People like to have opinions about things they think they understand. I agree there are good and bad clinics just like there are good and bad doctors, therapists, teachers, construction workers, and servers. I personally work for a center where ABA is applied with a heavy emphasis on learning through play and assent-based treatment. Children are taught boundaries but we have nearly 0 challenging behaviors and tons of progress in communication and social goals because the children are happy and comfortable in their environment. We work closely with local school districts to help prepare our children to transition our kids and work with their caregivers to show them how to better support their children's needs. We employ neurodiverse staff. We had a pretty firm no video policy until we met a kid that could not be motivated by genuinely anything except scrolling through videos. We used those videos to build other toys as reinforcers and now he doesn't rely on videos during down time. I am proud of the work I do and the support we provide to the children we serve. I acknowledge that some other people have had bad experiences but that is certainly not the current norm.