@WeMarchOn I worked with autistic people for some years. I can promise you that no one was trying to 'fix' them and no one thought that autism was anything other than a neurological disorder which was beyond medical science to change. Yes, knew beyond doubt that autism meant the brain was wired differently and we had many team meetings where we tried to imagine how it might feel for a particular child, what it was they experienced when they did interact iwth the world so that we might have a better understanding of how to present the therapy more effectively. No one was trying for a cure or a fix, we knew that was impossible.
If you have a small child who is basically not interacting at all with the world, except to climb furniture, perhaps, and has no speech and apparently no understanding of language, who spends the day climbing and masturbating, despite being 4 years old, what do you do? Are you suggesting that that child should just be left to do that? That nothing should be attempted? That their world cannot be improved in any way? That they do not need to learn how to feed themselves, speak, understand language and writing, that they should be left to 'stim' as much as they like despite them weeing on the carpet and stmming to the exclusion of food and drink?
The ABA I was involved in was for children and helped them to understand concepts, learn to read and write and all sorts of things. Most of the very young children I worked with did at last go to mainstream schools and managed there pretty well, something they simply wouldn't have been capable of without the therapy. Perhaps some of them might have got to mainstream school in much more time, grown into it in a way, developed those concepts and skills etc left to themselves, but they'd have been in primary at age 15, whereas most of them attended primary by the time they were 7 or 8. I think that's a therapy worth consideration. Every session was geared specifically to that child and whatever stage they themselves were at, so we didn't try to teach them the concept of a picture of a thing having a relationship to the reality of that thing before they had grasped that things have specific names which they could recognise either through sound or through some other means.
Alas, I have moved miles away from that area now so don't know how those children have managed since, but I know that a lot of those children learnt to use cutlery, use the loo, indicate their needs, and much much more, through the use of ABA.
Did you know there was a very large electronics company whose Head of R&D was autistic? I met him when I was at University. His job was perfect for him.
I have read many books by Temple Grandin.
Have you read The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon? Her son is autistic, and she imagines a world where autism is celebrated and particular talents which are common in autism (the noticing of small details in large patterns for instance). I loved that book because I wanted a world like the one at the start of the book and it gave many parents of autistic children much hope that we could build a world which did that. Obviously, we haven't.
Yes, I want a world where autistic people, where all people, are celebrated for their own individual abilities and talents. That world does not include children being left to stim at the age of 40+ because no one has bothered to try to help them understand the world around them and find ways to interact with it meaningfully.
One of the saddest memories of my life is of a man I used to work with about 30 years ago. His son was autistic, about 40 yo back then. The son had been in an institution for 20+ years, where they just drugged him to keep him quiet. His parents visited him every week but he didn't respond to them or anything else. Nothing. What was going on in that lad's life? When his parent 'put' him in the home he had become violent but was still unresponsive to anything much; they couldn't manage him any more,he beat them up, he broke the furniture and the windows, his mum had a breakdown. What was done back then, 50 odd years ago was to drug them into quiescence and leave them in a chair by the window in an institution. That's not really an answer is it?
If an autistic person is able to live in the world on their own terms and has brought themself to that point without help rather than having a therapy of some kind then hats off to them. But I would respectfully suggest that not all autistic people are able to do that. ABA has helped a lot of autistic people, and almost certainly still does, but what do I know?