Sure, we understand the importance of a relationship-based developmental approach in helping individuals with developmental challenges. But it's also important to know when (and why) a strategy doesn't make sense -- particularly if it's uncritically accepted and widely used. In his keynote address, Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards and Unconditional Parenting, will argue that manipulating people's behavior -- training them as though they were pets -- is both morally objectionable and, according to decades of research, unlikely to be effective in the long run. That's true for children and adults on and off the spectrum. Interventions such as ABA often prove counterproductive for multiple reasons: their preoccupation with measurable behaviors to the exclusion of the experience of the human being who engages in those behaviors; the proven drawbacks of carrot-and-stick control across a wide range of settings; and the poisonous message of conditional acceptance: "You are valuable only when you act the way you are told." To promote humane and constructive alternatives, we must be prepared to offer a persuasive critique of the behaviorist status quo.