Parenting the PDA way

I thought I’d explain the title of my blog a bit more,  ‘The PDA Way’. PDA stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance. The PDA Society are a charity and have a fantastic website which they are happy for me to post a link to

 www.pdasociety.org.uk 

As anyone with a PDA child already knows, conventional parenting doesn’t work. So rewards, consequences, praise …all the usual things you’d do as a parent cause anxiety, anger, meltdowns, violence. We tried for so long in the belief that we needed to be firmer, clearer boundaries, more consistent. Super Nanny’s voice rang in my head ‘he’s ruling the roost’ (I look back now and wonder how many of those kids on Super Nanny had undiagnosed PDA!). Everything was  a constant battle and we were all pretty miserable. I questioned myself and my parenting. I felt like a failure. Enter CAMHs, The Early Attachment Team to be exact. We were allocated a Clinical Psychologist, we’ll call her S. 

S is the main person in our journey who has changed the course of our lives. That sounds dramatic I know. But it’s true. Until we met S we knew very little about ASD and neurodiversity. I remember a conversation with S early on where I was telling her about our battles at mealtimes. We were doing ‘traditional parenting’ so I’d say to Little C ‘if you don’t eat your tea that’s fine but you can’t have anything else to eat etc’ - the usual things that mums/dads say. I told S that Little C refused to sit at the table or eat any of the food (even if it was something I knew he liked). It felt like ultimate defiance and turned mealtimes into a nightmare. S questioned whether it would matter if Little C ate his tea in the front room. A simple suggestion. But this opened up a whole new way of parenting, where the idea of how things ‘should’ be done is totally scrapped. So now Little C eats his tea where he wants, when he wants (within reason) and has whatever he wants (if it’s in). A typical tea time would be Little C asking for tea at 3.00, he’ll usually have plain pasta (eaten in the front room) or spaghetti shapes with cheese, Heinz’s vegetable soup, beans, or pasta and sauce (which he eats at the dining table with his tablet). Then at 5.30 I do tea for the rest of us and 80% of the time Little C will come and join us briefly and have a little plate of what we’re having, he often tries things and then disappears again. But this is great. There’s no pressure for him to sit and eat with us. He’s trying more food. He’s putting on weight (and has been discharged from the dietitian). So this, for our family, works. On Christmas Day he didn’t join us at the table and instead ate pasta in the front room and this was okay, we had a great day. We now accept that everything doesn’t have to be picture perfect.

So at home Little C has a fair amount of control. At night he can watch his tablet until he’s ready to go to sleep and you know what? ….gone are the hours of repetitive rituals, getting in and out of bed, midnight meltdowns, me sat on the landing crying. Instead, he turns his tablet off at 9-9.30 and shuts his eyes and goes to sleep. He feels in control, safe and goes to sleep happy. Of course I’d like him to be in his own bed! But that will come with time. At the moment he needs to be with me, he needs physical contact and that’s okay. 

Since we’ve starting parenting the PDA way, we’ve come to learn that all the things we thought mattered, actually don’t matter that much. We’ve found that the more we made things an issue the more Little C would resist. By taking the pressure off and reducing the demands he is actually able to do a lot more. I will gently prompt him to brush his teeth every night but I try to act like it’s fine if he doesn’t. Most nights he does now brush his teeth. 

So it’s an unconventional way of doing things - that may raise a few eyebrows I’m sure. There will be people who will think we are complete pushover parents, or that we’ve given up trying to parent altogether. 

Then there will be parents like us who have reached breaking point, been on parenting courses, felt judged, mentally exhausted and completely at a loss. We are so lucky we met S who helped us to figure this out. I’ve completely changed my way of thinking and I feel we’re making progress. S has helped us more than she will ever know. She has given me confidence by letting me make the decisions myself - she’d just ask a question or plant a seed, or mull things over with me. Always giving me a much needed boost and leaving me with options and ideas. I think we’ve been very lucky to have had this support. 

So that’s basically it - ‘the PDA way’ - it’s an actual thing. There are books, courses, support groups all sharing ideas and advice. It’s hard work, it’s far from being an easy option and it isn’t how I imagined parenting (or how I would chose to if I had the choice). But it’s a million times better than it was before so this is how we’ll continue to do things. The PDA way. Our way.