Ten Tips for Navigating the Holidays With a Pathological Demand Avoidance Child or Teen With Dr. Alex Klein | Ep. 188

The stretch from Halloween through the new year can feel like what my husband and I call the gauntlet. More expectations, more family, more novelty, more activation. And for parents who are already doing everything they can to hold things together, the holidays can bring a particular kind of grief: the gap between what you imagined and what is actually possible right now.

In this episode I am joined by Dr. Alex Klein, clinical psychologist, to share ten practical tips for getting through the holiday season with a PDA child or teen. We cover how to lower the demand on yourself first, why processing your own grief is a precursor to actually enjoying a modified holiday, how to plan for an out before you need one, and how to talk to family ahead of time so your accommodations do not fall apart under social pressure.

We also talk about traditions, religious practices, scripts for the auto-yes, monitoring your child’s social battery, and what it looks like to find the gray when black and white thinking takes over in burnout. These tips are drawn from our own lived experience and from years of working alongside families who are figuring this out in real time.

Key Takeaways

• Lower the Demand on Yourself First, Before You Lower It for Your Child | 00:01:58 One of the most useful things I did for our holiday season was give myself permission, during the pandemic, to have a low demand Thanksgiving: a couple of dishes, a table set for kids who could come or not, and potato chips as a totally valid holiday meal. That experience taught me something I could not have learned any other way. The more I let go of what the holiday was supposed to look like for me, the less activation leaked into the room for my kids. If you are walking into the holidays with a fixed picture of what has to happen, that picture may be one of the largest sources of demand in the environment.

• Processing Your Grief About the Holidays Is Not Anti-Neurodiversity Affirming | 00:05:07 Dr. Klein and I talked about this directly: a lot of parents feel like they should not be sad or disappointed that the holiday looks different than they imagined. As if feeling those things means they are not committed to their child’s autonomy or regulation. But what I have seen, and what Dr. Klein has observed in his work with families, is the opposite. When you have somewhere to put those feelings, with a therapist, a friend, a partner, the grief does not disappear into the background and leak out sideways as resentment or rigidity. Making room for your own feelings is what allows you to show up with more flexibility, not less.

• Have an Out Before You Need One, Even If Your Child Does Not Know About It | 00:12:41 Dr. Klein’s tip about planning for an out applies whether your child can participate in the planning or not. For years, my older son could not engage in collaborative problem solving around the holidays. He would shut the conversation down before it started. So my husband and I game-theorized on our own: if this happens, we do this. If that happens, we leave. And because we consistently followed through on those plans in practice, my son came to know without being told that there was always an exit. That knowledge may have made it possible for him to stay longer in situations that would otherwise have felt like a trap.

• Talk to Family Ahead of Time and Find Your Ally in the Room | 00:15:21 Accommodating with an audience is a different skill than accommodating at home. When we are in front of extended family, the pressure to meet everyone else’s expectations can override what we know works for our child. My tip is to identify at least one person before the event who understands what you are doing and why, and to loop them in explicitly. This might mean telling your sister that your child may eat his chocolate dessert before the turkey is served, or asking someone you trust to help you hold the boundary if you feel yourself starting to cave. You do not need the whole room to understand PDA. You may only need one person.

• Find the Gray When Burnout Makes Everything Feel Like Black or White | 00:38:07 When a child is in burnout, it can feel like the only two options are full participation or nothing at all. That is the black and white thinking that fear produces. What I have learned, through years of doing this with both my sons, is that there is almost always a gray option. Last year, when my younger son could not leave the house, my husband and I did shifts at Thanksgiving so we could each be there for part of it. When William could not go cut down the Christmas tree, the tree still came home. He smelled the pine needles. He watched us decorate. He was part of it in the way he could be. That is not settling. That is finding the version of the tradition that is actually available right now.

Relevant Resources

Paradigm Shift Program My signature program where the holiday navigation frameworks discussed in this episode, including demand lowering, connection tracking, and working with extended family, are practiced as daily skills with live coaching support.

Dr. Alex Klein is a clinical psychologist whose work with PDA families informs the tips and frameworks shared in this episode.

Topics Covered

• PDA holiday tips ten strategies families
• pathological demand avoidance Thanksgiving Christmas Hanukkah
• PDA holiday grief parent disappointment processing
• PDA lowering demands holiday season expectations
• PDA have an out backup plan holiday gatherings
• PDA talk to family ahead extended family ally
• PDA traditions flexibility no rules neuro affirming
• PDA religious practices spirit not protocol menorah
• PDA create new traditions involve child planning
• PDA social battery downtime holiday season monitoring
• at peace parents podcast
• PDA auto yes fawn response scripts pause
• PDA black and white thinking burnout find the gray
• PDA gauntlet Halloween January activation season
• PDA child separate holidays shifts parents burnout
• PDA Santa early Christmas anticipatory activation
• PDA Alex Klein clinical psychologist interview
• PDA accommodating with audience extended family pressure
• PDA grief neuro affirming feelings holiday season
• PDA low demand holiday Cooper William burnout examples