Episode 49: The Other Side of the Table: When "Trust the Process" Becomes Babysitting (w/ Kim Lambert)

<p>We love to say we value lived experience. We talk constantly about assent, compassionate care, social validity, and person-centered treatment. We’ve gotten really good at saying all the right words. But are we actually listening?</p><p>When someone tells our field, <em>&quot;ABA helped me,&quot;</em> we lean in. But when someone says, <em>&quot;ABA hurt me,&quot;</em> or <em>&quot;ABA failed my family,&quot;</em> we immediately jump into defense attorney mode: <em>What kind of ABA was it? When did it happen? That’s not real ABA.</em></p><p>On this inaugural episode of our new series, The Other Side of the Table, Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero stop explaining and start listening. We sit down with Kim Lambert, a single mother from North Carolina recently interviewed in the New York Times Article about ABA and whose son, spent years inside the ABA system.</p><p>Kim pulls no punches as she shares the raw reality of navigating our field:</p><ul><li><p><strong>The &quot;Trust the Process&quot; Trap:</strong> Why telling exhausted parents to &quot;trust the process&quot; often just means &quot;hand over your judgment and stop asking questions.&quot;</p></li><li><p><strong>Graphs vs. Real Life:</strong> Why mastering &quot;touch the blue square&quot; at a clinic desk means nothing when a child still can&#39;t eat, sleep, use the bathroom, or leave the house without a 4-hour meltdown.</p></li><li><p><strong>The Fear of Telling the Truth:</strong> Why parents hide severe behaviors from BCBAs because they&#39;re terrified of being judged, blamed, or reported.</p></li><li><p><strong>From 30 Hours of &quot;Babysitting&quot; to True Independence:</strong> How moving away from cookie-cutter clinic quotas and into functional, parent-involved accountability completely transformed Rhett&#39;s future from institutional talk to sleepaway camp and public school.</p></li></ul>