Caroline Foran

I do think in time, I do think there's a lot of people from what I've read that would maybe be ADHD plus PDA and not necessarily autistic plus PDA.

But right now, the diagnostic criteria means it lives under autism.

Now, I'm pretty certain that my son is, even if you took away the PDA, he's autistic.

But the PDA completely changes the nature of it.

It's kind of like walking on eggshells a lot of the time because you're either going to activate the nervous system and you're just trying to keep things calm.

And it's all about safety and connection instead of...

trying to hold a boundary for a boundary's sake, which is everything we've been taught and told about parenting.

Like, you know, how we define a good parent is how good you are at getting your child under control and how good a child is gets defined as how compliant they are, how obedient they are, how willing to do what you as the adult need them to do are.

And anything that goes against that is totally less favourable in society.

So the PDA in and of itself is so challenging, but it's also culturally so challenging because it's so

It's a relatively new term.

It's a relatively new criteria.

And a lot of time it can just look like a really bad behavior.

And it looks like something that he could just choose not to do.

But it's underneath that it's getting to the root of that, knowing that that is a nervous system response.

And it's often a can't, not a won't.

But it looks like crappy parenting sometimes.

It looks like you just...

have no control.

And I think, I mean, in my experience, parents arrive at PDA after a very long time of trying all the traditional parenting approaches and it not only not working, but making things so much worse for everyone in the family.