It Takes A Village
with Salma Jaramillo
Behavior Bites Podcast - Ep68July 30, 2025What brings you joy?
It’s okay if you don’t immediately have an answer, but I’m going to challenge you to bring more joy into your life!
During today’s meal— I speak with a behavior analyst about what brings her joy, her journey with ABA (the positives and challenges), mentoring younger generations, and community service.
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Amuse-Bouche
How do you get involved with mentoring younger generations, and why is it important to you?
Appetizer
How did you get into Behavior Analysis?
What did you do during your break from ABA, and what made you return?
What’s a typical day in your life look like?
Palate Cleanser
Describe your favorite summer dinner after a sunny beach day.
Entree
Something you wish you could have told yourself when getting started?
What are people generally surprised to find out about you?
Dessert
If there were no barriers, what would be your dream project?
What is your favorite thing about what you do?
Excerpts from the Episode
(*Paraphrased highlights)-
It’s meaningful work for me to mentor younger generations. I grew up in an area that's known as Section 8. We received a lot of help in the community. There was this one lady, Miss Gloria, I'll never forget her. She created the first Girl Scouts branch for Mexican-American girls. It was definitely an exciting moment for a lot of us. I was 10 years old and I was playing Girl Scouts basketball. It was a big deal for us and we would go sell cookies outside Publix supermarket.
I learned that over time, community is important. Community work is so meaningful. I'm sure that even without me being fully aware, I was still learning. I had these important role models serving my community, and it really did mean a lot when your parents cannot afford to buy you new clothes, new toys, and you don't know if you're going to have groceries in your fridge. To have people like that just being involved, it was very, very significant. So that's how I got inspired.
The way that I've gotten more involved is, where I live there's a program called Taking Stock in Children. It's a huge organization around Florida. They accept volunteers from all walks of life, and you get assigned a high school student. You get paired in their freshman year and the goal is for you to stay with them throughout their entire high school years. You make sure that they're staying motivated, getting good grades, staying out of trouble, staying out of drugs. If they do a good job of meeting their responsibilities, then they get a scholarship for college that’s fully paid for four years. These scholarships are given to children of immigrants or parents that are struggling and cannot afford to send their child to college. It’s highly motivating for these students to stay on task and meet their goals. I was already assigned a student. I got really excited when I met her, and I'm really looking forward to working with her, and helping her any way that I can.
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It's okay to slow down and take the time to know my client and know the family.
When I first transitioned into becoming a BCBA, I felt rushed, like I needed to know X, Y, and Z about all of these kids, their parents, their learning history, how things are at home, their environment. That added so much pressure on me, so much stress. I couldn't sleep because I thought I was going to fail the families.
Over time I learned, what is the big rush to know everything right off the bat? I wish I would have, from the beginning, taken more time and given myself more patience.
Now, I tell my RBTs, we don't know how long the pairing process is going to be with this client. You're just meeting them and they're just meeting you. Let's be patient, focused on playing, focused on building that positive rapport with the child and with the family. Yes, take notes and do your preference assessments and whatnot, but don't be so quick to learn everything about the child right away.
I feel like we lose track of why we're there. Now I’m not stressing myself out over every single detail. I give myself time. I conduct various meetings with the parents, with the child, and I just give them more grace and more time to get to know me and vice versa. That's really helped me.
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Seeing my clients and their parents being more connected, and for parents not to feel so afraid of their child's behaviors or meltdowns.
Something that has stuck with me is what a mom told me. She told me that because of the work we did together with her son, she learned to love his diagnosis. For a long time, she had been in denial. She would ask me, why is he autistic? Why? She struggled a lot with it. I worked with them for a couple of years, and over time she saw the progress. He was more carefree, playing more often, wanting to approach people, and just being playful and talkative with other people. It's not something that we forced on him. It's just something that we modeled and that he found value in.
She saw him flourish, and she thought, there's really nothing to be afraid of. I told her, no, there isn't, and I told her, you're not alone. There are a lot of people in this field with very good intentions. Our goal is to make a positive difference, to support you, to be with you every step of the way. If we don't have the answers today, we will figure it out together.
That experience left me with a warmth that money cannot buy. That’s something that is earned through being compassionate, and being kind, and being genuine with your intentions. That was really meaningful for me.
ABOUT Salma
Salma Jaramillo, MA, BCBA, LBA
Salma received her Master’s Degree in Exceptional Student Education & Applied Behavior Analysis at the University of West Florida. Before becoming a behavior analyst, Salma was a Registered Behavior Technician® for 7 years and provided direct therapy to various children with different needs and strengths.
Ever since becoming an RBT®, Salma knew she wanted to one day have her own ethical agency to continue to help children and their families. The agency she is building from the ground up is It Takes A Village ABA and the organization's message is that together we can achieve more.
Salma is stepping into her 4th year as a BCBA® and is still learning and hanging in there! Salma was raised by two immigrant parents that came to the states when she was only 3 years old and is a strong believer in resilience, hard work, and dedication to doing what you love. In her free time she creates art such as digital art and drawings, and is also skipping the midlife crisis and going straight into bird feeders, plants, and cats.
Salma also loves to volunteer and has participated in organizations that help abused & unhoused women and their children get back on their feet as well as mentoring teens going into high school with the goal to help them graduate with their high school diploma.
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