Good ABA Should Make a Child’s Life Bigger

The first person I ever tried to change using applied behavior analysis was myself.

Thankfully, I was a reasonably willing participant - although consistency was not always my strongest skill.

Before I worked professionally with children, I spent a year working with Dr. Yitzhak Chakiris in Chicago to apply behavioral principles to my own life. I wanted to understand a question most of us face: How do I actually become the person I say I want to become?

How do I study consistently? Master a difficult skill? Stay with a goal after the initial excitement fades and the couch begins making a very compelling argument?

I learned to look more objectively at my own behavior. Instead of simply saying, “I need more discipline,” I could ask better questions: What is getting in the way? What in my environment is shaping what I do? What would make the next step easier? What should I change when my first plan stops working?

That was liberating.

Motivation no longer seemed mysterious. I could take a large goal, break it into achievable steps, study what was working, and keep adjusting.

ABA made me more audacious.

I had always loved music, even though there was not much music in my home growing up. I especially loved the experience of connecting with other people through a song. As a teenager, I decided I wanted to become a professional musician.

There was one small problem: I had no idea how.

I did not know adults who had built careers in music. There was no clear road map. But I had learned not to be intimidated by the full distance between where I was and where I wanted to go. I only needed to identify the next step.

Together with my childhood friend Mordy Kurtz, I eventually built Rogers Park Band, a nationally touring musical act that helped support me through graduate school.

ABA did not teach me music. It taught me how to approach something difficult without being overwhelmed by the fact that I could not yet do it.

ABA made my life bigger.

Later, while studying with Dr. R. Douglas Greer at Teachers College, Columbia University, I learned another idea that deeply shaped how I think about teaching:

Behavior follows reinforcement.

We move toward what has become valuable to us.

A child may know how to read but still avoid books. A child may know how to speak but not seek conversation. A child may know how to play without yet enjoying the company of other children.

So teaching cannot stop with the question, “Can the child do it?”

We also have to ask, “Has the child found a reason to want to do it?”

That is what the magic of Friendship Circle showed me.

Our teenage FriendMakers did not arrive with formal clinical training. In fact, they were specifically told they were not there to be teachers or therapists. Their job was to build a real friendship, have fun, and show up consistently.

And somehow, that changed lives.

The FriendMakers became the magnet.

A child who might resist a classroom, a demand, or a structured activity would move toward a teenager who made them laugh, noticed what they cared about, and genuinely wanted to spend time with them.

I have seen some of the happiest children of my life in the halls of Friendship Circle, drawn toward perhaps the most powerful magnet of all: human connection.

That is the vision behind FriendshipABA.

We want to take that magic and create the conditions for it more intentionally. We want to strengthen the friendships our teens build at Friendship Circle and extend that same joy, connection, and possibility to children who need additional teaching and clinical support.

ABA gives us the science to understand what helps a child move forward.

Friendship gives the child a reason to want to.

When those two come together, we are not simply teaching behaviors. We are helping children gain access to more communication, more independence, more relationships, more enjoyment, and more opportunities to contribute.

Every child has something to give.

Good ABA helps open the pathway.

Because the true measure of ABA is not only what a child can do during therapy.

It is how much more of life the child can now enter.

Good ABA should make a child’s life bigger.