Stink bugs and radical acceptance

Two nights ago, the house was empty except for me and my younger son William (6). It was a little past his bedtime, but I was experimenting with some extra one-on-one lego time before moving him through the transition into teeth brushing and songs.

I had to work hard to bring myself back into my body because my mind was racing.

That evening William had screamed and kicked me over taking a bath (we dropped it) and had been mentioning all week how he doesn't want to go to school. We had already dropped reading in the evenings, which he had been insisting on.

As I watched him playing, I stayed present by feeling the tingling in my hands, concentrating on the visual of his rounded cheeks, and listening to the legos clicking into place.

"Mama, have you ever fainted?" he asked out of the blue.

"Yes, honey, I sometimes faint when you get a bloody nose in the middle of the night because my body is scared."

"I almost faint at school sometimes," he added.

"Really?"

My interest was piqued and I wanted every small detail of his experience.

But I know from my older PDA son that I have to manage my energy and non-attachment to give them the space to communicate.

"Like when I see or smell something gross. I shut my eyes, and almost faint," William added.

He described a recent encounter with a stink bug strolling on a bookshelf at his school. The sensation in his body of almost fainting.

And suddenly I had an "aha moment."

My son was describing the "dorsal vagal" response of his nervous system. A survival response.

The physiological response of immobilization when the brain perceives danger or life threat.

Of shutting down.

The proverbial antelope that feigns death and whose body moves into a state that resembles death. The heart rate slows down. The breathing slows. Endorphins are released.

And the lion drops the antelope because they don't eat dead prey.

William repeated, "I don't want to go to school," jolting me out of my polyvagal theory rumination.

My six-year-old child - the "easy" one, the one who was anxious, but so different from his older brother - was suddenly coming into full picture.

A picture that included "internalized" PDA.

My resistance to this idea had been softening over the last six months, but fear was rearing its head once again.

I wanted to shout. To negotiate. To explain that he wasn't like his older brother and he had to go to school.

But in the moment, willing myself to practice what I teach on a daily basis - I paused and said nothing.

Just let his words wash over me.

Instead of explaining why school was important, or why he had to go, or offering all the great things he loves about school (maps! friends! numbers!), I just let it be.

I listened without teaching. Or correcting. Or explaining. Or convincing. I just stayed.

The next day he stayed home from school.

And by the afternoon - while I was researching au pairs to support us next year in case he can't attend school - he interrupted me to say "I think I may go back to school to work on my map."

"Oh, really?" I said. "No problem, just let us know, honey."

I still don't know what will happen.

He may l go back to school on Tuesday and this is a blip, or this may be the end of his formal schooling career.

Most likely, it will be some point in-between those possibilities.

And yet, I'm ok with it. Anxious and scared? Sure.

But I've been down this road before. I know the counterfactual, and I also know how to navigate uncertainty.

I know that things can and do actually turn out better than ever expected when we lean into acceptance.

The truth is, the hardest - yet most impactful - part of supporting the nervous system of a PDA child is not in lowering demands, using declarative language, providing sensory supports, or finding a good therapist.

The hardest part is NOT doing. The not being able to fix. The not making it different.

The transformation comes from accepting the truth of the present moment even if we don't like it.

And when we accept just that moment - without trying to make it different (e.g. but you love school!) - it signals the most profound autonomy and equality possible.

True safety for our PDAer gets them back in their thinking brain. The connection remains and strengthens, and their neural pathways to regulation strengthen.

Acceptance is the place every parent I have ever worked with gets stuck. Including me. It is the biggest hurdle, the biggest sticking point, the reason we don't make the progress we want.

Not because we can't accept that our child is neurodivergent (although that is challenging for many of us too - no judgement here) but because of the tradeoffs acceptance suddenly presents to our own life.

The constraints we didn't know we had.

The impact on our marriage, career, relationships, community position, identity, finances, time or our own nervous system.

The life path that just bent again, twisted in a new direction and says: Hey, that plan you had? Just kidding. We are going in a different direction now.

What I want to encourage you with - however - is the wisdom that walking this ever-changing path with my older son Cooper has given me.

Wisdom that I see is reflected in the incredible changes and openings that families we work with experience.

Once we move through the acceptance - and the grief, resentment, and fear that emerges - true transformation for your family is possible.

I am watching them right now in our Paradigm Shift Program as we move through the nuts and bolts of the Acceptance module and the skill of Cost-Benefit Decision Making.

And I believe things can and will turn out better than you ever expected.

It happens one difficult moment at a time.

But I am with you, every step of the way and I know you can do this.