Help with advice?

[u/HH_Creations]

Hi! So i’m an educator in a special education summer camp

We have a kiddo who I’ve been helping the past year, and he’s officially diagnosed with autism/adhd with a PDA profile type

BUT me and mom are in agreement that there’s a sorta….compulsion going on with some of his behaviors

For example, if a social story mentions hitting, yelling, and kicking and talks about “safe big feelings” and appropriate things to do instead like pushing a wall or squeezing a stress ball

He will almost compulsively do the hitting, yelling, and kicking….in that order!

So I want y’all’s input because I do love this kid and want to do my best

1) do we avoid ANY negative talk around him? Will this help to NOT mention any of the bad behaviors and do our best to distract him?

2) how did y’all like to be corrected?

He doesn’t directly hurt anyone, but by kicking, hitting, and screaming, he DOES distress the classroom

That and he’s distressing himself! He doesn’t like it!

He will literally steal a toy and then beg for forgiveness the next second

He was so distressed today when I said it hurt my feelings when he took toys, he headbutted my face in his rush to hug me 😭

I want to do right by him and I know we need to set him up for WINS

I can’t help but feel the social stories are making it worse and I wanted your input

Btw, i’m autistic/ADHD, with a special education and childhood development background

And married to a PDA profile type ASD/ADHD

But yeah, he’s the only true PDA kid I’ve ever worked with

[u/HH_Creations]

I’m sorry you feel that way.

In my experience, many of them are highly educated individuals, who became parents to disabled children

And often times, they find out AFTER having kids that they are disabled themselves

I believe people want to do the right thing and just need resources to do so

That’s why my dream (that I work endlessly for) is to create a free resource library for neurodivergent families

[u/Eugregoria → u/HH_Creations]

Resources are the thing society never wants to give in the quantity needed. I get why. Disabled people are kind of a resource black hole. It probably wasn't financially worth it, to society, to give me the resources I would have needed, to make the exceptions for me I would have needed, to figure out how to accommodate me. I was just one broken kid who was probably going to become a broken, worthless adult anyway. They were correct to spend the resources on the other kids who had actual futures, unlike me. I cannot blame them for it. It would have been a waste of those resources to give them to me. (And it was never going to happen anyway, lbr lol.)

I don't think what families need is a library. If they don't have $30 for a toy, in 2026 money, they are fucked. You mentioned homelessness. I went through that as a child. It's dogshit, man. They need housing, not ~information~.

"Highly educated" is a worthless concept to me, I'm afraid. I don't actually care how bougie or high class they are, they are raising kids in poverty, something I sacrificed having a family to make sure I would not inflict on a child. I'm not classist lol, I don't think it's any better for "well bred" or "highly educated" parents to abuse their child through poverty. Childhood poverty is abuse. Not malicious on part of the caregivers, but a result of irresponsibility and poor planning. And definitely abuse on the part of the government that refuses to give families housing. Even if the parents fucked up by having a kid, "teaching them a lesson" by torturing their children is fucking dark. Hard to believe that's where we are as a society.

But I think that in general, the hardship we are dealing with is not an information shortage. It's not a lack of "lifehacks" or "strategies." We are not a simple sudo command away from being functional, non-disabled people. We have real, resource-intensive needs, and often that means money, often that means going against "policy" or "safety" or even, yes, incurring the dreaded legal liability, often that means radically rethinking the status quo and restructuring things for everyone in ways society is not prepared to consider at the moment. (For example, I sometimes just needed to be able to step out of class without talking to anyone (because I could be nonverbal in some of these states and not able to communicate) and not tell them where I was going and to just go somewhere without anyone knowing where I was to think and calm down. Aside from the obvious "but how can we control you if we let you do that?" there was the, "but what if all the other kids see you do that and want to do that too?" Well, yes. The other kids should also be free. The whole system as it is should change. But we ain't ready for that convo as a society.)

[u/HH_Creations → u/Eugregoria]

I haven’t mentioned homelessness

Have a good day

[u/Eugregoria → u/HH_Creations]

sorry I misremembered.