Leaf and Lake Behavior Consulting

Meet Abby Amacher, MA, BCBA, LBA

Founder of Leaf & Lake Behavior Consulting

Abby has worked in Applied Behavior Analysis since 2008, beginning as a behavior technician providing in-home support before earning her degree in Social Work and later becoming a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Her experience spans direct clinical care, staff training, clinical and operational leadership, payer systems, and multi-site service delivery.

After years in leadership, Abby returned to what she enjoys most: working directly with individuals, families, and the people who support them. She founded Leaf & Lake Behavior Consulting in 2025 to provide flexible, individualized behavior support outside of a one-size-fits-all model of care.

Abby's approach is assent-based, trauma-informed, and neurodiversity-affirming. She believes behavior change should have a meaningful reason behind it—and that sometimes the person isn't what needs to change. Treatment and consultation focus on understanding behavior in context, building useful skills, reducing meaningful barriers, and changing environments when the environment is part of the problem.

Rooted in Oshkosh

Abby has called Oshkosh home since arriving for college in 2005. Leaf & Lake serves Oshkosh and surrounding communities through direct treatment, caregiver collaboration, school and community consultation, and professional mentoring.

Beyond individual services, Abby is interested in helping schools, businesses, and community organizations create environments that are more accessible to neurodivergent people. Inclusion shouldn't depend on teaching someone to look or behave more “typical.” Sometimes meaningful change means changing the environment instead.

Abby Amacher

What is Applied Behavior Analysis? 

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the science of understanding behavior and the environmental variables that influence it. At Leaf & Lake, ABA is used to understand why behavior is happening, what purpose it serves, and what—if anything—needs to change.

ABA may be used to build skills in areas such as communication, daily living, self-regulation, independence, and social interaction. It can also help address behavior that meaningfully affects health, safety, access, relationships, learning, or quality of life.

Not every difference needs treatment. Behavior is considered within the context of the individual, their environment, their goals, and the people around them.

Our Approach to ABA

Leaf & Lake provides assent-based, trauma-informed, and neurodiversity-affirming behavior support. That means treatment isn't built around making someone appear more typical or gaining compliance for its own sake.

Our approach includes:

• Prioritizing safety, dignity, autonomy, and meaningful choice

• Recognizing and responding to assent and withdrawal of assent

• Collaborating with clients, caregivers, and other support providers

• Building useful skills rather than simply suppressing behavior

• Considering environmental changes before assuming the individual needs to change

• Using behavioral science and ongoing data to guide clinical decisions

• Selecting goals based on meaningful impact rather than social conformity

Behavior change should have a meaningful reason behind it. Sometimes that means building a new skill. Sometimes it means reducing behavior that is causing real harm. And sometimes the appropriate clinical decision is to leave the behavior alone.

What is focused ABA?

Focused ABA targets a limited number of goals based on the individual's most important needs and priorities. Rather than addressing many areas at once, treatment concentrates on specific skills or behaviors that meaningfully affect everyday life—such as communication, safety, emotional and behavioral regulation, daily routines, independence, or challenging behavior.

Focused ABA may be appropriate for individuals who do not need a comprehensive treatment program or who need support with a specific concern. Services can take place at home, school, daycare, or in the community so that skills are taught and practiced in the environments where they actually matter.

Focused treatment may also provide support for individuals waiting to access a more comprehensive program when clinically appropriate. However, focused ABA is not simply a smaller version of comprehensive ABA. Goals, treatment intensity, and service setting are individualized based on the person's needs.

Whether the goal is communicating needs more effectively, increasing independence, navigating difficult situations, or reducing behavior that creates meaningful barriers, focused ABA is designed to address what matters without treating every difference as something that needs to change.