What Now? Moving Beyond ABA
What neuroaffirming support looks like, the questions to ask about any programme, and where to learn more, in Ireland today.
Neurodiversity Ireland, October 2026
PDF, 8 pages, 192 KB
Anti-ABA
What is ABA?
Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) focusses on the function of behaviour and the compliance of the child (achieved through rewards or negative reinforcement) and teaches children to mask their pain and distress leading to poor mental health and increased suicidality.
Behaviour-based compliance approaches are fully rejected by the autistic community and the neurodiversity paradigm, in part as they share their origins with gay conversion therapy. Ultimately the end goal of Applied Behaviour Analysis is an autistic child (or adult) who is ‘indistinguishable’ from their neurotypical peers.
Compliance-based behavioural methods (including Positive Behaviour Support or PBS and ABA) have been shown to have significant, negative, long-term effects on people’s mental health.
At Neurodiversity Ireland we advocate, every day, for neuroaffirming values and practices to take the place of harmful, out of date programmes. That means approaches that do not try to make a child look or act less neurodivergent, but that support them to be their authentic self.
If you have stepped away from Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) or other approaches that did not feel right for your child, you may be asking: what do we do instead? The answer is not another programme. It is a different way of being with your child, built on safety, trust and respect.
In other words: kindness and humanity. Unconditional positive regard. Validation. Presuming competence.
This guide sets out five foundations, the questions to ask about any programme offered to your child, and some good places to keep learning. The foundations are in no fixed order, and each one supports the others.
Safety and Trust Come First
Regulation first. Relationship always. Nothing else works until a child feels safe with the adults around them.
- Offer co-regulation. Children learn to regulate through steady, connected adults, not through being told to stop.
- Build relational safety. Trust grows when a child knows the adult is on their side, every time, including on hard days.
- Reduce unnecessary pressure. A nervous system in overdrive needs safety, predictability and autonomy before anything else.
Communication in Every Form
Presume competence. Your child understands more than they may be able to show, and deserves to be spoken to and with, not about.
- Take a total communication approach. Speech, gesture, sign, pictures, writing and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) all count, and can be used together.
- Learn about Gestalt Language Processing (GLP). Many Autistic children learn language in chunks or phrases, sometimes from songs or shows, before breaking them down. This is a natural way of developing language.
- Treat AAC as communication, not a reward. AAC should be available to your child at all times, never taken away or earned.
Autonomy and Consent
A child’s “no” matters. When a child says no, that no is information, and refusal is self-advocacy.
- Put your child in the lead. Follow their interests and areas of strength. Child-led learning is how children learn best.
- Ask before you act. Check in before helping, touching or changing a plan, in whatever way your child communicates.
- Respect fluctuating capacity. What your child can do on one day may not be possible on another. That is not defiance.
Unconditional Positive Regard
Your child does not have to earn your warmth, their comfort items, their interests or their communication.
- Step away from sticker charts and token systems. We reject rewards and punishments as an approach, including in compliance-based Positive Behaviour Support.
- Validate feelings. Name what you see and accept it: distress, joy, overwhelm. Feelings are not problems to be extinguished.
- Celebrate who your child is, not how closely they match what is expected of other children.
Example
Instead of asking “How do I stop this behaviour?”, ask “What is my child telling me, and what do they need to feel safe?”
This only works if you are willing to change what is around your child, not just expect your child to change.
Environments That Fit the Child
The question is never “how do we make the child fit?” It is “how do we make the environment fit the child?”
- Start with the senses. Learning rests on the sensory systems, including interoception (sensing what is happening inside the body). When those foundations are under strain, nothing built on top of them holds.
- Use Autistic SPACE as a checklist. Developed by Mary Doherty et al, it covers Sensory, Predictability, Acceptance, Communication and Empathy: across the physical, processing and emotional needs of Autistic people.
- Build predictability. Knowing what comes next lowers the load on a child’s nervous system.
Questions to Ask About Any Programme
Before you agree to any programme, therapy or intervention for your child, in school or outside it, these questions can help.
| Ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Were Autistic or neurodivergent children or adults involved in designing this programme? | This is the most important question. Autistic adults can tell us what is and is not helpful. International disability law requires disabled people to be involved in decisions that affect them. |
| Would we do this to a child who is not neurodivergent? | If not, ask why it is being done to your child. |
| Who has assessed the impact on my child’s human rights? Does my child agree? | Children’s rights come first and foremost. Your child’s view counts. |
| Has my child consented? | Consent should be embedded in everything done with a child. |
| Does it improve my child’s quality of life, and how is that measured? | Success should be measured by your child’s wellbeing, not by how compliant or “typical” they appear. |
| What does it cost, and how accessible is it? | Is it free and open, or hidden behind paid certification and “accreditation” courses? |
Asking these questions is not an attack on anyone. No one doubts that people working with children want to protect each child’s integrity, dignity, autonomy, safety and personhood. When we know better, we are duty bound to do better.
Why This Matters
We name harmful practices for one reason: to end harm. Too many neurodivergent children and young people carry the weight of feeling, implicitly and explicitly, that they are different and less. For some, that weight becomes unbearable. Ending harmful practices will save lives.
Our children deserve a childhood filled with joy, play, confidence, company, carefree fun and self love.
If you are worried about your child’s safety
If your child talks about not wanting to be alive or about hurting themselves, take it seriously every time and speak to your GP or your local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) as soon as you can.
If you believe your child is in immediate danger, call 112 or 999, or go to your nearest emergency department.
The Irish Reality
There are signs of change in Ireland. The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has published NCSE Relate, a regulation-first approach to reframing behaviour and supporting student engagement and participation. Its key principles are:
- regulation first;
- relational safety;
- unconditional positive regard;
- removing positive reinforcement;
- identifying stressors, including environmental stressors.
You can share Relate with your child’s school as a shared starting point. Neurodiversity Ireland is calling for the Relate Framework to be made statutory and funded, so that every school can put it into practice.
Change also starts with children themselves. Children are not born with bias. The LEANS (Learning About Neurodiversity at School) programme, for children aged 8 and upwards, helps classes understand all brain types and ways of being. If we want to break stigma, we need to start from the ground up and teach from an early age that there is no one normal, typical human way of being.
Keep Learning
There are now, thankfully, too many neuroaffirming voices to mention. Many share their life’s work for the greater good, often free of charge. A few good starting points:
From Autistic and neurodivergent adults
- Untypical by Pete Wharmby: how the world is not built for Autistic people, and what we should all do about it.
- Wonderfully Wired Brains by Louise Gooding: an introduction to the world of neurodiversity, written for children.
- The Neurodiversity Smorgasbord by Sonny Jane Wise: a way to understand human differences beyond diagnostic labels.
- AUsome Training.
On communication
- Finding Charlie’s Voice, and the many practitioners who share their knowledge of Gestalt Language Processing, AAC and all things communication through their social media, courses and services.
On neuroaffirming education
- Jane O’Neill, Director of Thrive Hub at Neurodiversity Ireland and a former autism class teacher, whose talk Beyond Compliance on child-led, neuroaffirmative teaching is on the Education page of our website.
- Siobhán Uí Dhalaigh, NeuroNurturing: a pioneer in neuroaffirming education practice and child-led learning, drawing on the work of Carl Jung and Alfie Kohn.
- Maria Montessori, whose child-led approach laid foundations many of us still build on.
- Play Spark, and Autistic SPACE by Mary Doherty et al: two of many neuroaffirming frameworks we share.
Follow Neurodiversity Ireland on Instagram and Facebook, where we share neuroaffirming practitioners and practices that support all ways of being, and visit neurodiversityireland.com for more guides on PDA (Persistent Drive for Autonomy), burnout and school distress.
Where to Find Support
- Your GP can refer to CAMHS, your local Children’s Disability Network Team (CDNT) or Primary Care services.
- Neurodiversity Ireland supports families of neurodivergent children with speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, PDA-informed supports, AAC and family wraparound supports. We also run a support WhatsApp group for parents and carers of PDA children. To find out more, contact us.
info@neurodiversityireland.com
This guide is for general information and does not replace individual clinical advice. Neurodiversity Ireland, Registered charity RCN 20206465.
