For our PDA kids we know that demands trigger a stress response in their nervous system.
If they encounter expectations and demands beyond what they can cope with it can trigger a fight/flight/freeze/fawn response.
Every family has to work out where the balance is for eliminating or reducing enough demands so that their child can stay within their window of tolerance and have enough capacity to complete the things that they either want or need to do.
This is what lowering demands looks like at our house.
Brace yourself, it looks very different to anything you will find in a parenting book.
Lowering demands at our house looks like:
• Co-sleeping next to a parent.
• Sleeping in day clothes instead of changing into pyjamas.
• Choosing what he wears and when he gets changed.
• Only wearing shoes and socks if absolutely necessary.
• Where possible, picking early mornings and late afternoons to go out in the sun to reduce the frequency that sunscreen is needed.
• Skipping hair washing and hair brushing.
• Cutting nails only if they are bothering him.
• Cutting his hair while he is sleeping. (He requests this if his hair starts go over his eyes.)
• Respecting sensory preferences.
• Aiming for teeth brushing once a day.
• Bathing or showering when he chooses.
• Having control over what and when he eats.
• Control over how he spends his time and the places we go.
• Reducing the amount we talk. We tend to comment on what is happening right now, in-the-moment, and often wait to chat until our PDAer engages with us.
• Not attending face-to-face therapies. We utilise parent consultations instead.
• Homeschooling using a self-directed learning approach.
and the list could go on.
As with everything that I write, this is what works for our family.
There is so much rationale underneath all of these, much more than can be contained in a short post.
This is simply an example of what a low demand lifestyle can look like.
It might be helpful and validating for you or you might have a completely different experience and that is ok.
Accommodating our PDAers is a constant problem solving/recalibrating process.
Early on, the biggest thing that stood in the way of embracing a low demand lifestyle was my own mindset.
It’s time and intention to let go of the ‘shoulds’.
The pre-conceived ideas around how we should be parenting and what our kids should be doing.
They can get in the way of staying focused on what works right now.
It takes courage to parent differently, to parent the way our kids need.
