A few years ago, I evaluated a three-year-old with a heart murmur alongside an autism diagnosis. The parents were completely paralyzed. Every basic parenting moment, buckling into a car seat, a normal transition, a simple 'no', got met with total hesitation. I did not need to ask what was holding them back; I could see it immediately. Two fears were stacking on top of each other: fear of letting their child cry because of the heart condition, and fear of what was still allowed now that autism...

Part 1 of 3 in our series on rapport across the ABA team. When people think about rapport in ABA therapy, they usually think about the relationship between the RBT or BT and the client, and that relationship absolutely matters. But it is only one piece of a bigger picture. A well-rounded therapy approach depends on rapport across the entire team: the BCBA with the parents, and the BCBA with the BT. When either of those relationships is weak or assumed rather than earned, therapy suffers, even...