About Us
Care that meets every child exactly where they are.
Propel ABA Therapy (PATH) was founded on a simple belief: every child deserves care built around them, and every family deserves a team they can actually reach. We're privately owned, which mostly means this — when something needs to change, the people who can change it are the ones you're already talking to.
Our Mission
To help every child with autism or behavioral needs build the skills that matter in their own life, through ABA that is built around one child, grounded in current research, and delivered with respect.
No two children are alike, so no two plans are. We chart a personal path around each child's strengths and goals, and we teach families the strategies to carry that progress into every part of the week.
Our Vision
That every child on the spectrum, and every family beside them, can get care that meets the child exactly where they are.
We intend to be the ABA practice Houston families trust most, and to prove that therapy done as a genuinely individual journey produces independence, connection, and possibility that lasts.
Our Values
Built with families, for families.
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Dignity, always.
Every plan protects your child's autonomy, voice, and joy.
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Evidence, honestly.
Clinical practice grounded in current research — and honest about what we don't yet know.
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Family as partner.
You are the expert on your child. We build the plan together.
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Follow the child.
Home, center, school, or community — care shows up where life happens.
About ABA Therapy
What ABA actually is, in plain language.
Applied Behavior Analysis is the most widely researched therapy for children on the autism spectrum. At its heart it's the science of understanding behavior — why it happens, what a child is trying to get or avoid, and how new skills can be taught in ways that feel natural rather than drilled.
At Propel it looks like play, curiosity, and real-life practice. What follows is what that means concretely, because "individualized, evidence-based care" is a phrase you'll read on every ABA website in Houston and it tells you almost nothing.
What an hour actually looks like
It depends enormously on the child. Here are two.
3 years old · Early Foundations
Your therapist arrives and your child is already playing. That's where the session starts. Not at a table, and not with a worksheet.
Say the goal this month is asking for help instead of melting down when something won't open.
Your therapist sets out a jar with a favorite toy inside, the lid on just tightly enough. Your child tries. It doesn't budge. Your therapist waits — a beat longer than feels comfortable — then models the word, or the sign, or the button on the device. Your child asks. The jar opens.
Over an hour that might happen fifteen times across fifteen different activities, and to your child it looks like playing. Your therapist is recording data the whole time, usually on a tablet, without breaking the flow.
Some days are harder. A child who's sick or tired or already had a bad morning doesn't get pushed through the plan anyway. We work with the child in front of us.
And if you're home, you'll get pulled in — not to watch, but to try it yourself. The strategy has to work when we're not there.
14 years old · School Years
Your therapist doesn't arrive with a bag of toys. They arrive with a plan your teenager helped write.
Say the goal this month is asking for a break instead of leaving the room. Walking out of class gets him written up. Asking gets him five minutes and his day back. He knows the difference. He just hasn't had a way to do the second one once he's already past the point of talking.
So they practice it while he's calm, in the version he'd actually use — not a script, but a card, or a phrase, or a text to a teacher who agreed to it in advance. Then they practice it while he's mildly annoyed. Then the real week tests it.
Data still gets recorded, discreetly. A fourteen-year-old notices a clipboard and resents it, and being watched is its own kind of pressure.
Some sessions he doesn't want to work. That's information too, and often the most useful kind. We would rather understand why than push through it.
And the goals are his as much as yours. At this age, a plan he didn't agree to is a plan that stops working the moment we leave the room.
How we decide a goal is worth working on
Before anything goes into your child's plan, it has to pass one test: does this make your child's life better, or does it mostly make them easier for everyone else?
What we prioritize
Things that expand what a child can do, say, choose, or reach. Asking for help. Being understood the first time. Handling a change of plan without the day collapsing. Getting dressed alone. Making a friend.
Where we ask harder questions
Goals aimed at how a child appears rather than at what a child can do. If a behavior isn't limiting your child or putting anyone at risk, we'll want to talk through why it belongs in the plan before it goes in.
You know your child better than we do, and the decision is always yours. What you'll get from us is a straight answer about what a goal will actually accomplish.
You may have read that ABA is harmful. Here's our answer.
If you've been researching, you've seen it — and you deserve a real response rather than a reassurance.
The history is real. ABA in the 1960s and 70s used methods that would be indefensible today, including punishment and aversives. Autistic adults who went through that era describe lasting harm. Others describe later programs that valued compliance over communication and taught them to mask rather than to thrive.
That is not modern, ethical ABA, and it is not what happens here. We don't use aversives. We don't use punishment procedures. We don't chase compliance.
What we do instead is described above. We follow the child's lead, we teach through play, and we think carefully about which goals belong in a plan and why. If your child says no — in words, with a gesture, or by walking away — that's information, and we act on it.
During your consultation call with us, ask what happens when a child says no. Our answer will tell you more than a page like this one can.
Who delivers the care?
Every program is designed and supervised by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA). Direct therapy is delivered by Registered Behavior Technicians (RBTs), Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts (BCaBAs), and behavior analysts completing supervised fieldwork toward their own BCBA certification — all trained and supervised in-house, and all working to a plan a BCBA wrote. Progress is measured, reviewed with you monthly, and honestly reported — never manufactured.