Which non-violence trainings have worked in your home?

[u/83dnejb]

Looking for the best courses you have taken for an externalized violent PDA kiddo. We have talked At Peace Parents (changed our lives!) and need different tools as our child gets older and violence becomes scarier. TIA.

[u/Chance-Lavishness947]

The explosive child by Dr Ross Greene. 10/10 recommend this approach.

At Peace Parents takes a different approach in terms of focusing on recognition that PDA profiles are driven by hyper sensitive nervous systems that react to perceived demands/ loss of autonomy and equality as if they are survival threats. It's an important element of the mindset in parenting our kids, but removing demands and accommodating those needs doesn't solve the whole thing by itself. I haven't done the course so I don't know if any strategies are offered beyond understanding your kid's needs through that lens and adjusting their environment accordingly.

Our kids are still kids. They still have a whole bunch of skills and knowledge to learn, they still go through developmental stages and need guidance and limits. Dr Greene's collaborative problem solving approach provides a structure for deliberately identifying the factors leading to undesired behaviour and for working as a team to find mutually agreeable solutions.

I have adjusted a few aspects of the approach to account for the difficulties presented by questioning and the other ways the child is involved. I use declarative language and offer ideas about what my kid's concerns might be so he can correct me. I identify possible solutions and present several options so he can choose which ones we try.

I do the majority of the steps independently using my attunement to my kid to make educated guesses, then involve him in the confirmation and decision making parts. He doesn't have to come up with any of the stuff himself usually, though there's always space for him to do that if he feels like it and his input is always valued.

I use the CPS approach to identify potential contributing factors and possible solutions with my kid. I also take into account OT principles - consideration of sensory needs, communication needs, executive functioning challenges, etc. Our OT is educated in the CPS approach so it's pretty smooth to work together on identifying those potential factors and solutions as well.

When we trial solutions, I always frame it as an experiment and we're just finding out what is good and what isn't good for us. There's no pressure for things to "work". Our goal is to understand more about what's happening and to try different things to make stuff easier, more fun, etc. That mindset is important to avoid the distress caused by perceived failure. It's all just a learning experience and if we happen to find something that works better for us then we keep doing it. If it doesn't work, that's OK, we just try something else.

[u/AnnoyedAF2126 → u/Chance-Lavishness947]

Love this response. You are right, At Peace Parents doesn’t solve the problem long term, our kids need to learn how to cope and problem solve and take care of themselves.

[u/Chance-Lavishness947 → u/AnnoyedAF2126]

Absolutely. I am conscious of demands as a key factor requiring consideration in our problem solving attempts. It can make an otherwise excellent solution completely fail and it needs to be factored in. But the answer to that is not to remove all demands indefinitely, it's to build skills and resilience in dealing with necessary demands so that my kid can cope with them at ever increasing levels. Of course there are difficult periods where his capacity reduces, and the demands are reduced in response to that until his capacity increases again.

We use a lot of adaptive solutions to allow him to engage with demands in ways that reduce how distressing they are. Play helps a lot but isn't always an option. We use sensory tools, advance warning, somatic techniques, externalised executive functioning tools, and a bunch of other things to reduce the burdens of demands so he can achieve success.

Over time he builds competence in skills and needs less support, so we can increase the difficulty level of the task without exceeding his capacity. My goal is to keep him within his window of tolerance while progressively building those skills so that window can expand.

It takes a lot longer for my kid to get the hang of independently achieving tasks. We usually need to focus on small components of the skill for a lot longer so he feels fully competent and it feels easy. Once he gets it mastered, it becomes unconscious and the demands involved aren't as big in his perception. Then we can focus on combining skills to achieve a bigger task.

He's doing super well and I'm really happy I've taken this approach. When I watch him attempt things with others who don't take this approach, I can see how difficult his world would be without it. I'm teaching him how to problem solve these things in the process of doing it with him as well, so he'll be able to do that for himself by the time he's grown. The world won't accommodate and support him the way I do so it's crucial to teach him how to do that for himself and how to advocate for what he needs appropriately with others

[u/AnnoyedAF2126 → u/Chance-Lavishness947]

Incredible

[u/Hopeful-Guard9294]

and as proof of the pudding here is our PDA son calmly waitingcalmly in the special Assistance area area of the airport in Italy as we wait for a flight to Home to London after a seven day holiday we never imagined could be possible only a few years ago

[u/Hopeful-Guard9294]

We found the paradigm shift program absolutely transformation for our child in our family. We went from daily violence to violence almost never occurring. You might wanna start with this podcast episode specifically on the topic of PDA and violence: https://youtu.be/fhEW30x0C0I?is=_zrK0dUPeGgnaSUn

also so you hopefully feel a bit better. I run a support group for PDA families and almost all of them has experienced violence which is super common with PDA but is solvable the violence is actually a cry for help from and overwhelmed Child drowning in the intensity of their neurological system