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Yesterday I had a very PDA exchange with my 9 year old son L who was trying to upload a video he had made onto YouTube:
L enters my room, flops on the floor and wails “Help me, I can’t get the video to upload. It won’t even upload 1%”
Me: “Ok, what seems to be the problem”
L: “I don’t know, it’s not working”
Me: “Ok, let me have a look at your phone… Right, how do you upload a video on youtube?”
L: “I’m not telling you, figure it out yourself”
Me: “What - I don’t know how to do this - what bit do I go into?”
L: “I’m not telling you - do it yourself or you will die”
Me: “Do I do it in this section?”
L: “Do you want to die?”
Me: “No, I just want to know what button to press. Do I press this one here?”
L: Ignores me
Me: “Right, ok - I think I have the upload screen - what do you want to call the video?”
L: “You figure it out”
Me: “How on earth am I expected to know what you want this to be called?
L: “You have to guess, but if you do it wrong you will die”
Me: “Right - so let me get this straight - you want me to help you but you won’t tell me what to do to help you? You want me to upload the video and guess the name, that you know and won’t tell me. However if I guess the wrong name and upload it I am going to die? So if I don’t do it I die and if I do do it, but incorrectly, I still die? This is a no win situation for me!”
L: Brink of meltdown - “Yes, except if you do it correctly without me telling you anything you will not die. So you better become a psychic”
Me: “I’m not a psychic”
L: Meltdown ensuing…
Me: “Right, lets use my phone instead and see if it works on there”. We look on my phone to see the video he previously posted slowly uploading. He snatches my phone, runs off and continues work on his video.
Situation over, for now. This was a minor incident as it quickly resolved itself but is an example of what day to day life with a PDA kid entails. They want your help but don’t want your help. They need you to help but won’t help you help them. They want you to sort it for them, but it needs to be done to the highest perfection or you have failed. Basically they ask the impossible every day. It’s exhausting.
When starting out at the beginning of your PDA journey you may be inclined to use traditional parenting techniques. These might include ensuring some or all of the following happen:
Manners, where are the please and thank you for helping?
Threats - don’t threaten me or I won’t do it
Punishment - punish that child for threatening to kill you
Refusing to help the child until they do all of the above or more
Unfortunately, traditional parenting techniques will consistently fail for a child with PDA. This is FACT. When you are at the beginning of your PDA journey, you might be trying these techniques - and don’t understand why they are failing. Schools/professionals and extended family might be telling you to apply discipline, boundaries and reward & punishment systems. And, when they start to fail the reason is because you are not applying them firmly enough, consistently enough or for long enough. So you continue persisting until you and your child usually end up at crisis point. But traditional parenting just will not work on these kids.
So what does work? Novelty, humour, completely thinking outside the box, creativity and pretty much relinquishing yourself of absolutely every expectation that you have of your child and how they behave. You have to let that go completely. Particularly, the words that they say. Obviously you need to keep your child and yourself safe - particularly when your child presents with violent and challenging behaviour. But a majority of that behaviour comes from the demands and expectations to comply.
I hate being told by my child that he wants to kill me. It’s horrible. It’s not nice to think about your own death, let alone be told in excruciating detail how your child would pretty much like to decapitate you. Your own nervous system goes into flight or fight mode, you become overwhelmed and it is very hard to keep your cool in these moments - after all, you are only human and not some psychic mum who is able to magic up an instantly perfect YouTube upload. I’ll admit it is a major trigger for me and one that I really struggle with to parent my child as effectively as I want to.
One of the first things we did when the lockdown started was to sign up to the newly launched Disney Plus - as Star Wars is L’s special interest at the moment. L and I were so excited to start watching the Mandalorian together (I am a geek and baby yoda is super cute!). Every Friday morning when a new episode came out we would watch it together on the sofa and it was a lovely bonding experience. About half way through the series we had an incident - I can’t remember the details but I remember being completely fed up of the death threats. He had asked me to do something I couldn’t do at that exact moment and I started walking down stairs with threats of extreme violence. At this point I regretfully said something like “Fine, you know what I don’t actually care - kill me if you like it’s fine by me”. He stopped and very calmly said “If you don’t do what I say I won’t watch the Mandalorian with you on Friday”. I stopped and looked around shocked. I reacted with complete devastation - because I genuinely love that time. I said “No, no not that - anything but that! That is my favourite thing in the world, please please I will do anything you want but do not take that away from me” I crawled up the stairs, begged and grovelled at his feet and agreed to whatever it is that he wanted me to do that I had earlier refused.
Now why - why did I do this? Because right now I have a fate worse than death and I have given my child the ultimate gift in being able to threaten me with it. No child really wants to place death threats upon their parent - can you imagine the guilt and how terrible he feels to say those things. It is awful for the parent and the child and causes the situation and conflict to escalate so quickly.
Now, this is his go to threat when he really needs me to listen and help him. It lightens the mood for both of us because my nervous system doesn’t react, his doesn’t react and we can find a solution quicker and easier - it is a win win for all involved.
There is no way we could have reached this balance if we had used traditional parenting or even traditional “autism strategies".
Those methods do not work for these kids - and you can find that out the hard way (by listening to everyone else except your own instincts ) or listen to me now. I give YOU full permission to only listen to your own gut when it comes to your kid. It is not easy, it’s going to be the hardest thing you have ever done - but it is the only thing that will work. Good luck - and may the force be with you!
