My Journey with The Verbal Behavior Approach

Transcript for Podcast Episode: 159
My Journey with the Verbal Behavior Approach
Hosted by: Dr. Mary Barbera

Mary: You're listening to the Turn Autism Around podcast episode number one hundred and fifty nine. Today we are talking about my first book, The Verbal Behavior Approach Book. It was published in 2007. So why am I talking about this? It's actually a part - it was a webinar that I just did for parents and professionals from Lithuania. And it was super cool, and when I got done, they sent me the recording and I thought, You know what I think there was would be a lot of people that listen to the podcast, either professionals or parents from any town or state in the United States, as well as globally all over the world. So we are chunking this down and having a special podcast solo show about the verbal behavior approach.

Welcome to the Turn Autism Around podcast for both parents and professionals in the autism world who want to turn things around, be less stressed and lead happier lives. And now your host autism mom, behavior analyst, and bestselling author Dr. Mary Barbera.

Mary: Welcome back to another episode of Turn Autism Around. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Barbera. And like I said, I'm going to present a webinar today that I did live for people in Lithuania, and I was asked to present and to answer questions from Egle Steponeniene from Lithuania. She is a mom to a son with autism who is turning 14 at the time of this show airing. She became a board certified behavior analyst. She used my first book, The Verbal Behavior Approach, as her Bible, and she went on to translate the verbal behavior approach a few months ago came out in the language of Lithuanian. She is incredible. I think anybody that speaks more than one language is amazing, and we have had people from over 90 countries take my online courses and be part of our community. So I wasn't planning on doing this as a podcast. But once we got it finished and I listened to it, I thought, there are so many stories in here and insights about how we reach people from all over the world to change the way autism is detected and treated, which is my mission. So let's get to the about 30 minute webinar and then followed by a couple of great questions and answers. And the person asking the questions is Egle Steponeniene who is amazing. So let's get to this episode.

Egle: So first, I would like to introduce our guest from US, Mary Barbera, and she is the author of the book The Verbal Beginner Approach. And I would like to just read from the back of your book the presentation about you. So she is a registered nurse and doctoral level, more certified behavior analyst. She was the lead behavior analyst for the Pennsylvania Variable Behavior Project, studying the effect of verbal behavior techniques in classrooms to allow the state of Pennsylvania. Mary Barbera was founding president of the Autism Society of America's Berks County chapter. She has worked with hundreds of children in the autism spectrum and has extensive experience training for a variety of professionals. She is the mother of a son with autism. Tracy Rasmussen is the award winning author of the book and the like. Really also big things for for Tracy to contribute to that book. And now I will pass the word for Mary Barbera kindly. Please, Dr. Mary to speak like, really very excited to listen you.

Mary: Thank you so much for inviting me today. It's morning here in Pennsylvania. And I am really grateful that my book, my first book, the verbal behavior approach, has been translated. I believe this is the 15th language the original book came out in 2007. So a long time ago, right? Lucas was 10 and Spencer was eight, and they are now twenty five and turning twenty four this month. So it's very exciting to have a book that I put a lot of my heart and soul into writing to have come this far over the past 15 years and even recently being translated into Lithuanian, which I'm very happy about.

Mary Barbera's Intro to Autism: Lucas' Diagnosis

Mary: OK. So I say I fell into the autism world in the late 1990s when Lucas, my first born son, started to show signs of autism. But I didn't recognize the signs. I didn't know what autism looked like in a baby, and neither did anybody else back in the 1990s. I was a registered nurse, though, and I still am. And so I did have a teeny bit of experience with working in or just doing a clinical rotation in a residential placement for teens. And there I saw a few teenagers who had autism. And to me, that was scary. So when my husband mentioned the possibility that Lucas might have autism when he was just 21 months of age, I was terrified. I was confused because I had never thought of that and my husband's a physician. So he said, Do you think Lucas might have autism? And I said, What are you talking about? And I this is the first page of the book, actually. It says I told him on that day, I can still picture it. I was in my old house, in my family room with the blue rug. And he said, So you don't think Lucas has autism? And I said, Oh my God, what are you talking about? And I said, No, he doesn't have autism. He's warm and cuddly with me. He has some words. It's winter time. I just had a baby or in the house. It's both kids got sick. You know, they got RSV. And so, you know, you're just trying to figure it out, you know? And I told him on that day, I never, ever want to hear the word autism again, which then I went into a deep state of denial. But the seed had been planted, and every time I heard autism, I would be like, Oh my gosh, or any time he would do something, Lucas would do something weird, like he used to take things and kind of squirrel them away, like he'd moved like a whole bunch of stuff from one place to another. Or he may play with a string for a few seconds longer than I thought. Maybe it was normal. And so I'd be like, Maybe he has autism. He has autism. But the spring and summer, you see, that year, he seemed to do a little bit better on a second birthday. We have videos of him clapping and not pointing, kind of looking at us for attention. So it was confusing. He started speech therapy. He started. Typical toddler preschool at two without support. Without anybody helping him. And he did pretty well until mid-year when they call this in and basically said he wasn't engaging with the kids. He but he wasn't throwing a fuss. He wasn't banging his head. He wasn't doing anything that I would consider autistic behavior. So we lost a lot of time from 21 months of age until finally I got out of denial and what got me out of denial. A lot of people say, Well, what got you out of denial? I learned about the work of Catherine Morris and the LOVAAS study and ABA therapy for kids with severe autism. And I thought, and even my husband thought that if he would get a diagnosis of autism, he would get a mild diagnosis. So, you know, somebody I met said who didn't know Lucas never met him, said, Well, if he just has a speech delay or very mild autism, you need to look in the ABA because these studies are very powerful, they're showing major advances and gains. And so I looked into it, got the Catherine Morris book on my way home from that woman's house, and as I read the descriptions of these kids with autism, I was like, Oh my gosh, Lucas has autism. He had, you know, many of the many of the signs he he had a speech delay, definitely a sign he used to point, but he no longer pointed. So regression of skills, lack of pointing, hand leading, which I didn't know about. When a child takes your hand and puts it on something they want, that's called hand leading, that's a red flag. He covered his ears. You would get overwhelmed with sounds. He wasn't a big tantrum kid, though he didn't have a lot of problem behaviors. He was very mild mannered and he did not have trouble with transitioning. He didn't really get fixated on things, but he did like to go the same way in the mall. He did get to be a very picky eater. His sleep was disturbed. So he had the signs. It's just that we missed some. Well, my husband saw them early on, but I didn't pursue it. And everybody, I'd ask the pediatrician or speech therapists, occupational therapists, they would, you know, Oh, well, he's, you know, because it's hard to tell, like speech delay versus autism orother things. And some kids, some kids, I know personally that look like they had autism in the beginning and turned around with or without therapy and are leaving. You know, I have lots of friends who are like, Yeah, they thought Johnny had autism, but he's actually, you know, he didn't. He didn't need any support after a little speech therapy. So who knows, you know? So anyway, that was all happening in the late 90s. He was diagnosed the day before his third birthday. And then what was recommended was ABA therapy. But when I asked the developmental pediatrician about the Morris book and the LOVAAS work and can kids recover? And I read this book and I you put ABA in place and make things all better, you know, a very black and white thinking that I did. He said, No, not. It's I mean, he didn't exactly say this, but he acted like if I would have brought him in the 21 months when he was very mild and not severely delayed, then maybe we could have gotten like four very mild kids. He has seen that complete turnaround. But he wasn't very optimistic, which further led to my feeling guilty for my denial. But in the end, he said yes, he needed ABA therapy. And three months later, I managed to get that in place and paid for. Lucky I lived in Pennsylvania, which was one of the few states that somebody figured out a way to get ABA paid for. Even back then. So we started 40 hours of ABA therapy in my basement for Lucas, and he went for five of those hours. He continued to go to his regular preschool. He stayed back in the toddler class. So that was in 1999 and really from twenty one months to thirty nine months when he finally started. Intensive ABA therapy, that's a lot of time.

The Focus Behind Mary's Work:

Mary: And now my focus, especially in the past couple of years, is really trying to get to the parents even before a diagnosis. So if you have parents out there listening or you're professionals working with parents, you know, or you're a parent or grandparent yourself, you know, my mission is still what it was years ago. But now it's like doubly important for me to get to the parents and the grandparents and the professionals working with the toddlers who don't have a diagnosis yet, because that's really when the most gains can be made and the turnaround can be seen. So which is the the whole point, and I'm going to talk not much about this, but the point of my new book, which is called Turn Autism Around an action guide for parents of young children with early signs of autism. This book is still helpful, though, even if you have a eight year old or 10 year old or 15 year old who still struggles with talking tantrums, eating sleeping potty, training socialization, going to the doctor's dentist haircuts without a fuss. These are the same skills, the same deficits, the same techniques that work. And over the years, that's why my book. OK, my Verbal Behavior Approach book is still being translated. It is written to last decades. It's already lasted more than a decade, and it is still selling better than ever, especially now with my new book and with all these translations, it's amazing, you know, to get the word out. This book really ties in all of my experiences getting ABA for Lucas. Which took some time. And then when I was, it was paid for, but the consulting wasn't paid for. So I ended up in what in the United States is called due process, which is like litigation law, a lawsuit to get ABA fully funded for Lucas.

Why the Verbal Behavior Approach?

Mary: So I engaged in this lawsuit in the middle of all of this mess in 2000 and took a whole year. But in the middle of that, my lawyer suggested that I become a behavior analyst. And I was like, What's that? And he said that I was a new certification. So becoming a board certified behavior analyst wasn't a thing in the 1990s. It became a thing because of the Morris's book, which opened up all of this need for ABA treatment, right? So in 2000, it was a brand new thing, and I was like, What's that? And he said, Well, you need a master's degree, which I already had a master's in nursing administration. And you know, you obviously have studied this. I mean, I went around the country learning about autism like Dr. Bowen and Dr. Sundberg. But anywhere they were speaking about autism, I would go. So in 2003, I became a board certified behavioral analyst, and I started working for the Pennsylvania Verbal Behavior Project, which is now the Pattan Autism ABA Supportss Initiative. I was the lead behavior analyst there for seven years, working hand-in-hand with teachers, speech therapist, paraprofessionals, anybody the cafeteria age, the school bus drivers, anybody who was having problems helping kids with autism do their best. I was there to consult and I would go around to different classrooms and we would just improve what was happening in schools, mostly with kids that were school age. But there were some three to five year olds, preschoolers. So anywhere between three and 21 not sure in Lithuania how old you can be to go to school. But in the United States, that age for kids with severe developmental disabilities is you can go up to age 21. So we worked hand-in-hand as Lucas was going through elementary school and high school, and he so I was working with him and figuring things out and working with hundreds. If not, I think at this point it's thousands of kids with autism directly and then training people all over the world. So my book, like I said, I started working for the Verbal Behavior Project in 2003, and then I also because of my nursing background, I was very interested in. Why are pediatricians missing these, these signs of autism? So I became very involved in 2003 as well with a statewide grant to help pediatricians know the first signs. It was called the first signs grant. So I got trained in things like the stat, which is the screening tool for autism in toddlers and me, the 8oz, the autism diagnostic observation schedule. So I was also training in those things and trying to get the diagnoses better. And in that process, somebody came over with a very young child. And I did a stat and I did the video to send in to get certified. And she was like, What can I do? You know, he's scored very poorly on the stat. He was clearly on the spectrum. He was only two. So what can I do? What can I read? Where can I go to learn how to help him? His name was David, and I said, You know what? Like, let me hear your voice, but I would not recommend that anymore. Like that have been my Bible. But now like that, that wasn't good. So this was probably 2005 when she came over. And I would agree, you know, potty training in the day, but that was a 1970 book. Like, I wouldn't potty train like that anymore, and just all the resources that I had use were outdated. And so I said, You know what? Next week, we're having a verbal behavior project training for professionals. Why don't you come to that? It's two days. It's in Harrisburg, which is an hour away. You're going to have to get a babysitter, you know? And I thought she would be like, Forget it, you know? But she went. And she learned and she went home and she's got to work, and he started immediately talking and interacting and playing. But I lost touch with them until four months later. I got an email or something saying that that video I took of David doing these tests. These are subtests to see if he had autism. One of the things is to blow up a balloon and to, like, let the balloon fly away and see if how the child responds. And they emailed me and they said they need another video because I had happy birthday on the balloon. And the balloon needed to be plain without happy birthday. I was like, Are you kidding me? So I had to redo the tape, so I was like, OK, let me call up David's mom. Bring the little David over four months later, I had completely not talked to her since the training and I was like how's David doing? She's like after that two day training. He started talking, I started putting things high up on shelves, doing everything they they taught me. And you know, he's talking everything. He came over and he was instead of scoring like the worst, he scored midway like on the fence in terms of autism diagnosis. He was still waiting for an official diagnosis. He did get an official diagnosis of mild autism, but he really had a major turnaround just from a two day training, which is all of what was in my head, right? So I knew I needed to write the book for her and for all the parents like her, where I was not no longer able to, like, sit there and guide them. And then I knew that every other book that I leaned on was outdated. So that's why I wrote the verbal behavior approach. I didn't think that it would be selling. I mean, it's probably five years ago it was it sold 50000 copies and was in 10 languages. Now, I don't know how many copies it's in 15 languages still selling better than ever. And really, this book for Tracy Rasmussen actually is the I wrote it with Tracy. I dictated the book into dictation software at the time, and she would shape it up. And she was a reporter for the paper, for the newspaper, and she came up to do an autism story and she told me when Lucas was four or five. If you want to write a book, I'll help you. So Tracy is a friend of mine and she helped me write the book, but I didn't really think I just wanted to get the stuff out of my head into the book to help both professionals. Because I was in the verbal behavior project. I knew professionals were struggling and also to help parents that if they didn't have professionals on board that they could do it themselves. And I got Mark Sandberg to do the foreword, which was amazing. That's a whole nother story I won't get into. I got Dr. Jack Michael, who unfortunately died a year or two ago to do a blurb and many, many professionals and parents. The nice thing about the verbal behavior approach book, as well as my new book It Can. This book can be read on a plane by a novice parent. And it's also used in the United States as a textbook in graduate level about coursework. I've heard that from many, many people, so it's great that both parents and professionals are here because I like to talk to both. The more we can bridge that gap. Really, my new book is all about empowering the parent to become the captain of the ship. And I know some of the professionals out there are like, Well, not everybody. Is gung ho like you are? But you know what? There's a whole lot of gung ho people out there who really, I mean, their child is there. Nobody's more motivated to change the situation than the parents. And nobody's going to be there for the long term like the parent is. Nobody has so much to win or lose if they do or don't act.

Switching Gears: How Mary Started Creating Online Coursework

Mary: From two thousand fifteen on. I also pivoted again. I finished my PhD in 2011 in leadership and people were saying, Well, so what are you going to do now? And I said, I just need to get this all of this stuff online because I have I've traveled to many places around the world. I've never been to Lithuania, but I have been to Australia three times. I've been to the UK, France, Germany. I came to Germany in 2014. But you know what? Traveling to speak to 60 people, 300 people. It's just not going to get us where we need to be. And I knew that. So in 2015, I started my online courses and the courses are all available. If you understand English, there is no better or no better way to learn these techniques than to join my online course and community. We have parents and professionals from over 90 countries who have taken my online course. There's a lot of people where English is not their first language, and you can find out all about the courses. There's two courses. One is the Verbal Behavior Bundle, which is really goes hand in hand with this. It's early learners is the one course, and intermediate learners is the second course all based on the VB-MAPP, which the baby map wasn't even out when I wrote my verbal behavior or approach book, but it is the best assessment. I also created my own easy assessments based on the VB-MAPP based on all of my experience and also based on my medical background, which I think is huge. So all of my course information is that Mary Barbara incom for slash courses and I also have a toddler preschooler course that is really good too. So from 2015, all I have been heavily focused on producing courses, a podcast every single week. I don't know if any of you have listened to it. It's the Turn Autism Around podcast. My books are both on audio too, so my Verbal Behavior Approach book was put on audio 12 years after I came out by somebody that I don't even know. All of a sudden it was on audio and I'm like, Wait, I didn't get to read it. Nope, it's my Turn Autism Around book. I do read this book. It's on Audible and it's also in hardcover and Kindle. The Turn Autism Around book will be in paperback in April. This book is just in paperback, and I mean, the translation to Lithuanian is excellent, too, so that's kind of my spiel.

An Update on Lucas: Living with and Caring for an Adult with Autism

Mary: Lucas is doing well. He's twenty five. He is still very much impaired with moderate to severe autism, mild intellectual disability. We have his major problem behaviors near zero. He is fully independent with showering, dressing, toileting, grooming. He cleans up. He makes his breakfast. He does need a lot of supervision now, and he can't be left alone. I can't run to the store while we physically can teach him to what to do. Dial this 9-1-1 in case of an emergency, he wouldn't understand cognitively what to do, how to stay safe. He's he doesn't understand, you know, those concepts, and he probably will never understand the concept. So we have to plan for 24-7 care for the rest of his life, which is all other. And if you think this programing for little kids or older kids is complex, you know, and it's not the kind of thing that I would write a book about because. Lucas is still functioning at a one to five year old level for language, which is the focus of both of my books, of all of my courses, of all of my podcasts and video blogs. And so I also have a YouTube channel that has over 100,000 subscribers. I just got this plaque up here. It's my YouTube plaque for getting 100,000 subscribers. So anywhere you want to find me. MaryBarbera.com/YouTube, /Facebook, or /Twitter, /Instagram, I'm everywhere. And if you are struggling with a topic and I'm not sure I think it would work in your country with, you know, just type marry autism. Plus whatever topic you're struggling with eating, sleeping, potty, talking, biting, hitting. The M-CHATT, the STAT, the ADAAS, diagnosis is a speech delay or autism just type that and you will find a video blog, a podcast. I have so much information out there. That's why my courses are so good because I basically have this course in community where we take all of the information, all of my information and pull in the need to know because especially whether you're a parent or professional. Time is of the essence, right? We really want to get to the solution as quickly as possible. We have a picky eater. We want to help them eat better if we have a child that doesn't sleep or is having potty accidents. That's not something to wade around in the free information zone for too long. Because the child will get older, they'll get more set in their ways. And so turning things around and even the whole turn autism around the title of my book or my podcast, my video blog, what do you mean turn autism around, you know, people say, like, what do I mean by that? And I mean, I want each child with or without a diagnosis doesn't matter. I want the same thing for both of my boys. I want each child to be as safe as possible, as independent as possible and as happy as possible. And I want each child to continuously try. We're going to try to help him or her reach their fullest potential, which is a moving bar. It's a moving target. So turning things around doesn't mean curing autism. Actually, that is very tough to turn everything completely around. I mean, it's not a black and white issue. It's a process. But yes, we should be treating autism with ABA therapy, and we should also be helping parents roll out medical problems. And we should also be helping teachers and professionals know what to do so that we don't have to feel like we're constantly putting out fires in our practices. And so that is my goal. So do we have any questions I know I covered a lot and talked a lot. Hopefully that was helpful.

Egle: Yes, for this question also. I was hoping so maybe. ABA or Verbal Behavior? What is the difference?

ABA vs. Verbal Behavior:

Mary: OK, so that's a great question. I get it a lot. So ABA is both a science and a treatment package for children with autism. So ABA as a science stance for applied behavior analysis. It's the science of changing socially significant or important behavior. So ABA is the science is always working. It's like gravity. If you reinforce a behavior, it's going to go up. There's ABA is operating all around this. If I say to you guys, everybody raise your hand and you all put your hand up and I say, good job, you know that is ABA. I am giving an instruction. You're participating in a behavior, I'm giving you some praise or reinforcement. ABA is also operating if we get a speeding ticket or we go to a casino and we're putting in slots or any kind of instruction. People that say, I don't like ABA or I don't believe we should be doing ABA, you're doing it if you're if you're working anywhere. ABA is operating as a science, but then we take ABA. And so in the 60s and 70s with the work of LOBAAS and Jack Michael and Mark Sundberg and all of them doing their dissertations with kids with intellectual disability, mostly in developmental disabilities. They were able to take the science of ABA, which is operating around us and make that into a treatment package to increase good skills and decrease bad girls. Now one of those treatment packages, so we have the ABA science. So saying which is better ABA or VB is like saying which is better soda or Coca-Cola like or which is better religion or Catholicism. So religion is the overarching what ABA is. And then we have Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, whatever religions are under there. We have soda or pop or whatever you call it, as the overarching now we have Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper underneath it. So with ABA, we have ABA. We have like the lOBAAS type of ABA or traditional ABA. We've got a pivotal response training. We've got ABA verbal behavior. So the verbal behavior approach is a treatment package that ABA is the science and what we in the verbal behavior approach them with. The Verbal Behavior project with all of my work is incorporating skinners analysis of verbal behavior. So B.F. Skinner wrote a book in 1957 called Verbal Behavior that was about language, not about autism, and how language is a behavior that can be increased. So Bev Skinner's work is all in my verbal behavior approach, but so it's it's we are always using ABA. So really, this book should be called a applied behavior analysis using B.F. Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior to teach children with autism. Obviously, that's too long. But we did start out with just the Lobos approach in 1999. Valukas use that until 2000 exclusively. Then somebody flew down to Florida, heard Vince Carbone speak about VB We switched. We shifted. Back then it was very much the Wild West in terms of programing. Nobody knew what they were doing, but I became an expert out of necessity to help Lucas, and then I started helping lots of other kids. So my personal opinion is you don't want ABA without verbal behavior, but. I'm kind of the verbal behavior kind of guru or queen, you know, so I'm certainly not going to recommend not like including B.F. Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, doing the VB-MAPP, incorporating all of this motivation, pairing a man because the center is never going to hurt anybody and it's only going to help. So if you are practicing ABA without verbal behavior, definitely want to read the book? Consider joining my online courses. You really need to learn more because it's not. It's going to change the child's life. But it's going to change your life, too, whether you're a parent or a professional. The more you learn about motivation pairing reinforcement, the better you are going to be and the happier you and your whole family is going to be and generations to come. It is all positive, child friendly. Using a comprehensive whole child approach.

Egle: Thanks for a really great explanation and one more question related to this. So from your experience in general, three of the biggest myths about Verbal Behavior.

Myths and Truths in ABA:

Mary: Well, I would say I would get more myths about ABA in general, because ABA right now, it seems now more than ever in the past couple of years. ABA is very controversial and I did do a podcast called The Four Myths of ABA and the Myths and Truths of ABA, but I can't. I don't know them off the top of my head, but one of them is that ABA was created for kids with autism, which is not true because the ABA science is different than ABA packages, and some packages are actually not that great. You know, I have lots of examples. Kelsey, who is our community manager and she's one of the best success stories from my online courses. I've never met her. She lives in Canada. She's a single mom, but she was driving each way one hour away to her ABA clinic, where the board certified behavior analyst was trying to teach her the little boy Brantley colors. And he was banging his head on hard surfaces a hundred times a day he couldn't request. So not all eBay is good. I mean, it should be good. And it's not like that person was maliciously trying to do anything bad. It's just like if you are struggling and the child or children you work with are not making progress, then I don't care what you call it. If you're calling it pivotal, like you're calling it VB. That's the problem is like. You know, just because somebody says they're doing VB or they read the book and they're doing this, it's like if the child's not getting better progressing, you need to learn more. And it's a constant process, you know? So I'd say obey is always good or always bad. No, it's always operating. The science is always operating. And if your treatment package where you're saying you're using ABA is not producing. Changes and, you know, people are like, oh, they're older, he's a slow learner, he's you know. No, no, we don't blame the student. Student, it's never wrong. We are. We are teaching. And if you have a 12 year old who's not potty trained or 16 year old who is aggressive, that's just, you know, whoa, what can we do? No, we have to get to it. We have to solve it if we go back. And now with my new book, I have four steps. It's basically the scientific method we assess. We plan, we teach, or intervene, and we take data to help us make a decision. And as a circular thing with all of the things we work on. So there's just so much more to learn and I learn something new every day. I didn't know, for instance, this Zoom thing. You could hit the interpretation. I mean, this is really nice. So there is something new I learned today already and hopefully some of what I taught you today. You'll also learn,

Egle: Yeah, our time is already running out. So basically, I would summarize and thank you so much for your time. It was a big, big pleasure for me personally, and I hope for everyone to see you live here soon. Connection. This connection, I will call also live and I see in Lithuainia and that, like really everyone is very excited. They'll think you're like, really, really great meeting the people are writing. So I know this from me in person. It's a good opportunity to wish you like really all the best. Of course, I thank you from all my heart and from all my family, from all our clients, and for all people in Lithuiania and who are, you know, in the field in any how to see a way for your work, what you did, what you are doing and also like really? Thank you very much. That's a reminder for all of us where we can access your online courses like really, I would strong recommend I passed this course is also some years ago, like really great course and for any type of problem you can find. I will honestly you the solution answer in the YouTube. Like really, all your materials are great. You are great presenter. Thank you very, very much, and please pass our best wishes to your family or both sons and husband. And like, really, fingers crossed that everything for events that everything is fine for you, for you in person. And we hope that we will meet each other somehow.

Mary: That sounds great. Well, thank you so much for inviting me today. I really enjoyed speaking with all of you I applaud you for. You know, I only speak one language, English, so I'm very I'm just thrilled to see all of these people accessing information any way you can. We have a lot in common because I have from the start been all about learning to help Lucas and then help others. And really, I think I have no desire to retire to go, you know, sipping Mai Tais on the beach anywhere. My mission is really to help people all over the world. So it's touched my heart today to be with all of you to know that my message is reaching the world and thank you so much for translating my book. It means a lot to me. So thank you. Happy holidays to all of you.

Mary: If you're a parent or an autism professional and enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out my online course and community where we take all of this material and we apply it. You'll learn life changing strategies to get your child or clients to reach their fullest potential. Join me for a free online workshop at MaryBarbera.com/workshop, where you can learn how to avoid common mistakes. You can see videos of me working with kids with and without autism. And you can learn more about joining my online course and community at a very special discount. Once again, go to MaryBarbera.com/workshop for all the details, I hope to see you there.