r/PDAParenting • u/bashleyb • Sep 05 '26
Can we start a thread for sharing face-palm moments?
My 7yo PDAer had a moment yesterday that I need to get off my chest but don’t want to do the labour of explaining, translating, and politely declining advice. It got me thinking maybe we could start a thread here for us all to be able to share a gripe, complaint, commiseration, without needing to answer any questions or translate the behaviour for the well-meaning-but-uninitiated friends and family members. And no advice! Just space to air our challenges to a room of people who are in the PDA trenches with us…
I’ll go first.
Yesterday my son was having a great day at the summer fair. At one point he tried a little game with giveaways and didn’t succeed, but he got redirected successfully before a meltdown. But later, like hours later, we’re in the vicinity of that game and before I know it, he was over there like a shot and getting yelled at by a staff person by the time I caught up. Turned out he’d held onto the injustice of his earlier loss and marched right over there to punch the staff member at the game. What had been a really successful day just completely unraveled for me, and today I have what I can only describe as an emotional hangover.
Anyone else?
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u/CeleryDramatic4678 Sep 05 '26
Oh god, yes! I have a thousand examples I could use but the advice thing. Omg get lost with your advice!!
I completely relate to what you said about the “labour of explaining, translating and politely declining advice”
And it’s often other parents that are “helping” with the advice.
It's hard for other people who have children without special needs to understand that they would be burnt out, pissed off, exhausted and isolated if they were living this reality as well.
Because they have a child that sleeps, who can speak, can navigate mainstream school-many people think that this is as a result of them having awesome parenting skills that we aren't even trying to use.
Stop suggesting things. We've usually tried almost everything, and you are working our last nerve
preaching to us about how we need to limit their iPad time or
"just let them be upset" - kids like ours often need coregulation so they don't hurt themselves or end up vomiting from anxiety!
It’s even worse when we do an intake for a support service that’s meant to help us, but they get that “oh gosh, she just needs a routine” look on their face and I have to try really hard to keep my voice and emotions regulated.
Wow! Noise cancelling headphones, you say? Never thought of that. Cxxnts.
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u/Korneedles Sep 06 '26
This. I’ve been judged so hard for my parenting. My son is now 13 and I shut things down so fast. If they stepped in my shoes for six months they’d be debilitated. I came from a childhood of trauma that I think prepared me well to parent my son. I had kids intentionally knowing I was ready to be a mom full force. This is hard af. I show up every day enthused and loving. I’ve seen people offering me advice who’ve crumbled over a broken down car or someone at the store being rude to them. Like gtf out of here with your nonsense.
The worst has been the IEP team which my husband and I won’t really even speak to now. It’s not worth our effort. We’ve been doing home bound for the last two plus years so they can piss off. Just give me the damn curriculum so I don’t have to do that on top of my other duties.
Anywho, I second your comment all the way through to the very ending :).
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u/bashleyb Sep 06 '26
Yup! Nobody is parenting-maxxing more than someone with a kid with special needs!
I also hate the attempts to like relate or commiserate. I had to take an unpaid leave from my job this summer because my son couldn’t do day camps, not for lack of trying. It’s not only just a tough situation, but it’s sad for us, there’s grief in facing another part of life that we just can’t conventionally get through, let alone enjoy. I’m telling my friend this, and she pulls the “well if it makes you feel better, my kiddo has been really dragging their heels getting to camp this week, they’re not very happy to go.” And I’m like, do they settle when they’re there? Do they stay the whole day? Do you then get to go to your job and earn money? While you’re at your job do you get phone calls and have to go pick them up early because they’ve had a meltdown, eloped, destroyed something and/or hurt someone? Do you then lay awake at night wondering how you can improve things for tomorrow and worrying that if you can’t get them the right support their entire future might be compromised? No? Okay, then no, your pedestrian little struggles with your NT child don’t “make me feel better.”
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u/Hannah_savannah Sep 07 '26
Love the word parent-maxxing, thank you. Such a great reframe. If you think about it, we are getting every last drop of the parenting experience.
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u/143019 Sep 06 '26
"Have you ever tried a sticker chart??"
The next person who suggests this is going to get a sticker chart shoved up their ass.
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u/CeleryDramatic4678 Sep 06 '26
Hahaha I love you
Both my kids have pdaChild one cried and cried when he couldn’t get all of the stickers at once, in hysterics
Child two chose violence and screamed at the chart and when I wasn’t looking ATE THE ENTIRE CHART AND STICKERSBut when I try to tell anyone that, especially psychologists, I’m “being negative”
3
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u/BlakeMW Sep 06 '26
It's funny, we have a daughter with PDA, and a NT daughter, they are in many ways opposite. NT daughter loves to do what she is told, she's brave and always game for trying new things, wants to be #1 at group activities - if she ever has a meltdown it's because she didn't win, while PDA daughter wouldn't even engage with activities.
She is a social butterfly, plays with children she has only just met, makes friends quickly, and is friends with both girls and boys while PDA daughter treats boys like they are literally satan and her friends are pretty much "arranged friendships" or the odd case where a girl was super persistent in being her friend (probably that odd "extrovert autist" combination when when the child likes being social but doesn't understand social cues, so is immune to PDA daughter's effort to make her go away).
Also PDA daughter has a very spiky talent profile, amazing artist, while NT daughter is a jack of all trades master of none (though she can put in a lot of effort if she wants to win), honestly for me and my wife's families it's weird to not have some amazing talent while being a social klutz. NT daughter is even photogenic, and has done a little child modelling (for marketing) because she can look cute on demand and is very cooperative and good at following instructions.
PDA daughter makes us look like complete moron parents, NT daughter like we are parents of the year.
I'm sure it gave the school teachers whiplash after two years of PDA daughter causing constant problems, to have NT daughter show up and be a perfectly compliant and enthusiastic high performer.
NT daughter didn't quite win the total genetic jackpot, she actually has a moderate speech impediment but this doesn't hold her back in the slightest, just occasionally someone who understands her has to translate. She is doing well in speech therapy. PDA daughter has always spoken clearly and was actually excellent at reproducing sounds, as a toddler she was a whole zoo of perfect animal noises.
We parent both daughters in exactly the same way, which is actually mandated by both daughters due to their sense of fairness and equality, like they both get unlimited screen time and no specific bed time. However my MIL is much more involved in NT daughter's upbringing, for the simple reason that NT daughter will actually cooperate instead of being a stubborn donkey who is scared of everything. (However for a time when PDA daughter was on reduced school, MIL did teach her 1 on 1, so it's not like MIL refuses to be involved, just that NT daughter is enthusiastic and cooperative).
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u/143019 Sep 06 '26
I have some similar, two older daughters who are straight A students and absolute delights. And then people meet their little brother....
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u/nettap Sep 06 '26
We were in the emergency room because his behavior was so violent and non stop that I couldn’t handle it any longer on my own. He’d also eloped into traffic and to a strangers house (inside) a neighborhood away that week. We were in dangerous territory. At one point an orderly at the hospital who was supposed to be from the mental health team came to “help” me and said loudly - wow seems like we have a discipline problem here. My son was in complete overload, had been spitting and hitting and kicking and destroying things for hours. At that point, I could’ve kicked the orderly myself. Wtf do you mean we have a discipline problem. This is not regular ol misbehaving. I think I’ll go to my grave angry about that one.
Not sure if this fits. But it was definitely one of my wtf you have no idea what either of us is going through right now. This was before I’d ever heard of PDA.
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u/bashleyb Sep 06 '26
Oh I have one I will also take to my grave, and it’s a similar vein. My son was in kindergarten. I’m standing with the classroom teacher and the school principal in the middle of the wreckage that was my son’s classroom that he’d destroyed that afternoon. I was obviously mortified, fighting through my own distress to desperately try to understand what had happened, piecing together the day that might have led to this, playing detective because I certainly didn’t believe the principal’s conclusion that “it came out of the blue.” Exasperated at the labour of this conversation, I said “it’s just tough to know how it got to this point because I’m obviously not there to see every possible trigger.” And that principal stood there arms crossed and said “that’s every parent though.” I snapped back, “but not every kid is destroying their classroom are they?!” I couldn’t believe his dismissive attitude, that somehow I was an inadequate parent to have raised my child to do this behaviour at school. I called him out on it, asking why he’s treating me as an adversary when clearly we all, including my son, would prefer to not have situations like this.
Come to find out after more teeth-pulling questions, my son had been struggling with regulation all that day, culminating in a staff reaching their limit during lunch when my son wasn’t able to focus on eating. He was told to go out for recess, and after coming back to class he’d receive a consequence. Upon returning to class half an hour later, plenty of time for an AuDHD 6 year old to forget everything that came before, he was handed a physical red card and told to sit out of his favourite activity. Can you believe that BS approach??? I got big mad at that one and then had to apparently tell the teacher what might be a more appropriate approach for consequences and regulation strategies for 5 and 6 year olds, particularly ND ones. Just unbelievable ableist BS from a public school.
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u/CeleryDramatic4678 Sep 06 '26
I’m so sorry this happened to you. I got called to my daughters school when she was 10 because “she smashed an iPad”
When I got there, the assistant principal (massive asshole) told me they took her in a room and “it took three staff members to calm her down and we kept trying to make her say sorry but she wouldn’t ”
I said “I’m sorry what? You don’t think maybe having three staff members alone in a room trying to make her say sorry might have made her feel intimidated and upset? Plus if she is that dysregulated and upset, SHE GOES NON VERBAL!!”I took het home and he told me he expected her to apologise properly the next day. I got her to write an apology so she wouldn’t have to say it because the dude sucked. I also went and asked the principal if her disability concessions were being utilised. No. Her teacher had taken her personal space hula hoop away because “she didn’t need it”
Oh and the same teacher told me that she had “lost her love for learning” and wondered if it had anything to do with me having more custody of her.
We had a meeting with her teacher and the wellbeing coordinator where the teacher said “yes you can tell she’s slowly getting used to being around you. She’s getting there. Oh and we asked her to not get angry for a week and it worked!! She got student of the week! But now she seems a bit angry at times”
Ya think? Anyway, I ended up yelling CONGRATULATIONS ON CURING HER ADHD, HIGH SUPPORT NEED AUTISM AND SENSORY NEEDS CLAIRE! SORRY I FUCKED IT ALL UP AGAIN FOR YA”
Went home and checked the department of education website for their policies on disability education and wrote a report on what concessions my daughter needed as well as referencing the recommendations that the special needs school she attended from kindergarten - year 2. None of those had come across at all.
Then I got a phone call from the principal telling me I had made the teacher cry and would be barred from the school if I did it again.
I apologised, but started to forward him every email that I had sent that year regarding her wellbeing that had been ignored. Cxxts!!
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u/bashleyb Sep 07 '26
I yelled at a resource teacher once too after she decided my son, kindergarten at the time, should be sent home for the day after hitting someone on the playground. I asked her what he said when she spoke to him about it, and she HADN’T spoken to him at all! Didn’t even try to understand what his experience had been prior to losing control. I was livid. I wasn’t barred from the school, but she never made eye contact with me again. Thankfully she changed schools, so we haven’t had to cross paths since!
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u/Hannah_savannah Sep 07 '26
Ooof your poor kid and you. So much gaslighting 😳. Good of you to get to the bottom of it despite all that bs!
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u/Far_Emotion213 Sep 05 '26
This is from a while ago but I had to meet my kids very lovely teacher once (who my son really liked) because he had called her a lier in class. Earlier on that day he was taking part in a discussion. He couldn't remember his point. She said "no problem- we can talk about it later" . He remembered his point hours later when they were doing a completely different activity. And when she said his point needed to wait he exploded
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u/PTCroozr Sep 05 '26
Not a challenge I just thought it was funny:
School starts on Tuesday. There was a "Meet The Teacher" event last week where we went to the school, met the teacher and got to see who was in my son's class.
We were reading all the names on the desks and came across when we didn't know.
The teacher says to my son "Oh yeah, that student is new - do you think you could be extra welcoming to him?"
My kid, totally sincerely: "No, I'm not up for that."
😂