Here is the second part of a training I did at the Rebecca School, as a prologue to a case presentation on a kid who came to our school, and then was struggling as a result of what we call “ABA Detox.” This is the state of affairs where a kid who has become used to being told, “prompted”, about everything all day long becomes paralyzed and anxious when he is given the freedom to think. Kids detoxing from ABA don’t recognize that they have a right to have a thought, or they don’t even recognize that they have a thought on which they could act.
In this second part of the training, I talk about why parents go along with ABA, despite their misgivings, and then, finally leave ABA for more developmentally appropriate, effective, respectful treatment.
Dr. Gil Tippy's Child Development Blog 
This makes me sad for children confined to tables everywhere…this description of what happens to the parents/child in the first years of ABA exactly describes our experience. We had spectacular changes in the first year, then we came to realize that the really important things were missing – attachment, initiative, creativity, problem solving, engagement, emotion sharing, interactive play…and the ABA people had no answers for how those things might develop. We flipped her over to a DIR program, and all those things began to emerge. The first change we noticed with DIR was that she was a much happier, much less stressed child.
Thanks for saying what is politically incorrect to say. I keep wondering why so few people seem to see what we saw. Is it possible that some children can become divergent and engaged thinkers while doing ABA, or in spite of it?