Amber Weiss

I definitely attribute my success to my inner child. My greatest success story has been cultivating that connection and re-parenting my little self every step of the way, especially in ABA. I remind myself every step of the way that, like, why didn't I have that whenever I was a kid? That, for me, was another moment of, like, hey, let me reparent you. It's okay that you didn't have that whenever you were a little kid, because you have me now. Little Amber had the most challenging life possible. I had both my parents who were addicts, and my grandmother that raised me was a very, very, very strict religious person, and I just was raised in this environment with my parents where I didn't feel safe. By the age of 9, I was diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome, but was misdiagnosed and did not find out otherwise until adulthood. I had drug-addicted parents, I had a strict religious grandmother and aunt, I had every doctor in the world telling me something was wrong with me, but it was the wrong something. I had this big lens and this big false belief that I was not good, something was bad about me. Those little triggers show up every single day as an adult, because until we work through that stuff, it's just gonna keep showing up in different ways, in different facets of our life, until we look at it. Connecting with my inner child has been a way for me to really look at that stuff and face my triggers with appreciation instead of reactivity. It has given me countless opportunities to connect with the younger aspect of myself and Re-parent her along the way. By consistently doing this for myself, I'm the most successful I have ever been.

The best career advice I ever received was that there comes a time when you graduate from being an RBT and you transition into the role of being a leader. And when that time comes, you really have to separate yourself as a leader. It basically meant, like, hey, you know, these RBTs are here to get led by you. They are not your friends anymore. Even though they are friendly people and they are great people, you have to separate the two, so that they will take that direction and they will take that initiative based off of the feedback that I give them. Learning how to take that feedback and implement it was a challenge, but I definitely would say that was the strongest one. That and leaving your personal stuff at home.

Don't be scared to ask questions. Do not be scared to ask questions, do not be scared to be silly. In this field, the sillier that we are with these kids, sometimes the better we are for these kids. You'll have a situation where a client might exhibit a maladaptive behavior in the form of self-injury, say it's an accidental self-injury, and they bumped their head because their eyes were closed while they were trying to walk. Yes, it's still a dangerous behavior, but right now, what are they experiencing? They're probably embarrassed. They're probably like, oh my gosh, I just ran my head into a pole. That's embarrassing. All these people just saw it. So don't be afraid to empathize with your client and normalize the situation, even if you have to be silly to do it and bump your own head dramatically to make them see that everyone has situations. How can you empathize with that in the moment? Whatever it looks like. If it's being silly, be silly. If it's getting excited, then get excited. My other big piece of advice is please read the procedures. Read, read, read, as much as you can read in the field. Stay up to date on everything, from your clients' programmings to the advancements in ABA.

Some of the biggest challenges that I would say, like, overall, under the umbrella are denials to insurance claims. Now, while this does not necessarily impact the RBT specifically, it does impact the clients and the parents drastically, which in return does impact the technician. We're one of the only clinics in the Houston area that does not have an age limit to treatment. So, you can be 18 or you can be 65, or 45, or 2, you can come and get services with us. But it's just getting thinner and thinner on that age limit, because insurance is not wanting to pay the way that they used to. And people that desperately, desperately still need services are put on notice of their last 30 days because of insurance denials, and it's sad but this is a stark reality in ABA, it is literally happening everywhere.