Books
Two books. Two sides of the same table.
The same argument, written twice — once for the people who build the programs, and once for the people who have to approve them.
Practitioners make it meaningful. Parents make sure it’s meaningful.
Make it Meaningful
A Practitioner’s Guide — Peter F. Gerhardt & Shanna Bahry
A practical framework for teaching the skills that actually matter into adulthood: how to choose targets that matter, using methods that work, and how to build programming that survives contact with real environments.
Written for behavior analysts, special educators, and anyone responsible for deciding what someone spends their instructional hours on.
Make Sure It’s Meaningful
A Parent’s Guide — Shanna Bahry
The parent-facing companion. Same argument, written for the person on the other side of the table — how to tell whether a program is preparing a child for adult life, what to ask for, and how to ask for it in a way that gets heard.
Why this belongs on a practitioner’s radar: sometimes you have already made the case for adaptive skills and it has not landed. A family hears “life skills” and hears you giving up on academics. This book makes the argument at length, with the research behind it, in language written for them — so the parent who was resisting the plan starts reinforcing it at home instead.
Bulk & training use
Using a book with your team or your families?
Both books are used in staff onboarding, graduate coursework, and parent education programs. Get in touch about bulk orders, discussion guides, or pairing a book with a training sequence.