Compassion for Caregivers
Being in the field of ABA for 11 years and a BCBA for the past five years comes with continuous opportunities for learning, improvement, and growth within our practice. An overall area many of us strive to excel in is demonstrating compassion. I believe that, as a field, we are shifting immensely in demonstrating ways to show compassion to our clients. A question that has sparked is whether are we demonstrating this continued growth in compassion to our client’s parents as well. Becoming a parent myself has shifted my perspective immensely in my practice–especially in regard to demonstrating empathy, understanding, and compassion to our clients’ caregivers.
I feel that, as a field, we are also shifting to being more considerate of cultural components, family dynamics, and economic considerations. While these are great areas to continue to demonstrate understanding and compassion for, I wonder are we also continuing to have an understanding of just parenthood in general? Are we ensuring we are creating caregiver training goals that are valuable and meaningful to the families while also continuing to respect their own emotions? I feel many of us have informed caregivers to be mindful of not reinforcing less desirable behaviors. I myself have told families when their child is crying or tantruming “let’s wait until they’re calm before we give them access to x, pick them up, etc.” to be sure that we are not accidentally encouraging that behavior to occur again. However, since becoming a mom myself, I know the physical reaction parents have when seeing their child upset. The only way I can describe it as my heart literally aches when I see my son crying. I would do anything to make my son happy and feel calm.
I think this is something important that practitioners must keep in mind when collaborating and creating goals with families. As BCBAs we can help support in developing proactive strategies for families to utilize while also being mindful of reactive strategies that not only feel good for everyone involved but also be realistic and sustainable for caregivers. Proactive strategies such as providing reasonable choices, setting time limits, and creating schedules are all items that can greatly support our clients while being maintainable for caregivers. Keeping compassion for both our clients and their caregivers in mind, we might suggest reactive strategies such as providing children comfort or modeled coping strategies when they are displaying feelings of distress. Having a full understanding that not only a child might not be ready to self-regulate but it also may be too emotionally challenging for a caregiver not to react in those instances.
I am so thankful to have the opportunity to wear both a BCBA and a mommy “hat” and for the perspective shift parenthood has allowed. I am also very proud of the continued shifts we have made to demonstrate compassion within our field. I am hopeful that we can keep learning and growing and demonstrating these skills across stakeholders–including caregivers.
