About me
My name is Elizabeth and I am a stay at home Mum to three kids aged 14, 12 and 8. I have been married to my high school sweetheart for 19 years. My family is my greatest joy.
My background is in Early Childhood education and I taught for about 5 years before moving from Australia to the United States. I am so glad to have had that experience to support my parenting since.
I love to research. Often I find myself rabbit trailing and discovering information that is helpful to my family’s current needs even though I didn’t know I needed to know it. While I love to learn new things I do end up with many thoughts flying around in my head looking for somewhere to land. This blog is the landing place to record my journey, and corral my thoughts. I am excited to share my discoveries with family, friends and others with similar worries and experiences. I hope you find it helpful.
In preparing this page I researched a lot about how to make a blog more personal. Having a photograph of myself, as suggested in many articles, seemed to make sense to me until I had a conversation with one of my children. They did not want to have their photo on the blog. I understood this and thought that I’d just add one of myself until I realised that it would still identify my family and there remove the anonymity that child wanted to keep. I also decided that I could be more authentic and honest while maintaining my family’s privacy. I hope that I can use words to paint a picture of the real me. I have added here a photo of the rhodies in my backyard where I take Mother’s Day snaps each year.
So with all that said………..here goes. Thanks for joining me!
Hi Elizabeth,
I have just discovered your posts and am loving them.
I have read a lot about PDA, and we have also contacted some PDA professionals offered through the pdanorthamerica website.
However, since in the USA PDA is mostly unknown or unrecognized, we have been having difficulties finding professional help that does recognise PDA. I have introduced PDA to our school district case manager, to my daughter’s head of school and teachers (where she no longer attends), and try to mention it to potential therapists. However, I do not know who really gets it and takes it seriously.
We are trying to find a suitable school (through the district or privately) and suitable therapy. After reading Dundon’s “PDA in the Therapy Room”, I feel that it is crucial that anyone working with my daughters be familiar with PDA.
When it comes to schools it is trickier. We could not convince my daughter’s small alternative private school to let go of the demand that she wear shoes, and to accept that her refusal was not an act of opposition but anxiety. The arguments with teachers about wearing shoes became such a vicious cycle every day, that she would “turn into a cat” and I had to come pick her up from under a table a few times. Finally, she would not wear shoes even outdoors and was not allowed to come back to school.
I have two questions:
1) Do you know a source for PDA friendly therapists?
2) Could you share with me how to got your school staff to understand and support your PDAer, and to drop unnecessary demands?
Thanks,
Sheva
Hi Sheva,
I am glad that you have had your lightbulb moment. It can help to alleviate some of the sense of unknown when it comes to your child’s needs.
I have found that PDA is starting to become more known throughout the autism therapy community where I live on the West Coast of the USA. I totally agree that anyone working with your child should be familiar with PDA. It is important that they understand that the types of strategies that are often used with autistic children are not only not likely to work for a child with PDA but can in fact cause more anxiety and avoidant behaviours.
I start each new intake with a new therapist/Dr etc by asking if they have know much about or have any experience working with PDAers. I take a list of the main points about PDA and which ones in particular are relevant for my child. I have found that in most cases they have either heard about it and are interested to know more and have the opportunity to work with a child with PDA. I also provide this list for the teachers at the beginning of the school year.
I am not aware of any source of PDA friendly therapists in the USA. It would be a great resource. If I do come across anything I will reply here again or post an article.
My son’s school has learned about PDA along with our family so we have been very fortunate to have had a supportive experience in his education from kindergarten onwards. As part of the info shared about PDA at the beginning of the school year I include a list of ‘sentence starters’ that avoid using triggering words such as no, not, never, must, have to etc. There is a list of these in this post https://lifeontiptoes.com/pathological-demand-avoidance-pda-strategies/ It definitely takes practice to change the way we make requests of our PDA child but I have seen it make a difference to my son’s sense of control over a situation.
In order to reduce the demands at school I offered that if there is any work that has been avoided during the school day/week, that truly needs to be completed, that I will do it at home with T. I also let him know that he can do it at school or at home. This way we know that he will be getting through anything that needs to be worked on but I can give T the control over when he will finish the work. He has only a few times had to bring work home as he would rather not do it at home. His teachers also reduce the amount of work that my son has to complete especially if he is clearly showing that he already knows how to do.
I think there are some teachers or schools who get very caught up on the idea that everyone has the same rules. They worry that if they allow one child to do something different that everyone will want to do that. In my experience in the school my son attends this has not been the case at all. The teachers have had lessons with the children about diversity and that our brains and bodies work in many different ways. This means that the way people are able to feel safe and calm is not going to look the same for everyone. Feeling safe and calm is the way that our children are going to be able to participate at school.
One thing that I know is very helpful for my son is being able to take a break when his anxiety is increasing. We ask that he listens to the lesson instructions and then can take a break such as take drink of water, got to the bathroom, read a book or some other short calming activity. Often when he comes back to the task he is less anxious about it and has also been able to take some control over when he is doing the task.
I know that your original comment was a while ago so I do not know if you have had success finding a therapist who is familiar with PDA or found a new school. I’d love to know how you are doing in these searches. I have not posted for a while but am hoping to find the time to get back to it. I am so glad that you found this blog helpful. It can feel so isolating especially when there are people who do not believe that PDA is a real thing!
You are not alone <3