When a Lifeline Comes with Strings Attached
From masking to authenticity
I read the Metro op-ed about a mother pushing to bring private ABA providers into Pennsylvania schools. I want to speak not to her—because she’s already made up her mind—but to the parents who felt a pang of recognition while reading it.
Maybe you’ve seen changes in your child through ABA. Maybe aggression eased, communication looked easier, your home felt calmer. Of course that feels like a lifeline. Who wouldn’t want that for their family? It’s natural to cling to the first thing that seems to bring relief. It feels like hope finally after months or years of uncertainty.
But here’s what many of us learned the hard way: some of those gains come with hidden costs. Compliance is not the same as growth. Reduced “problem behavior” is not the same as peace. A child who sits still because they’ve given up fighting is not a child whose needs have been met. The surface may look smoother but underneath your child may be learning a dangerous lesson—that their real self is unwelcome.
And this is where the heart of ABA reveals itself: it often teaches forced masking. The whole method is built around rewarding children for suppressing autistic traits and discouraging them from showing their natural ways of moving, communicating or self-regulating. A child learns to perform what looks “normal” to others even if it costs them comfort, joy or authenticity. On the outside this can look like progress. On the inside it can feel like erasure.
Autistic adults who went through ABA as kids often tell us about the aftermath: exhaustion, mistrust, difficulty knowing what they want because they were trained to perform what others wanted. Some describe years of anxiety because they learned to mask their needs so well that they lost track of what those needs even were. Others describe it as a slow erosion of trust—the sense that love and acceptance had to be earned through obedience. That’s not the story you hear in glowing op-eds—but it’s part of the truth.
This is why so many autistic adults speak out against ABA. Not because they want parents to suffer, not because they don’t understand how hard it can be but because they know what the long-term cost feels like in their bones. They are the children those op-eds never quote.
So if you’re a parent wavering, if you’ve noticed your child withdrawing, if the “progress” feels fragile or comes at the cost of their joy—know that you’re not alone in questioning it. Other parents have stood where you are. Many chose to leave ABA behind not because they didn’t care about their child’s future but because they finally saw that the price was too high.
And here’s the hope: there are ways to support autistic kids that don’t depend on suppressing them into compliance. Ways that start from listening rather than controlling. Ways that see your child as a person not a project. That doesn’t mean giving up on structure or guidance—it means redefining what support really looks like. Sometimes it’s speech therapy rooted in respect or occupational therapy that builds sensory comfort or simply a classroom that adapts instead of demanding conformity. Sometimes it’s family learning to interpret a child’s communication differently, recognizing that behavior is always a message.
The lawmakers will hear plenty from the parents who insist ABA saved their child. They’re also being asked to pass HB 1121, a bill that would open school doors to private ABA providers. I’m writing for you—the ones who quietly wonder if saving might not mean what they say it means. You don’t have to reject what you’ve seen work; you only have to keep asking whose needs are really being met and what kind of adulthood you want your child to carry in their body and memory. If you’re asking those questions you’re already closer to real support than any op-ed will take you.