When parenting a PDA child feels like constant rejection

For parents of children with pathological demand avoidance (PDA), constant negative responses from your child can start to feel like failure or rejection.

Here is a reframe that has helped hundreds of families make sense of what is actually happening.

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Seven years ago, when my older son Cooper was in burnout, I was getting constant negative feedback.

I would ask him how he was, and he would growl or grunt.
I would gently touch his hair, and he would slap my hand away.
If I tried to play with him, he criticized or corrected my every move.

It felt terrible.

Most parents have moments of feeling like their child doesn’t want to be around them. For us, that was the baseline. The constant negative feedback – when I was focusing all of my attention and energy on him, with all the patience I could muster – made me feel like a complete failure.

This came up yesterday during our free workshop.

Parents were reflecting on what runs through their mind when their child or teen:

- says “stop talking” in response to a simple question, or

- unwraps a Twix bar and throws the wrapper on the floor right in front of them, or

- countless other things...

Even though you have discussed these things with them 100 times and even agreed together that they aren’t appropriate.

The thoughts that came up in the chat were incredibly consistent:

“I’m failing.”
“I’m a bad parent.”
“My child doesn’t love me.”

These are heartbreaking thoughts. I have had them many, many times.

As I slowly learned more about the PDA nervous system – and what equalizing behavior is – I could take a more objective, logical perspective.

I could step out of my wounded heart as a mom and back into my thinking brain.

I started to realize that:
 👉 these responses were not personal, and
 👉 they reflected cumulative nervous system activation in my PDA child’s body.

This accumulation built up not just over that day, but over months and in moments when I wasn’t even there, like at school.

So I started telling myself, “It’s just data” every time I got negative feedback.

It served as a consistent reminder that this surface‑level behavior was simply telling me how close my son was to his threshold for nervous system stress.

It helped me remember: this isn't actually about our relationship or how he feels towards me as a mom.  And that felt surprisingly freeing. 

“It’s just data” has helped hundreds of families withstand the constant negative feedback that comes with a PDA child or teen who is in or near burnout. 

It's helped them view it for what it truly is: a clue about your PDA child or teen's underlying nervous system state. 

Will you experiment with “It’s just data” this week – even just once or twice – and see what shifts?

Even one moment of stepping back into your thinking brain can make all the difference.