Safest of the Safe

Six years ago, when we lived in the Washington D.C. area and hadn’t yet had our second child, Cooper would usually spend Saturday nights at his granny’s apartment in the city.

They would bake challah bread together and he enjoyed punching and braiding the dough. He consistently took a bath and went to bed early, without drama, and then he would sleep in later than we had ever witnessed at home. He wouldn’t break things, scream, or refuse to eat, but rather he would drink healthy smoothies and eat peanut butter sandwiches on homemade bread.

On Sunday mornings, my husband and I would drive into the city from our home in Maryland, feeling like we barely “got back to neutral” with one night off from parenting and not really understanding why. We would then walk into Granny’s apartment, with a sense of unease and, to be honest, dread.

The moment Cooper saw us, he would become a whirling dervish, needing to rough house with dad, not letting us speak to Granny by impulsively interrupting, and even breaking things. Sometimes he would have a full meltdown as soon as he saw us walk through the door.

When we got home, Cooper would be back to his “home self” – the side of him that (pre-burnout) was not visible at his daycare or granny’s house. He would refuse to eat, go limp so we had to carry him up the stairs for bedtime, scream, cry, and avoid any demand we asked of him no matter how small.

It was baffling. And honestly, it made me feel like shit as a mom. I kept asking, what was wrong with me?

Now, in retrospect, I completely understand the dynamic and the logic of his neuroception and the “deep why” behind this paradox.

While he was at Granny’s he was “masking” or internalizing the threat response because he wasn’t with his “safest of the safe” person (me).

This was happening on a subconscious or “pre-perceptual" level. His amygdala – or survival part of the brain – was registering “I can’t scream and destroy things here because this isn’t the safest of the safe location or person.” This didn’t mean he wasn’t experiencing threat or activation in his nervous system, he was just internalizing it and it was accumulating until the moment we walked in that door.

This was one part of his brain (survival brain). At the same time, his thinking brain and heart loved and loves his granny deeply and now six years later, Cooper still reminisces about making challah bread!

This dynamic and paradox – where a PDA child or teen only lets out their externalized threat response with their Safest of the Safe person or people – is incredibly common. It can be a dichotomy even within the same household where the child or teen “behaves terribly” for the mom who represents more unconditional felt safety and then “follows the rules” and complies with a stricter dad. I see this all the time in my work with parents, especially in divorced households where there are truly two different household cultures around parenting and “believing in PDA.”

The logical conclusion for most people looking in at this from the outside results in the following:

The statement: “He doesn’t act like that for me” followed by the conclusion that there must be something incorrect or inconsistent with the behavior of the Safest of the Safe person in the PDAer’s life. This is usually the mom. We get blamed.

(And as we know, this narrative isn’t new. It was also present when Autism in general wasn’t understood and we were the “refrigerator mothers.” See Neurotribes for a more complete history.  

Parent blame was even present in this 2023 publication on PDA from Germany. The sentence: "It is made clear that PDA can represent a facet in a complex disorder model in which not only the characteristics of the affected person themselves, but also the parents and their own psychopathology play a central role.”)

Here is the mindset shift: The worst “behavior” of the PDA child or teen will come out more visibly with the Safest of the Safe person*.

Why is this important to understand? Because most moms or lead parents are blamed - and blame themselves - for this dynamic. They beat themselves up thinking there is something inherently wrong with them as parents, and this is reinforced by things like a school administrator saying “well, there must be something going on at home, because they don’t behave like that here” or “we can’t be responsible for what goes on at home.”

If you are the Safest of the Safe, I want you to know that the behavior you see is a reflection of felt safety with you. Your child perceives – on a subconscious level – that you are safe and attached enough to let the cumulative nervous system activation out and still maintain the attachment needed for survival. It doesn’t mean you are parenting poorly, inconsistently, or need to be more strict. (Read that again and internalize it. Don’t let anyone tell you different).

Yesterday, I received an anonymous message on social media from a mom whose 5-year-old PDA daughter explained this exact dynamic in her own words: 

This PDA child is five and already has that level of self-awareness!!

So as you go into this weekend, I invite you to stop blaming yourself for your child’s behavior. You might not even realize you are doing it! 

Unfortunately, the rest of the world will keep doing it, but we don’t have to. We can give ourselves grace and compassion, knowing in our hearts that we are the Safest of the Safe and keeping our families afloat, even when it is hard.

I 100% believe in you and your PDA children and teens!