12 Accommodations For PDA Children and Teens

1: Autonomy

Autonomy can be thought of as providing our PDA children or teens with true freedom and choice, which is deeper than allowing them to choose between limited options that we decide upon. Perceived losses of autonomy are one of two primary root causes of nervous system activation (fight, flight or freeze). Autonomy can often be expanded, while still holding health and safety boundaries. True autonomy means letting go of some control of outcomes on the part of parent, teacher, therapist, etc. 

2: Equality

A lack of equality is a primary root cause for what activates the nervous system in our PDA children or teens. Perceived inequality (when a person or situation is above them in stature, power, authority) triggers a fight, flight or freeze response in the moment and accumulates over time. The accommodation on the part of parents, teachers, therapists means moving from a “power over” to a “power with” approach and focusing on mentorship (rather than authority) and collaboration. 

3: Nervous System Safety

Parents, teachers, therapists can provide nervous system safety through undivided attention and intentional signals of safety in words, tone of voice, and bodily movements. Think of it like this: mammal to mammal, your nervous system is speaking to another’s, often with no words at all.

4: Communication

Communication with a PDA child or teen involves both what we DO and DON’T say. Our body language and energy speak to our kids before our words reach them. Declarative Language (Murphy 2020) can be a highly effective tool to use when speaking. Also deliberately offering “safe energy” with or without verbal communication can be highly effective. These accommodations also include reducing the complexity of speech and using pauses for processing differences. 

5: Strewing

“The art of allowing your child to discover something you have casually left out” - according to Sandra Dodd, who coined the term. We can expand this to mean: a visual, verbal or sensory cue or “offering” of anything – a conversation, an activity, a meal, YOU – that the PDA child or teen can engage with or not. 

6: PDA-Friendly Play

“Play” in this context may mean pure sensory interaction, engaging in a video game or minecraft alongside your child or teen, or allowing them to control you within the context of play. If play is hard for you, you can get into the energy of “playful,” which supports you and the child or teen to move from a place of perceived danger to safe and social. I often recommend at least 10-15 minutes a day of undivided and playful attention to build connection between parents and their children or teens.

7: Novelty, Dopamine & Sensory Intense Offers

Dopamine, novelty and sensory intense experiences support PDA children and teens to engage and can often be leveraged with their special interest. I believe these types of accommodations also distract a PDA child or teen from a baseline of perceiving threat in their body throughout the day. 

8: Lowering Demands

Lowering demands means removing the pressure that a PDA child or teen “should” be able to do something according to their age or because they have demonstrated they can do it in another moment. This includes removing direct commands, unspoken expectations, or energetic disapproval AND lowering the demand by doing it for them. This may mean delivering food on the couch, packing their backpack, cleaning up after them, putting shoes on, brushing their teeth for them, etc. 

9: Humor

Humor has the potential to disarm the threat response for both parent and child. It can also support a more “collaborative” energy and one of equality, especially when combined with goofiness, silliness, or self-deprecation. 

There are THREE Responsive Accommodations

10: Diffusion

This is the most difficult accommodation to implement. It means that in response to difficult, defiant, oppositional, rude or inappropriate (but not unsafe!) “behavior,” you recognize that the PDA child or teen is in their “survival” brain and that the “behavior” is not under their control. Then you refrain from correcting, teaching, explaining, or punishing. You either use a sacred pause or use one of the 9 “proactive” accommodations to support them getting back to the thinking brain. 

11: De-Escalation

This accommodation is in response to a meltdown or panic attack when there is no risk of physical harm. Here, we provide a non-reactive presence, without trying to control or stop the screaming or crying. We treat it as a seizure or a panic attack not under our child or teen’s conscious control (because it isn’t under their control). We stay within eye shot, without touching or moving the child or teen. Once they start to calm, we focus on repair and recovery, not talking about emotions, teaching, explaining or punishing. The goal is to provide energetic and environmental safety to our PDA child or teen when they have moved past their Threshold of Tolerance. Sometimes I think of this as: bearing witness to the exquisite pain of this aspect of my child’s human experience. 

12: Risk Mitigation

We use this accommodation when there is risk of physical harm to the parent, sibling, and/or PDA child or teen. The foundational principle is: mitigating risk in a situation where there is no perfect answer or solution in the moment. This accommodation has three components: 1) Preparing the physical space ahead of time to mitigate risk of harm (removing knives, breakables, etc.) 2) deciding in the moment what action is least likely to result in physical or psychological harm to all humans in the space. This often requires choosing between awful options. 3) Once out of the moment, panning out and re-examining big picture choices like school, separating children, or re-allocating finances/work schedules, etc. Remember, PDA is a nervous system disability. You can’t extinguish the “behavior” using behavioral approaches because it isn’t under their control. 

Gentle Reminders

• An Accommodation Approach is way more than “lowering demands” or a “low-demand lifestyle.”
• The energy and radical acceptance behind the accommodations matters more than perfecting the implementation.
• This is not about perfection, but rather creating a new baseline to support your child or teen. Stress to the nervous system is cumulative. 
• This is not a prescription, but rather an invitation to experiment with these 12 tools so that you can see with your own two eyes what works for your child.
• These accommodations can support any child or neurodivergent child or teen, however the “cost-benefit decision-making” on the part of the parent will be vastly different. That is a different topic altogether.
• This is a muscle you strengthen with practice, not something you “do” in order to make PDA go away.