The How to ABA Podcast

Effective parent coaching starts with connection, not just teaching behavior strategies. We're joined by our friend and fellow BCBA Leanne Page, founder of Parenting with ABA, to explore how building strong relationships with caregivers can lead to more meaningful collaboration and better outcomes. We discuss why soft skills are essential for BCBAs, especially when navigating challenging parent coaching sessions. Leanne shares her CARES framework, which helps clinicians structure conversation...

Skills-Based Treatment (SBT) is typically implemented in one-on-one clinical settings, but its principles can also help us create more effective classroom behavior plans. The key is making those principles practical for teachers and support staff. We explore how shifting our focus from reducing challenging behavior to teaching meaningful skills can make a real difference for students. By prioritizing safety, dignity, and joy, we can build behavior plans that support functional communication, ...

When it comes to behavior reduction, collecting more data does not always lead to better clinical decisions. We need data that help us understand what behavior is communicating, evaluate whether our interventions are working, and determine what to do next. We talk about why detailed tools like ABC data can be valuable for identifying patterns and possible functions, but are not necessarily meant to be permanent data systems. Once we have the information we need, it may be time to simplify. We...

Data guide our clinical decisions, but collecting more data doesn’t always mean collecting better data. The right measurement system should give us meaningful information without interfering with teaching or taking our attention away from the learner. We explore how to choose ABA data collection methods based on what we actually need to know and the decisions those data will help us make. We cover rating scales, frequency, duration, interval recording, probe data, and trial-by-trial data, alo...

Data-based decision making is essential in ABA, but data alone cannot tell us everything we need to know about a learner. Sometimes the numbers point us in one direction while our clinical judgment and what we’re observing suggest something different. We talk about why data and clinical judgment may not always align and what we should consider before making changes to a program. Context, treatment integrity, motivation, environmental changes, measurement limitations, and the level of support ...