How to Bring Self-Advocate Input Into ABA Goal Writing (Even When the Learner Can't Tell You)

If the learner can tell you what they want, you ask and you write it down in their words; if the learner cannot tell you, you watch them for a week and you write goals from what their body is already saying, the way Kaelynn Partlow did with her nine-year-old client who kept bringing dolls over to a peer she could not yet play with. That second move, where observation is treated as the self-advocate input, is the part most goal-writing checklists skip. The board certified behavior analyst (BCBA) is the person doing the writing, but the input has to come from the learner first, then the family, then the funder, then the field. Not in a different order.

What 'self-advocate input' actually means in a clinical context#

Self-advocate input is not a vibe and it is not assent. Assent is a moment-by-moment yes or no during the session you are running today. Self-advocate input is the thing that shaped which goal you are running in the first place. It is the learner's preferences, interests, friendships, and refusals, captured before the goal got written down and used to decide what goes on the plan at all.

The history matters here. The 1978 Wolf paper that defines social validity in ABA puts "the consumer" at the center, and the consumer is the person receiving the service. This is not a new-age idea bolted onto the field. It is the original meaning of consumer validity. Self-advocate input is how you build social validity at the goal-selection step, not at the satisfaction-survey step after the goal is already running.

How to ask a speaking learner without putting words in their mouth#

If your learner can talk with you, the asking is simple, and most clinicians skip it anyway. You sit with them. You ask open questions. You write down what they say in their own words, not what you wish they had said.

A few rules that keep this honest:

1. Ask before you write. Not after. The goal you draft after talking to the learner should be different than the one you would have drafted from the assessment alone. If it is the same, you did not really ask.
2. Ask what they like, what they do not like, who they want to spend time with, and what makes them feel bad. Those four buckets cover most of what a goal can be aimed at.
3. Do not give them a forced-choice list of your favorite goals. That is preference assessment for your priorities, not theirs.
4. Save the actual sentences. "I want a girlfriend." "I want to cook." "I hate the smell of the cafeteria." Those sentences belong in the treatment plan. They are the source citation for why the goal exists.
5. Re-ask every few months. Kids change. Teenagers change faster.

A teen who says they want a girlfriend is telling you the terminal outcome. Conversation skills, texting etiquette, date conversation, and reading social cues are the goals that come from that sentence, not from the next blank box in the curriculum.

How to read self-advocacy from a non-speaking learner (Kaelynn's doll case)#

This is the move that makes the page. When the learner cannot tell you in words what they value, observation is the self-advocate input. The body is already advocating. You are the one who has to notice and write it down.

Incorporating learner values is no less important for learners who cannot directly tell you what their values are. So this is where your observation and clinical judgment are key. From the talk — Kaelynn Partlow

The worked example in the talk is a nine-year-old girl who loved dolls and wanted to play with another girl in the clinic. She did not have the words or the play skills to keep the interaction going.

One summer, I worked with a nine-year-old autistic girl who was really interested in dolls. Based on observing her clear interest in playing dolls with the other girl, I was able to generate some goals that would be meaningful to her. From the talk — Kaelynn Partlow

Read what Kaelynn actually did. She did not run a paired-stimulus preference assessment on toys. She watched the kid. She watched the kid try to start a friendship she did not have the skills to finish. Then she wrote goals that fit what the kid was already trying to do: naming the dolls, holding the dolls, feeding the dolls, pushing them on the swing, and a few starter phrases like "she needs to eat" and "I'm going to give her a big push." From there the learner started making up new phrases on her own.

Practical version of the move:

1. Pick a week. Write down every moment the learner approaches another person, an activity, or an object with positive affect. Smiling, leaning in, watching, laughing, returning to the same person or thing. That list is your raw self-advocate data.
2. For each item on the list, ask: "What skill is missing between this learner and the thing they are clearly drawn to?" That gap is the goal candidate.
3. Cross-check with caregivers. They have a longer dataset than you do.
4. Write the goal in language that names the value, not just the skill. "Play a doll game with one peer for five minutes" is closer than "Engages in three-step play sequence with leisure item."

Where to find autistic adult input when your team doesn't have any#

Self-advocate input is not only about the kid in front of you. The field itself has been making goal decisions for autistic people for decades, often without autistic adults in the room. When your team does not have an autistic clinician, you have to import that perspective from somewhere.

My entire social media presence is dedicated to dispensing the most authentic autism and behavior analytic information any single individual could hope to pray. Many language-abled autistic people like myself feel what we call too different to be normal, but too normal to be different. From the talk — Kaelynn Partlow

What that looks like in practice:

• Read or watch autistic clinicians and writers regularly. Kaelynn, Megan Miller, Brian Middleton, Greg Hanley collaborators who are openly autistic, and others have published material you can cite inside a treatment plan.
• Bring in autistic adult feedback during plan review. If you are writing a goal about masking, eye contact, "good game," figurative language, or compliance, run the goal past an autistic adult before you sign it. If their answer is "please do not," that is data.
• Treat lived-experience accounts as one input alongside the literature, not as a replacement for it and not as an afterthought.

If your team has no one to ask, that is a hiring problem and a supervision problem, and it is fixable.

What to do when the self-advocate and the caregiver disagree#

This is the hard one. The learner wants more independence and the parent wants more protection. The teen wants community access and the parent is scared of community access. Both are real.

The move from the talk is to back up from the goal to the value underneath the goal.

Backing up from goals to values because our root values are probably the same because they want safety and I want safety. And they want a happy future and they want a happy future. And I want a happy future. From the talk — Kaelynn Partlow

In a meeting, that sounds like this. "It seems like safety is really important to you. That is important to me too. That is why we are working on this. Keeping them out of the community now is going to make me concerned about what their adulthood looks like. Ten years from now they are 22. What do you want their community engagement to look like then? Would it make sense to start building that now so they know how to be safe?"

Notice the structure. You agree on the value. You stretch the time horizon. You let the parent see the future version of their kid. Then the goal becomes a way to honor both sides instead of a fight between them.

When the disagreement is between two caregivers, the same move works. Find the value both of them share, name it out loud, and write the goal so that it serves the shared value first.

Documenting self-advocate input so it survives the treatment plan review#

A goal that came from real self-advocate input can still die in plan review if the documentation does not show its origin. Funders read what is on the page. They do not read the conversation you had in the beanbag chair. The documentation is the conversation.

A short template that works inside most treatment plans:

• Source of input. Name who provided it. The learner, observed during X. The caregiver, in interview on Y. The autistic adult consultant, on Z.
• Verbatim or near-verbatim sentence. "I want a girlfriend." Or, if non-speaking, the behavioral observation: "Learner approaches one specific peer eight times per session with positive affect, then withdraws when interaction stalls."
• The value the input points to. Connection. Independence. Safety. Joy. Belonging. Pick one or two.
• The goal that came from that value. Specific, observable, written so the reader can connect it back to the source.
• How you will check that the goal still matches the input. Quarterly re-ask. Caregiver interview. Re-observation during free time.

Two lines per goal is enough. The point is not the formatting. The point is that a reviewer six months from now can see why this goal exists and whose voice it came from.

Frequently asked questions#

Is self-advocate input the same thing as assent?

No. Assent is the learner's moment-to-moment willingness to participate in a session that is already happening. Self-advocate input shapes which session is happening in the first place. You can have one without the other. Strong assent monitoring on a goal nobody asked the learner about is still a self-advocacy failure at the planning step. Both layers matter, and they live in different parts of the treatment plan.

How do I get self-advocate input from a two-year-old?

The same way Kaelynn read the doll case. You watch. A two-year-old cannot fill out a values inventory, but a two-year-old is broadcasting preferences constantly. Who do they crawl toward? What do they reach for? What makes them light up and what makes them turn away? Pair your observation with the caregiver's longer dataset. Goals at this age should be aimed at the things the child is already drawn to, with the skills they need to access more of those things.

Do I have to use formal preference assessments to count this?

No. Formal preference assessments are useful for narrow questions inside a session, like which item to use as a reinforcer right now. They are a thin slice of self-advocate input, not the whole thing. The fuller version is observation across days, conversation with the learner if they can talk with you, conversation with caregivers, and a check against autistic adult perspective when the goal touches a contested area. Document all of it. The formal assessment can sit inside that documentation as one of the sources.

Watch the full hour for Kaelynn's case stories#

The CEU walks through the doll case, the bullying case, the beanbag and the wooden block, and the part where Kaelynn names why autistic adult input matters at the field level. Watch the talk to hear the moves in context.