The PDA Paradox: The Highs and Lows of My Life on a Little-Known Part of the Autism Spectrum

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Recently, he has delivered training on DAP to postgraduate level and spoken internationally on the topic.

It allows space for PDA parents who must accomplish a seemingly impossible task – to respect and balance the needs of each individual in the home, while not letting the right to peace of one override the right to peace of another. Treat all branch property (including the venues they use) with respect and do not deliberately damage it. These are parents who have tried everything — these parents have gone through different therapists, and they've tried medications with their kids, and they've tried parenting classes, and they're exhausted,” Henderson says.For example, I’ve learned it is not always so straightforward to reach out to parents of PDA children, as many resist the notion that their child is Autistic, because the PDA presentation is atypical on the spectrum, and not yet widely recognized. c. Strong, involuntary emotional threat responses in the context of perceived demands (can be implicit and ever-present, such as attending school and work; or explicit such as a direct request or direction or suggestion) on the person’s autonomy, which may be expressed as; anger, aggression, rage, anxiety, fear, desperation, and at its extreme, meltdown (panic). Thompson says in his YouTube video, “Anxiety Presents in Multiple Ways,” that many class clowns like he used to be as a middle-schooler often resort to hiding behind a flamboyant persona as a coping mechanism for anxiety.

The top hang has an illustration of a man’s profile in reds and burgundy, next to him is written “PDA Adult” and below that in a list “capacity for maturity. Non-violence allows me to acknowledge the depth of my pain and disconnect with my son, as well as his with me, while also laying out a path towards reconciliation.Any physical, emotional, verbal abuse or rudeness towards volunteers or other branch members will not be tolerated. There is no single interpretation of what executive functioning is (Chown 2017), this reflects how there is no single interpretation of what DAP is.

I'm still going to read his book and consume his materials because he has excellent insight on many things, but much like the neurotypicals do, he has a blind spot when it comes to himself, and conflates his personal flaws as part of group pathology. May be genuinely highly attuned to social structures and have a penchant for detecting and challenging hierarchy and authority due to heightened perception of its arbitrary and unfair nature. We offer signposting and events for all things SEND and are the Parent Carer Forum for Cambridgeshire. They've learned that it's only a matter of time before the next demand comes along, and they're sort of hypervigilant to danger.He needs belt to re regulate, cleared instruction and expectation, help to overcome what has made him behave as he is 😢.

The lack of understanding and empathy for people who are neurodiverse in our mental health services is shameful. Furthermore there is no trait that is specific to DAP and its traits often have many interpretations in different labels. I also need the word “violence” if I am going to fully acknowledge how I unknowingly perpetuated it in my own home before I came to understand how my son’s brain worked -- the moments when I demanded that my Autistic son look at me, answer me, when I moved his body against his will, shut him behind closed doors for “time-outs” or insisted that he eat something he registered as a threat to his safety.There’s a diagnosis that describes these characteristics: pathological demand avoidance, or PDA (although many autistic people and professionals working with them prefer the term pervasive drive for autonomy — but more on that later. May have a ‘special interest’ in a certain person, people, society, social systems, studying and understanding people, e. A number of prominent people and organizations in the PDA community have since cut ties with Thompson.