When your child has an unrecognised neurotype like PDA it can be a long and confusing journey towards getting a diagnosis and accessing the right help for your child and your family.
This is a little snip-it of what is sometimes felt like for me…
I felt dismissed. When I raised concerns about my son, I would get comments like…“Your child is fine”, “They are just a regular 3 year old”, “I’ve never even seen your child get upset”.
I felt inadequate. I would get unsolicited advice… “You let him get away with too much”, “He just needs firmer boundaries, stricter parenting, consequences for his behaviours”. I was left wondering how other families made parenting look so easy. Why was this so hard?
I was constantly searching for answers. I always had a gut feel that something wasn’t quite right. It seemed like more than just sensory sensitivity, more than just social anxiety. An autism diagnosis didn’t quite sit right. My child had pretend play skills, social skills, their language and motor skills were on track, how could they have autism?
I felt like a failure. All the strategies recommended for autism weren’t working, in fact they make things worse. Even though we had wonderful therapists, therapy sessions were causing more stress than benefit. At the same time, I was going through all the emotions that come with your child being given a diagnosis and grieving the life I had imagined.
Then I had a light bulb moment…
I finally came across a subtype of autism that I had never heard of,
a subtype that isn’t formally recognised in Australia,
PDA. Pathological Demand Avoidance.
Everything finally made sense.
