Trusting yourself again

 This week has been a bit of doozy.

Cooper, my 9-year-old PDA son, and his younger brother William (5) have been stir crazy without camps or school (which starts next week). Noticing the chaos and trying to put some structure around their interactions, our au pair built them an epic fort with separate, cozy chambers so that they could watch their ipads in peace without harassing each other constantly.

Amidst all the action and noise, we have been trying to get snippets of work done before we are back to our normal schedule when the boys start school next Tuesday and we begin the 10th live cohort of the Paradigm Shift Program. (Yay!)

This week, also between caregiving shifts, I gave an in-person training about PDA and nervous system accommodations to 40+ childcare providers working for a local daycare organization.

I loved being proximate enough to the audience to see their facial expressions and notice the subtle nods of their heads when learning a concept or recognizing a name for a truth they had already experienced in their day-to-day work.

When I explained the concept of PDA, it seemed that almost everyone in the room recognized it on an intuitive level. I could see the lightbulbs of realization flipping on in a lot of faces.

I asked people to raise their hands if they thought they had worked with – or are working with – a child that seems to fit the PDA neurotype and almost the entire room raised their hand.

When I talked about the child who would “equalize” (engage in controlling, manipulative, destructive or fixated behavior) against the “safest” nervous system, I saw at least three caregivers nod their heads vigorously. I also watched the relief in their bodies and relaxation of their shoulders – a sign they were realizing “oh, it’s not my fault” and “I’m not doing something wrong with this child whose behavior always seems worst with me.”

One caregiver came up to me after the training and described how a 5-year-old girl she was sure was PDA would calm herself down by controlling the arm movements of the caregiver and controlling what she could say and do. Intuitively, this caregiver had leaned into this behavior with humor and play because she knew on some level that the child needed it to stay safe.

It wasn’t surprising to me that while this audience – many of whom spend 40+ hours a week with the same children – already understood PDA on a certain level. They just hadn’t had a name for it. And how many of them had intuited what the child needed and gave it to them, even if it was outside of the behavioral or typical learning strategies that they were trained in.

Finally, nearing the end of the presentation during the Q+A, some participants worried aloud about the undiagnosed PDA kids going off to kindergarten, as they likely wouldn’t get the same amount of nervous system safety and flexibility at public school as they had at a private daycare.

Many of the concerns I heard from the caregivers were similar to a frequent one I hear from the parents I work with. On some level the “lead” caregiver for the PDA child knows that the child needs support that runs counter to the “conventional wisdom,” and the caregiver feels like they shouldn’t provide that type of support because it is “enabling” or doesn't teach the skills the child will need later.

But what I point out is that by providing that needed support what the caregiver is actually doing is helping the child stay in their thinking brain. And that is where the child needs to be to actuallylearn those skills for the future. 

I've worked with so many parents who have this same intuition. But (just like I used to - and still do sometimes) they doubt what their gut is telling them, often because for years and from seemingly every person they've asked (or not asked) they're been told: 

• PDA doesn’t exist because it isn’t in the DSM-5
• You need to be more strict, consistent and firm.
• You can’t let the child get away with that.
• How will they ever learn?

That's one of the reasons so much of my work with parents focuses on experimenting with new approaches and then tracking the impacts. For those of us who have been gaslit so frequently, we need to see with our own eyes (and in my and many cases track numerically on paper) the positive changes that come about before we can trust our intuition again. Then, as we continue to do so, we build momentum, and tuning out the voices of people who don't understand how our child's nervous systems work becomes easier and easier.

In order to help you feel a little more confident in trusting your sacred intuition as a parent (or caregiver, or therapist, or teacher!), I want to share with you one of the podcast episodes we released this week.

Episode 71: The Role of Intuition While Parenting a PDAer

I hope it can help you all feel just a bit more confident in all the knowledge you already have.

We are rooting for you here at At Peace Parents!