Don’t let the title fool you into thinking about this as a division. A father’s role in therapy is the same as a mother’s role in therapy, or any guardian in therapy. Responsibility, respect, love, and contribution. That should be a given. But sometimes it’s not always treated that way.

A recent intake for a client stuck with me. In this intake we were discussing prior ABA services for the child, and how parent training was done, how programs were generalized, and what seemed to fit best with their prior therapy experiences. It’s good to get an idea of these things. Parent participation is important in therapy. Incalculably important. In this particular one, the father mentioned their prior BCBA tended to discard his suggestions on targets, or socially relevant behavior goals. This caused a second or two of an awkward pause where the mother jumped in with a humorous aside about how the BCBA got along much better with her. The thing is, you could see that the way the professional handled that situation limited the father’s future enthusiasm to engage with the process. Some people could often mistake that as the “Dad being distant” cliche, and everything continues as these expectations play out. The problem is, we had a parent interested in a process, who had a voice, and that voice was silenced (ignored) and guided to a false consensus.

There are sometimes these unspoken things, or expectations, in parent roles. Some are traditional things that stick around, some are just artifacts of a bygone era that do more harm than good. Rooting those kinds of things out and making more functional alternatives tend to help the whole process along, relationship wise, responsibility wise, and makes people all together wiser about how they’re behaving and what the expectations are for how therapy will work. Parenting is sometimes rule governed after all. In therapy, professionals, like BCBAs, can sometimes make unspoken rules with unintended consequences. Inferences here. Ignoring something there. The feeling I was getting from this situation above was that there was not an equal input in the last experience with ABA therapy. So, with a little back-stepping to basics, I wrote down all the suggestions both parents had for goals, and funny thing was, Dad said more, and the Mom was surprised. We all learned something. It sounds like a small thing, but imagine what a trend like this could have been long term.

I suggest some very simple ground rules, which should be very obvious:

A client’s mother can have great ideas about therapy goals.

A client’s father can have great ideas about therapy goals.

Any other suitable guardian can have great ideas about therapy goals.

The client themselves can have great ideas about therapy goals.

Sometimes these suggestions don’t make sense to us as professionals, sometimes they aren’t age appropriate, sometimes they don’t fit current skill levels, but we don’t just ignore them and silence the people who are invested in the client’s well-being and growth. The whole point here is that there should not be this great distinction between what the Mom can contribute, and what the Dad can contribute. Once we assume one has better ideas, or more time, or more commitment, we do a disservice. Situations may play a role in what happens in actual practice, but those are going to be based on actualities, and not preconceptions. Preconceptions acted on as though they are obervations are not behavior analytic.

Now, there also may be things that we notice between male parents and female parents that are a little different. Sometimes these things are stereotypical. Sometimes the interests follow expectations that we see generalities of in our daily life. We need to make sure we don’t assume too much with these. Treat every situation as though you will be proven wrong. Treat every situation as though you will learn something. Assuming too much is where we always get it wrong. Overlooking things is not scientific.

Data Point of One (Personal Experience Talking)-  On a case, I had a father once who had a different view point on some social goals. There are some situations where the current social goals put the client in what the father called a “weak position” to their peers, based on some peer interactions that had gone a bad route.  At face value, we could either say “NO! The client is expressing themselves! That’s good! What happened wasn’t their fault! Get out of here with that victim blaming!” or, we could take a minute and understand the meaning and sentiment of that worry. The client could be taken advantage of. Social hierarchies exist. Kids take advantage of other kids. Kids hurt other kids. The specific operant behaviors we were teaching here might actually be reinforcing peer aggressive/hurtful verbal behavior. It’s possible. We should probably take a look. Behavior does not occur in a vacuum. It ended up being more complicated than that, but the analysis was warranted. It helped.

Both parents can contribute. No matter the gender, no matter the outlook, most of the time if you find a parent who cares about their child enough to attend meetings, put the time into the trainings, and are enthusiastic about transferring and generalizing skills, you’ll find someone who can make a contribution to the growth and progress that can not be underestimated. The more hands on deck to getting the client the skills the better. We want more people on our team. We want more people showing love to the client to get them where they can thrive. A large support structure that loves and cares for an individual can make all the difference. We as professionals don’t get to decide who gets a voice and who doesn’t. That’s the lesson.

Comments? Questions? Thoughts? Leave them below.

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