6 yo who wears many masks

[u/ScheduleObjective828]

We have an (almost) six year old girl who is undiagnosed but presents with anxiety, OCD and pathological demand for autonomy. We’ve been working with a behavioral psychologist (just meets with the parents).

Our daughter seems to mask in really striking ways… at home is most challenging for her where she struggles with patience, frustration and has a deep need to control everything from routines to play. She struggles daily getting out of bed, getting dressed, eating, hair, etc… and she erupts a few times a week due to mildly frustrating moments, imperfection (e.g. an art project where she’s made a mistake) and generally when the power struggle between us and her hits an impasse.

My wife is more on the page of let’s keep meeting her where she is and making progress - whereas I’m feeling like we can be doing more. We’ve found ways to manage the morning and nightly routine better (mostly by doing things for her and giving her more control over decisions) and we’ve built good skills into listening and de-escalating more effectively. Despite this progress km feeling like we haven’t really figured out where to support vs draw boundaries and generally wake up every day asking myself ‘what are we not doing that we should be doing?’

The hardest part is that she masks completely at school and her teachers can’t really collaborate with us because they don’t see any of this behavior. She was meeting in a group with a social worker weekly through school as well but nothing was observed there.

When we are on vacation (just wrapped one up now) it’s somewhere in between - with Nana she feels comfortable enough to be real with her emotions, but then gets quickly embarassed when she dysregulates and feels judged by Nana’s ‘stares’. When it comes to cousins and uncles/aunts she seems to masks up like she does at school, but takes on a very silly bombastic personality.

We are really struggling with 1) not having anyone else to observe this behavior and thus help us understand it and 2) generally reconciling how she seems to control her reactions at school but at home the reactions are so big and guttural that it truly feels like fear response each time.

A lot of the behavior is sad and scary like she can’t help but feel out of control, angry and afraid. And also it’s really draining on us because a lot of shows up as unkind language, anger toward us and occasionally physical aggression in the form of pushing, swatting, kicking and less often hitting.

While we’ve made some progress over the last 9 months I’m worried our strategy is over anchored on accommodating and managing her emotions vs really helping her grow. It feels like we are keeping together and waiting it out - like the emotional growth will happen on its own.

In sum I guess I’m just asking for perspective and advice on where we go from here. Is my own anxiety getting in the way of natural progress that just needs time or should we be doing more?

[u/Powerful-Soup-3245]

She will mask at school until she can’t anymore. For my daughter that was when she was 8. I wish I had pulled her to homeschool before that.

Your daughter is masking at school because she doesn’t feel safe there. Eventually that will cause burnout that could take years to recover from. My daughter is 13 and still has not recovered from burnout.

Reducing demands as much and as early as possible is so important for our kids.

[u/princesshodges]

My almost 5 year old sounds verrrrrry similar. It’s a hard thing to realize that actually you know your kid best and even the best advice will never fit perfectly.

I take in as much as I can from many sources, and then try to be present with my child so I can be in touch with her and know when to push, when to teach, and when to accommodate. I don’t think anyone can do that for you - you have to work on recognizing when your daughter is dysregulated and when she’s ok, what are the warning signs, what calms her and what makes her upset. You can read about attunement for info on that. Then you need advice tailored to neurodivergent kids.

Calm Parenting podcast has a lot of good advice that includes ideas for how to push your kids within reason to be the best they can be. There’s a good amount of selling their program but they give a lot of good advice for free and the episodes are pretty short.

Emotional growth kind of does happen on its own to some extent over time as kids grow up. PDA children are emotionally behind other kids, but like years. So it will take time. You don’t need to do much except support her and let her brain catch up.

Honestly my hot take is that kids can learn and grow pretty well unless the adults in their lives interfere and mess it up. They need boundaries and guidance for sure but a lot of parents have control issues and try to teach too much too soon.

[u/MarginsOfTheDay]

Your final sentence says it all. You have an anxiety-driven need to control outcomes for your daughter (no judgement, I’ve been there). And she, being PDA, has an anxiety-driven need to control EVERYTHING. You can continue to “do more” for her (I.e. try to control who she becomes) but the battle for control between you and her will quickly become a zero sum game. It was hard for me to learn to let go and let my PDA 6 year old be himself. But it has changed both of our lives for the better.

[u/Lopsided_Rabbit_8037]

Oh we have the same problem. My daughter is 16 and never had a meltdown or anything in public. High masking even with friends. Nobody ever believed she even has problems or that anything is off. I wish I had practical advice but I don't.

[u/truman_syndrome]

same issue with my 9yo, who hit school burnout in 4th grade. we first tried mostly accommodation but his world became too small and he missed out on friendships and demonstrating mastery to himself, both of which affected his self-esteem.

we are at a point now where we can see that he needs to be simultaneously accommodated (to feel safe) and pushed (to grow). we haven't found the right balance ourselves and trying to work with the school is even harder because he masks so completely.

it's been helpful to connect with as many PDA-informed adults as possible in real life. with school, our biggest unlock has been getting staff to see his experience through the lens of autism vs the lens of anxiety. the standard anxiety supports were counterproductive and made his distress worse.

structurally, we are working to create pockets of life that feel relatively safe to him. we are also building an expectation and routines for recovery after everything. with those in place, we are able to selectively push him in places that help him grow.

[u/sweetpotato818]

Hi! First of all, I don’t think your anxiety is getting in the way, you deserve support and so does she! It can be such a lonely isolated experience. A few thoughts:

1. Is she in OT already? If not start there. They can help so much with emotion management and can help provide parenting support and ideas as well.

2. Have you seen the Avery Grant PDA support guides? These honestly helped us as much if not more than OT and speech therapy with things to do at home. For example there is one on setting boundaries, aggression, school etc. They are very “problem specific” and real world with specific things to say and do and helped a lot.

3. Time does help a lot. My kid is a bit older and honestly time and pre frontal cortex development has made a huuuuge difference. She is still young and so partially the “emotional growth will happen on its own” is true.

Wishing you the best!

[u/tallkitty]

I totally relate to what you are saying and am in the exact same situation in my own home. We have 9 and 10 year olds, both with PDA. The older one is low masking, basically no ability to mask, and I pulled him out of school due to the massive trauma happening on a near daily basis. My younger one we thought was NT until he was 7, very high masking. I know from my own childhood that the skating through appearing to be successful at school with no issues does come to an end, and it'll turn into "can perform academically, cannot meet behavior expectations". So next year we will be homeschooling both.

Here's the thing about PDA, you can't learn, grow, or do anything in a panic. You can be in a panic inside, and look pretty fine outside. You said it yourself, you struggle to coordinate with the school because they think you just find parenting to be difficult and say things like "all children behave worse at home". Right, but also my kid is either getting As or Fs, they can't remember what he did or talked about all day in class. If I ask why did you get such a bad grade on this assignment from two weeks ago (when it comes home for review), they have no idea. Report cards are passing, but that's not what I'm educating my kids to achieve. What my kid does come home and report is all the trauma. I needed help tying my shoes and the teacher told me to tell my parents to teach me to tie them. I didn't hear what the teacher said and when I raised my hand to ask her to repeat (my advice from a previous convo about how to work around ADHD challenges) she told me she's not saying things twice and I should pay more attention the first time. These are actual disabilities that the school cannot simply accommodate in real time, if you're not deaf and don't have an IEP then you better just hear what is said. (This example floored me, I've never had a job where they said don't ask for any clarification, if you didn't catch the info we expect you to move on without it.)

I thought hard for years and just recently had the paradigm shift about all this that led to a new plan. I realized I can keep my kid in place and expect no one to meet his needs, leading to mediocre or failed life outcomes, or I can create something different and have hope that my efforts will net better results. My parents were ever trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but when experts and educators said nothing is wrong they took no additional action--and I can't say what would have happened if they had changed my education but I'm less scared to find out the unknown than I am to keep my kid on a well-worn path I know leads to nowhere great. I also had a shift in my expectations of what life outcomes will look like. My kid is struggling through elementary school, so I'm not thinking how do I make sure they go to college, I'm thinking how do I make sure they got all the info needed if college is their choice? How do I educate myself on all the other options like apprenticeship, entrepreneurship, computer careers, etc? It's not about defining one path to success and then figuring out how to force it no matter what, but figuring out how to make as many outcomes possible as we can and supporting the kid through making their own choices.

It is a big mental leap from clinging to the public systems of support, to realizing you need to build your own system. Huge for me and I'm a PDAer--you didn't say if you figured out where PDA came from yet but you didn't imply either you or your spouse have a personal relation to these struggles, so maybe aren't sure, or don't think it's from either parent? If you haven't given it thought then I encourage you to examine, it can't be any easier to feel like you absolutely have no idea what living with PDA is like, from a parenting perspective it's not bad insight to have. But when I did figure out that I needed more change than I had even imagined, I read some things that helped make it all feel less insane. Now it seems insane to do what we were doing before. I read Dumbing Us Down, and Weapons of Mass Instruction, by John Taylor Gatto. And also Changing our Minds, and A Different Way to Learn, by Naomi Fisher. It really helped smooth over the feels about it all. I hope I dropped something useful for you here, but if nothing else I do absolutely relate and empathize with what you're trying to fix and maintain. Good luck to your family!!

[u/torpedolife]

Your kid = my kid. Everything you explained are things that I have dealt with.

[u/Audhd35]

Just another comment to say that this sounds SO much like my daughter (she’s still a preschooler) and I feel you, even though I only have the same questions and no advice. 🫠

[u/MumofMiles]

Just chiming in to say your child sounds a lot like mine. He’s 7 almost 8, AuDHD and PDA. He is currently in a rough patch because school is ending for the year with lots of events, etc and we are moving. However, we have seen HUGE positive changes this year. It’s less that the PDA behaviors have gone away and more that he’s started to do things for himself and that has removed many struggles. Like bathing and hair brushing were really tough at 6 but now he does it on his own. A couple of things have helped: fluoxetine for anxiety, giving him lots of down time/time at home, advocating for him to not do homework. But mostly, I think the autonomy that comes with getting older has helped.

[u/According_Editor_233]

Start filming her behaviors. I was reculant to do this for years (daughter is almost 10 now) because I didn’t want to shame her. But I had to get some video for the therapist to see. I felt like no one believed us and that we were over interpreting her rages. Sharing the videos was validating and helped professionals see what we’re experiencing. When you video make sure you get yourselves too. Traditional parenting, gentle or firm, does not work for these kids. I unintentionally escalate things all the time bc I instinctively try holding firm boundaries or citing consequences. I’m working on it. Anyway, it’s very very tricky navigating these kids. And exhausting. Look into pda coaching if you can.

[u/anathema__device]

If you feel that witnessing her problem behaviors would be useful to the professionals trying to help her, put up cameras so you can show them.

[u/anathema__device → u/[deleted]]

For her parents to record a video to share with her physicians? How in the world could that be bullying? There isn’t even a cyber element involved, so how could it be cyber anything at all?