At Peace Parents Podcast

Casey

The At Peace Parents Podcast is your source for all things related to understanding, supporting, accommodating, and advocating for your demand avoidant or PDA child. It will completely transform the way you think about your PDA child's brain, behavior, and parenting, and support you in finding your path to more peace and stability in the home. For more information see www.atpeaceparents.com

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20 episodes
Updated Tuesday

Episodes20

Newest first

Tuesday · 17 min
Why You're Walking On Eggshells: Cumulative Nervous System Activation And Your PDA Child Or Teen | Ep. 174
Seven years ago I created a huge spreadsheet trying to find the cause of my son's meltdowns. How many hours outside, how many minutes on screens, how many calories eaten, and much much more. But I couldn't find a consistent pattern. Something that triggered him one day might be barely noticed another. The problem was, my logic was wrong. In this episode, an excerpt from our free Understanding PDA Masterclass, I explain why the standard ABC framework of antecedent, behavior, consequence fails for PDA children and introduce the cumulative nervous system activation model: how drops build in the bucket over weeks, months, and years toward a tipping point, and why what you do this week may determine whether your child can brush their teeth three weeks from now. Key Takeaways Why the Spreadsheet Did Not Work | 00:00:00 When my son went into burnout, I tracked everything: screen time, calories, sleep, fresh air, meltdown frequency. I was looking for the antecedent - the thing that happened right before the blowup - that would tell me the cause. What I now know is the reason the spreadsheet could not find the pattern is that the logic of the PDA nervous system is not event-based. It is cumulative. The antecedent is not the primary cause. It is the tipping point. The ABC Framework and Why It Does Not Apply to PDA | 00:01:45 The ABC framework - antecedent, behavior, consequence - is the foundation of most behavioral approaches in schools, therapy, and parenting. For some neurodivergent children it can be useful: the fluorescent lights went on, the meltdown followed, the consequence was leaving the room. For PDA children, the same surface-level event can produce completely different responses on different days, because the behavior is not caused by that event in isolation. It is caused by the cumulative level of nervous system activation that has been building in the system toward a threshold of tolerance over days, weeks, months, and in some cases years. TDrops in the Bucket Toward a Threshold | 00:03:19 I use a glass of water to illustrate the threshold of tolerance: the point at which cumulative nervous system activation tips past the window and begins to disable basic needs. Every subconsciously perceived loss of autonomy or equality is a drop. With a PDA child, we may have fifteen drops before we have even finished breakfast. Those drops build continuously, which is why burnout can feel sudden, especially for internalized PDA teens who masked successfully for years before suddenly being unable to leave their room. My son's escalation into burnout felt like an autistic regression because it was so rapid, but looking back, the drops had been building in the system for years without anyone seeing it. Why Behavior Fluctuates and Why That Makes It Hard to Trust the Disability Framework | 00:09:40 A PDA child may be able to brush their teeth at the beginning of the week but not by Friday. My older son's test scores drop between the start of the school year and the end, not because he has lost the skill or knowledge but because cumulative activation has made it harder to access. When things fluctuate like this, parents can doubt whether what they are seeing is really a disability, because the inconsistency does not match how we think disabilities look. This fluctuation is actually a feature of the cumulative model: accommodation brings activation down, and the child moves away from their threshold. Activation builds it back up. Two Out of Three Is Enough | 00:12:58 You do not have to accommodate perfectly for this model to work. Every accommodation removes a drop from the bucket. Every activation adds one. If your co-parent is not yet on board, your accommodations are still helping, just more slowly. If your child is in a school that is adding drops while you remove them at home, progress will be slower but not impossible. The practical implication is that what you do this week, this month, in the next three weeks, is directly connected to what you will see in basic needs access, nervous system reactivity, and connection and engagement a month from now. Relevant Resources Understanding PDA — The free masterclass from which this episode is excerpted, covering the full nervous system disability framework including the cumulative activation model and threshold of tolerance described here. Burnout — Free class with context for the burnout threshold I describe, including why escalation into burnout can feel sudden even when the activation has been building for years. Tracking Progress — Free class on how to track the three dimensions that reflect cumulative nervous system activation over time: nervous system reactivity, basic needs access, and connection and engagement. Paradigm Shift Program — My signature program where the cumulative activation model is applied practically, with live coaching to help parents identify where drops are being added and removed in their specific family system
July 28 · 17 min
Finding Meaning as a Parent of a Pathological Demand Avoidance Child or Teen | Ep. 173
When autonomy is low, meaning has to be high. That is what I learned during the two years I spent as a full-time caregiver for my older son, isolated in our home, and putting myself physically between him and his eighteen-month-old brother when things got bad. In this episode I share how I found a sustaining "why" during that period, and how other families I have worked with have found theirs. I also introduce a practical tool I call the "hang your hat on the day" goal: a way of redirecting from goals that depend on another person's behavior to goals that are entirely within your own control, so that you can give yourself genuine credit for what you are doing every single day. Key Takeaways When Autonomy Is Low, Meaning Has to Be High | 00:00:00 Parenting a PDA child or teen introduces an almost constant rock-and-a-hard-place dynamic: every choice has a cost, and there is no option that gives you genuine autonomy without a trade-off. When you want to go to the gym, there is a cost when you come back. When your partner takes over for a few hours, there is a cost to their energy level. That sustained low autonomy is depleting in a way most people around us will never understand, and what I have found, from my own experience and across the families I work with, is that meaning is the variable that makes it sustainable. We need a "why" that gets us through the day. How I Found My "Why" in the Basement | 00:01:46 I was in the basement of our home in Michigan, putting myself between my older and younger sons when things got violent, feeling my own violent rage moving through me that I want to name as normal rather than shameful. My older son needed constant undivided attention and dopamine or he would go after his brother, and I was isolated, sensory overwhelmed, and out of resources. I had been reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and had a seed planted about the idea that a clear why makes almost anything endurable. In that moment in the basement I realized: my entire doctorate had been on nonviolence and grassroots peace building and there I was, finally practicing it. Not theoretically. In my own basement. That was enough meaning to sustain me through that period. What Other Families Have Found as Their Why | 00:06:27 The meaning does not have to be mine. Across the thousands of families I have worked with, the sustaining whys have included: healing intergenerational trauma, becoming the parent they wished they had, practicing becoming a less judgmental person, learning non-reactivity as a skill, learning about disability and neurodiversity in a way that changes how they move through the world, and healing themselves through the relationship with their child. None of these are about outcomes for the child. They are about what the parent is becoming through the practice of showing up, which is the only part any of us actually controls. Why Goals That Depend on Your Child Will Undermine You | 00:08:29 One of the most consistent patterns I see across the families I work with, and in myself, is attaching goals to things another person has to do: my child will go back to school in the fall, my child will be independent by this age, my partner will come on board if I explain it clearly enough. When these goals drive our sense of progress, we are setting ourselves up for a particular kind of suffering, because we have no control over another person's nervous system or choices. The shift I ask parents to make is not to stop wanting those things. It is to stop basing today's measure of success on whether they happened. The Hang Your Hat on the Day Goal | 00:10:06 This is the practical tool that helped me through the most acute period of caregiving and that I return to now in harder seasons. The hang your hat goal is the one thing within your own control that you can point to at the end of a day and say: I did that. Some days it is "I showed up more regulated than I would have a year ago." Some days it is "I stayed in the PDA lens for most of the day even though I fell back into the old pattern at bedtime." Some days it is "I brushed my teeth, I ate enough to stay alive, and I did not scream at my kids." All of these count. None of them depend on what your child did. And giving yourself genuine credit for what you did, even when no one else can see it, is one of the most sustainable things you can do for your own nervous system over the long term. Relevant Resources Finding Meaning — Free class where I go deeper into the meaning-making framework described in this episode, including how to identify a sustaining why that is true for your specific life and journey. Burnout — Free class with context for the burnout period I describe, including the two years of intensive caregiving that led me to Viktor Frankl and the hang your hat goal. Paradigm Shift Program — My signature program where meaning-making, the hang your hat goal, and the full accommodation framework are practiced together across twelve weeks with live coaching and a community of families in the same season.
July 21 · 1 hr 22 min
Shame, Power, and Pathological Demand Avoidance in Children and Teens with Dr. Gillian Boudreau | Ep. 172
What does shame have to do with PDA? And why do behavioral approaches fail so consistently for this neurotype even when implemented well? I speak with Dr. Gillian Boudreau, a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in autism, ADHD, and anxiety across children, families, and adults, to explore the roles of shame and power in PDA children and teens. Dr. Boudreau draws on her early career supporting high-need autistic students in a school system, her psychodynamic training, and her work with families to explain why these children frustrate adults, why that frustration is data, and what it looks like to help parents construct a resilient narrative from a place of compassion rather than blame. Key Takeaways What the Adults Around PDA Children Are Feeling and Why It Matters | 00:12:00 In her second year supporting high-need students in a school system, Dr. Boudreau shifted from behavioral interventions to asking the adults on the team a different question: what is this child bringing up in you? The answers were consistent: I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, I feel powerless, I feel like I'm going to lose control. Through a psychodynamic lens, clients often make helpers feel the very way they feel inside and cannot express. When the adults named their own feelings of shame and powerlessness, and the team began offering children more autonomy and genuine collaboration before demanding compliance, the big behaviors began to shift in ways that star charts had not produced. Shame Is at the Root on Both Sides | 00:52:00 PDA children often carry years of cumulative shame - due to numerous factors - and w hen a child in that much pain escalates, adults respond from their own activated shame response. This produces a shame-blame cycle that makes everything worse. Hurt People Hurt People | 01:00:00 One of the most common fears parents bring to Dr. Boudreau is whether their child has empathy, whether they are raising someone who will become abusive. Her response is direct: true sociopathy is extraordinarily rare, and PDA nervous systems are characterized by overactive fear and often hyperempathy. She uses an example from my own family to illustrate radical empathy as a clinical stance: if a child locked someone in a basement, the question to ask is not what is wrong with this child, but what level of threat must they have been perceiving in their body to do that? Why PDA Children Cannot Help But Call Out Arbitrary Power Structures | 01:05:39 Dr. Boudreau describes PDA as a nervous system that is exquisitely sensitive to the emotional electricity of agenda and control. From an evolutionary perspective, she suggests that the presence of PDA across the population may serve a function: some nervous systems are wired to detect and resist arbitrary or exploitative power dynamics that others have learned to tolerate. The problem is not the sensitivity. The problem is that schools and many family systems are not built to respond to it without escalating into shame cycles. What Parents Need Most: A Resilient Narrative and Permission to Grieve | 01:15:15 When Dr. Boudreau works with parents of PDA children, she starts by helping them catch their own shame response at the root before it cycles back toward the child. She holds space for grief, including grief for the life and the parenting experience that was expected. She also shares what she knows from seeing many PDA journeys longitudinally: this will likely turn out to be pretty cool at some point. The goal is not to minimize the hardship but to help parents construct a narrative that has room for the full palette of human emotion. Relevant Resources Clear Connection Psychology on Instagram — Dr. Gillian Boudreau's Instagram where she shares content and resources on emotional safety, connection, and supporting all brains and hearts across children, families, and school systems. PDA North America: PDA-Affirming Providers Directory — A directory of PDA-affirming providers maintained by PDA North America, referenced in this episode as a resource for families looking for clinicians who understand the PDA profile. Turning Passive Into Active: A Building Block of Ego and Fundamental Mechanism of Defense — Reference document on the concept Dr. Boudreau introduces in this episode as the psychological term underlying what I call equalizing behavior in PDA children and teens. Understanding PDA — Free class where I teach the nervous system disability framework and the neuroception logic that underlies the shame and power dynamics Dr. Boudreau describes in this episode. Burnout — Free class with context for the burnout period I describe in this episode, including the six months with my younger son and why the shame-blame cycle is most dangerous when a child is deepest in burnout.
July 14 · 10 min
Why Lowering Demands May Not Be Enough For Your PDA Child | Ep. 171
If you've lowered demands for your PDA child or teen but still aren't seeing much progress, this episode is for you. It explains one of the most common sticking points I hear from families: that due to the name - Pathological Demand Avoidance - parents focused on lowering demands, when what their child needs more is increased autonomy and equality. This episode is an excerpt from my free Understanding PDA Masterclass. In it I walk through the distinction between demands as a surface-level behavior and autonomy and equality as the root-level mechanism. To help make the difference clear, I describe how in a typical morning autonomy losses often accumulate before a child even gets out the door. Key Takeaways Demands Are the Surface. Autonomy Is the Root | 00:00:00 The name Pathological Demand Avoidance points toward the behavior: avoidance of demands. But if we think about PDA as a pervasive drive for autonomy, we get closer to the actual mechanism. Parents who have lowered demands and are not seeing progress are often still inadvertently signaling a loss of autonomy through expectation, energy, agenda, or position of authority, even when the demand itself has been removed. The surface level behavior is demand avoidance. The root level cause is neuroception of a loss of autonomy or equality. My Younger Son's School Refusal: The Autonomy Mechanism in Real Time | 00:01:33 For two weeks, my younger son could not get his body to go to school. Each evening he would tell me he genuinely wanted to go the next morning, naming specific things he looked forward to. When I asked whether he would like me to prompt him in the morning, he said no, because if you do, then I will not go. That is the PDA mechanism: in his thinking brain, with full autonomy and no external expectation, going to school felt possible. The moment an agenda or a prompt from me entered, his amygdala would register a loss of autonomy, activate the threat response, and make going impossible. A Morning Audit: Fifteen Activations To Start The Day | 00:06:02 I walk through a typical first hour of a day with a PDA child to illustrate how many autonomy and equality losses can accumulate before the family has even left the house. Being woken up by a parent or an alarm is an externally imposed loss of autonomy. Being expected to come downstairs, eat, eat in a particular place, be told what is and is not available for breakfast, clean up the plate, get dressed, put on shoes, pack a backpack, receive a gentle correction after pushing a sibling on the way to the car: each one registers in the amygdala as a threat event. In a loving, gentle household with no intentional pressure, there can be fifteen or more of these activations in forty-five minutes. That cumulative load is what makes PDA disabling, not any single demand. Equality Is as Important as Autonomy | 00:04:50 The equality piece is often underemphasized. It includes any energy of another person being above the PDA child in stature, authority, or position: not getting the most ice cream, not being first down the stairs, not getting the last word, having a parent try and teach them something in the moment of a behavior. Even gentle parenting's recommendation to take the child aside after a dysregulation and debrief produces this perception, because the parent is placing themselves above as the teacher and the explainer. The child is not in the right part of their brain to receive it, and the teaching itself is perceived as another activation. Relevant Resources Understanding PDA — The free masterclass from which this episode is excerpted, covering the six characteristics of PDA including the survival drive for autonomy and equality described here. Burnout — Free class with context for how cumulative autonomy losses build over time to the point of disabling access to basic needs. Paradigm Shift Program — My signature program where the shift from a demand lens to an autonomy and equality lens is practiced as an embodied skill over twelve weeks of live coaching.
July 7 · 16 min
Using the PDA Lens to Change Your Parenting With Pathological Demand Avoidance | Ep. 170
This episode is an excerpt from a lesson inside the Paradigm Shift Program. I'm sharing it because the PDA lens is the foundation that all other skills in my work rest on, and it is not something most parents are going to hear explained anywhere else. In this lesson I walk through exactly what the PDA lens is, why it has to be learned as a skill rather than just understood intellectually, and how to begin applying it. I also address the most common thought that comes up when I introduce the concept of deliberately signaling equality: am I training my child to be a bad adult? And why the answer, through the logic of this lens, is no. Key Takeaways The PDA Lens Is a Skill, Not the Only Valid Lens | 00:00:00 The PDA lens is something I think of as a pair of glasses you can put on and take off. It does not invalidate the ADHD lens, the sensory lens, the OCD lens, or the anxiety lens. It teaches a different logic, one that most parents are not going to hear explained anywhere else because every professional encounter tends to frame the root cause through a different paradigm. Every Loss of Autonomy Is a Drop in a Bucket, Invisible Until the Tipping Point | 00:01:31 The PDA lens asks us to look at every behavior, even if it looks manipulative or intentional, and think: my child has been perceiving threat around not having autonomy or being below someone or something, over and over, and every time that happens, a drop goes into the cumulative nervous system activation bucket. Most of those drops are invisible because high masking, the internalization of the threat response rather than the behavioral expression of it, is a feature of PDA. The accumulation builds over days, months and years. By the time most families arrive at my work, the child is either very close to their threshold of tolerance or so far past it that they are existing in a near-constant state of threat. Equalization, Basic Needs, and Why Behavioral Strategies Cannot Work | 00:06:41 When cumulative activation reaches the tipping point, the nervous system tries to exert control and move above in order to get back to felt safety. This is equalizing. And control tends to coalesce around the one or two things a parent genuinely cannot force: eating, toileting, sleep, hygiene. Because this is subconscious, cumulative, and not under their conscious awareness, behavioral strategies do not work. Signaling Equality Without Removing All Boundaries | 00:11:39 The equality signal does not mean there are no limits in the home and the child runs everything. It means thinking creatively about how to deliberately, mindfully, and as an accommodation give a child or teen the felt experience of being above, of going first, of being more skilled in this moment, in order to offset years of subconsciously perceiving that they are below. You Will Know More Than the Professionals You Work With | 00:10:09 This is not a criticism of professionals. It is a reality of where the PDA research and understanding currently sits. Most clinicians, teachers, and therapists have been trained through a behavioral paradigm that assumes behavior is rational, conscious, and changeable through incentives and disincentives. The PDA lens is a fundamentally different paradigm and it is not (yet!) taught in most training programs. Relevant Resources Understanding PDA — Free class where I teach the nervous system disability framework and the root cause logic that the PDA lens described in this episode is built on. Tracking Progress — Free class on how to observe the three outcome dimensions, nervous system activation, basic needs, and engagement, referenced in this episode as the data to watch rather than the behaviors to fix. Paradigm Shift Program — My signature three-month program where the PDA lens introduced in this excerpt is practiced as an embodied skill across twelve weeks of live coaching, spot coaching, and community support.
June 30 · 52 min
Addictive Behaviors and the Nervous System in PDA: A Conversation With Jan Winhall | Ep. 169
When I first heard Jan Winhall speak about the intersection of the nervous system and addiction, I immediately thought of the PDA teens and adults in our community who are reaching for substances or engaging in self-harm. In this episode she explains how addiction and self-harm function as nervous system state regulation strategies, what conventional models get wrong, and what it actually looks like to support someone through this from a place of safety rather than shame. Winhall brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation as a trauma and addiction psychotherapist, developer of the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model, and author of two books on treating trauma and addiction through embodied awareness. I hope her insights support you. Key Takeaways Addiction as a Nervous System State Regulation Strategy | 00:06:52 The conventional model frames addiction as either a moral failure or a brain disease. Jan offers a third understanding grounded in polyvagal theory and neuroplasticity: addictive behaviors are strategies the body uses to shift nervous system states when there is not enough perceived safety. When someone is in a chronic sympathetic state, the wine bottle or the substance moves them into dorsal, into numbing and relief. When someone is in a chronic dorsal state, high-risk or stimulating behaviors move them back up into sympathetic mobilization. The body cycles between these states because it cannot stay in either extreme indefinitely. The behaviors become addictive because they work, at least in the moment, and because there is no other available path to felt safety. What Cutting and Self-Harm Do in the Nervous System | 00:10:05 Self-harm functions within the same trauma feedback loop. Cutting can release a sympathetic surge when the blood appears, which shifts a person out of dorsal numbness. It can also trigger the release of endogenous opioids that bring the body back down into dorsal relief. The person is not being manipulative or seeking attention. They are doing what their nervous system has learned will shift an unbearable state into something survivable. Jan describes working with women in her first job who were all self-harming, all addicted, and all diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She did not accept that framing then and still does not. What she saw was a population of trauma survivors whose bodies were doing exactly what bodies are designed to do. Not Being Seen Is Traumatic | 00:37:30 Jan describes the privileged neurodivergent teenagers she saw in her clinical work who came to her saying I have everything, why am I like this? What they were experiencing, she explains, is the trauma of not being seen and fully delighted in for exactly who they are. What Healing Actually Looks Like With a Teen | 00:43:21 Jan describes her clinical work with teens as beginning with co-regulation and the building of a relationship where the teenager feels genuinely safe. That means meeting them where they are, including the sessions where they spend the entire hour talking about how much they did not want to come. It means creating an environment where they can say anything as long as they are respectful of the basic boundaries. It means finding something to fall in love with in the person sitting across from you, because that delight is the container in which a teen can begin to explore shame, identity, and the behaviors they have been hiding from everyone else. Neuroception, Interoception, and the Paradigm Shift | 00:22:55 Interoception is the body's capacity to sense what is happening from the inside: the tightness in the chest, the quickening of breath, the feeling of something that has not yet found words. Jan's Felt Sense Polyvagal Model combines polyvagal theory with a body-based practice to help people slow down enough to listen to what is already happening in the body rather than suppressing or bypassing it. Relevant Resources Felt Sense Polyvagal Model Institute — Jan Winhall's institute where she teaches the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model internationally, including graphic models of the nervous system that can be downloaded and used with children and families. Somatic Mondays With Jan Winhall — Monthly community gathering focused on nervous system regulation for people navigating addiction and recovery, hosted by Jan Winhall and Recovery Reimagined. Dr. Sean Inderbitzen on LinkedIn — Autistic therapist, parent, and author of two books on polyvagal theory and autism, referenced by Jan Winhall in this episode as a recommended resource for neurodivergent families. Understanding PDA — Free class where I teach the nervous system disability framework and the polyvagal concepts that underlie the addiction and self-harm patterns Jan describes in this episode. Burnout — Free class with context for the dorsal shutdown and burnout states that Jan's work helps illuminate, particularly for families whose teens are reaching for substances or engaging in self-harm. Paradigm Shift Program — My signature program where the nervous system framework, felt safety, and the accommodation toolkit are taught live, creating the kind of co-regulated container Jan describes as foundational to all healing.
June 23 · 21 min
Understanding the Root Cause of Pathological Demand Avoidance and Equalizing Behavior | Ep. 168
In this episode I share the definition of PDA I use: PDA is a survival drive for autonomy and equality that consistently overrides other survival instincts, including eating, sleeping, toileting, hygiene, and safety. I explain how this is different from older definitions that consider PDA to be anxiety driven, and why that distinction matters clinically and practically. I also I introduce the concept of equalizing - the behavioral expression of the disability that extends well beyond demand avoidance into physical, verbal, and relational patterns that can look like manipulation, control, or defiance but are actually a nervous system response. Key Takeaways Why the Definition of PDA Matters: Survival Drive vs. Anxiety | 00:02:05 The original framing describes PDA as an anxiety-driven need for control. Anxiety is a future-oriented cognitive experience, and that framing points clinicians and parents toward exposure therapy, medication for anxiety, and pushing through avoidance. My definition is different. PDA is a survival drive for autonomy and equality that operates on a subconscious level, in the nervous system, before conscious thought. A child can love their grandparent, be emotionally attached to their therapist, and genuinely want to go to football practice, and still be accumulating nervous system activation from losses of autonomy throughout all of those experiences. The drive does not require cognitive anxiety to be present. That distinction changes what we do about it entirely. The Survival Drive That Overrides Everything Else | 00:07:35 What makes PDA neurologically distinct, in my conceptualization, is that the survival drive for autonomy and equality can override other basic survival instincts. I share an example from my own life: telling Cooper to stay away from the fire, gently at first, then with more urgency, and watching him move toward it instead of away, then try to jump in. I have also worked with families where a child accelerated into a body of water - without the ability to swim - after being told to stay back. These are extreme examples I use to illustrate the mechanism, not to suggest this is every family's experience, but they show that the PDA nervous system can prioritize autonomy above the instinct to stay safe, which is what can eventually produce the feeding tubes, the selective mutism, and the basic needs collapses that many families in this community have experienced. What Equalizing Is and Why It Looks Like Manipulation | 00:12:31 Equalizing is a nervous system response to get back to a place of perceived equality - or above another - after a loss of autonomy has been registered. It can be physical: disorganizing something that was orderly, knocking things off tables, touching things impulsively, hovering near a sibling, controlling where a parent can sit or look. It can be verbal: correcting words, redirecting blame, pretending not to hear, changing the topic impulsively, lying about things that seem random. It can be directed at a safe person, at a sibling, at objects in the environment, or even at self. The Spices Example: PDA Versus Other Neurotypes | 00:17:11 I use a simple scenario - organizing kitchen spices - to distinguish PDA equalizing from behavior in other neurotypes, inclduing non-PDA autism, OCD, and anxiety. Equalizing Can Be Subtle Until It Escalates | 00:15:36 As cumulative activation builds and the environment continues to signal losses of autonomy without accommodation, these equalizing expressions can escalate toward the large nervous system responses and basic needs struggles I describe in this episode. The goal of everything I teach is to bring down that cumulative activation so families avoid these challenges, or get through them as quickly and smoothly as possible. Relevant Resources Understanding PDA — Free class where I teach the nervous system disability framework, the neuroception mechanism, and the cumulative activation logic introduced in this episode. Burnout — Free class with context for how the survival drive overriding basic needs leads to the burnout state many families are already in when they find this work. Paradigm Shift Program — My signature program where the full framework for understanding PDA, equalizing, and responding to both is taught across twelve weeks of live coaching.
June 16 · 49 min
Individualized Education Plan (IEP) Advocacy for Pathological Demand Avoidance with Dr. Destiny Huff | Ep. 167
If you are a parent who cannot unschool or homeschool your PDA child, or who needs practical support navigating the school system, this episode is for you. I am joined by Dr. Destiny Huff, a licensed professional counselor, non-attorney special education advocate, and neuro-affirming trainer who is also late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD and a mother of neurodivergent children. Dr. Huff shares the most common patterns she sees as PDA families navigate schools, how she frames the nervous system lens in IEP meetings, the specific accommodations she advocates for most consistently, her approach to functional behavioral assessments, and practical steps parents can take right now. Key Takeaways Two Patterns Dr. Huff Sees Advocating for PDA Families | 00:05:06 The first is families who have learned about PDA but are still defaulting to the demand avoidance frame when explaining it to schools, which makes it easy for administrators to push back by saying the child just needs to deal with demands. The second is schools latching onto the term PDA itself, either saying they do not recognize it or using it superficially, without understanding the nervous system mechanisms underneath it. Dr. Huff's approach is to move past the label entirely and focus on the root cause: what is happening in the nervous system, what does dysregulation look like for this specific learner, and what changes in the environment and approach can support access and safety. How to Frame the Conversation in an IEP Meeting | 00:13:53 Dr. Huff focuses on three areas that school staff are almost never formally trained on: sensory needs, communication access when regulated and dysregulated, and executive functioning, of which regulation is a component. She always starts with a profile letter that describes the whole learner before getting into accommodations or concerns, and she prefers working with teachers directly because they are often the most unheard people in the room and the most open to trying something new when asked what they are actually seeing. Accommodations Dr. Huff Advocates for Most Consistently | 00:29:43 The first is declarative language, documented with a concrete example of what it actually looks like in practice, because most teams have heard the term but are not using it correctly. The second is a nonverbal communication plan, for when the learner is dysregulated, that could include a designated safe space and trusted person, identified by the learner rather than assigned by the school, paired with a low-profile signal like a hand gesture or an email so the learner can access that space without drawing attention. Her Approach to Functional Behavioral Assessments | 00:40:11 Dr. Huff sees FBAs as useful primarily because they reveal the school's perception of the learner, even when the terminology reflects a behavioral lens she does not share. Once she understands what the school believes is driving the behavior, she goes into rewrite mode with her families: adjusting the language, shifting the approach toward relationship, safety and trust, and pushing back on behavior intervention plans that default to token economies and compliance strategies. What to Do When a Child Is Too Burned Out to Access School | 00:37:27 Dr. Huff has successfully advocated for truncated days and reduced schedules. Her consistent position is that a reduced schedule does not let the school off the hook for providing free and appropriate public education, but it does acknowledge where the child's nervous system is right now and creates a starting point that can be adjusted over time based on what is actually working. Relevant Resources Your FBA Is a Fantasy — Book by Rick and Doris Bowman on how to approach functional behavioral assessments through a trauma-informed, neuro-affirming lens rather than a behavior modification lens, recommended directly by Dr. Huff in this episode. Collaborative & Proactive Solutions — Ross Greene's framework for addressing the root causes of challenging behavior through collaboration rather than compliance, referenced by Dr. Huff as a resource for reframing FBAs. The Affirming Village Podcast — Podcast hosted by Dr. Destiny Huff and Lisa Baskin Wright on neuro-affirming approaches to education and parenting. Neuro-Affirming Special Education Handbook — Dr. Huff's book on navigating special education in the US from a neuro-affirming standpoint, including guidance on IEPs, FBAs, and supporting PDA learners. Advocacy and Consultation With Dr. Destiny Huff — Dr. Huff's direct services for families, including IEP meeting attendance, drafting parent input statements, and consultation on supporting PDA and neurodivergent learners in schools. Dr. Destiny Huff on Instagram — Follow Dr. Huff for ongoing content on neuro-affirming special education advocacy, IEP navigation, and supporting neurodivergent learners in schools. PDANA - Dr. Destiny Huff is board member of PDA North America. Paradigm Shift Program — My signature program for parents of PDA children and teens taught across twelve weeks of live coaching.
June 9 · 53 min
Four Ways To Create Calm With Your Pathologically Demand Avoidant Child | Ep. 166
When he was young, it seemed like my son Cooper was almost always active and agitated. I tried everything I was told to try - bubble blowing for deep breathing, emotion naming, zones of regulation, nature walks with candy as incentives - but nothing worked. Maybe the activity would occupy him once, but then he'd be agitated all over again afterwards. I thought I must be going it wrong, or just a bad mom. What I know now is that I wasn't and I'm not - and neither are you. The logic underneath those approaches just does not match how a pathologically demand avoidant nervous system actually works. In this episode I discuss the 4-S Framework I developed to help my PDA son - and the children of the many families I was working with - stay regulated. The four S's are: safe nervous system, sensory intense experience with novelty and dopamine, screens, and special interests. I talk through what each one means for a PDA brain specifically, why children in burnout can often only access some of the four, and how to use this framework to structure unstructured time so it feels less like chaos and more like a plan. Key Takeaways Why the Approaches I Was Given Kept Making Things Worse | 00:02:06 I walk through the regulation strategies I tried with Cooper before I understood PDA: sensory integration activities like bubble blowing and glitter shaker bottles, naming emotions and using the zones of regulation stoplight, and nature walks I would incentivize with sweets. Each one followed the same pattern: novelty made the first attempt work, and the second produced refusal, avoidance, or escalating behavior. But then I had an "aha" moment and made a shift that changed everything. S1: What Actually Makes a Nervous System Safe for a PDA Brain | 00:21:43 A safe nervous system for a pathologically demand avoidant child is not simply a kind or emotionally attuned person. In my work with thousands of families, I have seen loving, competent, well-trained adults be deeply unsafe nervous systems for PDA children, not because they are unkind but because they arrive with an agenda. They want to teach, engage, improve, or modify. The safest nervous system is the one that is not trying to change the child at all. I use the example of a grandma who arrives with activities and baking plans versus a grandpa who sits on the couch reading his phone with zero agenda. The PDA child will reliably gravitate toward grandpa. This is also why you may notice your child feels safer with your partner on certain days, or with a teenage neighbor who just wants to jump on the trampoline without any goal. The lower the agenda, the safer the nervous system. S2: Sensory Intense Experience, Novelty, Dopamine, and the Modern Day Alchemist | 00:26:48 The second S covers three overlapping things: physical sensory intensity like roughhousing; novelty, which is why the first time at an ice skating rink produces full regulation and the second visit produces a meltdown; and dopamine, which can show up as a fixation on sugar, screens, or the drive to transform things from one material state to another. I call this last pattern the modern day alchemist, and I see it consistently across PDA children and adults I work with. S3: Screens, Books, Podcasts, and Journaling as Regulation Tools | 00:40:02 I view screens neutrally, and I want to be clear that this S is not only about screens. For PDA children and teens who are older, or for PDA adults who grew up before constant access to devices, this S may have looked like always having a book in hand, listening to podcasts, or journaling compulsively. What all of these have in common is that they provide autonomy, allow engagement with special interests and learning without an agenda, and offer relief from the intense sensory input that comes both from the outside world and from inside a nervous system that is chronically activated. For Cooper during burnout, screens were one of only two things that kept him regulated enough to eat and exist. Now that his activation has come down, he tracks his own screen time and averages around two hours a day, half the national average for American children. That shift was not something I imposed. It happened naturally as his window of tolerance expanded. I share this because I know how much shame parents carry around screen time, and I want to offer a different frame: screens in the right season can be what keeps your child accessible to life. S4: Special Interest and How to Use the Full Framework in Practice | 00:43:45 Special interest for a PDA brain involves what researchers call monotropic focus: sustained attention toward an interest that is deeply regulating, and dysregulation when pulled away from it. For Cooper right now the three special interests are football, fishing, and friends. When I need to help him out of the "I'm bored" loop, I use the framework to identify which S's are available and stack them. In the episode I also name what this looks like in burnout: during the hardest years, Cooper could only access safe nervous system and screens. The other S's returned as his activation came down, and I want parents to hold that as evidence that things can shift. Relevant Resources Understanding PDA — Free class where I teach the nervous system disability framework and the threat perception mechanism that explains why standard regulation approaches tend to backfire for PDA children Burnout — Free class with context for the burnout period I describe in this episode, when only two of the four S's are typically accessible School, Screens and Siblings — Free class directly relevant to the screens S and how I think about screen time as a neutral tool within the Four S Framework Monotropism: Understanding Autistic Ways of Being — Background reading on the monotropic focus I describe in the S4 section and how it shapes regulation and learning in autistic and PDA brains Monotropic Split and Burnout — Explains what happens when monotropic focus is repeatedly fractured, directly relevant to why pulling a PDA child away from a special interest contributes to cumulative activation and burnout Me and Monotropism: A Unified Theory of Autism — Deeper academic context for the monotropism framework I reference when explaining the fourth S
June 2 · 1 hr 2 min
A PDA Neuropsychologist on How Pathologically Demand Avoidant Brains Actually Work | Ep. 165
I sit down with Dr. Jennifer Huffman, a board-certified pediatric neuropsychologist, PDA woman with lived experience, and creator of the Neurodynamic Navigator System and the Neurodynamic Quotient. After twenty-five years working with children whose profiles were called often called ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), she developed a framework to make the dynamic, fluctuating nature of the PDA brain visible and usable for parents, teachers, and clinicians. We talk about her childhood as an undiagnosed PDA autistic person, why ODD as a diagnosis isn't helpful, how she assesses children who cannot come into an office, and the app she is building to help families. After all that great insight, just her closing message for parents of PDA kids in burnout makes this episode worth a listen. Key Takeaways Growing Up as an Undiagnosed PDA Autistic Neuropsychologist | 00:02:48 Dr. Huffman describes a childhood marked by academic failure in math from third grade, severe bullying that led her parents to drive her thirty minutes each way to attend school in a different town, and the recurring experience of being told she was not living up to her potential. She names the specific mechanism she now recognizes in herself: she cannot process on demand. If someone tells her to do something, or if it feels redundant, her brain shuts off. This is not willfulness. It is the same mechanism she has spent twenty-five years helping children and families understand. She describes finding neuropsychology in her third year of undergraduate study as a light bulb moment, not because she wanted a career but because she was trying to figure out her own brain. The ODD Buster: Why Oppositional Defiant Disorder Is So Often the Wrong Label | 00:12:39 Dr. Huffman describes spending twenty-five years working with the complex cases other clinicians could not crack, children who had been given ODD diagnoses and whom nobody wanted to work with. She calls herself the ODD buster and states directly that in her clinical experience, she has rarely seen a child who actually had ODD. What she consistently found underneath that label was high empathy, anxiety, sensory differences, social communication differences, and learning differences, often in combination. She names ODD as an example of a DSM category built by non-neurodivergent clinicians describing externalized behavior without curiosity about what is underneath it. How She Assesses Children Who Cannot Come Into an Office | 00:17:38 Dr. Huffman explains that when a child is in burnout and cannot access evaluation, the work does not begin with the child. It begins with the parent: helping them advocate with the school, coordinating with medical providers who may not understand why the child cannot leave the house, and slowly building a relationship with the child themselves. She describes spending six months to a year playing Minecraft with a child before any formal assessment data is collected, and names this as genuinely valuable clinical time. She also holds PSYPACT certification, which allows her to work with families across most of the United States without the family ever entering her office. The Neurodynamic Quotient: Making the Dynamic Nature of the PDA Brain Visible | 00:36:57 Dr. Huffman introduces the Neurodynamic Quotient, her framework for understanding why PDA children can do something one day and appear to lose the skill the next. The formula combines dynamic safety, which includes felt safety, connection, information, and autonomy, with dynamic capacity, which includes the battery, sensory load, and executive functioning scaffolding, plus motivation. She explains why autonomy functions as a multiplier: if it reaches zero, the entire product is zero regardless of how much skill or capability is present. She also names motivation as the variable parents and teachers most often misuse, pushing past natural capacity because the child demonstrated what they were capable of once. Do Not Get in Front of Your Child | 00:55:03 Dr. Huffman closes with a message for parents whose children are in burnout. She names never assuming the child is not capable as the most important thing a parent can hold onto, and shares her own story as evidence: her parents could not have predicted she would become a neuropsychologist. She uses the phrase "do not get in front of your child" to mean: if they have something they want to do, let them fly. The child who is in their room with the lights off on Minecraft is telling you what they need. Meeting that need and staying regulated yourself is what moves them through burnout faster than fighting against it. Relevant Resources Understanding PDA — Free class with context on the nervous system disability framework and the dynamic, cumulative nature of activation Dr. Huffman builds on throughout this conversation Burnout — Free class with context for the red zone experience Dr. Huffman describes and the burnout recovery process for both children and parents Paradigm Shift Program — Our signature program where parenting for autonomy, safety, and connection is taught in full Unlocking the PDA Brain by Dr. Jennifer Huffman — Dr. Huffman's book introducing the Neurodynamic Navigator System, written as a manual for understanding and supporting the PDA brain The Able Center — Dr. Huffman's private neuropsychology practice in Illinois The Baby Fold — The Illinois nonprofit where Dr. Huffman serves as Vice President of Clinical Operations, specializing in trauma and higher support needs neurodivergent children Beyond Behaviors by Mona Delahooke — Mentioned by Dr. Huffman for understanding what is happening beneath the behavior in neurodivergent children Dr. Huffman is also a board member of PDA North America.
May 26 · 57 min
How A Dad Changed His Parenting To Stop Fighting His Child With Pathological Demand Avoidance: An Interview With My Husband | Ep. 164
This episode is an interview with my husband, Jake, about his path from well-founded skepticism of Pathological Demand Avoidance to fully changing his parenting to support our two PDA sons, and how that has helped all three of them. This conversation is for parents who aren't sure about PDA, their partners who are, and everyone who has wondered what it actually looks like to shift the paradigm as the "non-lead" parent. Jake talks about the enforcer role he played, dreading coming home from work, what brought him to shift his perspective, and how he took action to change his relationships with his sons. Key Takeaways Why Non-Lead Parents Lag and Why That Is Not a Deficiency | 00:10:01 Jake explains that his skepticism about pathological demand avoidance came from the same place as his desire to be a good father: wanting his son to be okay long after he was gone. He names the specific experience of not being present enough during the day to witness what Casey was witnessing, the cognitive dissonance of a child who could race through Halloween trick-or-treating and then suddenly be unable to walk, and the ease with which behaviors that look manipulative can be written off as such. He is clear that lagging does not make a parent deficient. It makes them human. What the Enforcer Role Actually Felt Like | 00:24:12 Jake describes placing himself in the role of the disciplinarian and enforcer when Cooper was young, trying strict and punitive approaches consistently enough to know they were not working. He reflects on the moments when Cooper would submit, and how even those felt awful because he was a grown adult overpowering a four-year-old. He names the specific appeal of the pathological demand avoidance approach as not just intellectual but personal: he did not want to be that kind of dad, and the relational damage it was doing to his connection with Cooper was undeniable. Dreading 5PM and the Second Arrow | 00:43:44 Jake describes a period when he went from counting down the hours to the end of the workday to dreading them, knowing he was walking back into a home where the kids were dysregulated, Casey was stretched to her limit, and there was no joy. He names the second arrow clearly: feeling like a dad who dreads his own family, and then feeling guilty for that. He offers this not as a confession but as something he suspects many non-lead parents are sitting with quietly. The Trampoline Commitment and What It Built | 00:44:23 Jake shares a concrete example of how he found a way into connection with Cooper during burnout: committing to saying yes every time Cooper asked to go on the trampoline, even though the activity involved Cooper lying there while Jake jumped for twenty minutes. He frames it honestly as work, not fun fatherhood. But he also describes how, when his legs gave out and he lay down next to his son and started pointing at clouds, the small moments of connection began to accumulate. This type of commitment, he says, may be available to other parents who work full days and only have evenings. Vulnerability With Other Dads and the Masculinity Frame | 00:29:46 Jake reflects on coaching Cooper's tackle football team and the specific difficulty of needing other coaches to understand that Cooper's meltdowns were not a measure of his commitment or character, while knowing that a full explanation of Pathological Demand Avoidance would not land. He names the fear of judgment, and the discomfort of demonstrating vulnerability in a context that did not historically make space for it. He frames the masculine enforcer archetype as a stereotype that most men do not actually identify with but feel bound by because breaking it is a risk. Relevant Resources Understanding PDA — Free class with the foundational context that Jake describes eventually coming to through lived experience Burnout — Free class relevant to the burnout phases with both Cooper and William that Jake discusses throughout Paradigm Shift Program — Our signature program where Jake hosts three live sessions specifically for non-lead parents
May 19 · 49 min
Giftedness, Pathological Demand Avoidance and Burnout in Adults: My Story | Ep. 163
In this episode I talk about how I understand my autistic brain, my internalized pathological demand avoidance, and why it took me six years of working in this space before I felt certain enough to say this publicly. I also walk through my life, from childhood to the present, with renewed understanding, in the hope of sharing insights that can help you. This episode is for parents of high-achieving young adults who burn out, for women exploring whether they might be autistic or pathologically demand avoidant, and for anyone who just wants to know more about the person behind this work (me!). Key Takeaways Why Casey Resisted Identifying Publicly for Seven Years | 00:06:29 Casey names three reasons she held back. First, she genuinely was not sure, because her experience did not feel like the veil-lifting moment many autistic adults describe, and she had other diagnoses that made the picture muddy. Second, her early experiences engaging with the autistic and PDA online community involved sustained harassment and cancellation attempts, which made that space feel unsafe rather than affirming. Third, her resistance to being labeled by others mirrored exactly what she teaches about pathologically demand avoidant children who reject diagnoses: it is a survival drive for autonomy, and that include identity. What Her Internalized Profile Looked Like in Childhood and School | 00:18:25 Casey describes herself as an extraordinarily compliant and academically gifted child whose two special interests were academics and people. She explains that school functioned as a natural accommodation: it was predictable, she was consistently above her peers, and cause and effect was clear. At home, her parents' divorce introduced chaos, and her nervous system defaulted to freeze, fawn, and shutdown rather than fight or flight. She started writing in journals for hours as a way of processing social interactions and exerting control over her environment, which she now sees as the same mechanism as a child spending hours on a screen. Burnout at 26 and the Panic Disorder Years | 00:27:55 Casey describes her first panic attack during a graduate economics exam at Columbia, followed by a full dissociative episode in the law library weeks later. She lost 20 pounds, could not eat or sleep, and could only function when physically close to safe nervous systems. She was prescribed medication, but she refused to take it for fear of addiction. She frames this period as a burnout triggered by the first situation in her life where she was not the best at something, in an environment where the rules of the game were no longer ones she could win. Postpartum Burnout and What Cooper's Birth Revealed | 00:38:40 Casey describes going off her medication during pregnancy, an emergency C-section after 48 hours of labor where she felt she lost control of her body, and the 18 months of suicidal ideation and intensive outpatient psychiatric care that followed. She was diagnosed with postpartum OCD, anxiety, and depression. She now understands this as a profound loss of bodily autonomy compounding a nervous system that was already primed for that response. Acceptance as the Shift That Therapy Alone Could Not Produce | 00:42:15 Casey describes reaching a point after years of EMDR, somatic experiencing, safe and sound protocol, havening, and meditation where she recognized that some of what she was experiencing was not going to be "fixed" by more therapy. It was brain wiring. She shares how she now applies to herself the same accommodation framework she teaches parents, including using the 4S's of regulation, attending hot yoga for sensory regulation, and protecting her close relationships as her primary nervous system resource. The intrusive self-critical thoughts, she explains, are her version of self-equalizing: a nervous system response to perceived loss of control that she is learning to accept. Relevant Resources What Is PDA — Foundation for understanding the internalized pathological demand avoidance profile Casey describes in this episode. Burnout — Free class with context for the burnout patterns Casey traces across her own life. Finding Meaning — Free class relevant for parents and adults exploring acceptance and long-term perspective.
May 12 · 55 min
A Speech Language Pathologist on Selective Mutism, Pathological Demand Avoidance and So Much More | Ep. 162
I speak with Stephanie Harrigan, a certified speech language pathologist with nearly fifteen years of experience working with the neurodiverse population, to talk about selective mutism, feeding therapy and more. Stephanie brings a regulation-first, child-led approach to all of her work, and this conversation is full of concrete examples from her practice, including what feeding therapy actually looks like when it follows the child's lead, how she has worked with selectively mute children, and what she has seen happen to communication when behavioral pressure is removed. We also talk about how to advocate effectively with a school team and what research Stephanie uses when making the case for a non-behavioral approach. Stephanie can be reached at Inclusive Minds Educational Consulting via inclusivemindsllc@gmail.com. She also shared some links to research and resources: https://scerts.com/ https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_laurent_compliance_is_not_the_goal_letting_go_of_control_and_rethinking_support_for_autistic_individuals https://tiltparenting.com/2025/01/21/episode-424-creating-neurodiversity-affirming-schools-with-amanda-morin-emily-kircher-morris/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9601143/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4515208/ https://aane.org/autism-info-faqs/library/restoring-the-autistic-nervous-system-a-gentle-path-to-regulation/ Key Takeaways Regulation Before Skills, Always | 00:07:00 Stephanie describes how her approach across all of her work, whether feeding, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) speech therapy, or selective mutism, starts with regulation. She references her time at the Center for Discovery, where the entire program was built on the belief that sensory and emotional regulation is the foundation. Without it, she says, everything else crumbles. She uses the analogy of a house: regulation is the foundation, and speech and communication goals sit on top of it. What Child-Led Feeding Therapy Looks Like | 00:18:32 Stephanie gives two concrete examples from her feeding therapy work. One student only ate hot dogs at age sixteen. Rather than introducing new foods directly, she used the student's interest in small figurines to interact playfully with food. Another student loved baking but would not eat what they made, so they baked together and delivered food across campus. Stephanie explains that child-led feeding therapy means finding the child's special interest and embedding it into the work, with no timeline for progress and no pressure toward any specific outcome. Selective Mutism and the Role of Safety | 00:24:28 Stephanie describes working with a kindergarten student who was described by staff as someone who never spoke. In her first session with him, he spoke immediately. She attributes this to the felt safety she worked to establish before anything else. She describes how she uses a total communication approach, honors every form of communication including grunting and hissing, and matches the child's energy rather than bringing high excitement. AAC Is Not a Last Resort | 00:30:29 Stephanie explains what AAC is and pushes back on the common concern that using a device will prevent a child from learning to speak. She draws a parallel to what Casey describes with PDA children more broadly: the issue is often not that the child lacks the ability, but that at times stress and sensory dysregulation are blocking access to that ability. She describes seeing communication expand when sensory needs were addressed first, and frames AAC as one tool in a total communication approach rather than a replacement for speech. How to Work With a School Team as a PDA Parent | 00:48:57 Stephanie's advice for parents trying to collaborate with a school team is to not be afraid to advocate. She says she has never viewed a parent as challenging, and that strong advocacy is not only a parent's right but something she personally appreciates. She suggests sharing resources from a place of curiosity rather than confrontation, asking for the team's expertise, and framing questions as "I found this and I'm curious what you think" rather than leading with disagreement. Relevant Resources What Is PDA — Foundation for understanding the nervous system lens Stephanie and Casey share School, Screens and Siblings — A free class relevant for families navigating school-based challenges discussed in this episode Understanding PDA — A free class for deeper context on regulation and autonomy
May 5 · 47 min
What Occupational Therapists Need to Know: Restrictive Eating and Pathological Demand Avoidance Part 4 | Ep. 161
This is the fourth episode in my series on PDA and restrictive eating, and this one is for therapists. If you are an occupational therapist, a speech language pathologist, or another type of therapist working with a child who isn't responding to gentle, play-based, sensory-based, or exposure-based feeding approaches the way you'd expect, this episode designed to help you. I share the full arc of my older son Cooper's journey with extremely restrictive eating, from the time he was four and a half years old and eating primarily three processed foods, through five years of occupational therapy, to where he is today. I walk through how we adapted the SOS feeding protocol over time to incorporate autonomy, equality, lower demands, play, and connection to special interests. I also share five specific strategies you can bring into your sessions. Key Takeaways The Sensory Lens Is Not Enough | 00:02:04 I share how Cooper's restrictive eating was initially understood through a sensory lens, and how, for about a year and a half, that framing guided his therapy. But the sensory lens alone was not sufficient to explain the patterns I was seeing or to help him expand his eating. What I came to understand was that his survival drive for autonomy was also a major factor, and that the two had to be held together rather than treated separately. What Was and Was Not Working | 00:11:56 I walk through what was working in the early stages of occupational therapy, specifically the therapist's focus on establishing relationship and rapport before moving to skill acquisition, and the role that dopamine, novelty, and sensory-intense experiences played in Cooper's initial engagement. I also describe what was not working: visual schedules and laminated choice boards, pressure to describe sensory experiences verbally, and structured home-based feeding protocols. For a PDA child, I explain, even chosen structure can become an internal demand. Autonomy and Equality as Accommodations | 00:16:37 I describe two specific accommodations that became central to how we approached feeding therapy over five years: autonomy and equality. Autonomy meant shifting away from scheduled, structured feeding time and toward strewing, declarative language, and following Cooper's lead. Equality meant deliberately allowing him to win, be above the therapist and me in games, direct the session, and have the last word. I explain how these accommodations address the root cause of nervous system activation rather than managing the surface behavior. Lowering Demands in the Session | 00:29:35 I describe what it looked like to lower demands in the occupational therapy session itself, meaning doing things for Cooper that he was cognitively or physically capable of doing himself, so that his available capacity could go toward tolerating and engaging with food. I give specific examples and I address the common concern that this approach enables children rather than building independence, and explain why the logic is different for PDA. Special Interests as a Turning Point | 00:37:06 I describe the turning point in Cooper's feeding therapy, which came when eating became connected to his special interest in football. I explain how this connection made it possible to revisit things he had previously rejected, including the laminated food charts, but this time entirely on his terms. I also offer five specific strategies for therapists at the end of the episode. Relevant Resources Free Therapist Masterclass — Free class for OTs and therapists on PDA. What Is PDA? — Overview of PDA as a nervous system disability. Paradigm Shift Program —Our signature live coaching program where we walk families as they implement accommodations and move forward.
April 28 · 52 min
Practical Autonomy-Based Tools for Families Stuck in Food Struggles - Restrictive Eating and Pathological Demand Avoidance Part 3| Ep. 160
If you've heard me talk about autonomy, equality, and lowering demands before and thought, "But what does that actually look like at the dinner table?" — this episode is for you. This is the third episode in my series on eating and PDA, and it's the most practical one yet. I'm walking you through six concrete accommodations you can experiment with if your PDA child or teen struggles with restrictive eating: autonomy, equality, lowering demands, sensory accommodations, strewing, and novelty and dopamine. Throughout the episode, I share anonymized client anecdotes and real examples from my own life as a mother of two PDA sons — including how our family navigated mealtimes during the hardest years and what things look like now. This episode is meant to be an experiment you can try out and observe, not a prescription. I hope it it's helpful for you. Key Takeaways Why Restrictive Eating Happens | 00:00:00 Before getting into the practical tips, I revisit the causal logic for why eating is so often impacted in PDA children and teens. Control around eating tends to be the outcome of cumulative nervous system stress, and is often an attempt to reset autonomy and equality when a child can't find it in other areas of their life. Autonomy Around What, Where, When, How, and If | 00:03:43 I break down autonomy into five buckets — what, where, when, how, and if a child eats — and explain how each one shows up in practice. This includes examples from my own home, like allowing my son to eat in front of a screen for years, delivering food on demand, offering a buffet of options, and giving treats before or with meals without attaching conditions. Equality and Why It Matters at the Table | 00:22:41 I walk through what I mean by equality as a nervous system accommodation around food — not as a philosophical concept, but as something you can observe and act on. I share the story of how our family friend houseguests helped re-establish family dinners, and how my son Cooper started joining us at the table by running a drawing game where he was the judge and ranked all of us — an equality accommodation I sustained for about a year. Lowering Demands and the Sensory Intersection | 00:27:56 I explain what lowering demands actually means in the context of eating: doing things for your child they could technically do themselves, in service of helping them access food. I share examples like packing a 16-year-old's lunch, delivering pizza reheated to the exact right temperature, cutting crusts off bread, and wiping out Tupperware to eliminate even a molecule of moisture. Strewing, Novelty, and Dopamine | 00:35:51 I cover strewing — leaving food out without expectation — and why it works differently from direct offerings. I also share how we used novelty and dopamine in my son's feeding therapy, including a "game show" approach to sampling every variety of apple, and cutting apples into stars or making apple pasta with a Zoodler. I end with my hypothesis about why PDA individuals tend to seek dopamine, and what that means for how we can think about introducing foods. Relevant Resources What Is PDA — Background on PDA as a nervous system disability Understanding PDA — Deeper dive into PDA frameworks and accommodations Paradigm Shift Program — Our signature live coaching program where we walk with families as they implement accommodations and move their family forward.
April 21 · 50 min
10 Misconceptions About Eating And Pathological Demand Avoidance Part 2 l Ep. 159
In this episode — Part 2 of our series on eating and PDA — I walk through the 10 misconceptions about eating that I personally had to unlearn in order to help my son. These are beliefs that are completely reasonable for most children and even most neurodivergent children, but do not apply to pathologically demand avoidant kids and teens. I cover why "kids will eat when they're hungry" isn't empirically true for PDAers, why behavioral approaches (even gentle ones) can backfire, why restricting sugar may not be the strategy you think it is, and why looking at eating in isolation misses the bigger picture of cumulative nervous system stress. I also share what the research does and doesn't tell us, where the methodology gaps are when it comes to neurodivergence, and what has actually changed in our home over the years. If the approaches you've been trying aren't working — or are making things worse — this episode is for you. Key Takeaways PDA Kids Won't Just "Eat When Hungry" | 00:05:52 I explain how PDA is defined by a survival drive for autonomy and equality that consistently overrides other survival instincts — including hunger. Even when a child is physiologically hungry, the internalized demand of needing to eat, combined with cumulative nervous system stress, can make eating impossible. Behavioral Methods Activate the Nervous System | 00:09:20 I walk through why behavioral approaches to feeding — including gentle ones like sticker charts, food rewards, or even subtly positive facial expressions — can backfire with PDA children. Because PDA is rooted in threat perception tied to autonomy, any method where a parent or therapist is the "decider" can trigger a nervous system response that makes eating harder, not easier. Restrictive Eating Is a Symptom, Not the Problem | 00:14:33 I describe how restrictive eating is often a tipping point — a symptom of cumulative nervous system stress that has built up over weeks, months, and sometimes years. Rather than focusing only on what happens at the moment of eating, I explain why it's important to look at the full picture of a child's daily life and accommodate across the board. Sensory Strategies Alone Won't Transform Eating | 00:26:15 I share how sensory-based feeding approaches, even fun and play-based ones, can still backfire if there isn't enough autonomy built in. I use an example from my own son's feeding therapy to illustrate how the lack of autonomy around engaging in a sensory protocol was causing him to avoid even the activities he enjoyed. Sugar, Bento Boxes, and Family Meals Reconsidered | 00:31:09 I go through several misconceptions I personally had to unlearn — including the idea that sugar is the main enemy, that colorful bento box meals represent good parenting, and that home-cooked family meals at regular times naturally lead to healthy eating. I share how I came to think about these differently for PDA children, including what actually changed in my own home over time. Relevant Resources What is PDA - a foundational overview of PDA as a nervous system disability. Free Burnout Masterclass - understand the burnout that can make restrictive eating so challenging for PDA kids. Paradigm Shift Program® - our signature live program where we support parents to help their PDA children and teens through and out of burnout so their whole family can thrive. Citations Love Me, Feed Me - book by Katja Rowell. Schaefer, Michael, et al. "Experiencing sweet taste is associated with an increase in prosocial behavior." Scientific Reports 13.1 (2023): 1954. Hammons, Amber J., and Barbara H. Fiese. "Is frequency of shared family meals related to the nutritional health of children and adolescents?" Pediatrics 127.6 (2011): e1565-e1574.
April 14 · 37 min
My Son Only Ate Three Foods - Eating and Pathological Demand Avoidance Part 1 | Ep. 158
If your child has dropped food after food, won't try new things no matter what you do, and every mealtime feels like a battle — this episode is the first in a four-part series where I get personal. I'm sharing the story of my oldest son Cooper, who at his lowest point was eating only Honey Nut Cheerios out of a single specific bowl. I walked through grocery store aisles sobbing, frantically looking for protein bars he might eat. I watched him go through the SOS feeding protocol in occupational therapy and add foods only to drop them again. I tried sneaking vitamins into his chocolate milk. Nothing was gaining traction — and I didn't understand why. In this first episode, I walk you through the years before I had a PDA lens: my own food-focused parenting, the Montessori methods I tried that he refused, the escalating meltdowns around eating, the developmental pediatrician who shamed me for not cooking every meal from scratch, and the moment I finally understood that the root cause of Cooper's eating struggles was not primarily sensory — it was autonomy and equality based. I also talk about what happened when I stopped the SOS feeding protocol, lowered demands around food, and gave him true autonomy around what, when, and where he ate — and what his eating looks like seven years later. This episode is for parents currently in the fear of it, for parents whose children have been diagnosed with ARFID or anorexia and haven't responded to traditional approaches, and for feeding therapists and other professionals who are wondering if there is another way to think about what they're seeing. This is also the first episode in a four-part series. Part 2 covers the logic of viewing eating through a PDA lens. Part 3 covers practical accommodation strategies. Part 4 is tailored specifically to feeding therapy settings. Key Takeaways The mango slice that changed everything | 00:07:29 Cooper was about four and a half when he wanted a third or fourth mango slice and I said no. He physically fought me for it, and it escalated into a two-hour screaming meltdown. After that, he refused to eat mango slices entirely — dropping yet another food from his repertoire. That moment was one of the first times I saw the pattern, though I didn't have a framework for it yet. Why the SOS feeding protocol stopped working | 00:16:05 We started the SOS protocol — a 30-step sensory-based exposure approach — and early on it was progressing. Looking back, I understand now that there was novelty, one-on-one attention, and a lot of autonomy built into the early stages because he didn't have to actually eat anything. But when we moved the protocol into the home during the pandemic, the novelty and dopamine were gone, and the rigid structure became something his nervous system perceived as a demand. He stopped engaging entirely. Dropping foods rather than expanding them | 00:19:43 The occupational therapist noticed an unusual pattern: every time Cooper added a new adjacent food through sensory bridging, he dropped the one he had previously been eating. His repertoire wasn't expanding — it was staying flat. Through the PDA lens, I later understood that this was him exerting control to get back to nervous system safety: always needing to be in the position of the decider. The grocery store moment | 00:23:06 I was standing in the aisle of a grocery store frantically picking out protein bars in birthday cake and double fudge brownie flavors, anything I could have in my back pocket for him to potentially eat. I was sobbing. I had watched him drop chocolate milk — his one reliable source of protein. I didn't understand why nothing was working. That moment was when I knew that the frameworks I'd been using didn't apply. What shifted — and what seven years looks like | 00:26:46 When I finally understood that the root cause was autonomy and equality based — not primarily sensory — I made the decision to stop the SOS protocol, lower demands around food completely, and give him true autonomy: letting him choose what, when, where, and whether he ate, even if that meant Lay's potato chips, Pirate's Booty, and popcorn for almost two years. It was hard. There were moments I reverted, and I could immediately observe his eating reduce. But slowly, he began adding things back. Seven years later he eats carrots, apples, tacos, steak, salmon, pork shoulder, smoothies, pizza, and more — alongside processed food — and he is healthy and growing. Relevant Resources What is PDA? — Start here for a foundational overview. Free Burnout Masterclass — Cooper's eating crisis happened in burnout — learn more about burnout here. Is My Child PDA? — Take the free survey and/or class to help figure this out.
April 7 · 55 min
Getting Husband and Parents On Board with Pathological Demand Avoidance | Ep. 157
In this episode, I coach Danielle, a mom from North Idaho who is newer to the PDA lens and has already been making progress with her almost nine-year-old son — but is running into resistance from her husband and her parents, who help with caregiving. Her son has existing diagnoses of ADHD, sensory processing disorder, and disorganized attachment, and was adopted from South Korea. Since discovering PDA a few months ago, Danielle says everything clicked in a way that previous frameworks hadn't. Her question: how do you get the other adults in your child's life on board — and how do you trust yourself — when the people around you see things through a lens of disrespect and shame? We talk through why PDA is so hard for other adults to believe, especially because of masking and the fact that the child's most intense behaviors tend to happen with the safest person in the home. I walk Danielle through the PLATO framework for making nonviolent communication requests — specifically, how to make a concrete, bounded request of her parents and husband without needing them to believe in PDA at all. We also talk about how to track three observable indicators — connection, nervous system activation, and access to basic needs — so that the approach becomes an experiment with data rather than a philosophical debate. Danielle also shares a moment where her son described what it feels like in his body when he's activated: "like a big animal trapped in a small cage, and all I can do is fight to get out." And she shares that he has already started using the language of regulation and dysregulation on his own. Key Takeaways Why the primary caregiver is usually leading the charge [00:02:02] I normalize the pattern Danielle is describing — where the primary caregiver, usually the woman in the home, is leading the charge on PDA because she feels the nervous system cost of demands and boundaries viscerally, while other adults don't have the same day-to-day experience. Why PDA is so hard for other adults to believe [00:08:31] I explain why PDA is especially hard for other adults to get on board with: because of masking, the child may appear fine or even well-attached in settings outside the home, which leads observers to conclude that the parent is a pushover — rather than recognizing that the child is internalizing the threat response and that activation is still accumulating. Using the PLATO framework with grandparents [00:17:04] I walk Danielle through the PLATO framework (Person, Location, Action, Timing, Object) for making a nonviolent communication request to her parents — specifically, asking them not to step in when her son says rude things at the dinner table. I explain that the request doesn't require them to believe in PDA; it only asks whether they're willing to try something for a bounded period of time. Turning a skeptical spouse into an experiment partner [00:34:52] I discuss how to approach Danielle's husband, who has been resistant and told her to stop "putting labels" on their son's behavior. I suggest framing it as a two-week experiment: asking him to view the behavior through the PDA lens and track three observable indicators — connection, nervous system activation, and access to basic needs — so the conversation is grounded in data rather than diagnosis. A child names his own threat response [00:50:26] Danielle shares that her son has already begun using the language of dysregulation and regulation on his own — and that when she asked him what it feels like in his body when he gets upset, he told her: "It feels like I'm a big animal trapped in a small cage, and all I can do is fight to get out."
March 31 · 54 min
What Radical Acceptance Actually Looks Like for Pathological Demand Avoidance Parents | Ep. 156
This is the first episode in a new behind-the-scenes series I am doing with Kendall, one of the coaches on the At Peace Parents team. Each month, we pull back the curtain on our own lives as parents who are practicing the same skills we teach, and on what these principles look like inside real coaching work with families. This episode is about radical acceptance: what it actually means, why it matters specifically for PDA families, and what it looks like in practice, not as an abstract concept, but in the messy, everyday moments of parenting a demand avoidant child. We start by defining radical acceptance through Tara Brach's framework, which I read directly from her book in this episode. From there, Kendall and I talk through what it has looked like in our own homes, including sleep arrangements, regressions that feel like they will never end, and the particular kind of grief that comes when you realize the approach you have been using is not working. I also share a detailed example from my work with a family whose six-year-old son was in deep burnout and engaging in a compulsive behavior around toileting. Kendall shares a case from her own coaching practice involving a child with food preoccupation and toileting difficulties whose parents had already been trying many of the right things but were still, unknowingly, maintaining an energetic pressure that the child's nervous system was picking up as a threat. We also address several misconceptions about radical acceptance that I hear regularly, including the idea that accepting your child means accepting harmful behavior toward a sibling, and the idea that if a decision is right for your family, your PDA child should be able to handle it without activation. This one is for the parents who are already doing the work and still feel like something is not quite landing. Key Takeaways What Radical Acceptance Actually Means | 00:07:00 I read directly from Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance to ground the definition. Radical acceptance is not about approving of what is happening or giving permission for it to continue. It is about seeing clearly what is true in the present moment, in your own body and experience, without avoidance, control, or judgment, and then bringing compassion to what you find. It starts with the parent, not with the child. The Sacred Pause as a Practical Tool | 00:15:00 Kendall and I both describe how we use the sacred pause in our own homes when a difficult moment arises. The practice involves noticing a thought or feeling as it is, placing it on a leaf in a river or a wave in the ocean, and then welcoming it without judgment before moving into any action. I give a concrete example from my own experience doing floor-time play with my older son, including the physical sensations and intrusive thoughts I was having in those sessions. When Lowering Demands Is Not Enough | 00:22:00 Kendall shares a case from her coaching work involving a child whose parents had already pulled him from school, were bringing him food on request, and had done significant research on PDA. The behaviors around food and toileting were not improving. What Kendall identified was that the parents were still maintaining an energetic vigilance, tracking plates of food, cueing bathroom use, that the child's nervous system was registering as pressure. The shift came when the parents stopped tracking and stopped cueing, and the child's internal awareness began to return. Radical Acceptance With Compulsive Behaviors | 00:32:00 I describe working with a family whose six-year-old in burnout had developed a compulsive behavior involving poop. Every intervention, including anxiety medication, behavioral approaches, and prompting, was making the behavior more entrenched and more hidden. The turning point came when the parents accepted, in their bodies, that their current approach was not working. From that place, they shifted their focus to what they could actually control: changing clothes, bringing water, cleaning the space daily. Over the following months, the behavior diminished significantly. Misconceptions About Radical Acceptance | 00:42:33 Kendall and I address the most common pushback we hear from parents. The first is the belief that they already accept their child, which is often true as love, but does not address acceptance of the trade-offs that PDA brings to daily life. The second is the belief that radical acceptance means tolerating a sibling being harmed. We clarify that you can still take action to protect another child while accepting that the action will likely increase your PDA child's activation in the moment. Accepting the disability means accepting that this is how their nervous system responds, even when you make the right call for your family. Relevant Resources Paradigm Shift Program — Where Casey and Kendall teach radical acceptance alongside accommodations Burnout — Context for families whose child is in the burnout Casey describes in this episode Meet the Coaches — Learn more about Kendall and the At Peace Parents coaching team
March 24 · 1 hr 1 min
Raising Twin Pathologically Demand Avoidant Boys: Socialization, Therapeutic Equalizing, and the Long Game | Ep. 155
In this episode, I coach Pam, a mom raising fraternal twin 10-year-old boys, both PDA and autistic, who present and react quite differently from each other. We talk through the socialization questions: what gets in the way, what actually helps, and why the issue for many PDA kids is not a lack of social skills but a nervous system that cannot access those skills in the moment. I introduce the concept of therapeutic equalizing and what it can look like as a daily practice at home. We also spend time on the harder, less tactical piece: what it means to stay in the energy of non-attachment when you have tried everything and your kids still did not go to the Dungeons and Dragons group. Key Takeaways Two PDA Boys, Two Different Presentations | 00:03:06 Pam describes how her twin boys, both PDA and autistic, present quite differently in the world. One masks heavily and comes across as capable and attitude-driven. The other shows his struggle more visibly and has been out of school since grade one. I use this as a starting point for the importance of not grouping two PDA kids together even when they share the same diagnosis, and why the expectations and experiments for each may need to start from different places. Why Socialization Struggles Are Not a Skills Problem | 00:19:34 For many PDA kids, the barrier to socialization is not that they lack the understanding of social norms. It is that their nervous system tips into threat perception in social situations, which blocks access to the skills they do have. I give the example of a child who understands not to call someone stupid but does it anyway when another kid grabs the controller, because the response is automatic, not chosen. What improves this over time is reducing cumulative nervous system activation, not practicing social skills in isolation. Therapeutic Equalizing as a Daily Practice | 00:27:30 I introduce the concept of therapeutic equalizing: intentionally creating space each day for a PDA child to be dominant, to criticize, correct, and control a trusted adult, while that adult responds with lightness, self-deprecating humor, and full acceptance. For Desmond, who is often in the position of yielding to his more dominant twin, this kind of deliberate one-on-one time may help him offset cumulative activation before it builds. Pam and I discuss what this could look like practically at home, including using strewing and sensory cues rather than direct invitations. How to Track Real Progress | 00:36:30 When parents feel like things are not moving fast enough, I come back to three indicators worth tracking over longer time horizons: nervous system activation, access to basic needs, and connection with safe people. Academic milestones, connection with friends, and hours at school are longer-horizon indicators that sit on top of these foundations. The Energy Underneath the Tactics | 00:43:29 Pam names something many experienced parents of PDAers feel: she knows the tools, she has been doing the work for years, and it is still hard. I reflect that what often remains after the tactics are in place is the energetic piece: the grief, the non-attachment, the letting go of what you thought your family's life would look like. PDA kids perceive the energy of a parent trying to control an outcome even when the approach looks accommodating on the surface. The work of releasing that is not a technique. It is an ongoing practice. Relevant Resources Tracking Progress — Free class on the indicators Casey discusses for measuring what is actually shifting Understanding PDA — Free class with deeper context on the nervous system disability framework Casey references Paradigm Shift Program — Our signature program where therapeutic equalizing and equality accommodations are taught in full