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

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?

When someone tells our field, "ABA helped me," we lean in. But when someone says, "ABA hurt me," or "ABA failed my family," we immediately jump into defense attorney mode: What kind of ABA was it? When did it happen? That’s not real ABA.

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.

Kim pulls no punches as she shares the raw reality of navigating our field:

• The "Trust the Process" Trap: Why telling exhausted parents to "trust the process" often just means "hand over your judgment and stop asking questions."

• Graphs vs. Real Life: Why mastering "touch the blue square" at a clinic desk means nothing when a child still can't eat, sleep, use the bathroom, or leave the house without a 4-hour meltdown.

• The Fear of Telling the Truth: Why parents hide severe behaviors from BCBAs because they're terrified of being judged, blamed, or reported.

• From 30 Hours of "Babysitting" to True Independence: How moving away from cookie-cutter clinic quotas and into functional, parent-involved accountability completely transformed Rhett's future from institutional talk to sleepaway camp and public school.