Can ABA Be Neurodiversity-Affirming? Assent, Masking & Individualized Care

What does neurodiversity-affirming ABA actually look like in practice?

In this episode of Acorns to Oaks, Kristine Dickson and Sarah Morrow continue a conversation that does not always have easy answers.

They talk about assent, masking, stimming, inclusion, individualized goals, developmental assessments, insurance requirements, and the difference between teaching skills that genuinely improve someone’s life and targeting behaviors simply because they fall outside what is considered typical.

The neurodiversity movement has pushed behavior analysts to take a harder look at some long-standing practices, and Kristine and Sarah see that as a good thing. Listening to autistic people and families has helped the field think differently about consent, quality of life, independence, self-advocacy, and whose goals treatment is really serving.

At the same time, families may still be dealing with significant challenges around communication, safety, independence, school, relationships, or daily life. Those needs do not disappear just because the larger conversation around autism is changing.

That is where much of this episode lives: in the space between those two realities.

Kristine and Sarah also talk about the practical side of providing care, including the pressure providers face when insurance companies require standardized assessments, deficit-based documentation, and specific definitions of medical necessity that do not always line up neatly with individualized or neurodiversity-affirming care.

The question is not whether ABA should ignore criticism or abandon evidence-based practice.

It is how the field can keep learning, keep listening, and keep getting better at supporting the actual person in front of us.