This is what success looks like.

When our daughter Alicia was three years old, we put her on a bus with tears rolling down our faces — and watched her go crying to a place she hated every single day. For three years.

The teachers and paraprofessionals at school loved Alicia and would do anything to help her. And I was doing everything I knew how to do — asking her questions on the ride home, requiring responses she struggled to give. She would cover her ears and shout "no school, no school." Linda knew something was wrong with the way Alicia was being taught long before I did. Our district's autism program was being guided by the most respected institution in the world at that time — the kind of place wealthy parents crossed oceans to reach. I leaned on that hard.

She was dead right. I was dead wrong. I don't say that very often — but it's the truth.

None of us knew we were making it worse. We just hadn't been taught yet.

When Alicia was six, we attended an autism conference and saw Dr. Vincent Carbone on the schedule presenting on ABA. Our first instinct was to skip it. Three years of watching our daughter suffer — every behavior of hers screaming don't send me back. On the rare occasions we were given the chance to observe, we'd stand behind that glass and watch her. Our little girl was never happy. She wanted nothing to do with any adult in that room — and honestly, none of them looked like they wanted to be there either. We always left with a pit in our stomachs. We were absolutely done with ABA.

I almost didn't walk into that room.

Thank God we stayed.

We were sitting there watching Dr. Carbone work with a little girl on the screen. A little girl who looked exactly like Alicia. And my wife Linda — who had been holding three years of I told you inside her chest — hit me with an elbow sharp enough to break a rib and said exactly that. See. I told you.

She had been telling me for three years.

She was dead right. I was dead wrong.

I walked out of that room knowing one thing. I had become a giant reflexive EO — the science term for a person whose very presence makes a child want to run the other direction. I didn't know yet how I was going to explain that to another human being. I didn't care. The only thing I was completely convinced of was this:

My daughter was going to start liking me whether she liked it or not.

People laugh when I say that at workshops. But it's the laugh of recognition. Every parent in that room has had that moment.

Three days later, Alicia started coming to me. Not because I had a treat. Because I walked out of that training with something I hadn't had before — one clear step I could actually take. I took it. And three days later my daughter started choosing to be near me.

I saw that little girl on the screen and something hit me that I still don't have a clean word for. Three years. Everything I thought I was doing right. And now I could see all of it clearly for the first time.

That moment lives in every workshop I've ever given. Because every parent in that room is waiting for it — whether they know it or not.

Now my granddaughter is walking the same road Alicia walked. My daughter Kayla is taking the next step. Now my granddaughter is walking the same road Alicia walked. My daughter Kayla is taking the next step. And I'm back — energized to help her, and other children like her.