Author: Kate Kleinau

Something that is often hard for parents to understand is that just because a child is capable of doing something doesn’t mean they always have the capacity to do it.

The capacity that our kids have available to them is going to change based on a whole host of different factors. Their capacity is going to change based on factors like if they are tried, hungry, thirsty, hot, cold, the environment they are in, the amount of sensory input they are exposed to, the people around them, as well as the amount of structure, autonomy, pressure, expectations and demands they encounter. Their capacity can relate to what is happening right now and can also be impacted by all the things that have occurred in the lead up to this moment, across days, weeks, even months. 

Lots to consider, I know!

The degree of flexibility we have as parents and the amount of support our PDAer’s require is going to be different from one day to the next.

I’ll use teeth brushing as an example. Our PDAer is more stable these days and he is at the point where he can manage brushing his teeth most days, however we know that it is still tricky for him. It is still a non-preferred activity and carries a big demand but we can generally get him there with accommodations. The level of accommodation we choose changes every day:

• There are some days where we can get there with strewing. We can place a tooth brush in sight and he will spontaneously comment, “I think now is a good time to brush my teeth.”
• There are days where we use declarative language and say, “Your toothbrush is ready.” We put the toothpaste on the toothbrush and leave it on the vanity and he will do it himself. 
• There are days where there is a little more resistance where he will get into the bathroom, and I can see the signs of escalation. I might see his body tense up or he might lose meaningful verbal communication and start making noises. At those times I give him a choice, “Do you want me to brush them, or do you want to do it yourself?”
• There are days where we can get there through calming sensory input and fantasy, where we do some rough and tumble play first and then clean his teeth while he is in character.
• There are days where he will say, “I’ll do it later, I’ll do it after I’ve played games, no not yet.” and he will negotiate to do it when he is ready.
• There are also days when he’ll say, “I’ll do it in the morning.” Those are the days we let it go. We don’t hold him to it the next morning either, we recognise it was his way of saying, “Mummy it’s too hard today.”
• And then there are days where we can tell he’s had a big day and has nothing left and we don’t even mention it.

How do we figure out what level of support to provide? Through practice. Through trial and error. Through tuning into our kids. Through experience. Over time we get better at gauging where their capacity is at.

We can notice and appreciate the wins on the days when things are easy.

On the days when it’s too hard, we can lead with empathy and grace, knowing that just because they can’t do it today doesn’t mean they will never do it again. 

They will do it when they are more regulated, when they have more capacity.

Our kids do well if they can.

One of the first things I often suggest to families when they are starting out with lowering demands is to identify predictable triggers. However, they often despair that everything is a trigger, or find it confusing that something can be fine one day cause a meltdown the next. The thing that triggers our kids is often the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In our PDA kids, demands can have a cumulative impact on their nervous system. McEwen & Stellar call this allostatic load, the wear and tear on the body that accumulates as an individual is exposed to repeated and chronic stress. In the case of our PDA kids, demands trigger a stress response in their system.

One analogy I like is to imagine our nervous system’s capacity being a bit like a bucket. Every stressor or demand that we encounter fills our bucket up a little more each time until it can’t hold anymore. When the bucket starts overflowing that is the point where our kids reach a fight/flight/freeze stress response. They are no longer able to think clearly. They can’t rationalise, apply judgement, or learn.

As parents we can act in two ways.

1. We can help to eliminate and accommodate the demands so that our kids aren’t reaching the point of overwhelm.
2. We can drain the bucket by providing opportunities for regulation and recovery which calm their nervous system. 

By doing this we are creating a bigger buffer zone, a bigger window of tolerance.

Over time it gets easier, we start to recognise the early signs of stress, we prevent and de-escalate meltdowns before they occur, we figure out the balance for keeping our kids within their window of tolerance so that they are able to engage in the things that are important to them.

There are going to be plenty of times where we get it wrong.

We learn from them and make changes for next time.

We do the best we can.

For our PDAers, any perceived inequality, injustice, lack of autonomy, lack of control or imbalance of power can lead to them being escalated and can trigger what looks like disruptive, threatening, controlling or aggressive behaviour.  Kristy Forbes refers to this as Levelling. Casey Ehrlich uses the term equalising. 

Regardless of what you call it, the behaviour is communicating that your PDAer’s nervous system is escalated, and they are trying to regain a sense of safety. It is the sign that tells us that we need to drop demands and prioritise regulating their nervous system. 

These are some examples of ways we accommodate our PDAer when he is escalated. None of these are a sure thing. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. The most important thing is trying to intervene early, before they reach a full meltdown state (managing a meltdown will be the topic of another post).

De-escalate through separation:

If another adult is around, we remove the trigger by separating the kids. If that isn’t an option, sometimes I can set the kids up in different parts of the house or even with different activities within the same room with me positioned in between them.

Redirect using screens:

Screens can help to de-escalate a situation quickly and can either serve to occupy siblings or act as a holding activity for my PDAer until I can provide the 1:1 co-regulation that they need.

Redirect using novelty:

Often, I set the kids up side-by-side with an activity that doesn’t require sharing. My kids tend to do well with things like playdough, kinetic sand, digging in the sandpit, gardening, Magnatiles, Duplo/Lego. I might use words like “Oh the plants need a drink.” Or “Oh look it’s a lovely time for digging, it’s nice and cool in the shade.”

Redirect using playfulness and connection:

Often my PDAer is triggered by me shifting my attention to his sibling. An example, I remember a day when I was helping my daughter get dressed and my PDAer came in and was humming loudly on loop, his body was getting restless, and he started poking her. I tapped into a game that we play called Mummy Robot, the robot has lots of different settings and I pretended it had been put in tickle mode and then as the kids tried to switch off the robot, I changed to hug mode, and then spin mode where I pick them up and spin them. Once everyone was laughing and had their connection fill, I asked our PDAer what he was going to do while I continued getting our daughter ready.

De-escalate by using fantasy:

Our PDAer will often get triggered by his sibling playing with a toy he wants to use. If he has taken or hidden something of hers, I can deescalate by giving him a way out, a way to save face. We had a situation a few weeks’ ago where he was denying that he knew where the toy was, so I suggested that maybe the fairies had hidden it and that they might leave a fairy trail for us to find it. We then pretended to fall asleep while he set up a trail of gemstones for us to follow. It made the kids feel connected, our PDAer felt like he saved the day, and our daughter was happy she got her toy back.

Mediate problem solving:

Our PDAer being told “No” by his sibling is another common trigger. The other morning, he asked her to play remote control cars with him first thing in the morning, but she just really wanted to have breakfast and he was blocking her from getting down the hallway to the table. They were at a standoff, and he started yelling threats at her, she was getting distressed. I sat down between then and just said, “It sounds like we’ve got a problem. You want to play remote control cars and you want to have her breakfast. What are we going to do?” Our PDAer’s idea was for them to play first and then our daughter could have breakfast. She said “No” again. I repeated that she doesn’t want to play first, then have breakfast. He countered with; “Can we have a really short play?” I added that it would probably take me a few minutes to get breakfast ready and wondered if they could do their short play while her toast was cooking. They both agreed.

Being able to notice the early signs of escalation and knowing what strategy to choose takes lots of intentional trial and error. We recognise the things that work and reflect on the times that don’t. Over time it gets easier.

What works at your house?

I want to start by saying that teachers are amazing! They have huge demands placed on them and so many little nervous systems to consider. It is a hard reality that many parts of the education system completely clash with PDA neurobiology. The PDA society found that 70% of PDAers are not able to cope with school. This post is for the 30% of kids that have the capacity to get there. I’ll do another one for home-based self-directed learning.

For teachers working with our beautiful PDAers it’s always essential to start from Dr Ross Greene’s mindset: Our kids do well if and when they can. Everyone wants to do well. Our kids aren’t going out of their way to be intentionally defiant or naughty or aggressive.  Behaviour is communication. Behaviours tell us that the PDA child’s nervous system is not coping with the demands and expectations being placed on them.

It’s also important for teachers to understand the cumulative impact of demands across the day, week, term, year. If you imagine a bucket. Every stressor your child encounters fills up that bucket a little more until it starts to overflow, that is the point where the PDA child’s nervous system can’t cope anymore. Our job as adults is to support them by reducing the demands and increasing opportunities for regulation in order to increase their window of tolerance, their ability to cope.

I recently posted about the variables that we can consider when accommodating our PDA kids. These apply to school just as much as home. There are three main variables that we can consider:

1. The child
2. The environment
3. The expectations/demands being placed on them.

There has to be the right fit between all of these factors to allow for success and it is going to take lots of collaboration with your child’s school to figure out the unique balance for your child. These are some suggested starting points…

The child:

• Noticing the child’s individual signs of escalation.
• Collaboratively problem solving if there are factors preventing the child from engaging.
• Factoring in opportunities for regulation:
  • Building a trusting relationship with a staff member who can co-regulate with them, never pushing, always honouring their ‘no’, their need for choice, their need for autonomy.
  • Consider how can novelty and special interests be incorporated into learning.
  • Incorporating sufficient down-time into the day. This might include access to calming sensory input, time away from the busy classroom or access to screens if needed.

The expectations:

• Differentiating the curriculum based on the PDA child’s fluctuating needs. As long as the child is not hurting themselves or others, teachers will need to be willing to let things go and pick their battles.
• Ensuring that intrinsic motivation is maintained. It might be necessary to explain why something is important, to scaffold the task so there is a ‘just right’ challenge and to align learning experiences with interest areas.
• Allowing lots of time. Rushing is a sure way of heaping on additional demands.
• Ultimately the child needs to have the option to opt in or out at any time. This might extend to if they attend school at all on a particular day and also the option to have their requests honoured if they need to leave early.

The environment:

• Educating teachers about PDA, polyvagal theory, sensory processing, and communication techniques like Declarative Language and Collaborative & Proactive Problem Solving.
• Providing access to safe people who can foster co-regulation (these people must have a strong relationship with the PDA child, based on trust and connection)
• Lowering the sensory demands of the environment and allowing opportunities for retreat.
• Fostering positive peer relationships.
• Sometimes we also need to consider the amount of time spent in the school environment. Not all PDA kids are able to sustainably manage full time school and reduced hours may need to be explored.

2 book recommendations that can be an excellent resource for teachers:

• The Teacher’s Introduction to Pathological Demand Avoidance by Clare Truman
• The Educator’s Experience of Pathological Demand Avoidance by Laura Kerbey

Our PDAer’s nervous systems are so sensitive to perceiving threat. 

Our tone of voice, our body language, being told what to do, or even just being asked simple questions can be triggering for them. 

Leading with genuine positive intent will always get you a long way in discussions.

We can go a step further in minimising the impact that our words have on their nervous system by switching to a more indirect way of speaking through declarative language.

Linda Murphy’s, Declarative Language Handbook, is an excellent reference.  She 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 keeps the PDA nervous system feeling safe. It helps them to notice what is happening around them and gives them the opportunity to learn and discover things for themselves, rather than just being told.  

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.

Imperative language is when we give direct instructions, commands or requests that requires us to do or say something in response. This type of language can trigger a stress response and cause a child to shut down. 

If we go into conversations with an agenda and hope that by re-wording requests our PDAers will do what we want them to do, we are going to end up sorely disappointed. It might work for a little while, but they will quickly cotton on and lose trust.

When I first started learning about Declarative Language I found it really helpful to have the words.  These are a few examples. Remember they are invitations; our kids can always do or say nothing in response, say, ‘No’ or suggest an alternative:

Hold my hand	We are in a carpark.  I see there are lots of cars around.  I wonder how we will stay safe. (Often he will hold my hand, other times he will respond by suggesting he rides in the trolley.)
Put on your shoes	It’s a hot day.  Hmm the concrete might be hot.  I wonder how we’ll stop our feet from getting burned. (Sometimes our PDAer has the capacity to put shoes and socks on, other times he will request to be carried over the hot concrete and go bare feet.)
What do you want to eat?	My tummy is grumbling, I’m going to have some breakfast. I wonder what your tummy is hungry for. (Sometimes our PDAer will request a preferred food, however often times he doesn’t respond at all and just lets us know when he is ready.)

Like learning any new skills, using Declarative Language takes practice.

Give it time.

I thought I would share a bit about our families experience with moving out of a crisis state. This won’t be the same for everyone but in sharing I hope you find some validation and perhaps some hope for the future.

Families often come to me concerned that they aren’t able to meet everyone’s needs. Those of their PDAer, their siblings, themselves and their partner.  It’s not possible to work on everything at once, sometimes you have to prioritise one area and put others on hold until more space opens up.

This is the very short, simplified version, of course in reality it is not a beautiful linear process:

1. Educating myself about PDA.
2. Stabilising our PDAer’s nervous system.
3. Stabilising my own nervous system.
4. Meeting sibling needs.
5. Re-connecting as a couple.

Educating myself about PDA

The first crucial step was finding out about PDA and recognising the characteristics in our son. It was also immensely helpful to have a professional validate this for us.

It was then necessary to understand what was happening at a neurological level so that we had a good understanding of the changes we needed to make to our lifestyle and the strategies that we needed to implement.

Stabilising our PDAer’s nervous system

Our PDAer hitting burnout was the catalyst for us working out that he fit a PDA profile. For our family, dropping demands low enough for healing meant stopping absolutely everything, stopping any extra curriculars, stopping face to face therapy, stopping daycare and dropping everything at home except for expectations around safety. 

Over 6 months we started to see how beneficial a low demand lifestyle was for our PDAer. The more demands we dropped, the more positive change we saw and the more confidence we gained that we were on the right track.

Stabilising my nervous system

6 months of intensely co-regulating with our PDAer and prioritising his needs over my own meant that I ended up in a place of care-giver burnout and it was necessary to switch the focus onto myself for a while.

There is an extreme amount of inner work that needs to be done in questioning lots of your long held beliefs around what your child should be doing, how you should be parenting, education, success, reconsidering what your life path might look like. It requires you to really consider what your big life priorities are. A counsellor was instrumental in helping me through this.

Initially I had to find micro moments for self-care that could be done at home and work hard on keeping my mindset in check.

Once our son’s nervous system became more stable, little pockets of time started to open up for us as parents to access more sustainable self-care options. Things like daily walks, getting back to part-time work and an evening class out of the house every week to pursue something I love became possible.

Meeting sibling needs

When our son was in burnout, I had to sit with the reality that for a season, prioritising our PDAer’s nervous system was actually what was best for our daughter too. If we set up days to keep his system calm it meant that the whole household stayed calm, I was more available for my daughter, there was a higher chance of being able to get out of the house and she was less likely to be the target of aggressive outbursts.

The more stable our PDAer’s system was, the more opportunities opened up to get out as a family, to get to playgrounds and play dates, to make park friends.  Our PDAer was also more able to problem solve, negotiate and be flexible to come up with solutions that meet everyone’s needs and level of support.

We have also had to get creative with finding times in the week for our daughter to feel special too. Sometimes this is 1:1 time with us as parents, other times we enlist help from extended family.

Re-connecting as a couple

Early on, the priority with my partner was on communication. We literally had weekly crisis discussions scheduled in our diary so that we could constantly recalibrate if there were things that weren’t working that needed to be adjusted.

Once our PDAer was more stable, those crisis chats turned into date nights at home, and we are now at the point where we can get out of the house for dinner every now and then.

Getting the balance right is not easy. It takes a lot of focused intentional work. Over time the little glimmers of progress build upon each other until the point where your whole household can function better.  You don’t’ have to work so hard just to stay afloat. You can come up for air.

When accommodating our PDA kids, there are three main variables that we can consider.

1.The child

2.Their environment

3.The expectations/demands being placed on them.

There has to be the right fit between all of these factors to allow for success.

Child

We have to accept that our kids are PDAers, they are wired that way. They will absolutely mature and learn strategies to better meet their needs, however until they are able to do that themselves, we have to actively assist them to regulate their nervous system by building in sufficient recovery time into their day and week.

Recovery time might include co-regulation with a safe trusted adult, time spent engaging in special interests and opportunities to engage in activities that provide calming sensory input.

We can educate them about their brain and model how to advocate for their individual needs.

Expectations/Demands

We can adjust our expectations to align with our children’s capacity. 

Every child will be different. These are some examples of big drops at our house…

• Reducing the demand for our PDAer to sleep by themselves and setting up a safe co-sleeping arrangement.
• Giving our PDAer control over what they eat, when they eat, where they eat. 
• Removing the expectation of attending school and switching to learning from home.

Environment

We can consider our child’s unique sensory preferences and ensure that the environment suits their needs.

We can be selective about the environments we place our kids in or how long we spend in certain situations.

The people our kids are interacting with also make up a huge part of their environment.

We can learn strategies like Declarative Language and Collaborative Problem Solving to help foster trust and connection. 

We can also be highly selective with who our PDAer spends time with.

Figuring out what works for your child and your family is likely going to be a constant problem solving/recalibrating process, overtime it gets easier to work out the balance.

As your child’s capacity increases, they may be able to tolerate more challenging environments or stretch up to more complex demands. 

There will be times where we don’t get all three variables lined up and those are the experiences that help us learn for next time.

Whenever I speak to families of PDAers that I work with in Australia, I am met with a whole range of different schooling options with no one option suiting everyone. (I understand that these options might not be the same for families in different countries)

There are some kids who are…

• Managing school full time.
• Who are accessing teacher aid support.
• Who are in a unit coded for autistic kids.
• Who are attending part time or short days.
• Who have regular days off to decompress.
• Who have the day off if their regular teacher is away sick.
• Who have arranged to attend only specific classes at high school.
• Who get the ultimate say over if they attend or not on any given day and can ask to come home at any point if they are overwhelmed.
• Who do a mixture of school and home-based learning.
• Who engage in Distance Education.
• And those who engage in self-directed learning or Unschooling.

There is no one right way to manage education, it comes down to the fit between the child and the learning environment they are in, the school, the teacher, the group of kids, the way learning is implemented.

However, I do strongly feel that for education to be sustainable our PDAer’s wellbeing needs to be the highest priority. It’s a matter of finding a way that they can be exposed to learning opportunities and have their wellbeing maintained.

Easier said than done, I know!

I also understand that there are lots of limiting factors that impact upon what options are available to each family.

In 2018, the PDA Society in the UK completed a survey that found 70% of children with PDA were not able to tolerate school. Our PDAer falls into that category. Mainstream learning environments were the catalyst for burnout and I wholeheartedly believe that unschooling is the best fit for him.

Many PDAers are social motivated and expert maskers. Often, they can manage to attend for a period of time, however it can come at a huge energy cost.

It may be that it leads to burnout, it may be that they explode or shutdown at home, it may be that for school to be sustainable the trade-off is that afternoons and weekends have to be solely used for recovery.

Families have to weigh up if the benefits of school outweigh any impacts to quality of life both for the PDAer and the family unit.

It’s important to remember that school is not the only way to gain an education.

You know your child best.

Trust your gut.

One thing that I often get asked by families is how do I know if my child is in burnout? What does it look like?

Dr Dora Raymaker, defines burnout as: “A state of pervasive exhaustion, loss of function, increase in autistic traits, and withdrawal from life that results from continuously expending more resources than one has coping with activities and environments ill-suited to one’s abilities and needs.”

I feel that burnout is important to identify because our expectations of a PDA child in burnout are going to be very different to when they are in a place of stability.

I have had this post drafted for over a year but haven’t been game enough to share it until now. I hope that in sharing it might help other families to identify what their child is going through and help to fast track getting the right supports in place.

Everyone’s stories are going to be different. This is some insight into what burnout looked like for our PDAer.

Looking back, our PDAer has been through 3 periods of burnout.

At 2yrs when his sibling was born.

– We didn’t know it was burnout, just thought it was adjusting to a sibling.

– Things that had previously been tricky but manageable, started to cause daily meltdowns (bathing, teeth brushing, haircuts, sunscreen etc).

– We were trying to carry on with life, bribing our PDAer to get in and out of the car or to go places, writing social stories, trailing reward charts. These either failed completely or worked short term but would never last.

– We ended up having to stop attending lots of things like swimming lessons, playgroups, music groups and large gatherings.  They were too overwhelming, and I couldn’t give our PDAer the level of co-regulation he needed whilst also managing the high needs of an infant.

– We were seeing strong flight stress responses when we were out: running away at the shops, walking off in the direction of home if other kids arrived at the park, riding his bike into the direction of traffic.

– There was a huge level of hypervigilance needed when he was around his sibling, I had to always make sure that I was physically positioned between them, if I wasn’t, our daughter would end up on the receiving end of a fight stress response.

– Our PDAer was experiencing extreme early waking, as early as 3:30am, and frequent night terrors.

At 3.5yrs our PDAer had a significant burnout period.

– Increasing days at Daycare and his best friend leaving were the main triggers.

– There was a build-up of separation anxiety over a couple of months. We would get meltdowns the night before daycare, the morning of, getting in the car, getting out of the car, waking through the door and then when it finally came time for a parent to leave.

– Afternoons after daycare we would get aggression or complete shutdowns.  This was his system becoming so overwhelmed that he was moving beyond fight/flight and into freeze.  This would look like: him curling up in the foetal position on the couch, becoming non-speaking, only being able to watch TV, not being able to engage in his interests.

– Then there came a day where the drop off experience broke our PDAer and that was the day we as parents said, “No more.” We pulled him out of Daycare and the relief in our PDAer when we told him he didn’t have to go back was immense, however he was left profoundly traumatised. 

– He experienced severe separation anxiety, to the point that I couldn’t leave the room to go have a shower. Leaving the house was exceptionally hard, even for things he enjoyed.

– This was when we figured out he had PDA and we started letting go of lots of the demands we had been previously holding but we perhaps didn’t appreciate just how low we needed to go.

– As we started to see the positive impact of a low demand lifestyle we dropped more and more and more.

At 4.5 years, our PDAer had an acute relapse triggered by me going away on a weekend retreat.

– This one was an intense few weeks of not being able to leave the house.

– He just watched screens the whole time.

– He barely went outside.

– He barely had any meaningful conversation.

– He barely ate anything.

– He was very controlling.

– However, for this one, his recovery was much faster, mainly because we had so much more awareness and didn’t push him to do anything, we gave him time and trusted that he would re-engage when he was ready.

Laura Kerby recently posted about how when a child breaks a bone, we have very low expectations of what they will be able to do, we accept that recovery will be slow, we give them time, and we don’t push them too soon because it could lead to further damage. When our kids are in burnout, they need the same care and support.

If you have supported your child through burnout, you will know it takes an immense amount of inner resolve to trust the process and block out the judgmental voices of what you think you should be doing. 

Supporting our kid’s nervous systems, trusting them, and giving them time to heal, are some of the most beautiful gifts we can give them.

Little by little you will see the glimmers that they are starting to come back.

When parenting a PDAer, keeping your own mindset in check is essential. These are 10 of my favourite mantras, reframes and affirmations that I have shared over the last year.

1. Just for now…

It can be easy to get overwhelmed catastrophising about the future. It’s easy to feel guilty that you are not doing enough. Guilty about not being fair to your PDAer’s siblings. On those days I use the mantra “Just For Now…’’ to reframe my thinking. Just because they can’t do it today doesn’t mean it’s forever. Just for now… we co-sleep. Just for now… we don’t do family dinner. Just for now… this is working for my family.

2. “Kids do well if they can.” Dr Ross Greene

What a difference it can make when you shift your mindset from seeing something as a behavioural choice, to viewing behaviour as being a way of communicating that this is hard, that I need help, that perhaps it is our adult imposed expectations need to shift.

I’ll add that parents, teachers and therapists do well when they can too. We all get overwhelmed sometimes. We all have times where we act in a way that we don’t condone or make mistakes. We are human and could all use a little grace.

3. They aren’t giving you are hard time, they are having a hard time.

Remember that behaviour is communication. When you see your child lashing out at their siblings, breaking or throwing things, yelling or running away. It’s important to remember that your child is communicating that they aren’t coping. Their nervous system is in fight/flight. Their brain is in protection mode. The thinking part of their brain has been short circuited. Responding by yelling, shaming them, making them feel guilty, sending them to their room or implementing consequences or punishments, will never help, in fact it will just contribute to the problem. What your child needs is to feel safe. They need an environment that is aligned to their sensory preferences. They need co-regulation with an adult they trust. They need unconditional love and connection.

4. “Good parenting means being responsive to the hand you’ve been dealt.” Another gem from Dr Ross Greene

He goes on to say… “Parents ultimately want what is best for their child. If parenting the way that society dictates, the way that parenting books preach, isn’t working, and is causing huge stress in your home. I’m willing to bet that most parents are going to question cultural norms, especially if it is in service for what is best for their child.” In our house we do what works and keep our own tally of wins. It’s pretty liberating to stop comparing yourself to other people.

5. “Parent the child in front of you.” Robin Einzig

I used to spend a lot of time worrying about the future. I used to think that if I didn’t hold boundaries, didn’t actively teach my PDAer skills, didn’t expose him to different situations, that he wouldn’t learn, he wouldn’t be prepared for the future, he wouldn’t be able to go to school, get a job, live independently. I was parenting from a place of fear. When you parent the child in front of you. You can focus on what is working right now. What are they capable of right now? When you can let go of fear, you can be present in the moment and start to trust that your child will develop in their own time and way.

6. Beware of borrowing worries.

Borrowing a worry is when we worry about something before it is time to worry about it. We often worry about things that may never happen or that are completely out of our control. I know, sometimes it can feel like it’s easier said than done. Our time and energy is so precious, it is best preserved for what we have control over right now.

7. Connection over direction

This saying is so true for our PDAers. Without connection, any strategies that you try to implement are likely to fall flat. Without connection a PDAer’s nervous system will detect threat, causing their thinking brain to be short circuited. No learning or collaboration can happen when kids are in this state. Genuine connection is the antidote to fight/flight/freeze/fawn. Over time it will increase your child’s trust, tolerance and capacity to engage in new experiences.

8. This is hard, I’m not alone, may I be gentle with myself. (from Mona Delahooke, based off the mindful self-compassion work of Dr Kristen Neff and Dr Chris Germer)

This is one that I say to myself on the hard days; after weathering meltdowns, when I’m exhausted and have been holding it together all day, when I feel guilty for feeling all of the emotions, these 3 statements help me to tap into my wisdom. It’s not that I’m a bad parent, it’s that I’m in a genuinely challenging situation and everyone would find it hard. 

9. Fair is not always equal.

Fairness between my kids is something that is really important to me. It is easy to feel guilty that I am investing more time and energy into one child over the other. However, the reality that I have had to sit with is that fair is not always equal. Equality is when everyone gets the same but true equity is when everyone gets what they need to be successful. We obviously try to keep things as fair as we can, but there will be some scenarios where there are going to be different rules for our PDAer.

Fair is to always equal can apply to partners too. We have to play to our strengths.

10. Others have to earn the right to your story.

You have permission not to explain yourself and your choices. Your energy is precious, don’t waste it on people who don’t understand, can’t understand. Unless you have lived it, it’s impossible for others to ever fully relate. Gasps… judgmental comments… outrage…defensiveness… you don’t need that on your life. Surround yourself with people who you don’t have to explain yourself to and who trust your choices.

What are the mantras and affirmations that help get through? Please share them in the comments. It might just be what another family needs to hear.