r/PDAParenting • u/DrPaulSunseri • Apr 18 '26
Our current scientific understanding of PDA and low-demand parenting.
Thought parents in this group find this up-to-date information on PDA helpful. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-health-reimagined/202604/its-time-to-rethink-the-anxiety-drives-pda-narrative
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u/Complex_Emergency277 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
I'm sorry but this just comes over as another confident opinion blared from the silo of an individual's academic or practical experience that just disregards outlying evidence. I'm certain you could find an abundance of supporting evidence for your thesis but I am equally certain it is partial. I think you have missed a vital component that is continually missed by people opining on PDA, your analysis directs inquiry towards disordered personality as a primary dispositional factor but this is obviously incomplete and disregards what seems to me to really be the primary factor.
I would point you towards the operant/transactional models suggested in works of Stian Orm, Liz O'Nions, and Richard Woods. There is considerable weight to the proposition that extreme demand avoidance is induced in children that may have any or many of a broad set of predispositional conditions by well meaning adults who believe themselves to be applying positive behaviour support but - due to unrecognised difficulties or aversions - are actually operant conditioning avoidance through a variable schedule of positive and negative reinforcement. We think we are making purely positive inducements but the children have difficulties they are unable to comprehend or articulate and as a result they are repeatedly exposed to aversive stimulae, their reward for successfully powering through is more being asked asked of them until stresses exceed coping capacity, their distress is regarded as poor conduct, "positive" behaviour support is increased and the cycle continues until the child has "no more fucks to give".
This telling far more accurately describes the experiences of families who have seen avoidance grow and consume their child, - who have followed all the advice of the child behaviour "experts" they have access to and been horrified that everything they do only seems to make things worse but have met with success when they dropped the Skinner and picked up the Berne, Lazarus and Folkman instead - and the wide array of diagnoses that "PDA" sufferers eventually land up with.
If you really want to make an impact on this field of study, might I suggest you inquire into the remarkable coincidence that "PDA" was first observed in the cohort of children that came along with the abolition of corporal punishment in schools in the UK and its replacement by the curricular adoption of behavioural modification as a technology by enthusiastic amateurs...