But what should I do?

“What should I do?”

This is a question that often comes up in my social media feeds, signature program, and occasionally in my coaching containers.

The answer I give is often deeply unsatisfying:

I’m never going to tell you what to do.

I usually only say this if we are face-to-face, so you can see my smile as a subtle reminder that this is not what we are doing together. I’m not here to give the answers or decisions about what you should do in your particular home, but rather provide tools to experiment with, frameworks to collect your own data on your specific child, and clarity on the next right step and the choices you make.

The last thing I want to do to a parent is to repeat the same dogma and dynamics that you have already experienced with medical professionals -- of them “knowing what is right and the ‘best approach’” and then evaluating you for whether either doing a good job applying it or not.

That said, I won’t leave a vulnerable parent hanging. 

I will often emphasize that much of your experience with your child (and in your head) is ABSOLUTELY NORMAL for a parent raising and caregiving for a child with a nervous system disability. I will point out where you have blamed yourself or made yourself feel wrong, for something that isn’t your fault. It's just reality. (e.g. your child’s nervous system disability, where they are in burnout or recovery, and the fact that you are living in a world that doesn’t believe in it… yet.).

I might ask you simple questions to help you return to your agency as a parent, rather than looking to me as a “guru” that knows your child better than you. Because I don't.

What do YOU think is the root cause of your child’s behavior in this particular instance?

For example, this week during the Paradigm Shift Program, while spot-coaching a dad, we panned out and re-assessed this question. His daughter was demonstrating controlling behavior but also what appeared to be ruminative and ritualistic behavior, which sometimes can be associated with OCD. I asked the question – what do you think the root cause is? Is it possible that it might be OCD? Ultimately, he had already worked through an exposure framework with therapists, which made things worse, so he returned to his intuition on PDA.

We went on to the next question:

What is the data telling you?

We reviewed the relevant categories:

How is nervous system activation over the long term? (meltdowns, equalizing behavior, etc.)

Access to basic needs? (e.g. is eating improving or getting worse? How is sleep?)

How is connection? (e.g. is your child putting their feet under you on the couch now after a year of kicking you onto the floor whenever you try to sit near them?)

In this case we panned out and looked at the “empirical” (observed) data over the course of the last 15 months and could notice patterns that gave him a better sense of whether it was “working” to accommodate and lower demands for his daughter and family or not.

Finally, we moved to radical acceptance. I outlined the three choices he had and what the costs and benefits might be. None of them were a magic bullet, none of them “solved the problem,” most of them felt like shitty options.

But he saw clearly what they were. What he could control and what he couldn’t.

And then said he would sit with them and decide. And guess what, although this process brings up grief, it also creates movement. It gets you unstuck.

When I ask these questions, my job is to remain objective and unattached to the outcome. To provide a sense of autonomy (see what I did there? Wink!).

I care about this dad’s peace and his daughter’s well-being more than whether he continues to work through a PDA lens.

What I want for him is clarity. To feel agency again. To trust again that he is a great dad and can handle all that is to come, for years down the line, when raising his unique child.

Finally, I often ask parents when we start a coaching container the following: What does your intuition tell you?

And the most common response is “I don’t know.” 

Why? Because you have been gaslit, made to feel wrong, and judged for what your intuition told you, so you shut it down. You have suppressed those hunches. The pangs in your heart.

And now I’ll say something vulnerable as a business owner who sells a program to teach parents the tools, mindset shifts, “How To’s” for implementation and data tracking approaches to support a PDA child or teen over the long term.

Most of the time, on some level, you already know what you need to do.  

The data you collect is so that you can confirm and believe in your intuition again.

The tools are a portal back to what you already realized on some level of your being, but doubted.

The language we use is to put contours and voice around what your deeper self already senses.

The community provides belonging and strength, so that you can feel empowered enough to implement and experiment. To make mistakes. To engage in trial and error. To learn. To find some healing and witnessing in your human experience.  

I will end with a gentle reminder:  

My work on PDA is not about convincing you or anyone about a parenting philosophy.

The work is about helping you get clarity, to see the data right in front of you, understand how your children’s brains and nervous systems work, what will *actually* support them over the long term, and return to your agency as a parent.

I want you to forge your own unique path through the dark woods.

It will look different than my path.

And that is the marker of your true success.

You got this my friends.