The Healing Side of ABA with Matt Woodard, BCBA, LBA and Dr. Jennifer Shannon

The Healing Side of ABA: How ABA has grown to focus on providing possibilities, leaving its “tough love” side behind.

In the latest episode of “In the Know,” child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Shannon has a straightforward and open conversation about what ABA looks like today with Matthew Woodard, who is a BCBA (board-certified behavior analyst) and founder of Basics NW, an active ABA practice in Washington state. Woodard is also the parent of a young child with autism. 

Through this conversation, these two colleagues and experts talk frankly about what did not work well in the earlier years of ABA practice, what has changed over the last decades, and how the current practices of ABA are geared more toward building strengths and finding possibilities for children with autism and other developmental and behavioral differences.