You have a pen.  The ball point variety.  You know what it’s called, and what it’s for.  Imagine you are writing with this pen and something unexpected happens.  It runs out of ink.  Now it no longer works.  With most pens, you can not fix it.  Running out of ink for a pen is a permanent matter of status.  So our first thought might be, “Ugh!  My pen is out of ink.”  Now what?

Why the pen story?  Because something as mundane as a pen running out of ink can be a conversation of how teaching children mostly static information can undermine their ability to develop dynamic ways of thinking.  See the real world is far from static.  The real world requires a unique response. It’s dynamic.  To understand what dynamic is, just see it as the opposite of static.  There is no “right answer.”  Or better yet, no “right way” in the dynamic world.  Because in the real world, each and every moment is unique with unique conditions, contexts, and characters in play.  So the question becomes, “How do we know what to do?”

Well for typically developing children, knowing what to do in unique situations is their bread and butter.  Let’s face it, from the moment they are sitting up and crawling on their own, they are figuring things out. They are also intently watching and evaluating how we big people are figuring things out (for better or for worse).  Solving dynamic real-world problems is how the human brain was meant to learn.  And children are able to perceive every problem as an opportunity to figure out a solution. There is no idea in their mind that there is a “right way”, just a way that works.  Look closely at this trajectory in thinking, and we can see a future of developing flexible, creative, and adaptive minds; the desired and in-demand “soft skills” of the 21st century.

Now, what makes the real world dynamic is that it is unpredictable, uncertain, and to some degree unanticipated.  This is what makes life so exciting, challenging, and scary; the necessary ingredients for personal growth by the way.  But for kids not able to develop their dynamic thinking, where “soft skills” remain allusive or absent, a very rough and troubling road is in store for them.  They are the children who end up on the autism spectrum.  And when the unexpected thing happens, and their pen stops working, often they get “stuck”.

So back to my pen story. Your pen runs out of ink. The unanticipated moment has occurred. What do you do?  Do you ask someone for a pen?  Who do you ask?  If no one has one, then what?  Would you take a pencil instead?  What if a pencil is no good because you need to sign an important document.  Now what? Do you use your past memories and see where you can find a pen?  Maybe, locate an office or perhaps a store to buy one?  Maybe the document can wait, and you decide to sign it at home where you know you have a pen?

The point is, knowing what to do is not really a “skill”.  It is a by-product of how our brains have evolved to solve problems when no clear answers are present. When you are moving about the course of your day, it’s not as if there is someone hanging over your shoulder telling you what to do.  It’s not as if a baby needs instructions on how to escape from the crib.  We humans have an incredible knack of appraising the situation and deciding, not only if a course of action is needed, but what that action should be given the situation; like my pen example.  This is my big issue with ABA as a learning treatment for autism.  ABA can teach them to identify a “pen”, and identify its function, but ABA is not set up to teach what to do when a pen runs out of ink.  After all, there’s no answer to that.  It depends.  This hyper training in static information ends up going against what the brain is designed to do; solve dynamic problems.  So while ABA absolutely works in training children to give “correct” responses, and “right” answers, it fails in tapping into the full depth and dimension of dynamic intelligence unique to the human mind.  ABA will have you believe that modifying behavior is the goal, that learning static information is “treatment”.  If that is your goal, then ABA is for you.  But, if you would rather have a mind that shows flexible, adaptable, divergent thinking, and innovative decision making, then understand, ABA will never deliver, because that is not its focus.