Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Parenting with Impact. I'm thrilled to have you here and excited to have a conversation with our guest, Jessica Leichtweisz, who is a behavior specialist. We’re going to dive into what that means and how it relates to what we do with the coach approach.

One of the things we know about complex kids is that behavior therapy training for parents is often recommended as a treatment. So, let’s get into a conversation with Jessica to explore how this fits into that. Jessica, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Hey, Elaine, and thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Awesome. Let’s get started. Can you tell us a bit about the work you do with families and how you came to be doing this work?

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yeah, absolutely. So, I do something called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). Typically, we work with children with autism, though I’ve also worked with children who have other special needs.

What ABA does is we assess a person and identify the skills they’re missing—skills that may be getting in their way and preventing them from doing the everyday things they want to do. We also look at what behaviors they might be engaging in that are preventing them from participating in activities.

Sometimes, children with special needs lack certain skills, and at other times, they engage in behaviors that aren’t productive for them. What we do is support them by helping them gain the necessary skills and replace unproductive behaviors with more appropriate ones.

I actually fell into this work. When I was in college, I really didn’t like kids. They weren’t for me. I mean, who likes kids when you’re 19 or 20? They smell bad, they make too much noise, and you have to change their diapers. So, kids were definitely not on my—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: They kind of slobber too.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Exactly. Kids were definitely not on my radar. But I had a scholarship, so I had to do volunteer work. I was attending a small church in the Bronx, and they asked me if I would become a children's minister there.

I reluctantly agreed after thinking and praying about it because I figured, okay, it’s either that or I could do community service projects like the Midnight Run, where we’d literally go out at midnight to feed the homeless in the city. I enjoyed that, but I’m not a night person—I’m a morning person.

So, the idea of being in the city from 12 to 2 a.m. didn’t appeal to me. I thought, okay, I’ll do this. I’ll suck it up. I only have to do it for a semester, and then I never have to see kids again. So, it was a labor of love. But when I started volunteering with these kids, there was one child in the class who was autistic. I had never heard of autism before.

I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, and autism wasn’t as prevalent when I was a child as it is today, and I certainly wasn’t aware of it. And I think—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I was going to say, we didn’t have the awareness of it back then. I think what we’re realizing now is that it was probably always there, but we’re just seeing it differently now. Is that fair?

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yeah, I think there has been a true increase in numbers—not a decrease—but definitely a significant rise. There’s also a lot more awareness and a lot more diagnoses. The definition of autism has even changed over the course of my career.

So, I worked with this boy, and he was really cute, which amazed me. I had never seen anyone like him before. He thought differently, acted differently, and spoke differently. I would always call on him to pray for the class, and his prayer was always the same: he’d pray that he got McDonald’s french fries for dinner and thank God for Pokémon.

It was the same prayer every week, and I thought it was adorable. I wanted to learn more about his condition so I could best help him. So, I started studying autism and contacted an autism center. I told them I wanted to volunteer because I really wanted to learn more about autism. They actually hired me when I was still in college, in 2008.

They offered me a great job when I graduated. So, while all my friends were returning to work at the mall with their expensive degrees or going to graduate school to defer their loans, I was offered a really high-profile job. I wanted to stay in New York City and didn’t want to go back to New Jersey, so I thought, okay, I’ll do this for a few years and see how it goes. Over time, I just fell in love with it, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, how did that shift? When you say you do Applied Behavior Analysis, for those listening, you’ve probably heard of ABA therapy, and that’s what Jessica is talking about. ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis, and it’s primarily used in the autism realm, but it’s also expanding into the ADHD realm.

As of 2021, there are already five states where ADHD is covered under ABA from an insurance perspective. When we revamped Sanity School in 2021, we collaborated with someone to make it an ABA-verified therapy program because it meets all the criteria. So, I think we’re going to see more and more about ABA in the coming years.

So, Jessica, you fell in love with this issue and autism—how did that lead you into ABA?

Jessica Leichtweisz: When I volunteered at the Autism Center, they were an ABA center. So, my first exposure to the world of autism was through ABA.

At the time, it was the height of what was called the autism recovery movement, which now gets a lot of criticism. I do think it’s still a very complex issue. But there was this fundamental idea behind ABA at the time that autism was a disease, that there was something wrong with an autistic child.

Our goal of ABA was to "normalize the child," to recover them from autism to remove the autism from the child through teaching them skills. And I think that's a very complex issue today. Certainly, it wasn't discussed in a very politically sensitive way. ABA has a dark history. So if you look 20, 30 years ago, what they did at ABA, they did some horrible things. And it does have a very dark history.

Today, it's very different. Even by the time I started, it was very different. But still, today, we're more child-centered. We're more focused on the individual. There's things I did do, like when I first started when I was trained in that organization in my own practice, I don't do just because I believe in a sensory-friendly approach to ABA. So children are stemming if kids with autism are flapping their hands; I don't try to stop that, whereas we did try to stop that 10 years ago.

I don't try to stop that today unless it's significantly interfering with the child's ability to participate in a social situation. But if it happens so often that the child can't go into a restaurant or go to the movies or even be in the classroom, then obviously, it's something we have to help them with. But if it's something they just do for fun and it doesn't disrupt their lives, then so be it. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: This is fascinating to me because you’re helping me understand. I’ve heard a lot of mixed things about ABA over the years, with a lot of parents complaining and controversy, and I never really understood the background.

That’s why it’s kind of mired in this: on one hand, it’s seen as a godsend, but on the other hand, some people see it as horrible. I think I’m beginning to understand where that’s coming from.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yeah, but you have to look back at the history of autism. When autism was first developed as a diagnosis, the official cause of autism was believed to be "refrigerator moms."

Medically, in the journals, the official cause of autism was said to be moms who didn’t love their children. The official treatment for autism at that time was something called a "parentectomy."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Say that again.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Parentectomy was the official treatment for autism, where they would forcibly remove the child from the parent's home and place them in institutions. This went on for years.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, how far back are we talking here?

Jessica Leichtweisz: In the '60s. So, for the lifetime of many people watching this show, this is not something from the 1700s. We’re talking about the lifetimes of people who are living today.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: In my lifetime.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Exactly. So, in the '70s and '80s, they started to shift their understanding and realized, okay, this is not the case. But they decided autism was a psychiatric disorder, so they used electric therapy and shock treatments. They relied heavily on pharmaceutical drugs and put children in institutions.

There weren’t even programs in schools for kids with autism until 1986, the year I was born. They weren’t in traditional schools; they were just institutionalized. Then, in the late '80s, in 1987, Dr. Lovaas started using Applied Behavior Analysis, looking at what had previously been done.

The other thing we need to remember is that in the late '80s and early '90s, when ABA was first being implemented, this is where much of the controversy stems from. They used aversive techniques on children.

They’d spray them with water, or use shock therapy—literally shocking kids like a dog shock collar, but on their hands. It was bad. It was horrible. But it was still progress, as awful as it was.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It was still better than it had been. And what I’m hearing is that there was this drive to figure out how to help these kids integrate into society instead of institutionalizing them. So, in a way, the intentions were good, even though the methods were badly applied.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Right. The other thing to remember is that these were things teachers were doing in schools, too. It wasn’t just a matter of what happened in institutions. Teachers were allowed to hit kids, and parents were allowed to hit kids. This was—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That was my experience.

Jessica Leichtweisz: You had the ruler on your hands.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I did.

Jessica Leichtweisz: I’m not diminishing the experience of what people went through, which was really horrible. By the time I started, which was in 2008, these things were no longer done. They were illegal. If you did them, you would have been arrested. But that dark history was still there. When I started, ABA was really effective.

Direct instruction and discrete trial training is the number one researched method for teaching children with special needs because it really breaks down and pinpoints the specific skills they need to learn.

It works. But when I started, the fundamental approach was that there was something wrong with the child, and it was our job to fix it.

Now, today, there’s been a huge shift. That shift has come from the autistic community of autistic adults. And even me saying "autistic adults"—when I first started in 2008, I was taught to never call a person "autistic." That was considered offensive and not politically correct.

You were supposed to say "a person with autism." It turns out, most adults today actually prefer to be called "autistic" rather than "adults with autism."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: This is a debate in both the autism and ADHD communities, and at this point, it really comes down to a matter of preference.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yes, exactly. It’s very divided, and some people have very strong opinions, and I respect those opinions. It’s similar to the current discussions about gender. You just respect someone’s choices. But at the end of the day, I got really involved with this work with autistic adults. Autistic adults began to give feedback to the autism and ABA communities, saying, "We really don’t like this.

We fundamentally don’t like being called this." Many people, like myself, were very receptive. As professionals, we were like, "What do you mean? We thought we were doing everything right." We thought we were a godsend to you.

We thought we were helping you. But there has been a shift in the ABA community. I think there’s still a lot of healing that needs to be done. But, as I said, the changes haven’t been dramatic. The fundamentals of ABA are still there, but we approach it differently now.

We respect the child. I no longer see a person with autism—or autistic people—as something I need to fix, cure, or recover. I want to make sure that autism doesn’t get in the way of what they want to do.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Living their life. They’re full of expressive life.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: GetAutismAnswers.com.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Parents can go to my YouTube channel, where they can access all the recordings. Even though I’ve been in the field for a long time, I never took my boards because I just didn’t need to when I was living in one place, but after relocating, now I do.

If you look at all my most recent videos, they’re actually geared towards a professional setting for the board exams. However, if you go through the videos I posted prior to about three weeks ago, there are hundreds of videos designed to help parents understand autism.

I also have about 20 to 30 videos where I interviewed autistic adults. If you want to hear their feedback on ABA, and to make sure you're doing things the right way as a parent, they provide really great feedback on what their parents did right and wrong.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You know what I’m loving about this conversation, Jessica? First of all, thank you because this is a history I didn’t know, and it’s really helpful for me. What’s really jumping out at me is that you could be talking about gender, you could be talking about race, you could be talking about any way in which people are disenfranchised from the community. And what you're saying really resonates.

I love this notion of acknowledging that there’s a dark history. That’s what it was. We've learned more, we know better, and we’re doing better. I think what we’ve seen happen in the last couple of years in our society is a reckoning with some of the darkest truths of the past and finding a new way to be in relationship with those truths, with ourselves, and with each other. And that’s a beautiful encapsulation of that in this little story about ABA and autism.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yeah, and I think, you know, what it comes down to is that I wasn’t even born when these horrible things were done, or at least I was very young when they stopped. While that doesn’t diminish the experience someone else has, I do think, as professionals, it is our responsibility to help heal those situations, even when we weren’t part of them. But it also doesn’t undermine the extent to which we can help people and families today, especially for young children who are just learning to talk.

I specialize in verbal behavior, which is a part of ABA, where I really focus on getting young children to learn language, both vocal and non-vocal, so we can still help kids a lot. The bad things that happened in the previous generation aren’t going to happen today. It’s a very different approach now. And while I’m not undermining in any way what happened to others, that doesn’t mean a person receiving my services today will experience that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I totally hear that. And I’m reminded of what happened in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s in mental health, and then the process of de-institutionalization. Back then, what we now call ADHD used to be called minimal brain dysfunction. I’ve had older clients who were given electroshock therapy in a very similar way, to try to "cure" them, instead of what we now understand: these are brain wiring issues.

It’s a brain-based condition where we can retrain the brain to help our community live happy and fulfilling lives, which is really what we’re going for here. So what’s important for parents to understand now? I mean, I’m hearing this beautiful story about meeting kids where they are today. How does that show up? How is it different now?

Jessica Leichtweisz: This is a very complex issue. The reality is that many symptoms of autism that get in the way of a person’s life are rooted in medical conditions. For example, sometimes children have an MTHFR gene mutation, which means their bodies can't chelate heavy metals. This is very common in kids with autism. It’s also common for people who aren't autistic, but it’s particularly common in children with autism.

For these children, if they have metal poisoning, and if the metals can be removed from their bodies, their brains are more able to learn because our bodies can't learn effectively when they’re poisoned. There are also kids who have other medical issues that impact their learning.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Let’s stick with chelation for a minute because I've dealt with it with my kids since they were little. I know a lot of parents might not understand it yet. What you're saying is that sometimes, we accumulate metals in our bodies that we can't process or remove—what’s called "chelation."

You've heard of lead poisoning, and we all know that’s a seriously toxic and dangerous situation. But there are other kinds of metals in the environment that can get into the body. If we can't chelate them, we can’t get them out, and as you say, it becomes an obstacle, interfering with brain function.

There are more strenuous methods to chelate, as well as milder or longer-term ways. But there are many different mechanisms or methods that parents can use to help their kids release these metals from the body, right?

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yeah. I did chelation myself, and for kids with autism, it tends not to do that. It tends to actually be aluminum or copper.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I was going to say copper.

Jessica Leichtweisz: [overlapping] Mercury was what people were having, but aluminum and copper, I did chelation myself. So people ask will chelation work for kids with autism. If a person has heavy metal poisoning, chelation will work for a person who has heavy metal poisoning, regardless of whether they have autism or not.

It has nothing to do with autism or not. A person who has autism is at a higher risk. The problem is, a lot of times what parents will do is they'll do and they won't know, they'll do either hair testing or blood testing for heavy metal poisoning.

The problem with that is that when our bodies are truly overly affected by metals, it actually hides in our fats and our organs the metals. So you actually need to do what's called a heavy metal challenge to really know if you have metal poisoning.

Now, I did this myself. I have a neurological condition myself. My symptoms all the doctors I had gone to had just thought it was my medical condition that was my diagnosis I was born with. And they're like, "Well, that's just part of your diagnosis." And I went to one doctor. He said, "I think you have heavy metal poisoning. I don't think this is part of your diagnosis." And he's like, "Well, here's what we're going to do."

And so he did the heavy metal tests. They came back negative. I said, "Well, I guess that's not it." He's like, "I'm not buying into that. Here's what we're going to do." He's like, "We're going to actually do a chelating session. He's like, "We're going to do one chelating session, and then we're going to test your urine to see whether or not you have heavy metals coming out of you."

He's like, "If you have very high levels of metals, once we do a chelating agent, which is called the heavy metal challenge, then you probably have heavy metal poisoning." And when he did that, my metal levels were through the roof. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. So I want to I want to be careful here because we're moving into a whole other realm, and I know that there are parents of kids with autism right now who are like, how do I do this? What do I do? And you don't want to do this independently.

You want to do this in consult with a practitioner. So chelation is one of the ways that you can reduce some of the symptomatology of people with autism.

Jessica Leichtweisz: For some kids. Other kids have issues with methylation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, that was my next one and then we need to start wrapping up and talk a little bit about methylation.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Just means that children can't necessarily convert folic acid to methylfolate. Sometimes, if parents have low folate levels, their parents will give them folic acid, which actually can be extremely harmful to a child who can't methylate because they can't convert it.

So if kids are getting vitamins that they can't use, then it actually can poison them. If they have methylation issues, they need to take the methylated forms of vitamins, and the number of things in which I can share with you are endless.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. What I want to reinforce is that these are some of the protocols that are used for some kids on the autism spectrum, and what's most important is that you work with a practitioner.

Don't try this at home. Work with somebody if this is something you want to experiment with. And when my eldest child was young, and again, this was so long ago, I worked with a nutritionist, and we did both chelation and methylated B12.

So I'm very familiar with what you're talking about. In both situations, what she said I'll never forget was, "We're borrowing from treatment for autism at that time," and it wasn't we didn't necessarily have a diagnosis for autism, although in hindsight, I think we probably should have but those were things that were present and evident for, for my particular child. And so you don't want to do this independently.

You want to do this in concert with somebody who really knows what they're talking about because it's complicated stuff.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yeah, absolutely. And I pointed out that this is not to use methylation or chelation. My point is that there are oftentimes genuinely medical issues that can be medically addressed to help the person with autism, and you should do those things as a parent. So that doesn't necessarily mean that you fundamentally want to change who a person is or that you fundamentally are rejecting the interest and characteristics of a person.

There's a way to support a person medically. I have an autistic adult who wrote part of the book that I was talking about, This is Autism, and he loves My Little Pony, and he's in his 30s. And he lives alone, and he works and he's successful. And that's just because he loves My Little Pony. He carries the My Little Pony dolls with him, and his house is decorated with My Little Pony and he watches that TV show. I'm not going to tell this person, "Hey, you can't do that because that's not normal. That's not what a 30-year-old man is interested in."

I'm not going to do that but if help his brain work more effectively, I'm not going to try to change who he is. But I can help him be more effective in terms of how his brain works neurologically, I'm going to do that. Because in my own body, I've done these things to myself, because I had brain fog. And when I had brain fog, I couldn't focus. So it's not about autism. It's about putting a person in the best state. So my advice to parents is don't reject everything from the past because it had a dark history.

Don't abandon everything. Like I said, there were the DAN doctors, defeating autism now. There was this recovery movement, a lot of good research came from that. So don't just reject everything, and go into the alternative of, like, we're just going to accept and love and not do anything and just let this person be because that's going back like that's really taking steps back. But respect a person for who they are, love them for who they are.

Don't fundamentally try to change their characteristics, but support them the way they need to be supported in the way you would support any individual who has a medical issue. Not the medical issue, but it does go hand in hand with medical issues.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Brilliant. So Jessica, tell people how they can find you. You mentioned your YouTube channel, which is getautismanswers.com, and then you have a website which is?

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yes. My website is hopeeducationservices.com.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And both of these will be in the show notes for everybody.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Perfect. And then I have five free books there as well. So, as a parent, if you are affected by autism or you want to learn more, I actually used to charge for these books. But when everything got shut down, I decided to make them free for the community so you can just go get them. My entire ebook library is on there for free on hopeeducationservices.com

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So awesome. So Jessica, this has been really interesting and enlightening for me. And I know for the people listening, is there anything else you want to share with listeners briefly before we wrap up?

Jessica Leichtweisz: My favorite quote in the world of autism is, and I actually kind of made this quote up but it says in the world of autism, one size fits no one.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: One size fits no one. So I'm going to guess that we're moving into your favorite motto or quote.

Jessica Leichtweisz: Yeah, I guess that's what I wanted to add is that that was it. I tend to always end with that quote, which is In the world of autism, one size fits no one.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Say it again.

Jessica Leichtweisz: In the world of autism, one size fits no one.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: One size fits no one. I love it. So thank you, again, for being here. Our guest today was Jessica Leichweisz. She's an applied behavior analyst and incredibly knowledgeable and insightful. It's rare to find somebody these days who's been involved in that community as long as you have, so thank you for your insights and for the history lesson, and for the work you're doing in the world.

To parents and professionals who are here listening, thanks for what you're doing for yourself, for your kids. That's what makes all the difference. Take care, everybody. We'll talk to you next time.