How do I teach my PDAer?

To start with, I just want to highlight that I am an OT, not an educator, so my skill set sits around creating access to learning, not necessarily how to teach specific concepts like reading or maths.

Let’s start with a quick recap of what we know…

• We know that PDAers recognise any demands as a threat, which places their nervous system into a state of fight/flight/fright.
• Many in the Autistic community prefer the term Pervasive Drive for Autonomy.  PDAers need to be in control, they need to choose for themselves, and they need novelty. 
• These needs align perfectly with the research around intrinsic motivation and self-determination theory.  Richard Ryan & Edward Deci state that intrinsic motivation is what drives us “to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacity, to explore, and to learn.”
• Conversely, they suggest that extrinsic motivation is achieved through some kind of reward, consequence, valued achievement or punishment. In other words, to PDAers, extrinsic motivation gests perceived as a huge demand!
• Intrinsic motivation requires a child to feel a sense of competence and autonomy.  The task also has to present the ‘just right’ challenge.  If the challenge is too high it will cause anxiety, too low and the child will be bored.
• Dopamine is the key neurotransmitter involved in intrinsic motivation.  We get a dopamine surge from activities that are intrinsically motivating, provide the ‘just-right’ challenge, have clear goals (a clear end point) and give immediate feedback. 
• Jillian Enright suggests that neurodivergent brains process dopamine less efficiently than neurotypical brains. Hence seeking out more of these dopamine surging activities.

What does this mean when we are thinking about PDAers and learning?

• In order for learning to occur you have to factor in autonomy, novelty and a ‘just right’ challenge that aligns with your PDAer’s interests. 
• Harry Thompson describes PDAers as autodidacts, self-taught people. We have to get out of the way.  If you are trying to help a PDAer to learn, he suggests that rather than teaching, you join in and share in their self-directed learning experience and perhaps help facilitate it.
• We have to trust that our children will learn when they are ready.
• If you are going to suggest something, your PDAer needs to be able to opt in or out as they choose.
• Casey Ehrlich suggests a few low-demand ways to encourage PDAers to learn: 
  • By leaving something out for your child to discover and explore.  Sandra Dodd refers to this as strewing, “I just strew their paths with interesting things.” It’s important that if your child notices what you have left out, that you don’t then impose your own agenda for how you think the activity should be done.  Step back and follow your child’s lead.
  • By doing something in their presence which might entice them to join in, of their own accord.
  • By using declarative language to guide exploration.

An example of this in action:

• My almost 5 year old PDAer’s current interest is monster trucks.
• The other day we were playing together when he showed interest in trying to work out if some trucks were heavier than others. To start with he was just comparing them by holding one in each hand.
• Without saying anything, I went to the cupboard to get out the kitchen scales and I put them near where we were playing, he noticed this, and was then interested in using it to weigh each of the trucks. 
• This turned into recognising numbers on the scales, writing down all their different weights, comparing if numbers were higher or lower, talking about the different materials the trucks were made out of, sorting the trucks in order of lightest to heaviest, and seeing how many small monster trucks he would have to weigh all together to add up to the same weight as a large remote control one.   
• I then made an ‘I wonder’ statement… “I wonder which ones would sink and which ones would float?”
• This captured his interest, and we headed out to the pool to test his theories. 

When we first sat down to play monster trucks, I had no agenda.  This beautiful learning experience occurred simply through following his interests and encouraging his existing curiosity.

What are the ways that you have found your PDAer learns best?