Is fear of the future getting you stuck?

Five years ago, when we began to shift our parenting towards providing more autonomy and flexible boundaries to our PDA son Cooper (now 9 years old), it felt terrifying.

For his first 4.5 years of life (prior to burnout), I felt that the structure, routine, consequences, authority, and strict rules I was providing in the home were a necessary, but rickety dam holding back a tsunami of my son’s defiant temperament.

I was constantly monitoring my own consistency because I felt that one little leak in the dam (e.g. not following through on a consequence, not enforcing the time out, etc.) would lead to the tsunami overtaking us and drowning the whole family.

However, when Cooper reached burnout and essentially stopped speaking, eating and walking, I didn’t have a choice but to change and experiment with a different way.

Although the process of lowering demands, re-examining boundaries, and introducing more autonomy did produce a period of chaos and confusion, it ultimately led to a much more peaceful rhythm in the home, me finally feeling like a competent mom, and my son thriving as the best version of himself.

Part of our mission here at At Peace Parents is to support you through that chaos.

My goal is to reduce your pain, isolation, confusion, and fear while you are making really challenging changes in your own behavior as a parent.

I want to drastically shorten your timeline, because I don’t want it to be as traumatizing for you as it was for me, or to take the years it took me to get where we are today.

Now that I have worked with more than 1,000 parents of PDA children and teens, I have realized how frequent fear thoughts are. It has become obvious how much these fears get in the way of parents taking action and deepening autonomy for their PDA child or teen.

I know this not just because I have heard the fear thoughts from countless parents as they are making a paradigm shift, but also because I have heard them in my own head!

Fears like:

If I don’t correct them in the moment for talking back to me, they will never learn not to (and then they will never have friends or function in society or have a job or get married or be happy…).

If I let them call me names, then they will grow up to be abusive.

If I keep delivering them food on the couch, then they will never be able to feed themselves and I will be their maid/servant forever.

If I let them sleep in my bed, they will never leave.

If I don’t make them practice reading, they will never learn to read (or finish school, be independent, etc.)

All of these thoughts are completely normal and valid. There is no shame in having them. And yet, we don’t have to design our lives around them or get stuck in our progress with our PDA child because of them.

So how do we implement real change, when our brains and thoughts are fighting hard against us!?

As an anxious, olympic-level ruminator, I know this is no easy task!  We can’t simply think our way out of it.

The good news is that we don’t have to.

We can act in the face of these thoughts and accept them as just part of the process.

That is why I have developed structured tools that will help you stay intensely in the present moment.

Some of the main tools I teach parents are the following:

• The Sacred Pause
• Cost-Benefit Decision-Making Within Constraints
• The 12 most Effective Accommodations
• A Non-Violent Communication Script for Easy and Effective Advocacy
• Boundary Setting and Pruning with others outside the home to preserve your energy
• And more.

The tools are there even when your brain is saying “don’t do it this way!” your in-laws are watching you pull out the ipad with raised eyebrows, and you feel a tightness in your chest because your nervous system feels that you are “doing it wrong.” And when you practice them consistently (which is what we do together in the Paradigm Shift Program!) and see the changes that come about, they provide a way out of the spiral of anxious thoughts.

And as a final gentle reminder: Fear of the future is simply that, a fear. It doesn’t make it true.

What if things could turn out better than you ever expected? I bet they will.