I noticed my son wasn't eating breakfast.

On Tuesday of this week, I noticed my son wasn’t eating his breakfast. Before school, Cooper usually curls up on the couch under a blanket with his service dog, and we deliver him heated up popcorn, Pirate’s Booty, and a small bit of OJ with his anti-anxiety medication in it. He watches YouTube videos of fishing, football, or dogs (current special interests) until it is time to transition to riding to school with his dad. In general, our au pair packs the lunches and delivers food to Cooper if he needs more, while I move between my morning nervous system exercises, meditation, and ensuring that my younger son William eats breakfast. He is upstairs with me, also on an ipad, still in his bed with cozy covers on him, eating nectarines or apples, while watching Thomas the Train videos. But as I came down to grab more coffee on Tuesday, I noticed that Cooper’s popcorn hadn’t been touched. I made a decision. Instead of returning upstairs to meditate, I decided to sit on the floor next to Cooper and to watch the funny videos of dogs with him. I commented on how silly they were. I laughed. I enjoyed it with him. As soon as my physical presence was next to him – without my intention of doing anything but signaling safety – he began immediately eating his popcorn. I share this typical scene from our mornings to bring to light some key complexities of raising a PDA child or teen and to give you a little more clarity on your parenting journey Realistic Progress Even though my son is a few years out of burnout and eating much better now (he has added grilled chicken, steak, hamburgers, and fried fish in the last year after eating no such proteins for three years!), I still track his appetite and whether he eats as an indicator of *underlying* cumulative nervous system stress. Looking at this helps me realize when he needs extra accommodations and nervous system safety. I track indicators like these – which are unique to my child – like a mother of a diabetic child would track insulin levels. They fluctuate and require a dynamic practice of attunement and objective observation, especially as your child moves out of burnout and we may feel it is time to increase demands again. The Stickiest Basic Need For my son, eating is still what I call his “Stickiest Basic Need.” Identifying your child’s stickiest basic need is important, because it is the area where progress will be the sloooooowest. For example, if your child has trouble sleeping, it may take much longer to see progress as you work through an accommodation lens, than perhaps needing help with wiping, having constipation, or other trouble with toileting. Basic needs indicators is a primary category we track to understand your child or teen’s progress over time. Signaling safety without words What I did by sitting next to my son on the floor, was to giving him the sense of “being above me physically” to preempt and balance the equalizing response. Meaning, to help his nervous system feel safe, I paired this with my undivided attention and the presence of my body – a safe nervous system (rather than his au pair’s, which is safe, but not the safest) – to signal safety. My energy, my presence, my subtle co-regulation. This is still something I think about constantly, even though my son is what I consider “thriving” as the best version of himself. Accommodations affect siblings Did I ever imagine that my mornings would look like me sitting on the floor while my four-year-old eats his breakfast in bed and watches Kids’ YouTube? Absolutely not. Is it my preference? I imagined – among so many other things – that we would sit, and chat, and laugh at the breakfast table and eat healthy things as a family. But I had to radically accept that there will be certain things that I have to let go of, if I want to also give my younger son a sense of fairness and flexibility, while also maintaining different boundaries than with Cooper. For example, my younger son doesn’t eat popcorn for breakfast, he gets fruit and yogurt. I hope this is helpful as you use these insights and tools to find *your* unique path towards peace and stability in the home.