When MI Doesn't Seem to Work — Diagnose the Conversation, Not the Parent
MI for Change: Motivational Interviewing in ABA & Mental HealthShow Notes
Share Your Thoughts With Us I teach motivational interviewing. I speak at conferences about it. I train clinicians on it. And there was a session — early in my MI practice — where I walked out thinking: this stuff doesn't work. The parent had nodded through the whole conversation. Agreed with everything. Said all the right things. And I knew, the moment it ended, that nothing was going to change. In this episode Dr. Monica Gilbert gets honest about what that moment felt like — and more import...
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Share Your Thoughts With Us There’s a question Monica asked a parent recently that she knew some BCBAs would hear and immediately think: you went there? She went there. And she’ll explain why. The parent became teary-eyed. And what happened next changed the entire session. In this episode Dr. Monica Gilbert walks through a consultation with a stuck parent — a parent a BCBA referred to her because nothing was landing — and the one question that shifted everything: Where do you see your child a...
Share Your Thoughts With Us Your BCBA comes to you frustrated. The parent is pushing back on the treatment plan. Maybe they’re questioning the BCBA’s judgment, demanding something clinically inappropriate, or just not communicating in a way that feels respectful. And your BCBA says: I can’t keep doing this. You understand completely. You’ve been in those shoes. But you also know that if this relationship breaks down, a family loses services — and your organization loses a case. So you’re stuc...
Share Your Thoughts With Us You walk in with your clipboard. Your intake paperwork. Your assessment tools. Your predetermined questions and your full plan for the session. And you look at this parent. They're answering you. They're being cooperative. They're signing the consent forms. Saying yes to everything. But they're not really there. In this episode Dr. Monica Gilbert — recording live from the FABA conference in Orlando — talks about what she's learned about the moment a family receives...
Share Your Thoughts With Us Have you ever sat in your car before a parent session, rehearsing the whole conversation in your head? Deciding what to cover first, what questions to ask, how to respond if the parent brings up that one thing? It's not because you don't know what you're doing. It's because parent sessions feel unpredictable. And unpredictable is a very specific kind of uncomfortable. In this episode Dr. Monica Gilbert names the word she hears from BCBAs over and over — not hard, n...
Share Your Thoughts With Us When a patient says "okay" — what does that actually mean? Sometimes it means I agree. Sometimes it means I understand. And sometimes it just means I don't know how to disagree with you. Those are three completely different situations. And if we treat them all the same way — if we accept the okay and move forward — we're building a plan on a foundation that was never there. In this episode Dr. Monica Gilbert uses a psychiatric treatment conversation she encountered...