Is my child *really* PDA?

Is my child really PDA?  This is a question I hear from parents and even within my own head sometimes! 🫣

The truth is, now that my PDA son Cooper (10) is out of burnout, has friends, is rocking his flag football team, and graduating from occupational therapy, I sometimes wonder – Does he really have a nervous system disability?

And in these moments I am tempted to ease off accommodations and shift back into traditional parenting.

It might even be after Cooper's just played a great football game that he'll start equalizing against his brother and instead of using any of the accommodation techniques I know, I'll let my anger get the best of me and scold: “Just stop being a jerk to your brother!”

But then I immediately see the look of betrayal in my son’s eyes, which is often accompanied by tears and escalation into a fight/flight response or panic attack.

And I'm here to tell you that it's ok to slip up as a parent like this.

Pathological Demand Avoidance (or Pervasive Drive for Autonomy) is a complex neurotype with a fluctuating expression. And our kids “mask” their threat response or internalize it (think: deer in the headlights, or fawning) and many can appear “typical” when accommodated over the long term.

So even those of us who are working so hard to support and accommodate our PDA children and teens will question what we're seeing and make mistakes.

And that's ok. 

Quite often our slip ups will be met with a quick and obvious nervous system response, helping us to give ourselves permission, again, to experiment with seeing things through the “PDA Lens.”

And when we do that over time - even with mistakes along the way - we can then observe important data within our own homes.

Thousands of the families I've worked with see:

• Connection, trust, and engagement improve
• Nervous system activation come down (less meltdowns, aggressive behavior, equalizing, selective mutism, shutdown, etc.)
• Access to basic needs get better (improved sleep, less toileting and digestion struggles, more brushing teeth and bathing without knock-down-drag-out fights, less self-harm, reduction in suicidal ideation, improved eating, more safety for the whole family).

This is the “data” we care most about as parents.

It's the proof of what your intuition already knows: Your PDA child or teen needs a radically different approach to thrive. 

And I know you are uniquely qualified to ensure they do.