Does my child have no empathy? 😓

For a long time, it was really hard for me to believe that my PDA son Cooper was a good kid.

Between the ages of about 4 and 7 years old, I often thought to myself that he had no ability to empathize, to consider the impact of his behavior on his brother, or even the fact that there were other people in the family besides him.

In fact, I can remember some distinct moments when I watched Cooper destroy his younger brother’s things, push him to the ground, or hit him for apparently no reason. I reacted in ways that I am not proud of, but I almost couldn’t help saying to him: “What is wrong with you?” or “You are not the only person in this home who matters!”

This was of course coming from my own place of utter exhaustion, desperation, and disbelief at how constant his equalizing behavior was, the level of destruction in my home, and his targeting of me and his younger brother.

I remember feeling so much resentment when we would get in the car and the radio would turn on as the engine started and he would scream "STOP!!!!" at the top of his lungs and kick the back of my chair like a maniac. I didn’t understand that he was at his Threshold of Tolerance for perceiving threat in his body and that the radio turning on was his tipping point. 

I just felt like a mom who was being abused by her son.

Making a shift away from correcting his behavior and trying to stop it in the moment was a huge leap of faith, and one I wouldn’t have been able to do without understanding the logic of how his brain worked.

I had to trust that what I saw on the surface was not *who he is* or *what is in his heart,* but rather a reflection of his brain perceiving danger and life threat.

The leap of faith was understanding that - even though I couldn’t objectively see the threat that his survival brain sensed - it was still possible that he perceived it as dangerous or life threatening.

In order to change my behavior with him, I had to believe it was possible that this was occurring even in the absence of a scientific consensus or diagnosis of PDA in the DSM-5. I had to radically accept that a brain that perceived threat in response to “neurocepted” losses of autonomy and equality could exist.

That this was what was *actually* going on with my son, rather than him being a bad seed.

Through this lens, I could logically understand that of course he can’t access empathy, take perspectives of other humans, or understand the impact of his actions from the part of his brain that wasn’t designed to do that. If he was spending all of his time perceiving he was going to die, then his protective mechanism would take over and do whatever it needed to do to keep him alive.

I remember thinking - When you perceive that you are in mortal danger – for example, being held up at gunpoint, you don’t take perspective of the assailant or consider the impact of your survival strategies on said assailant.

When you get into a car crash you don’t consider how your screaming will impact the passenger sitting next to you.

That isn’t how mammals and human beings are designed to stay alive.

Even though I got this cognitively, it took my heart time to catch up. And it was only when I started to see glimmers of thoughtfulness, that I realized, the logic actually DID fit.

Over time and with HUGE changes in our behavior towards our PDA son, I started to see surprising moments when he helped his little brother with something, or made me a ceramic coffee mug at summer camp "because you like to drink coffee,” or told us his concerns about a kid who was being made fun of at school.

I started to feel in my body the truth that I logically understood years before: His threat response isn’t who he is. His heart and his frontal lobe and his temperament are full of empathy and the ability to care about others.

Now, flash forward some years, and I am writing you the day after he finished 3rd grade. He brought home an art project he worked on for months titled: “Hometown Bakery.” He made a detailed diorama out of found objects (buttons, medication tops, wooden beads) to create our local doughnut shop and the owner of the shop, behind the counter.  

The description of his diorama says the following:

“The first time I had a donut there I was four, now I am nine. The nicest lady who works there always remembers me. She is the nicest bakery lady in the world.”

It is so thoughtful and empathetic that it makes my heart explode, and what's more, he is excited to give the diorama to the owner of the bakery as a gift!

All this from the once 4-year-old kid who I dreaded taking to that very bakery because he would scream, meltdown, cover the floor with crumbs and trash, and I would barely be able to apologize before he ran out the door without me having time to clean it up while trying to safely scoop up his then-baby brother in time before Cooper ran into the street.

Despite his activation, a part of him remembers the bakery lady’s kindness at that time. The heart behind the threat response knows implicitly that you are trying. It feels your kindness.

If you are in the depths of your “trauma cave” with your PDAer and you feel like your kid is a bad kid, or teen has no empathy, I want to reassure and remind you that their goodness is still there, just obscured by their nervous systems’ activation.

Sending all the love to you!