MI for Change: Motivational Interviewing in ABA & Mental Health

You've learned the OARS. You're asking open questions, you're reflecting, you're using affirmations. And you leave the session thinking — why didn't that conversation move? Why does it still feel like I'm pushing?
Here's what Dr. Monica Gilbert realized about her own early MI work: it wasn't an OARS problem. It was a timing problem.
OARS are the ingredients. The four MI processes are the recipe. And if you don't understand the recipe, you can have the best ingredients in the world and still somehow make a quiche when you wanted a pizza.
In this episode Monica gets practical — all the way down to the specific questions, reflections, and affirmations that belong at each stage of a parent session. She walks through a morning routine case start to finish: what to ask in Engage when your brain is already three steps ahead, how to find Focus when a session is wandering across behaviors and school and grandma and bedtime, what to do when you hear change talk in Evoke and every instinct tells you to move, and the two very different endings a Plan session can have — one that looks good on paper and never gets implemented, and one where the parent solves her own implementation barrier before she leaves the room.
If you've been using MI techniques and still feeling like something is off — this is the episode that names what it is.
Learn more about Motivational Interviewing and explore on-demand courses at www.drmonicagilbert.com
Join the MI Academy for practical training and resources — and enjoy an exclusive 15% off with code MIFORCHANGE at checkout.
📲 Connect with me on Instagram: @drmonicagilbert

You have the curriculum. You have the motivation. You've taken a course, learned the techniques, told yourself you're going to use open-ended questions and affirmations and reflections in your next parent session.
And it still feels like something is missing.
In this episode Dr. Monica Gilbert opens with a story about trying to bake a protein pizza — having almost every ingredient, skipping the one she didn't have, and ending up with a quiche. The metaphor is sharper than it sounds: in parent training sessions, knowing the tools isn't the same as knowing how to combine them. And it's the combination that makes the difference between a session with good rapport and a session where the parent actually moves.
This episode covers the most important reframe of the entire arc: are you doing parent training TO the parent — or WITH and FOR the parent? One word changes everything about how you show up in the room.
Monica also introduces the relationship between OARS and the four MI processes — how knowing where a parent is in the change process tells you exactly which tool to use, how much of it, and when. Not just what the tools are. When to use them.
Next episode: the full breakdown of how to apply OARS across each of the four processes.
Learn more about Motivational Interviewing and explore on-demand courses at www.drmonicagilbert.com
Join the MI Academy for practical training and resources — and enjoy an exclusive 15% off with code MIFORCHANGE at checkout.
📲 Connect with me on Instagram: @drmonicagilbert

You're in a case review. The graphs are flattening. The child is making progress in session — treatment integrity is high, IOA is high, the programs look solid. But every goal that depends on what happens outside of therapy hasn't moved in months.
Your first instinct is to modify the intervention. Change the prompting hierarchy. Adjust the reinforcement. Look at the function.
Sometimes that's right. But sometimes the data is pointing somewhere else entirely — and most agencies aren't structured to see it.
In this episode, Dr. Monica Gilbert speaks directly to agency owners and clinical directors about a pattern she has seen across clinics, across clinicians, and across diagnoses: excellent progress during sessions, minimal progress outside of them. The same outcome, over and over, in cases with completely different treatment plans. And the reason, when she finally looked at it honestly, wasn't clinical. It wasn't a family problem either.
It was a system problem.
This episode covers what most agencies audit for versus what actually predicts long-term outcomes, why parent coaching consistently becomes an afterthought at the end of supervision visits, and the one question Monica gave a BCBA last week that immediately changed how she was approaching a case she'd been stuck on for months.
Free AOA guide for you.
Learn more about Motivational Interviewing and explore on-demand courses at www.drmonicagilbert.com
Join the MI Academy for practical training and resources — and enjoy an exclusive 15% off with code MIFORCHANGE at checkout.
📲 Connect with me on Instagram: @drmonicagilbert

Have you ever finished a CEU training thinking it was genuinely good — took notes, highlighted the slides, told yourself you'd use it with your families — and then three months later couldn't remember what the presenter actually taught?
Most continuing education doesn't fail because the information is bad. It fails because information alone rarely changes behavior. And as behavior analysts, we already know this. We know our clients need practice, feedback, repetition, and reinforcement before new skills generalize. We just somehow expect ourselves to learn differently.
In this episode Dr. Monica Gilbert gets honest about the gap between attending a training and actually changing how you practice — including a two-day workshop she was genuinely excited about, bought the book for, and then quietly stopped using when life became life. She also shares why Motivational Interviewing has stayed with her in a way that most other trainings haven't — not because it's inspiring, but because it's structured. It gives you a roadmap, decision points, specific questions, and techniques you can use in your very next session.
One of those techniques — the AOA approach — is demonstrated live in this episode through a real session with a skeptical ABA parent who came in having heard everything negative about the field on social media.
Free AOA guide . Grab it and use it this week.
Learn more about Motivational Interviewing and explore on-demand courses at www.drmonicagilbert.com
Join the MI Academy for practical training and resources — and enjoy an exclusive 15% off with code MIFORCHANGE at checkout.
📲 Connect with me on Instagram: @drmonicagilbert

Why do parents keep agreeing with you in session — and doing nothing at home?
If you've ever asked yourself that, this episode is for you. Dr. Monica Gilbert sits down with Jany Bello, M.Ed, BCBA, LBA — founder of Exceptional Minds ABA — to talk about the real reasons behind parent follow-through, why the fix-it reflex BCBAs are trained to use is often the thing killing rapport, and what motivational interviewing actually looks like in a parent coaching session versus what most of us were taught.
They also get into the BCBA-RBT relationship — the breakdown, the burnout, and the three questions every supervisor should be asking before giving any feedback at all.
Whether you're a BCBA struggling with parent buy-in, an RBT trying to find your voice, or a supervisor who wants a team that actually trusts you — this conversation is going to hit.
Don't try to impress. Try to connect. That's the episode in one line.
Find Jany at Exceptional Minds ABA for RBT and BCBA exam prep, ABA education content, and straight-talk advocacy for the field.
Learn more about Motivational Interviewing and explore on-demand courses at www.drmonicagilbert.com
Join the MI Academy for practical training and resources — and enjoy an exclusive 15% off with code MIFORCHANGE at checkout.
📲 Connect with me on Instagram: @drmonicagilbert