How Motivational Interviewing Makes your ABA Therapy More Effective

How Motivational Interviewing Makes your ABA Therapy More Effective

If you have heard about Motivational Interviewing, you are probably wondering “How can Motivational Interviewing, make my ABA sessions more effective?”

And I am here to give you some information that may help you see the connection between ABA and Motivational Interviewing.

We all know the effectiveness of ABA. But parent’s inability or refusal to use the same strategies we use during our sessions can make it seem like ABA Therapy is not effective. And sometimes we even start doubting ourselves as professionals because we are not seeing the RESULTS we want to see.

I HAVE A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS FOR YOU!

  • Do you feel stuck because parents are cancelling parent training sessions last minute?
  • They inhale and exhale when they hear about parent training sessions?
  • You feel like you are doing most of the ABA work and can’t get parent BUY IN into your sessions?

Imagine if it didn’t have to be this hard? And if the responsibility of interventions did not fall on YOU!

What happens when parents are not seeing the results they want from therapy?

YOU work harder.

YOU bring your research to show them it works.

YOU start using all your BIG behavior words to get BUY IN…

And when you see that it doesn’t work!

You BURN OUT!

I have a proposed solution for you: Motivational Interviewing (MI)

But what is MI?

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is:
  • Not a “mumbo jumbo” psychological approach; it is a way to learn how to effectively communicate with others!
  • It was developed and first described by Miller (1983) and elaborated by Miller and Rollnick (1991)
  • Client- centered and directive approach to evoke intrinsic motivation
    • Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson (1999) offer a Behavior analytical definition of “Client centered” : “arranging a nonpunitive, nonconfrontational environment that is intended to reduce counterpliance”.
    • “‘Directive’ refers to therapists evoking and differentially reinforcing change talk
    • “Intrinsic” motivation -automatic reinforcement (Vaughan & Michael, 1982), that don’t require environmental support
  • A collaborative, goal- oriented style of communication that pays attention to the “language of change” (AKA change talk).
  • Recognizes the fact that clients who need to make changes in their lives approach therapy at different levels of readiness to change their behavior
  • Operates under the current presumption that people are much more likely to do things that they say they will do versus things that they are told to do.

Motivational Interviewing is non- judgmental, non- confrontational, and non- adversarial.

Once you are able to use MI strategies more effectively in facilitates a partnership with parents, it shifts the working alliance, so you are not the only one responsible for the change and it allows you to work smarter instead of harder and achieve generalization of your interventions.