Really nice description. Take out “low key” and you’ve painted a great picture of how I feel about my daughter.

The progress made during her kindergarten years was remarkable. I could put it down to a number of things. A fantastic ESW who lasted the whole 2 years. A great kindy in an old building with high ceilings, plenty of sunlight and room to run around and squeal in. Understanding kindy teachers, accepting of diversity in their class.

However one thing more than any other must be given credit for my daughter’s development: the amazing little girl herself.

I think there are lots of misconceptions about ABA and my experience of Special Education speech therapists and early intervention teachers is that their advice on ABA is not that well informed. The early intervention teacher allocated to my son refused to come and observe an ABA session for example but was still quite happy to be negative about it.

We have only ever paid for 10 hours a week of therapy (most families that I know do a similar number of hours), and so is not as intensive as many believe.

Doing ABA and interacting with and supporting our child are not mutually exclusive. As parents we still engage as much as we can with our son, but find that the ABA therapists provide support and advice that we would otherwise be without.

The idea that ABA means a child locked in a room doing countless repetitive drills which he hates every minute of is totally incorrect.

During our ABA sessions our son has playdates, goes shopping and plays with a therapist’s pet dog to name but a few activities. These were all areas that we needed help with - he didn’t interact with other children, going shopping was a nightmare and he was terrified of all dogs.

While he was a bit reluctant initially as he was asked to do things he found hard, our son now really looks forward to the sessions and the therapists are part of our extended family.

The research on ABA is divided, and while you found a study that wasn’t positive about ABA there are many more that are. Ultimately I think it is a really hard area to study as autistic kids are all so different. What I would say to any parent with a newly diagnosed child is to become fully informed on all the options yourself and don’t necessarily be influenced by special education staff who are generally very anti ABA. Instead find some parents and talk to them about what worked.

The real problem is of course that parents get so little support and educational provision for autistic kids is so poor. Your study refers to ABA programmes being compared to ‘autism specific nursery provision’.

If we had been offered autism specific early childhood and school education maybe we wouldn’t have done ABA, but found that there was little alternative.

While my son does go to a couple of therapists each week (an OT and a weekly social skills group) I arrived at a similar place to you with regards to persuing lots of things. I realised that when I am feeling anxious and pressured, this does not help my son one bit. So I decided against several therapeutic options because I could tell I was getting overly worked up about them. Like me, my son is much more responsive when he is not under pressure. He seems to have a psychic sense of when i am trying to get him to do something ‘for his own good’ as opposed to a more natural enjoyment, and he resists accordingly.

I do find there has been a place for getting help from therapists, but I also want to excape the idea that it is all up to me to make things work for him. He seems to take big steps when he is ready.