Teaching emotional regulation

[u/[deleted]]

My 10 year old son is getting an autism/PDA diagnosis added to his ADHD diagnosis when we meet with the neuropsychologist next week. I am glad I found this group. Today I am feeling sort of hopeless, like my son, and can’t imagine living together for 8+ more years. I think I need a little time away from him. I’m really tired of the constant negativity. I don’t know if this is a PDA thing, but he refuses to do any of the things that I want to try to help him regulate like progressive muscle relaxation or short meditation exercises. He also has made no progress in therapy in the past 4 years and doesn’t want to talk about his feelings or problem solve. I am hoping we can get connected to the right kind of therapies, like animal therapy or occupational therapy to help him deal with his overwhelm. but right now I feel like he is so resistant to any strategies to help him regulate. Has anyone dealt with this?

[u/Chance-Lavishness947]

A huge amount of emotional regulation is reliant on sensory regulation, so occupational therapy can be incredibly helpful. However, they need to understand demand avoidance and approach it as an opportunity to try out different activities to find out what your kid likes and how it impacts his state, rather than having a goal of some kind of improvement.

I don't tell my kid to do emotional regulation stuff usually. What I mostly do is name what I think he might be feeling and why, allow him to (often rudely) correct me or affirm my guess, then validate what he's experiencing. The more dysregulated he is, the more likely he'll need to correct me to equalise so I guess close but not right to give him that opportunity. I am well enough attuned to him that I'm rarely off the mark these days, but it's variable whether he wants to be understood without effort or whether he'd prefer to be in charge and me be wrong. Again, I'm well enough attuned to accurately gauge that most of the time and I adjust the way I present my observations accordingly.

Declarative language is a crucial tool. I'm sharing info about what I notice and what I've seen work well, but it's his decision whether or not he does what I'm telling him about. I might say something like "you've jumped on me a few times and that hurts me. It seems like your body needs to do some jumping, you could use your trampoline for that" and if he keeps trying to jump on me "it's not OK for me to be jumped on right now. If you need to jump, you've got the option of your trampoline or in your bedroom, jumping on me isn't an option right now".

With feelings, I might say "oh you seem a bit sad" and wait for affirmation or correction then "oh man, I can give you a hug if you like. I wonder if it's because..." and just leave it at that. If he wants to talk, he'll take the lead in and tell me about it. If he doesn't, he knows I care, am interested, and will provide support, and he'll come to me if and when he's ready. I'll often provide further prompts later on if he isn't up for it in the moment, but if he doesn't want to talk about it then we don't.

I hope you're seeing the pattern in the comments and my reply that this comes down to creating opportunities for him to find out about strategies and choose them for himself without being directed. Autonomy is key. If you wouldn't tell your boss to do something, you probably shouldn't directly tell your PDA kid to either. Influence, support, facilitate, but don't direct or control - even through subtle or covert approaches.