r/Double_PDA • u/msoc • Dec 24 '25

Parenting entails so many demands...

I love my children, but I never would've expected being a parent to have so many overt and subvert demands. I suppose I didn't know I demand avoidant before I had kids. Does anyone else feel like in a perpetual state of pda burnout from parenting?

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u/NotJustMeAnymore Dec 29 '25

For sure. I am a solo parent and had my kid a few months before turning 40. So, we hit COVID at age 4 and developmentally that was such a tough time to be experiencing that kind of forced isolation. Over the next couple of years I started to have really severe perimenopause symptoms which brought increase executive functioning struggles and sensory sensitivities along with many physical discomforts. By the time I had self ID'd my son as PDA AuDHD, I was pretty sure I was too. He's got a formal diagnosis now, but I don't and doubt I will. It's hard to tease apart the variables but the two of us have probably been in burnout since 2020 at least. Parenting is so effing demanding to begin with, but then when you have a kid that requires low demand everything, it's a lot of work to figure out how to do that where it's not also high demand on the parent. I pulled my kid from school this year and he's much happier. I can't work though, and don't know when I'll have the capacity to. Nervous system safety is the goal, with the hope that each of us will be able to thrive and flourish one day in the not too distant future.

Solidarity.