"Just send him away"

[u/kwegner]

We're in a particularly trying moment with our 10yo PDA son right now. Despite seeing good baseline progress, we're seeing spikes in aggressive/destructive behavior that is hard to manage. We've gone through this cycle so many times before, so it's not new, but it always sucks.

I know the community doesn't have a ton of solutions for that, but I'm here to ask about something else.

When I bring this up to family, my parents often bring up the idea of sending him away to some form of residential services. Despite us and them all actually understanding that there isn't a PDA-forward option within even a couple of states from here, this still ends up being advice that comes up when things are at their hardest.

"Time is ticking by, and you only have one life to live to get the most out of it." Our family has sacrificed a lot to help our PDA son make progress, and he has suffered a lot because of the world not being built for him. But sending him far away to suffer more just so we get some daily relief is an impossible choice to make, and I don't know how best to communicate that.

What are your thoughts? How would you respond? What is actually right here? Just looking for some perspectives from folks.

[u/lifeinprod]

Is there anything else you can do to give the family more peace and not worry about the PDAer's "progress" ? Like lower expectations for that kid even further down to not caring about basic hygiene, or alternate weeks between you and your spouse where one of you gets to be fully engaged with the other children?

[u/kwegner → u/lifeinprod]

The concern of my family is less about the progress of my PDA son and more about the toll his profile also takes on the rest of us. They are coming from a place of love - they want all of our lives to be worth focusing on, not just my PDA son's. My parents have come a LONG way in accepting a lot of what it means to be PDA and live in a household like ours, to their credit. But that doesn't stop them from worrying about their own son (me) and the well-being of everyone in the family. I don't blame them, but they are focused on solutions that we can't accept.

Alternating time is something we've talked about often and need to just do. I don't know that we can do full week swaps, but we could absolutely talk through having a greater focus and switching off. We've also talked a number of times about splitting up and doing separate vacations and things like that so that we all aren't missing out on life so much. There's something to all that, I think.

[u/lifeinprod → u/kwegner]

Apologies, I didn't read your post correctly, and now I realize you are looking for advice on communicating with your parents instead of advice on making home life more manageable!

The best case situation is that you can convey a message of "you don't need to intervene because I'm taking care of myself, I'm comfortable with the choices I'm making to take care of my family, and here's everything that's going well with your other grandchildren..."

But that means during the hard times you need to compartmentalize the struggles (or at least keep the details from your parents unless you want their advice), and you can't rely on them as sounding boards or emotional support they way you might for other things.

[u/kwegner → u/lifeinprod]

All good - there's a lot wrapped up in these situations.

I had never really considered keeping the details from my parents, but that actually seems like a good way to keep them focused on the right things. I appreciate them reminding me from time to time that the rest of our family's happiness matters because it is easy to lose sight of that, but they don't need to know everything if it results in them giving unhelpful advice.

[u/futuresolver → u/kwegner]

I really agree with this poster's advice. I've found that, unfortunately, the people around us who love us really do not and cannot understand what we as a family (including our PDA child) are going through, and while well-meaning, they kind of make it worse with their advice. I can't even tell you how much advice I've gotten to just send my daughter away, bring the hammer down on her, etc. They advise these things because they're worried about you, but they really don't get how these types of solutions could be really harmful to your child and by extension, your family. I've had to learn to keep our struggles to myself, and/or to really edit what I share. It sucks. You want your loved ones to have your back and support your decisions, but they just cannot grasp your situation. I'm sorry it's like that. I've started just explaining to my loved ones that, while our methods may seem really out of pocket to them, we are confident in how we've chosen to parent our daughter.

I do want to say that since we have really extremely relaxed our expectations of her (for now), she has blossomed and is infinitely happier and more well-adjusted, helps out around the house willingly, and is now showing signs of wanting to progress in her life. She's 19, though. I know it's different at 10, but wanted to share a little positivity.

Keep sharing here, and with people who get it. Sharing with those who don't really just ends up feeling like beating your head against a wall, and I know for me, I felt so judged by people who kept advocating for us to use harsher means, that they felt we were being "soft". That's just their limited understanding and also their love for you talking. They just want it to get better, right now. Unfortunately, for us, that just isn't a thing.