A Word From One Of Our Therapists:
When people ask me what it is I do for a living, for some reason I have the hardest time explaining my job. When you say, “I’m an ABA therapist” usually no one knows what that means. It shouldn’t surprise me that no one knows what that means, since I have such a hard time defining it myself. I guess the easiest explanation for what we do, is that we work with children with developmental delays to reach their goals, but, what it really means to be an ABA therapist is so much more than that. What it means to be an ABA therapist is different for every child we work with. For some kids, it means we help them find their voice, expand their language, and successfully communicate their needs. For other kids, we help them with socializing, Potty training, or food intervention therapy. Every child’s needs are vastly different, and every therapist’s role adapts to what is needed. In this job, every day is different. On any given day, an ABA therapist is a problem solver, a collaborator, a data analyst, an interpreter, a listener, an innovator of new ideas, a counselor, an entertainer, a support system, a motivator, a teacher, and so much more.
This job is more than can be explained in a quick “what do you do?” conversation. Being an in-home ABA therapist means you work crazy hours, you drive more than you sleep, some days are hard, other days are harder, and some days you question every moment of your life that brought you to this job that challenges you on every aspect of who you are. Then you realize that the hard days are far outweighed by the days that bring tears to your eyes because of how much good you are creating, how much progress you see, and how much the lives of the children you work with are being impacted by your greatest efforts. You realize that being an ABA therapist means that you take nothing for granted, and you understand the great complexity which goes into the subtlest of tasks. You love the children you work with, and you are part of a team who is your family, and part of the family of a child whose life is being made better because of you. You are loved, smiled at, hugged, and appreciated everyday by some of the most amazing kids in this universe. Our therapists are genuine, kind, patient, and some of the best people that I am proud to call my friends and my colleagues. That’s what it means to me to be an ABA therapist.