What Makes CSD Different: Our CEO’s Vision for the Future of ABA

On his eighth birthday, Gregory was given a choice: skip today’s virtual ABA session and start his party earlier or keep his session and then on to cake and presents. His answer surprised his mom: He wanted to keep the session. 

Gregory is why I ask this question a lot: “What does it take to deliver ABA that is not just good — but exceptional?” I’ve heard wonderful answers: parental involvement, clinical compassion, personalization, amount and concentration of treatment time , skills goals, and consistency.

What intrigues me most is the answer I don’t hear. 

ABA, at its core, is how we teach behavioral skills, such as communication skills or social skills,  the very skills that will improve the well-being of the child and their family. These skills are the the foundation upon which all other skills in life are built. So, teaching these skills well is immensely important.

The answer I always hope to hear is that exceptional ABA makes the child love learning. The child might never say those words, but they will look forward to their sessions, find joy, build confidence, and discover what they are capable of doing and becoming. Their family will feel the effects too — in dinners without meltdowns, siblings playing peacefully, and grocery shopping that is finally easy. 

Designing a ‘must-attend’ learning experience to engage a child who thinks and learns differently is the heart of great ABA.

How Do We Cultivate a Love of Learning?

I started my career with almost a decade at Disney—a brand that set the standard for experiential delight—and there is much to learn about how Disney creates memorable experiences for every guest and makes them want to return. I then moved into education, because if we could make learning as engaging and exciting as a visit to Disney, the next generation would be unstoppable. There are so many ways to engage a learner, to use their interests to draw them into learning, to use technology to make learning “sticky.” When the science of learning is in the hands of a teacher, coach, or therapist who believes in their learners and encourages them, it transforms lives.

Imagine if we could create an ABA experience that is grounded in behavioral science and incorporates the best of learning science and experience design tailored to what the child loves. That trifecta is the future of ABA because it turns a goal into a personalized learning adventure that captivates the learner and supercharges outcomes. That is what we are creating at CSD — and we now have the data and client outcome studies to show it works.

Behavioral Science + Learning Science + Experience Design = Beyond Breakthrough ABA™

At CSD, we recently concluded an 1,838-client study of our Beyond Breakthrough ABA™ program, one of the largest studies in the history of ABA. We found that clients in our program achieved higher outcomes (17 percentage points higher) in less time in treatment versus traditional ABA models. 

Those are stellar results. But what really caught our attention was the “joy factor” — clients in the program looked forward to their sessions at higher rates than clients receiving in-person care alone. It confirmed something I’ve believed for a long time: kids learn more when they love learning.

So what actually creates that kind of experience? For us, it comes down to three things.

1. Learning shouldn’t look the same every day.

Think about how you learn best. Doing the same thing, in the same room, in the same way, gets old fast — for you, and for kids. So we let learning move with the child. Some days that’s a therapist sitting across from them. Other days it’s a virtual session built around whatever they’re currently obsessed with—dinosaurs, trains, a video game. For some kids, it means practicing a skill in virtual reality first, like crossing a street or introducing themselves to a new friend, before trying it in the real world.

This isn’t technology for technology’s sake. It’s about keeping learning fresh and giving kids a chance to practice a skill in more than one setting, which is exactly what helps it stick in real life.

2. Kids need more childhood, not more hours in a chair.

For too long, hours have been treated as a stand-in for quality in ABA. We think the better question is: how much learning can happen inside those hours? We call this “learning density”—every session should be packed with as many real opportunities to learn, practice, and build confidence as possible. There’s a floor, a minimum amount of time it takes to teach and reinforce a skill. But once you’re past that floor, more hours doesn’t mean more progress.

If a child gets there faster, we should be thrilled about that, not suspicious of it.

Because every hour a child doesn’t need to spend in therapy is an hour they get to spend being a kid—at a friend’s house, on a team, at a birthday party, or doing nothing at all on a Saturday. ABA shouldn’t be about filling a child’s calendar. It should give them more room to actually live in it.

3. The people who love a child are part of the treatment, not bystanders to it.

A therapist might see a child for a few hours a week. Parents and caregivers are there for the rest of it—breakfast, bedtime, the grocery store, the playground, the moment a skill the child has been working on for months suddenly shows up, unprompted, in real life. The progress and issues caregivers can track and provide therapists from life lived outside of sessions are key to a child’s success.

That makes caregivers essential to the learning, not just witnesses to it.

Our job is to make sure they feel equipped and supported in that role. Every family at CSD has a dedicated BCBA for clinical guidance and encouragement, along with tools like the CSD Starship Caregiver App and CSD Connect App that help families stay connected to their care team and what their child is learning.

But those tools are exactly that: tools.

I think of technology as the seasoning on the meal, not the main course. The main event is the child and the people surrounding them. Technology should help strengthen those connections, never replace them.

None of these ideas is complicated. But together, they point toward a different way of thinking about ABA.

Instead of asking only, Did we deliver the treatment? we should also ask: Did the child want to be there? Did they grow more confident? Did what they learned show up in their real life? Did we give them more possibilities — and more joy?

Those are the questions that will move ABA forward.

Wherever the future takes us, our mission of delivering the best learning experience on the planet will remain the same. Our belief that ABA should be joyful, convenient, and effective will not change. We will always lead with compassion, science, and humility.

What remains evergreen is that the best learning—and therefore the best client outcomes—happens when science and joy work together. We envision a world where every child’s ABA therapy feels like their favorite experience on earth. 

An experience they may even choose over a birthday party.