My book, “The Educator’s Experience of Pathological Demand Avoidance” starts with an honest confession, and that is that working with learners with PDA used to scare me.
The reason it scared me? Because before I really understood PDA, and what learners with PDA needed, my time with PDAers was not always successful. Sometimes I would be on the receiving end of some rather harsh verbal feedback, sometimes work I had spent hours planning got ignored or ripped up, sometimes things would get damaged or destroyed, and on a few occasions it was not just my feelings that got hurt.
Fortunately, I realised pretty quickly that there was nothing wrong with the learners I was supporting, but there was a lot wrong with the way I was working with them.
It was ME that had to change, Me that had to adjust and ME that had to learn. I had to “unlearn” a lot of what I thought I knew about autism and completely change my approach.
Sometimes, we have to “go against the grain,” when we are supporting neurodivergent children, whether this is as a parent or a professional.
A lot of what we do as professionals is because that is “just the way it’s done.” It is the way we are told it should be done, or it is the way we have been trained to do it.
A lot of what we insist on as parents is stuff that we do because it is the way we were brought up, and the way we think that things should be done.
As an example, I used to insist that my children sat at the dinner table until everyone had finished their meal. This is what I had been brought up being told I had to do, so I passed this expectation onto my children too.
As a result, mealtimes in our house were often a source of stress and conflict, and eventually I realised that insisting that my eldest son, who has ADHD, sat, and waited for the rest of us to finish eating was a recipe for disaster most nights. Letting him get down from the table as soon as he had finished eating cut down on a great deal of that stress and conflict, but it initially felt a little uncomfortable as it “went against the grain.”
A few years ago, I was working with a lovely family who had a son with a PDA profile. One morning I had a 9am consult scheduled with the dad. He arrived at my office slightly early and slightly flustered and told me almost immediately, “I need to tell you what I did this morning, because I have gone against all my parenting instincts, and I need to talk to you about it.” I was a little worried about what he was going to tell me and braced myself to hear it, then he told me, “I let my son watch his iPad at the breakfast table with his headphones on this morning……”
“Aaaaaaand………………?” I asked slightly nervously.
“We had the best morning ever! He got to school on time, happy and I am here early too!” He told me smiling.
He then went on to explain that letting his son sit at the breakfast table on a screen went against all his parenting instincts and was not something he ever thought he would allow, but as we talked, he admitted that this style of parenting was how he had been brought up, and that what he had done that morning just “went against the grain.”
So, we need to ask ourselves “why am I asking them to do this? And “does it actually matter?”
In a learning environment we can ask ourselves:
- “Does it actually matter if they write, or I do it?”
- “Does it actually matter if they don’t finish this piece of work?”
- “Does it actually matter if they do PE in their school uniform?”
And in the home environment we can ask ourselves similar questions like:
- “Does it actually matter if they don’t eat their meal at the table?”
- “Does it actually matter if they don’t get dressed and stay in their pyjamas for the day?”
- “Does it actually matter if they say please and thank you?”
For a child with a PDA profile this is particularly important as we must remember that placing demands on these children will feel like threats to their autonomy and can cause unnecessary anxiety. This is something I talk about in my book in more detail, and is illustrated so beautifully by Eliza Fricker, AKA, Missing the Mark.
So, what happens when we decide to “go against the grain?”
Initially it feels a bit “rough” and a bit uncomfortable, there may be a few “splintered” moments, but when we continue to go against the grain, it starts to feel easier and easier, and eventually it becomes so natural and smooth that everyone involved benefits.
Oh, and by the way there is a second confession in my book and that is, “You’re not meant to have favourites when you work in education, but I do, and guess what………they all have PDA!” And the reason I love working with them so much? Because I learned to go “against the grain.”
Pic Credit: Missing the Mark taken from our book, “The Educator’s Experience of Pathological Demand Avoidance” Published by Jessica Kingsley Publishing.