Episode 12 From Traditional ABA to Developmentally-Grounded Services

In this episode, we’re joined by Teresa McFarland, M.Ed., BCBA, Director and Senior Consultant for Thrive Collaborative, to explore her 22-year journey from traditional behavior therapy to Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) that prioritize relationships, motivation, and joy. Teresa shares how Thrive uses models like the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) and Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) to create developmentally respectful, family-centered services across home, school, and clinic settings. Thrive’s work centers on naturalistic, relationship-based therapy with a strong focus on parent coaching and collaborative care. Teresa also shares her professional evolution—from an undergrad volunteering with autistic children, to graduate training at Vanderbilt under Ann Kaiser, to building Thrive Collaborative as a space for affirming, play-based care.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hey everybody, welcome back to another one of our exciting vodcast episodes. Today we have Teresa McFarland who's joining us from Colorado. And she is with Thrive Collaborative, which we're going to spend some time talking about that and its many different name iterations over time and how that has really influenced everything that they're doing in the community. Teresa, thank you for coming on and talk with us today.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me. I'm happy to have the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Yeah. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about who you are, your journey, how you got to be an NDBI practitioner?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Yes. Yeah, I think this will probably resonate with a handful of you out there. And especially I've been practicing for over 22 years now. And when I first started, I was in undergrad and I was starting as a psychology major and knew that I wanted to work with children, but wasn't quite sure in what capacity. So from there, I saw a flyer just in our department around working with a child with autism or diagnosed with autism at that point. And so I contacted the family and reached out. And when I started working with that child, I was amazed. I was so intrigued with how their brain worked and just all the joy and interesting complexities and how they saw things. And so I was hooked. And I started a nonprofit group at my university to try to connect students, working with families in the community. So I did that for the four years that I was an undergrad. And we ended up working with many, many families and 40 to 50 students by the time I left. And so I was very motivated to keep figuring out how I can be a part of this community. And yet I had just stumbled onto it and worked with a few people through these volunteer opportunities, but nothing formal. So I ended up applying to a Lovos replication site at the time. That was where most of behavior analysis was working for kids with autism. So I was at a Lovos replication site in Ohio in Columbus and stayed there for two and a half years or so and really learned kind of the basics, the foundational pieces of a lot of behavior analysis. And we did pretty traditional ABA there, as you would expect. And I felt like I learned a lot. And pretty early on, I was recognizing there was a bit of a disconnect of what I was being taught to do with the children and the disconnect of their engagement and their motivation. And at the end of the day, their generalization, especially outside of the clinic, outside of pretty traditional discrete trial and to families. And that felt hard for me. So I decided to go back to graduate school I decided to go to graduate school, go back to school. And I realized I don't know much about education. I don't know much about the broader field of autism. And so I applied to the special education program at Vanderbilt, which also had an I applied it a few places, but I really fell in love with the program at Vanderbilt. And um, so I went and studied under Mark Woolery and Ann Kaiser and a lot of really incredible people in the field of autism. And they were practicing more from a special education lens. And I felt like, well, this is something I don't know as much about. Let's see if maybe the answers that I'm looking for are there. So I was there for quite a while. I was there for about two and a half years, and I was a mentee of Ann Kaiser. And so I worked on her naturalistic language project. And that was one of the first experiences where I started to delve into naturalistic teaching and realizing, oh, when there's motivation and children are using and wanting the things that are in their environment, communication comes naturally and we can support that. And so I worked as a therapist on her research projects and then a parent coach. And until I graduated, did my thesis with her and on naturalistic language teaching, and then was lucky enough after graduation to work with a company who was doing naturalistic therapy. So they were doing behavioral therapy, but with a naturalistic lens and did that for two or three years. And then we decided my partner and I, uh, we moved out to Colorado and I met up with Diane Osaki. She is one of the original clinicians that worked alongside Sally Rogers at JFK Partners. And so they did a lot of the early work on the what at the time was the Denver model. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So there was a whole group of really incredible clinicians working together here in Denver. And over time, after Sally moved out to mind and Diane kept practicing in the Denver area, that's when I moved to Colorado in 2010. And so she was running a nonprofit at the time. And I applied and started working as one of her program coordinators for the early childhood program. And I came at this perfect time. They were shifting from more open-ended behavioral therapy to using the Denver model, the ESDM model in earnest. And so we had trainings with Lori Vismara and of course Diane was supporting and consulting, and one of our other incredible SLPs, Helen Nitschka, was a part of the program. So we worked together for three or four years there. And then we split off and decided to start Thrive. So Thrive is a small independent company that provides behavioral therapy, but with a very developmental lens and relationship focused. And we use ESDM for our younger clients and we use many of the philosophies and tenets, even with our older clients, and we go into all the natural environments. So we do parent coaching and support some schools, and we also have a clinic. And that's how I landed here.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

What an incredible journey. I feel such parallels with you from starting out in the 90s, Iowa, when there was a word replication that would come out. And it was the same thing. I talked about it a lot, the little boy that I supported in a room in the office with a chair and his heels toys, and all he wants to do was get out of the door. And then he ran out one day and I went to find him. He was upstairs in this glorious playroom, just play full of toys. And I was just to the mom, can I can I go up there? Do I have to stay on the table? And she's like, I'm fine with it. If the the supervisor from Cardi, she was wonderful and was like, Yeah, you can teach anywhere. Great. And instead of running away from me, he would run to me. And I was like, I know I I can't difference. And I was 20 or 19 at the time. It was a long time ago. And so I feel that same very much journey of I don't know the science of ABA, but I'm not feeling this application or how it's applied in these contexts with these young children because it's feeling comfortable to me, but I don't know enough about development at that time. Yes. Yeah. Then went to school, and my master's was in Ohio State in applied behavior analysis with Tim Coop, but it was in the special education department. So it was very kind of a different feel. Right. And then kind of pulling that out, and then I went to work for Dr. Partington. So I got into verbal behavior and net in the net. And I was like, okay, a little closer to what I'm feeling. Like I'm alright, there are no whammies. Yes. I got into PRT and ESDM, and I felt and I'm like, okay, this is where I meant to be. I was very happy. Feels like we're doing things for the right reasons at the right time, in the right context, with the same incredible science. So I know I love that journey for you. And I love Anne. Yes. Amazing. She came on the NDBI Connections conference that we had in October. She came on lovely, and it was just incredible to listen to her share her knowledge about dose considerations. Yes. And Connie had talked about some of the work they did for Jasper and EMT. Yes. Learning more about these other ones over here. More exciting.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. She was an incredible mentor to learn from. And I think our focus was language, but even just the shift of thinking about what are kids motivated by, what do they want to communicate for? And it's such a difference in really thinking about communication more than only tacting and manding, and more about let's think about where's their motivation and all the different ways that as humans we communicate. So I learned so much from her and was really excited to be a part of the parent coaching piece because as we know, there's involvement, but it's what parents' involvement looks like and how that varies over time depending on the program is vastly different. So having parents involved in a in a meaningful way and them being the primary providers of the therapy in a very play-based way that didn't feel like therapy for parents. They still got to be mom or dad was just such an eye-opening experience.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Absolutely. And I appreciate that myself as the parents. Yes, absolutely. Me too. Yeah. You know, looking at that little Liam goes to preschool. Yeah. Maybe once a month might get a note from the SLP uh teacher. We're worked on L today. Right. Great. How would you like to support that? What? You know, when I look at that 25, 30 minutes he gets of speech once a week, not being generalized, not being carried over to the home because we have no clue what they're doing. And it keeps that that marble jar, but that's like one teeny marble of all of this that my husband and I could be filling with support in a routine-based, language-based, play-based kind of model to support. We can't do that. We don't know what that is. Right. Right. Ot SLP behaviors be oh, all of it. Absolutely. How incredible. Do you want to share what your dissertation was on? I'm curious.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I do. Oh, I sure do. Yeah. Yen and I um talked quite a bit, and I ended up doing a generalization project with parents. So I looked to see when I would do parent coaching on naturalistic language teaching. So I did, I taught EMT, which is enhanced milieu teaching, when I would teach those concepts and topics to parents, they they would be working with an at-risk SIB. So they had two children, at least two children. One of their children was, one of their kids was diagnosed, and then one was at risk, not simply by being a SIB, but they also would go through some at-risk assessments that I did. And so if they were considered at risk, then I would teach the parent these EMT strategies to use with their child who is at risk. And then I ended up after teaching the topics to see would parents generalize those skills to their child with autism. And then also, would they generalize skills to different types of routines? So maybe we would first teach and play, but then I would see can they generalize to book routines, a lot like ESDM. So it was really a generalization study to see not only can I teach the topics, which we we had pretty solid evidence on EMT that parents were able to learn EMT and they were able to do these strategies, but could they generalize to a child where they hadn't directly been taught? And then could they generalize to these different types of routines? So that was my thesis. And the results were the results were generalization didn't happen naturally, which actually was really helpful to recognize, but with one, for the most part, one or at most two booster sessions, they were able to generalize both to their child with autism and to different routines. So I think that that's such a great clinical application of we can't assume generalization happens, even when you have 12 weeks of solid coaching. The jump to generalization, whether it's activities or different children, is actually pretty different for a lot of parents. Children are different, as we know, different activities have different components. But I was very encouraged that one to two booster sessions directly with that child who hadn't been taught or the other routines was enough for parents to reach the criteria again.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

That's incredible. Yes. Uh, it's available, I think, on Vanderbilt's website, Kid Talk. Yeah, yeah, that's the EMT project. Yeah. Yes, I know. It's such a great project. Yeah, it's for me. Perfect. Learning about that. Yeah. If Ann has any books, I don't know that I have any books on EMT in my library. Right. Publish.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

I are there any that you're not not that I'm aware of. She's published many articles. So she does so much research, but I don't believe she's published a book. I think that would be lovely. I mentioned to Sally and Diane early on so much of the language pieces in ESDM mirror a lot of Anne's work and Paul Yoder's work and some of the naturalistic language. And I think EMT even takes it a little step further. So some of the knowledge and things that I learned with Anne, I apply in ESDM, but it's not uh as detailed or hasn't yet been as detailed in the model. And so I think having more resources around that would be lovely for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

I think so. I think you need to unpack that for us. What would some of those be? Right, right. I know they're redoing the manual and then summer possibly coming out. And then that's an exciting chapter was a big part of that scanning. So what would be some of those things that EMT brings in that can enhance ESDM from the perspective?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Yeah, I think I think ESDM gives the global, like they're they hit the mark globally. But I mean, what we find, I don't know what you find, but when I teach the workshops or when I bring people through certification for ESDM, the adult language piece and teaching multiple communication functions, those two pieces of fidelity are really difficult for adults. It's difficult for adults to change their language behavior, to not ask so many questions, to use declarative versus instructive or question other questions. And so EMT really goes into the depth of thinking about, and Sally talks about this in in the appendix, but thinking about how do we expand language, so language expansions and even going further back to how do we simply observe, and then what Anne would call mirroring. So basically watching and imitating. And then they kind of go through this hierarchy of really starting early on with observing and then imitating, and then we're starting to expand language. And then at the very end of training, then we're talking about prompting language. Whereas I think many of us, either behavior analysts or those that we're taught more traditionally, we go straight to prompting instead of really thinking about how to build motivation and how to join. It's a lot like the play partner decision tree that we talk about in ECM, but it's much more detailed from a language perspective and thinks about language in a different way rather than a behavior analytic way. Or um it just goes more in depth. So I think it gives more information on what does it mean when we're talking about language expansions? What does it mean to ask less questions and to prompt multiple communication functions? I think a lot of that is new vocabulary and new language for at least behavior analysts, and I think many practitioners and practitioners coming to ESDN.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Absolutely. And I agree, those are two of the areas that I tend to see from my trainees that come in through certification or that come from a behavior analytic background. Right. They're struggling with that. And it's like here's a visual job aid, here's what that looks like. Yes, unpacking it for them. Most of them are oh, yeah, it makes sense, but it's just in conflict with either what they were taught or no teaching, they're just and they're excellent behavior shapers. Of course, is how they're shaping those behaviors and the timing of when I heard a lot about the little ones that I often see who are not initiators, not given the chance to initiate. It's so adult-driven. Yes, uh speaker versus listener, if we think of a behavior perspective, exactly an opportunity because we're not little pauses, we're not scaffolding for them. Yes, and they're the kiddos that respond beautifully, but they never spontaneously initiate and don't because they don't give, they're not given the chance to. Yes, within like our framework for ESCM that we are looking for that to really make sure that this is co-constructed and that we're both equally what I would call a listener and a speaker, having these beautiful conversations, which is for me like star, it's a conversation. You have a setup, a theme, a top right, and then you kind of say goodbye, and then you wrap it up together. So it's this beautiful dyadic back and forth. Um, and that's very different from how I started out with adult-directed driving the bus, if you will, and the kid, which is kind of along for the ride, as opposed to the child and I are taking turns driving the bus and we're going on the same route together with the same sort of focus and goal. And that is so much fun and enjoyment and motivation that comes along on that journey compared to um the other journey before.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah. Yeah, I think the strategies when you when you go back to the science of communication and thinking about EMT and a lot of other naturalistic language interventions, they really think about how do we build motivation and space for kids to communicate. And and like you said, we're thinking about it. One, we need to do more, what we in in language intervention you'd call time delays, or we might call them expectant pauses. And so thinking about giving both just the actual space, like not adults taking three, four, five turns in a row, but giving space. And then also thinking about how do we set up children to be initiators rather than only responders and you know, the listener-speaker type dyadic that you were talking about, really thinking about that in a almost like a long game lens, because we're we're not as interested in the immediate, do they respond to my question, do they respond to my instruction? We're interested in teaching them to be active, engaged initiators. And that's a hard skill. And it takes a lot of time. And how we get there is typically through narration and contacting or commenting and building the foundation about talking what they're about what they're interested in and giving them space to talk about that and and let them know I see you, I hear what you're interested in, I want to hear what you have to say. And as adults, I think we're used to, even as a parent, we ask questions because we want to hear their voice. And and actually asking questions can be a punisher. Yeah, it can it can reduce kids' motivation and and so it is a more of a long game and a long process, but definitely worth it. And I think one that's a pretty big shift for most adults.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

I absolutely agree. And I really appreciate you saying kind of see them, hear them, and meeting them where they are, you know, as a professional doing this forever and now as a parent, you know, it's really important to kind of support everyone's individual preferences and economy and you know, ascent is a big topic for the BBA right now and mean it doesn't mean you don't put any boundaries or expectations. Of course, we're talking about cutlers, they need boundaries, right? They need expectations, yes, yes. I can't fathom a world where a three-year-old was allowed to do whatever they want anytime they wanted to. So I think it goes back to that for me, that understanding of um, I try to always talk about kind of child centered, because if I talk about that already kind of put some people off, oh, you follow the child around. No, no, that's child run. That's not what centered. Yes, so I feel like I spend a lot of time clearing up mis and misconceptions. Yes. We really got to the heart of it. Like we're trying to kind of meet that child where they are, understand them, learn with them, learn from them, right, in addition to teaching them. And I feel like sometimes professionals just I got a goal, I got an objective, I gotta get it to the payer for review, I gotta get the data. Yes. To me, it's how you get the data is more important than the data point. Like absolutely and it didn't generalize it's still a data point, it's not a data point, as opposed to setting up conditions in the environment that are really gonna get us that maximized, efficient, generalized learning that we're looking for. And so I really appreciate you sharing that viewpoint and that's yeah, I think I agree.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

I in those workshops, it's been so such a privilege to have those conversations with practitioners of their misunderstanding at times of ESDM of like, I thought it was child-led. Like we can have boundaries, we can the child, we're not following every whim of the child. And and so we have that conversation of developmentally, of course, and ESDM would also agree. So, thinking about, you know, I think Diane and Sally use the term more child inspired, but I think child centered is another great way to think about it. And so we're really thinking about what are the motivations and where where will learning happen most efficiently? Because if we can get that hook, as we talk about in ESDM and we can build motivation, then our learning tends to happen so quickly. And so spend the few minutes or even longer getting engagement and getting motivation and then learning will happen. It's it's so common for adults because I I think it comes from a place of caring of I want to teach, I want them to learn, I want to have the data to show their progress. And sometimes we skip all the early steps of yeah, but we need to build the we need to build the foundation and scaffold to even get buy-in and engagement.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Yeah. That's kind of really big picture kind of view versus that smaller one of when I was looking at ESTM when I kind of stumbled upon it, oh God, forever ago, um, I had stumbled upon it through PRT and then looking at um some of the social motivation research and the social attention that Jerry Dawson has. And I was looking at I was fascinated by the brain development and like, hmm, this is interesting. And then I got into the social motivation and Chevalier and colleagues kind of laid out a paper where they really define and break down this construct of social motivation. Yes. Orienting seeking right and I was like the layout going off and I was like okay really into this model because the entire model is kind of based on that I'm like this just makes sense from application that the whole thing is focused around attention and motivation. And if we don't have that yeah you can teach but how long might it take the trials contrived might you have to do as opposed to kind of setting up the conditions for that. It's like magic for me how fast children are learning. And yes no that's not scientific but I'm telling the difference of children's responses between style of teaching and this style for the majority of the children that I've seen is just day and night. It is you know what you do if you do something and you're motivated by it, you're more likely to do it again. You find it fun, reinforcing you're likely to seek it out. So that recipe for success is just built into NDBIs in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah. Yeah and I think NDBIs really focuses on how do we give context and meaning to learning which you know especially in a more discrete or traditional model sometimes we we take out the meaning for kids. And so without them seeing meaning there's it's hard to build motivation. So making it contextual to their interests and thinking about developmentally where are they and where are their phases of learning and that zone of proximal development. So yeah it to me it makes total sense and I and I also recognize it's a big shift. It was a big shift for me even though I felt even though I experienced felt and saw the data like oh this makes sense. It's pulling together so many fields of science that really create this great comprehensive effective model.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Oh I agree we can preach all day about that. Yeah yes what do you find in the community so community practice that you're in center, schools, natural settings in the home what does that look like and and what kind of challenges do you encounter kind of trying to implement and do you get pushback still or no people are becoming a little bit more open and receptive to this model?

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah so as far as ESDM there is such receptivity. I think you know many of the families that reach out to work with us come to us because they're looking for ESDM. And I think certain practitioners who are starting in the field there is there is a new awareness and it's starting to even be talked about in graduate programs. And so the model itself I think there's there's for the most part a willingness to learn more about it. We so in the homes the I find that when we work in homes families are typically very receptive because we are we're teaching in a way that replicates what their day-to-day looks like and we're asking from the get-go what do you value? What do you care about? What should we be supporting you all with? So rather than going in with an assessment that's standardized and saying okay this is the next target this child needs to learn we're really gathering information but then their programming is built on family values and culture and and what is developmentally appropriate. So it's a little different than 20 years ago when we were going into homes and we would come with a pretty scripted program for all kids. And so it being individualized it being play-based and play-based meaning naturalistic and so that means we're teaching in snack we're teaching during diaper change we're coaching them through difficult transitions into the car and we're teaching at the museum. So that has been welcomed and I think that's been such a gift to see families feel like oh this is what we're talking about. It was scary when we had a diagnosis and they said behavioral therapy but this I can get behind. And so again how you practice behavior analysis can look very different. And so that's been um very well received what I think is probably the hardest is there is, you know, this is pretty focused on behavior analysis or at least BCBAs but there's still in Colorado and I would imagine other states there's we have a reputation BCBAs don't have the most positive reputation and I think a lot of it is well deserved from years of going in and doing pretty traditional not as individualized programming. And although it was effective and although we really stayed true to our science I think we we didn't do as good of a job as we could have on collaborating. And so when we do experience pushback it tends to be in schools and it tends to be with providers who have had negative experiences with other BCBAs or other behavioral companies who come in and have a very strong opinion on how or what should be taught. And so rather than gathering information and having discussions and really truly collaborating they are shutting down teachers and insisting that things are done a certain way. And so that tends to be where where a lot of our time and effort is spent because it's it's meaningful to create true authentic collaboration in the community. And I think that takes work and sometimes we're starting from a place of closed doors because of the past and so we're really trying to work hard to open the doors and and get in and show them that it can look different and it can be much more co-constructed essentially like really evenly conversed on everyone's thoughts and ideas at the table.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

I love that I love that and and yeah I think that there are so many providers I think I'm just old so I always date myself like the young and I think the board has put out what 50% more than 50% of the certificates are certified within the last five years. Yes for me that's babies teaching babies right and I'm yes like brick and mortar building right a whole different kind of process when it was brick before they had online courses and online this and all of this technology that even worked into um but I still see some of that pushback we do it this way because it works. Well just because it works doesn't mean it should right just because you have science to make a change doesn't mean it's developmentally contextually meaningful to shape a baby into rolling over well possibly but why would I do that? Could it be a safety risk if they can't roll that in the middle of I have the science to do it. Yes mean it's appropriate timing to work that skill and to talk about kind of the developmental the big D and N DBIs that really focus on um developmental of learning I have a two year old right there um oh what's too uh near zero rates of tantrums for a two year old like that's what they do they're becoming they're learning about boundaries like that's not a realistic expectation or there's three and a half that's dude back and forth turn taking he'll be a good sport seven we're talking seven before that kind of skill develops so while we have these great kind of assessment curriculum guides that kind of help lay out developmentally maybe a projection not all of our kids follow that with their little profiles but to me it's the context again what's is what are they doing what's relevant and meaningful or socially significant we could say yeah but it's that second A in applied behavior analysis that I feel like is really kind of the analytical component. Just gonna check let's do the next thing what about behavioral costs? What about this skill is more meaningful and more impactful than all of these you're wasting time. This is not going to get you generalized efficient learning because they're missing prerequisite collateral right yeah that to me clinically is I don't see a lot of that happening in the field. Right. I don't know if you encounter that uh in your practice or community collaborating with other people outside of why would you do that? Yeah you can but right that big long term big picture view again.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Right, right to yeah yeah and I think it's it's a common it's difficult because we you know many of us were taught even when we think down to the details of like generalization, there's a common standard I think in most schools of 80% across three days. And so we we think about well why 80%? Does that make sense for this kid? And is three days enough for it truly to be fluent and mastered and so having conversations that are not meant to point out what's right and wrong but let's talk about what's helpful for this class and what's helpful for a kindergartner and what is even reasonable for this teacher to implement because we can have the the most beautiful science based, evidence-based plan. But if it's not something that the teacher can carry out then it's it's not worth thinking about or putting into place. And so really it does need to be a collaboration where we think about yeah beh developmental cusps and what the context looks like, what's most pivotal for this classroom, where are the pain points for that teacher. And I think the same applies to parent coaching and working with parents as well. And it's it's a it's an exciting discussion. There's no black and white answers about it. It's really just having conversations with people to figure out where do we start, where do we begin and then we bring our science and what we know and developmental knowledge into the conversation as well to create the most effective plans that are also socially significant and meaningful. Yeah which is so important for threat collaborative right we're collaborative very intentional yes yeah we we do I think there's so many as you and I were talking earlier there's so many incredible clinicians in the Denver area and many people have been doing this for years in different types of fields and and recognizing that we want to be able to collaborate. We want to just keep opening doors rather than us all being in our own silos and so thinking about we know the science of adult learning let's collaborate and let's build bridges instead of everyone working individually we know in ESDM with it being multidisciplinary that's the most effective for all kids. So that was very intentionally chosen when we started five of us started the business um 11 years ago and we thought long and hard about what we would call ourselves and why and that was the decision and before we got on recording we had talked about it was Thrive Autism collaborative change that do you want to unpack yeah yeah we started as Thrive Autism Collaborative and we in the beginning especially because many of us Diane and I are both certified ESDM trainers and many of us were certified in the model we and Helen who's one of our speech therapists was very well versed and very well known in the autism community. So many of us were kind of autism specialists and so we we decided to start the company and we thought this is mostly going to be our population that we work with and that's where we were most comfortable and most passionate about it. And over the last probably five to six years we've just realized ESDM and just a lot of our focus on collaboration and relationship building and trauma informed care and ascent building we really realized this isn't only autism. This isn't the only autism community that could benefit from this. So many different neurodiverse individuals could benefit. And so really expanding to think about yes we could work with this neurodiverse individual or of course we could work with this child or this teenager. And so realizing that we wanted to expand past autism and really think about more the neurodiverse community at large led us to think about should we still keep autism in our name? And especially for those that you know for some identity is really important and they they gladly hold being an autistic individual. And for others it's it's either a journey or something they haven't formally gotten diagnosis around or they have a different neurodiverse diagnosis. So we ended up shifting to Thrive Collaborative a few years ago keeping the parts that we thought were still most important. We want all beings to thrive and have a quality of life that's aligned with their values and we also really want to focus and kind of center our practice around collaboration with others. I love that's where we landed.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Yeah I'll put the website link for this but thank you more about it. Yeah do you have any resources that you would share or how you stay up to date on NDBI do you read the articles? Do you find things online? Right. What tips or questions would you have for people who are wanting to learn more about CM EMT and DBI in general any recommend.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

I think one so I heard this years ago and I can't remember the practitioner but when I was at a CEU conference they recommended going like signing up for alerts when journals would come out with essentially like their table of contents. And so for probably the last 15 years I get alerts for many of the journals that come out and I can at least see the the table of contents. And so from there I can decide oh this article would be really relevant or that's very interesting. I've never learned about that. So signing up on different journals that you would subscribe to and getting those alerts for their table of contents when they published I think that's a nice way to at least be aware what research is coming out and then you can select individual articles. As far as specific resources I think I I tend to be the black sheep of BCBAs where I do read quite a bit of behavior analytic articles, but I also encourage people especially with ESDM in mind to think more broadly. So even as simple as if you don't know much about development, go observe in a preschool, volunteer with other children in your neighborhood like getting to know development, observing in preschool, see what two year olds do, see what tantruming looks like for typical neurotypical three year olds. And so general developmental resources I also tend to encourage people to expand to learn about works that are related but maybe not behavior analytic in nature per se. So a lot of the books that Dan Siegel has written we learn a lot about and I encourage people to learn about motivational interviewing and stages of change if we're going to have any meaningful conversations with parents and teachers and community stakeholders. And of course I think all the ESDM articles are very helpful and supportive there's some very exciting research going on around group ESDM and parent coaching and so I stay up to date on those but really thinking about what aspects of my practice do I not know as much about and what do I want to learn more and what pieces are missing. And you know we probably eight or nine years ago at Thrive we we made a pretty big effort to learn more about ACT. So acceptance and commitment therapy and we've been doing more with motivational interviewing now. So trying to weave in related fields that just help bolster our practice and what we see as a need day to day from the work we do.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yeah that's such sage advice to just kind of step outside the box of there's some analytical articles but again need is to learn more about contextualized learning or motivation or attention right developmentally appropriate practice there are organizations that have developmentally appropriate practice guidelines such as get for free online you don't have to be a member just if you don't want to get out um a big book and I'm always looking for podcasts like is it yes podcasts are great yeah to kind of find out like kind of developmental norms our kids don't kind of follow those so realign it all and just really understanding what you don't know you go out and speak a bit more and it's absolutely okay for you to do that encouraged for you to do that. If you are that practitioner kind of flying solo definitely want to do that because you'd absolutely multi or into interdisciplinary team to rely on you know you don't have to be the expert in everything but I do think a human you know supporting another human you kind of need to understand who you are supporting basic autism, child development especially if you're like zero to four, right? Yes um that tiny two-year-old is not a smaller version of a four-year-old yes there so being able to understand that really puts that context into those goals and objectives aren't going to be the best thing for the child right now. And I don't know again that we kind of get that from our field. Yeah get that from over here in the dark side you know yes dark side of the light like go to the dark side like go over here okay they're friendly they'll welcome us and just bring it back over and use your science.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Yeah I think one of the best things we can do especially if you're a behavior analyst is really become bilingual. And so thinking about we have our terminology which is incredibly important and when other behavior analysts I will use it occasionally but more often than not thinking about what's the language that's shared whether I'm talking to a parent or a speech therapist or an occupational therapist. And when we don't speak from a bilingual perspective, I think we we shut doors that we're not intending to do. And so thinking about all the other fields that have information to offer us I think you know right now we've had many conversations our team at Thrive about gestalt language processing and how fascinating that is and that's really shifted even though I have a really strong language background that's shifted how I think about language and what early on we used to call kind of repetitive or ecolic language with no meaning now I'm seeing it in a totally different reference and frame of light. And so thinking about this is actually incredibly useful information to pay attention to from the child and how can we build their gestalt language processing system in a different way. So again it's not traditional it's not what most behavior analysts would think about, but thinking about what are other fields doing that could relate to our science and how can we integrate it in a way that really makes even more meaningful progress for kids.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

I love it. Oh it has been so much fun to chat with you today. Yes you too thank you again on I can't posted for the listeners that they can learn more about Thrive links to EMT and I love the thought of doing the alerts or do Google alerts as well I'm sure yes so that's a great recommendation I'm gonna do that for myself. Great so I can get those alerts that I do just pinged at me. I know it's much more helpful yep great recommendation. Oh thank you again Teresa I appreciate it thanks for the conversation welcome