1. Shift your mindset
“Kids do well if they can.” This quote from Dr Ross Greene is a good place to start. What a difference it can make when you shift your mindset from seeing your child’s behaviour as a choice, to viewing behaviour as being a way of communicating that this is hard, that I need help, that perhaps we need to adjust our adult imposed expectations.
Your child is not broken and does not need to be ‘fixed’. Put aside all the rules, beliefs and expectations of what you think your child should be doing and how you think you should be parenting, and just trust your child, build connection with them, delight in them and unconditionally love them, just as they are. Any strategies that you implement with your PDAer are only going to be effective within the bounds of a trusting, safe and supportive relationship.
2. Understand what is happening at a brain level
Polyvagal theory tells us that all humans have a basic survival system designed to protect us called neuroception. It is constantly monitoring if we are safe or if we are under threat.
PDA brains have highly sensitive neuroception, it is very easy for their bodies and brains to go into a fight, flight, freeze stress response. Imagine a caveman encountering a sabretooth tiger, his breathing and heart rate increases to get more blood and oxygen to his muscles, his sensory systems become hypervigilant to his surroundings- the first instinct might be to freeze, maybe the tiger won’t see me. If that doesn’t work, he needs to run away, flight. Then if he can’t run, he needs to be ready to fight. Recently another threat response has been added, fawn, in this analogy it might be giving the tiger a steak in the hope of making friends to prevent it from hurting you.
This is the kind of threat response that is happening for our PDAers, but instead of only experiencing it in life of death situations, they are experiencing it every time they are met with demands or a loss of autonomy. PDA brains have a pervasive drive for autonomy, a need for control, a need for safety.
The behaviours that we see in our kids are stemming from a neurological response that is out of their control. Their body and brain are literally responding as if their life depends on it.
Our job as parents is to create safe environments that allow our kids to emerge out of their threat response. One of the best ways we can do this is by lowering demands.
3. Lower demands across the board
For our PDA kids, we know that demands trigger a stress response in their nervous system. Demands can be anything from seemingly small things like having to answer a question or having to brush their teeth, to bigger things like getting to an appointment or going to school.
Living a low demand lifestyle is about lowering our adult imposed expectations to better align with our child’s capacity and really focusing on the big picture priorities. It’s about picking your battles and trying to incorporate as much choice, control and collaboration with your child as possible.
Our child’s tolerance or threshold for what they can cope with is going to change dependent on a whole range of factors: how much sleep they’ve had, if they are hungry, thirsty, hot, cold, sick, tired, the environment they are in, the sensory demands, the amount of structure, autonomy, pressure, expectations and demands.
These factors can also have a cumulative effect on our kid’s nervous systems across days, weeks, and months. They might be able to cope with something one day but have a complete meltdown the next. Or they might appear really competent in certain environments and completely disabled in others depending on the level of demand.
Every time our kids are met with a demand, their autonomy is taking a hit and they are inching closer to being tipped over into a meltdown. I often think of the saying “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”
By reducing the load on their nervous system, your child might just have enough energy in the bank to leave the house, have their hair cut, go to the dentist, play with a friend, or engage in learning (either at home or school).
It seems counter-productive doesn’t it, the more they are pushed the more they will resist, sometimes if the pressure is removed completely, all of a sudden, they will self-initiate.
4. Be mindful of how you communicate
What you say and how you say it matters. The way parents speak to their PDAer can either trigger a stress response or allow them to feel safe and engage with them.
Linda Murphy describes Declarative language as “A comment or a statement… Usually it is a statement that observes. For example, it may observe events in the environment, including people, actions, and changes. It can also narrate an internal event, such as thoughts, feelings, predictions, opinions, observations, or problem-solving dialogue.”
Declarative language avoids asking questions, instead it invites your PDAer to notice, think and problem solve. There is no demand, there is no right or wrong way to respond.
Switching to declarative language takes practice. Start out by picking just a few times of day where you are going to give it a try and see what happens. Eventually it will become second nature.
An example. Instead of saying “Put on your shoes.”… You might try “It’s a hot day. Hmmm the concrete might be hot. I wonder how we’ll stop our feet from getting burned.”
5. Work towards collaborative problem solving
Once your child is in a place of stability, I highly recommend Ross Greene’s CPS model. Collaboratively and proactively problem-solving solutions with you child.
Bear in mind that it might take months of implementing these first 4 steps before your child’s nervous system is in a place of stability and has the capacity to start problem solving with you. Check out our blog post, How we collaboratively problem solved wearing sunscreen with our PDAer, to see what CPS looks like in action.
And of course… give yourself lots of grace and compassion. We are in this for the long game. Trust that your child will do things when they are ready and able. I am certain that you and your child can create a happy and meaningful life together, it might just look a little different from what you had imagined. You’ve got this.
