Why I'm happy my 6-year-old is calling his dad "Toilet Tongue"

"Idiot, idiot, stupid, idiot, dumb."

I listened to my younger son, William, whispering under his breath at his Minecraft world. 

A few minutes later, his dad poked his head in to say "Hi." 

William responded with, "Hey Toilet Tongue."

For the last three months William has been home and recovering from burnout. We unenrolled from first grade at his private school. 

Since then he has spent the majority of his day watching Kids YouTube, playing Minecraft (with and without his dad), showing me ideas he gathers from cartoons, and receiving food deliveries to his bed. 

The truth is, I have been so worried about William. 

You see, like all the parents we work with, as a mom I sometimes also have doubts and fears about working through the PDA lens. 
Thoughts like: 

• What if I am somehow getting this wrong and this isn't the right approach for him?
• What if he does need to be pushed a little through his anxiety (vs. accommodating internalized PDA)?
• What if I am not seeing things clearly?

This has been exacerbated because William looks SO different than his older brother.

But when I heard him repeating this "idiot" under his breath and calling his dad names for the first time - I felt some relief. 

It was all starting to make sense through the PDA lens. 

Now that I could see with my own two eyes some "equalizing" against the characters in Minecraft and a safe person, it felt less like a hypothesis that William was PDA and more like knowing. 

You see, William has a primarily *internalized* expression of PDA (think "freeze, fawn, shutdown" instead of "fight, flight").  

And for the last three months, I haven't seen the equalizing behavior that was so clear with his older brother Cooper (10) from the get go. 

This lack of observable "data" made me feel unsure about William's brain-wiring. 

Was the "compulsive behavior" I have been observing since last November OCD or was it the "equalizing towards self" of PDA?

Finally, things feel more clear. 

There are two primary things we can learn as parents (or therapists) from this anecdote. 

Equalizing looks different for different children

We can define it simply as: nervous system-driven behavior that a PDA individual engages in to feel "above" and/or "control" a person, scenario, or situation to get back to safety. 

Equalizing is most often directed at the safest (primary caregiver or safe person) or the weakest person (younger siblings), but it can also be directed towards self in internalized PDA. 

Equalizing is much harder to spot with internalizers, because it can express in the form of picking, self-harm, behaviors toward self that look compulsive, negative self talk, intense negative ruminations, and suicidal ideation. 

The Hierarchical Nature of Nervous System

For parents who begin to experiment with a new paradigm of supporting an *internalized* PDAer in burnout, it can look like things are getting worse in the beginning. 

They see more aggression, more verbal equalizing, more activation, and perhaps behaviors they didn't witness before.

This can feel scary, but there is a good reason for it. 

Here is the logic:

• Your child or teen spent a lot of time in freeze, fawn, or shutdown at school (these are often the "compliant, fine, and high achieving" children until they hit burnout),
• When you start accommodating or they are home because of burnout, their cumulative nervous system activation will come down and they will start to move towards a more "safe and social" state.
• Yet, in order to get to that "safe and social" state, they will have to move through "mobilization" (fight or flight) first to get there. 
• That is why we sometimes feel like things are "getting worse" before they get better. 

I share this because I am going through it with my youngest.  

Professional me must remind mom me that all is well. 

So cheers to the moments when your internalizer calls you an "idiot" under their breath or suddenly seems more "aggressive" or "violent" towards the content they want to engage with on a screen. 

Paradoxically - it may actually be a good sign. 

Have a regulated and kind weekend everyone.