage off, like you know, um, something like this, so they can actually be able to do it. Now, they mostly do it in the way where we it's like more of a clinic based, not like they don't do in home, any of that. It's more of like a clinic kind of a slash school. They drop the kid and everything. At times, the families believe that the the only thing the kid wants is just to be in ABA therapy, like the her, the child, the actually the client she has doesn't even go to school. The schooling that the parent takes is ABA, doesn't go to school at all. So to them, it's the the ABA training and all of that that the client is receiving, the sessions, this is what's considered for them that he's learning and reaching those goals and learning as if he you know that child was in school. So completely different there.

SPEAKER_04 25:50

So do you find so in America, as I'm sure you've experienced as well, I feel like initially when I first got into the field, it was almost more of an educational model treatment of ABA specifically to autism, because that's what my experience is. It was more like done through the schools and supplemented with the regional centers, and then with the insurance mandates, it went from more of an educational model to more of a medical model of now the insurances are gonna fund it. So it's more based on the diagnostic piece, and with that then comes the medical model. Do you find in other countries? So I guess two questions. One is do you find, and I guess you said in South South Africa and probably a lot of other countries as well. I know I've seen job offers from Dubai and places like that. I imagine a lot of it's just private pay. So maybe that's a third model. So do you find like speak to that across the various countries you work with, whether you find that it's educational model, medical model, or more private pay, and kind of what that means. And then with that, do you find that those countries, if there are any that are medical model, is the the goal in those countries like fix my kid? My kid's broken and fix my kid. Are you finding that where I feel like that might have been how it used to be in the US? And now we have a little bit more of a compassionate and maybe more of a social model than like a medical model in terms of fixing something that's never our goal. But I imagine other cultures, because I hear people in the US that are from other cultures, they say when they go back home, you know, autism's like a big stigma, and I can't let my my grandma or auntie know that my son has autism because then they'll start looking at me. So, yeah, I guess those are my questions. What is the model that you find most common in other countries? And do you find it more of like a fix my kid kind of thing, or not necessarily?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yes. So I I'll say this I am an American, but however, I also am a Caribbean. So which island? Haiti, actually.

SPEAKER_04 27:47

Oh, nice, good for you. Good for you. Yeah, I've done a few uh Caribbean cruises. Haven't gone to Haiti, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Yeah, I I went to Labari with my husband um for our honeymoon, and beautiful, very beautiful. The way people perceive it's the whole country that is going through the chaotic governmental politics of whatever is happening, they think it's the whole entire country, it's just Port-au-Prince being that way, and the rest of the outside, like the countryside, other places, and it's very different, beautiful, no problems at all, much. So, so then me as a Caribbean, just to answer your questions, as a Caribbean, and the way my people, how they have like the viewpoint, um, and I believe probably Dominican Republic is that way, my husband's Dominican. And so I feel like the way we are uh in terms of viewpoint where when it comes to autism, we sometimes a lot of them are in denial, where it's like, I will spank you because you are misbehaving, but not because I need to look into this and rule out that you have ADHD. That is a comorbid diagnosis that may at times frequently come with autism or ADD or ODD or all of those other comorbid, you know, diagnoses. So now it's more so my child is running and running, getting on those walls and not learning where it's I'm going to spink or I'm going to redirect or give you that other different kind of punishment response cost or a punishment where um you're losing something that I gave, or any of those, instead of just saying, you know what, this is kind of weird. I'm getting teachers calling me all the time for you and not others. Let me go and find out what's wrong with my kid, you know? So this is where we are still teaching these nuances, like those kind of little things about autism, what it really looks like, what how it may affect that kid when you see those things. And not really that per se is they take a lot of them take autism that you are very uh what's the word? I will I will use the word that you are still retarded, that you are stupid. They don't believe that autism has that level one in it. Okay, that you can either be on the Asperger side or you can be, you know, still very extremely smart. It's just a missing little piece of puzzle that is different for those people that make them be a little different, and but they're still they can they're smarter than me at times, like you know, yeah, they figure things at times, like Elon Musk is on the spectrum, right? So they take it that being on the spectrum means that something is profoundly wrong and that it is severe at all times, and I am even scared to reveal it to family members, so they'll hide it and at times, and so you're right, and so that person that I have in Africa, the the the the student, she has told me how this family doesn't even want anything to do with him as much as so for the child. They they it's it's they baby him, they do a lot of things for him, as in they think he's in capable of doing certain things for them. At times it's us the the the the technicians, the analysts who's telling them actually they are more independent than that. We've seen this and that, and they get so dumbfounded, like what I did not know because they were doing so much for them in at first. So with Africa, do I say they are kind of similar in terms of the way they have that viewpoint? Yes, because of the story that that tech student has given me with the way this family has been with their kid. It's they can go places, they would tell they they'll they they told me she went to their house one time. It was more like I'm doing everything for you. And it's more like I don't want people to know that my kid has this because the mom itself is a psychologist, the dad is, I think, a doctor or some kind of stuff. So when they are in that status level, is I want to hide as much as possible my kid having this issue. So to them, it's like you know, I want that child that is not on the spectrum, that's neurotypical, to be more shown to the world, and I'm going to hide the neurodivergent a little bit more.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

So that's to answer your question. And so, do they have the medical model not with the codes and everything? No, I think they're taking it more in terms of it is in-person pace slash educational, not in the medical model, as in my point of view, the way my perspective, the way I have understood it, the way she's explained it to me.

SPEAKER_04 33:08

Well, that's that's go ahead. Oh, so what you're saying, if I understand correctly, in the two just specific cultures that that you talked about, it might be more of how do we give this individual skills so that when I take my child out in public, they're less of an embarrassment to me than more so than like how do I teach them skills to express themselves? It's more of like myself. This, how do I make it so this person isn't as uh yeah, embarrassing is probably lack of a better term to me out in public? Is that is that accurate?

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Yes, but according to the story she told me, yes. It's more so I'm gonna drop him off, you guys deal with him. It they can actually say, Hey, can you look into this? I'm noticing this, or where can you please rule out this? And and it's more like, well, uh, figure it out yourself, or by the time it's it's done, it's a lot of that re repetitive statement of please really look into this, please get the this done for your child because of their status level in in the society. So it's sad that the Caribbeans, they at times do it. And do they have the medical model for it yet? No, same thing. It's more they have a center, a place they put all of them and they teach them in a kind of it's more of educational slash same thing, you know, uh pay in person or co-payment play or uh pay or whatever. But there's no medical model for it as well either.

SPEAKER_06 34:43

I wonder if I've never I don't think I've looked into that, at least no time recently, but what does that ICD 10 diagnostic piece look like for autism? Because I imagine that's what they would be using. They're not basing it on a DSM, right, internationally. They've got the other set of codes. But yeah, so like what you're describing sort of reminds me of you know our current revival here in the States in terms of now looking at people as more neurodivergent and and less as a more linear or more singular diagnostic piece. I mean the DSM isn't necessarily doing that, but I think general approaches are doing that. And it sounds like these other countries might still be going through that. The idea that uh but what an interesting place to be, though, in terms of being able to proliferate ABA, knowing that maybe in our progression here in this country, we're far enough along to have some really harsh criticisms of ABA. And maybe in South Africa that's still sort of the saving grace for this thing called autism, huh?

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Yes. ICD 10 code, do I know if they have that and if it's universal? I'm not quite sure. Yeah, if it's something that Dr. Scott knows or have and he has uh an answer to it, then he by so please jump in. However, I when I was like with that South African, and I have actually an Indian at SIBA, which is something we can tackle after. He did mention he there are a couple Indians that he knows they are getting into the field of ABA, but they it's not like they are so rooted as in the way we are rooted, how it's it's more of like a career and we're getting payments like that or whatever. But there are some that are coming into the field. That's something I could ask as questions as hey, do they do they recognize the ICD 10 code that hey, this is autism and the code for it is f84.0. You know, is that something that is kind of wide recognized, widely known, or is that something SIBA and Quaba board and IBAO have to do to to get this into other countries so it can become also a medical model? I guess that's what we would have to do if it's not used as that over there in those countries.

SPEAKER_06 37:11

I'm just looking it up here. I guess I guess the codes are still international, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Oh, the code is international?

SPEAKER_06 37:17

Yeah, I guess so. So it pertains to both both systems, but I did not, I would have never known. There's still some different codes here that wouldn't coincide with the DSM five. So like Asperger's syndrome is still something that that is classified. That's pretty interesting. Just in terms of, you know, I I I I I'm very hopeful when I hear discussions on say ascent-based approaches. And then you have to think about that, that has a very it's the word I'm looking for, that can have a very imperial feel, meaning depending on how any given culture regards a child, that idea of ascent is gonna look differently. There's certain cultures, I think you were alluding to this earlier. No, you don't have a choice. This is what you're doing, and if you don't do this, you're gonna get a spanking, or something that, from a behavior analytic perspective, i isn't off the mark, but it's not something that we would necessarily put into practice here culturally. And how do these I mean, how often are you hitting those situations? Are you having people tell you about more traditional disciplinarian approaches that you're having to fit the ABA into? I mean, that happens to us here in in the States, but I wonder if there's a difference that you discern in working with uh people internationally.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Well, it it do I it's funny. It's great, actually, it's a great question. And I feel like that's something I did not even tackle, to be honest with you. I did not teach where this part, and that's great. I think it's something I can actually involve and put in that curriculum for other analysts to actually mention and and teach that as in okay, maybe if really if we're teaching ascent withdrawal, or you know, uh, we're teaching ascent-based and and all of that. I I feel like um, and and also Ascend is very, it's not as easy as people think to teach. It is still very generalized, as in so broad, it's not like a one-term or one fit all for it. It's not you can see this company is doing it, like implementing it, and then the other company saying, Yeah, we're implementing it, it completely looks different. You're like, really? It's like as if it's something that is still so new, and it is it is really it's a nice term to add to your description.

SPEAKER_06 39:45

It's it's very trendy right now, but yes, I like where you're going with this. What does it really look like? And that's not that's hard to capture.

SPEAKER_04 39:53

It's like the new uh version of innovation, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:56

It is, it would be, it would be an innovation thing for me to teach. And even do other countries even know what that is yet? I don't know. It's something I can actually even talk to some of them and ask, hey, is this something that your country knows? Do they do do you even know what that is? Do they know what it means? That if I am really accepting for my client to say no, and to for me to see all of that happy, relaxed, and engaged looks, topographies for me to know, okay, this is happy, relaxed, and engaged. And this is when I know this is my turn to do certain things. And if you say no to me for now, that I can take you saying no to me five times versus another one will say, Okay, he said no, then I'm not gonna do it for the whole day. It's like right, it's like, okay, um, but we're still going to do it because it's important, versus some other places will say it's not as important as long as they did say no because I actually prefer that there's no behaviors at all. Versus this one is saying it's okay to have a few behaviors as long as it's below the occurrence level of how I wrote it. It's different, it's it's extremely hard to teach for me to say, you know, to an African or to an Indian, you know, please do not speak anymore, and let's just use more punishment-based, and please do not yell anymore, and let's just use this instead. Please do not do this, it's just have the neutral tone instead. Where the parents are like, this is so new to me because if I quickly yell and scream, he listens.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Versus me saying, you know, if you do this, first you do that, then you do this, or I'm going to remove this or do that. It's gonna work. They have not implemented it. It's hard to really go into those countries and teach something like this of something they were they were doing for millennials centuries and say, now we're doing it ascend-based, and this is what it looks like now. And let's follow the treatment plan and the protocol and the BIP and all of that. But refrain from this, it's I think it is extremely difficult.

SPEAKER_06 42:13

Yeah, and I everything you just mentioned and just the array of different circumstances that you were commenting on, I think is very important to reflect upon because it it is we we run the risk of coming in. So, first of all, we come in with behavior analytic principles as they pertain to parenting. Parenting, which can have different styles across households, across cultures, and and people inevitably are looking for at people like us to give them the one right way to do things. And what you're highlighting here is there isn't one. And and that really speaks to the complexity of what we do. We send these young professionals called RBTs into those situations, and sometimes with maybe not sufficient training, and there's a lot of ground to cover there. So I feel like this is a good opportunity here to bring in the content expertise of a Dr. Scott O'Donnell. Dr. Scott, what give us your thoughts on Ascent here? It's a it's a nice, it's a beautiful concept, it's a fancy word. And then to Shubi's point here, how does it how does it really fit in? What does it mean?

SPEAKER_03 43:14

It's completely overrated, in my opinion. I know it's a buzzword now. I know everyone's I like it. Yeah. How's it really being done?

SPEAKER_06 43:22

You know, how's it really being implemented?

SPEAKER_03 43:23

Like, yeah, like I understand, I understand the concept, but do you really need assent from like a kid? Because if you ask them if they want to go to school, they're gonna say if like if you give them a choice, would you rather go to school or would you rather stay home? They're gonna say, I'd rather stay home. You know, so do we really need to stay home? I I like I like cooperation better. Yeah, I think you could get you could get cooperation from someone and not cons consent from them. Someone could be like, Yeah, I'll just yeah, I don't want to do it, but I will. You know what I mean? And and then I think that's that's more important because if you're getting if you're just getting Consent, like you know, all right, we'll we'll consent to a needle in your arm. Well, I don't want to get a needle on my arm, but I'll cooperate with you. I mean, I think that's a more important thing. Are you getting the cooperation from them? And then this comes back, always comes back to like every poor building that you're doing with a client. You guys talk about it so much. You had you had Carrie Carrie Maliko on. I think I was listening to that episode. That that episode was really good. And I was like, I was like, why I was wondering why I liked her so much, but she was a student of Dr. Hakenberg. So, you know, he's a he's a pretty popular professor there too, and a real EAB guy. And she was she was talking, you guys were talking about like basically that that rapport building, and yeah, I think we were we mentioned it too. We recorded an episode, we were talking about like how like in EAB we just we deliver 20, like 12 or 12 to 20 reinforcers. Just you know, that's part of our procedure that we do that. Do we do that in ABA? I mean, yeah, do we try to build a good rapport? Yeah, we try to, but do we sit there and count our behavior and like how many reinforcers we're delivering to the kids? Maybe we should, yeah, you know, because it is part of our experimental procedures. And you talk about bringing things out of the uh laboratory, you know, to the living room. It's like, well, if you're gonna bring stuff out of the laboratory, you still have to do those things that we did in the laboratory. You can't just say, oh, I built rapport. No, we measured it. We measured our procedure, what we were doing. You know, we measured what we were doing, how many reinforcers we were delivering. You know, I think that I think that's the way we should look at it. Instead of trying to get a cent, I think it's very confusing getting a scent because you could definitely get a cent from someone and they might not want to cooperate with you at all.

SPEAKER_06 45:38

I like that. You can get a cent, it doesn't mean cooperation or any form of collaboration. And then there is that, I mean, the the other word that gets thrown around for RBTs is pairing, right? These are all things that are somewhat related, related to reinforcement delivery, and access. And then, yeah, what does it really mean? Dan, you did that for a little while. I thought it was kind of cool. There was, I forget what level of programming we were working on, but you had RBTs counting their behavior in terms of what they were modeling. I forget exactly what it was. But yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think that and then and then even then we're gonna have to have a qualitative look at okay, so where are we now with this child? What when I walk in, what do they do? Uh what does that rapport mean, right? Does that mean that they now come over and sit right down and you know now we can run all these so-called trials or or these learning opportunities can be administered, and it's always a dance, right? Because a sense or rapport or instructional control one day doesn't necessarily mean that the next day it's gonna look the same. Often, if it does, you I mean, I don't know, you have to worry about rigidity or other things that might be going on. So it is, it's quite a dance, but I do like that a sense, uh ascent in terms of cooperation, collaboration. How are we exchanging what what level of reciprocity have we established in terms of me doing something, you responding, me providing some level of consequence, and so on?

SPEAKER_03 46:53

Is it possible? Oh, go ahead, go ahead, Dan. I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 46:57

Is it possible ascent is just maybe the pendulum swung too far on the adult directed side of things and having these random strangers come give kids or whoever instructions and then withholding all reinforcement until they followed these sometimes non-functional instructions to to hit some sort of you know data point on a data sheet that ascent is kind of the the other side of that pendulum of hey, let's somehow include the child and follow the child's lead to some extent where it's not I think kind of what you're saying is that yeah, it shouldn't be a hundred percent ascent. There are things that we all do and we all have to mask at times and we all have to do things we don't want to do for the most part. The flip side, we all don't have to do a hundred percent of the things we don't want to do, hopefully, for the most part. I mean, I guess some people do. So maybe since one end, compliance is the other end, and in the middle there is like the happy zone.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

Well, I we we used to measure is see, we used to measure like that in EAB. We used to measure latency to the to the food cup or latency to the dipper. So like you can measure this if you want to. I would say that would be a good idea to like I'm let's measure rapport here. Did we build it, or is that client approaching us? You know, or are they still or they still running away from us? But you know, I just would just wanted to add that there. And I think it really came from like we are a very experimental group of of people, like our origins is in experimentation. I think that it really came from that idea of informed consent that we would have to explain things when we were doing an experiment to our participants so that they would have to understand. And anytime we do ABA research, this is part of it that we have like you know a document set up and it's describing things that would be on their grade level or around their grade level or something like that in a plain way that they understand so that we can get informed consent. They have all the information and they can you know decide whether it's appropriate for them. But then it's a at the same time, if we're looking for that, we also work with groups of people who we know are suspect in their decision making because we can measure you know decision making and stuff like that. And you know, we might be working with someone who's got a brain injury, and we know that what happens with brain injuries, yeah, your your decision making is affected, certainly is affected by by that. So are we really getting consent from them? You know, we can present them everything, and then more likely you're going to get you know a consent and cooperation. More likely you get that from someone with a brain injury than you would get it from someone without a brain injury. They're just more likely to do it, you know, it has to do with so is it really informed consent? Because their decision is is is suspect now, it's been affected by their injury, right?

SPEAKER_06 49:45

Yeah, it becomes a matter of checking that box, right? The idea that it was the information to your point was presented to them. What level of understanding or actual consent is being derived? That's a that's an important question.

SPEAKER_04 49:58

So I had a question back with for Shubi, but before I get to that, Dr. Scott, did you I think I cut you off a little earlier. Was there something that you wanted to add or bring up before I pass back?

SPEAKER_03 50:08

Oh, I can't I can't remember.

SPEAKER_04 50:11

No worries. So Shubi, you mentioned that when I these are my notes. If it looks like I'm texting, I'm taking notes on things that people say. So you got so you're texting. He's texting. That's all you had to say, right? It's okay. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 50:24

He's like he's it's it's an AI chat bot. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 50:29

What's the next question? Yep. So you're a speech pathologist, had no real idea of what ABA was, heard that you could make some money, which I'm still trying to find out. I mean, let's get back to that later.

SPEAKER_06 50:39

The you can make a lot of money part. Anyway, continue, I digress.

SPEAKER_04 50:43

Well, actually, it does seem like you know, you can either make a lot of money or be happy, one or the other in this field. But anyway, so you got into the field, you got your BCBA, and I think you said within a year or a year and a half, you realized that you needed to start your own company. What what happened? What gave you that realization? Like, talk to us about why you had to start your own company within a year and a half.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Well, it first well, not my own company, but like company as in a location, but more of uh an online um educational okay. Yes, so that's what I I created just to just to kind of shift the way people are just learning, like study notes ABA, for example, when you take them as an example, it's great, amazing. However, when I was a student, I was not taught on the writing part, like the a lot of the what I will say to a parent, what I will say to a student, really how that looks like. How do I operational define this? Although, yes, it's taught to us in school, but uh having a refresher, a mind of, you know, when we really, when you by the time you graduate, you're done, you finish, you study, you pass. You really need to refresh your mind on really knowing how to do these things. Instead of going to get a feedback from a supervisor at your job, but you came with the full knowledge already, what it is expected of you. So what that's what really transpired me, like, really to be like, you know, let's just do something like this within a year and a half, because I was like, that's what I got. I was seeing when I was a tech BT first, then a RBT. It was the lack of all of those things. And I was like, you know what, how about we create something that is different that stands out? If another place is doing it, I don't even care about my business, about being like, I need to be number one, I need to have those clients. I I if they're doing it even a much more amazing job than me, so be it, go to that person because they are teaching the real deal of what I need to really know, what the field is really expecting of me, not just really uh passing the exam, but I need to walk the walk. That's what it is. And so what I noticed with something we did mention earlier, pairing. We used to kind of just say, oh, you need to build that rapport and pay rapport or pair with that client family, but then there was really no definition, no operational definition for it. Now I see companies in ABA, they are actually they have that in the program. They put pairing and they put what that looks like, and they put whatever it is, examples and non-examples of what that looks like. And I was like, yes, this is great. This is where we were five years ago. I did not have that written for me for me to know what that really entails pairing, really. And now analysts are really coming and they have that in the program as something they're monitoring. They're monitoring pairing, they're putting the BIP inside as a separate thing. They're saying, okay, this is the the antecedent for that, and they have it separate and they put each behaviors what that goes under, and then they have uh one where they put all of the mastered programs, all of the goals, they put them here, the ones that are under treatment there, the ones still in baseline here, they are really breaking it down and being more organized versus how it was three, five years ago, completely different. So we are getting somewhere with where the field is. People are saying the field is dying. I actually see the opposite, it's not per se dying. I feel like we just are shifting from certain things to making it better. But again, the ascent-based one, I feel like, yeah, we still need to get more uh training on this overall CEU's training on this because it's still kind of I think creating some kind of confusion throughout different companies based on what I've seen so far.

SPEAKER_06 55:17

And there is plenty of confusion to clear up. This, however, ends part one of our interview with Schilbert Abreyu. I really hope I'm saying that correctly. Or as we endearingly are calling her Shubi, please do come back for part two and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_05 55:37

ABA on top 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.