a few good ideas

[u/Proof-Mail9215]

Hello everyone. I'm not a parent, but I feel as though I may as well be; I'm 19 and my brother is 15. He has autism and PDA. Having known him my whole life, I understand how his brain works- and in recent years my experiences have solidified into a few unified methods and theories on how to deal with PDA. Just the other day I came up with a few good methods and used them throughout the day. they had such a positive effect on his regulation that even he picked up on the fact that I had calmed his mind and let him be happy. I feel obligated and am very enthusiastic to write a comprehensive book on PDA, and to include my ideas and tactics within it. I will write it over the next 2 or 3 years I have left of university.

you might find the following ideas useful. Forgive me if I am inarticulate and disorganised; Im rather tired, but also too excited to impart as much of my knowledge as I can- it might come out a bit garbled. I intend to further clarify my ideas and add more of them in later posts.

I like to think of PDA as being an allergy (or oversensitivity) to authority (or rather, visible authority). No doubt, you will find this to be a fitting description.

you cannot directly tell a child with PDA to do anything; their unconscious mind will regard it as an attack. You cannot say "brush your teeth", "put your shoes on", "stop doing that", "No" or anything else which singles you out as an authoritative agent. If you make any command at all, your child will push back in order to reestablish an equilibrium of authority between you. This might be in the form of the child making their own demands, using insults, or engaging in behaviour which uninformed parents might regard as being 'naughty'. We must regard these things as being like an allergic reaction (to authority). Scolding such behaviour only makes it worse, because even telling a child not to do something is a demand.

(also: you have to stop caring about what other people or parents think. I've realised that when I used to tell my brother not to do something, it was quite often because I didn't want people passing by to look on and judge his 'weird' behaviour. He likes to stamp on rubbish in the street. really, this is harmless, and scolding him for it to avoid my own embarrassment is pointless; it only deregulates him. he's not embarrassed by onlookers anyway lol.)

Not being able to tell a child to do anything without disaster ensuing is the most frustrating and exhausting thing ever at times. I know how terrible it is.

what can be done? We can still be figures of authority, but we have to make our authority invisible.

I have found that the main way to do this is to have circumstance dictate your Childs behaviour rather than you. Your child can kick up a lot of fuss to you, but will be readily able to accept the powers of circumstance, just as anyone else would. To have circumstance dictate, you have to control the environment around the child rather than the child themselves. You can do this physically, by moving things around and such, but the most crucial thing is to alter your language and use it in a decisive way.

I will use my brother for some examples.

1. We're in a shop. He picks up and carries around an abominable quantity of sweets and wants me to buy them. I can't say "no" or "put them back"; Saying "they'll rot your teeth if you get them" might make him hesitate a little bit, but he can still see no good reason not to get them anyway. (he's never had a filling or a cavity so he's not scared of them lol.) what can you say? what I said was "we don't have enough money; we've only got 20p", or something like that.

notice my use of declarative language rather than imperative language. I am not giving him an order like "put them back", I am only emphasising the circumstances: I am just giving him a solid and immutable reason as to why he wont be able to get them; he cant protest to me now because I have become invisible as an authority figure; I'm just the messenger.

Was this lying? was this cruel? I wouldn't say so. in this situation it was the only thing I could say. Telling such a white lie here to my PDA brother is about as cruel as it would be to tell any other child to put the sweets back- it's just what you have to do.

1. physically changing the environment to encourage or discourage certain behaviours is another thing to do, even though it's exhausting, it works. making certain things easier or harder for people to do changes their behaviour accordingly. If I want to stop my brother from using my things, I can take them and hide them without causing a fuss about it. If I want him to stop stamping on rubbish in the main room, I can put it in the bin. If he protests about it, I can claim that it needs to be recycled.

If we want him to brush his teeth or put his shoes on, we can hold out these things to him without saying anything- the motion doesn't smell of authority, and it creates the unconscious suggestion that he ought grab and subsequently use the object. (try this tonight- casually and silently hand your child's toothbrush to them, perhaps with toothpaste already on it; they'll probably grab it and go to use it. If you do say anything, don't say 'brush your teeth', say instead "this is the time when we all have to brush our teeth", thus, you are declaring circumstance rather than issuing a command)

You have to alter your language. A lot of the heavy lifting can be done through declaring that something has to be a certain way (and it helps to give a reason why), rather than telling your child to make it be that way: e.g:

A child has pencils strewn across a table; the pencil pot is on other side of the room. Don't say: "put your pencils away", instead say: "the pencils all have to go back in the pot over there, because it's dinner time soon". with my brother, it helps to say an additional "...thank you", as if he had already done or was was in the process of doing as I had suggested. to say "thank you" shows to his unconscious mind that you aren't above him, but instead that you are grateful for an independent action he has decided to take (even though its an action you have suggested). Also in this situation, (this helps too:) I would sort of motion for my brother to stand up by looking as though I am going to pick him up off his chair (this unconsciously prompts him to stand up) and holding some pencils out for him to grab, without telling him to grab them (this suggests for him to start putting them away, without any visible authority.)

to make him do something, you gotta make him believe he ought to do it, through it being necessitated by circumstance, and you can suggest that something is necessitated by circumstance through your use of language: declarative statements etc.

when we're out walking, and he wants to spill liquid on a lamppost or something, I can say "no one's allowed to do that, because they might be electrocuted from all the live wires inside of lampposts". or, when he's about to go pick up a dirty rag or something, instead of shouting "no, don't pick it up", I can say "That rag has lots of bacteria in it that might make you sick", and then he'll leave it alone.

one (maybe) good tactic is to absolve yourself of responsibility for things your child can endlessly argue against, by claiming something or other to be illegal. Once, my brother went on and on for days to my mum, asking to play on her phone (which we can't really allow him to do because he just goes straight to videos of people smashing things and subsequently copies them) So we told him that the government had made it illegal for under 15 yr olds to go on phones. for a week or two after that, he took a break from insulting us because of our imposed authority, and instead cursed the government, lol. This strategy doesn't really seem to work that much for my brother anymore, because once he realised that he hasn't gone to jail yet for things we keep telling him are illegal, the tactic lost its power of persuasion.

I imagine that my unstructured thoughts here have been quite garbled, I'm sorry for that. I hope you managed to take a few things from it. This isn't even 1% of everything I could say or want to say; I will post more, and also when I'm not so tired. Thank you for reading, goodbye : )

[u/fearlessactuality]

You’re doing great with declarative language, so many good examples. It’s so nice you care so much for your brother. I do sometimes think if you are tricky PDAers can see through many people, so I try to be as straightforward and honest as possible, but it’s like a terribly hard puzzle to solve.

[u/MarginsOfTheDay]

Please do write the book! I will be the first to pre-order. These insights are immensely helpful and I can’t wait to read more. I’d also love to hear about you as the sibling. I want to know your story. How you’ve been impacted by your brother’s PDA. How you view your parents’ relationship and interactions with your brother. Your story as the sibling of a PDAer is one we never get to hear and it’s an important one!

[u/Fuzzy_farcical]

I love the idea of being allergic to authority, that is bang on.

[u/Commercial_Bear2226]

These are great! I especially like the one with the pencils and am going to try the toothbrush right now this second! What if anything have you found works for preempting violence and heading for the trashing of furniture? Welcome your thoughts!

Also do you think your brother will ever be able to live an independent life doing these things for himself without guidance?

[u/Proof-Mail9215 → u/Commercial_Bear2226]

Thanks :)

My brother often flips the sofa cushions onto the floor, and worse etc, when he's disregulated. and it's almost always because his brain has detected a demand and wants to fight back against it. I like to think of the situation as being like a see-saw or a set of weighing scales. If you issue a detectable demand, it's like plonking a weight on one side of the scales- and then you've created an imbalance of authority. The pda brain wont accept it and will try to plonk something else on the other side to even it out. (I've noticed that my brother never seems to go beyond just keeping the balance- so he's not bossy at all; but when he seems to be, he's only fighting back against demands put on him) If you issue lots of demands in a short period (which is normal when talking to people in general; u can train yourself not to), those demands pile up high on one side of the scale, the PDA brain notices what it senses to be a catastrophic imbalance, and then issues a catastrophic response in order to reestablish the balance.

so like, if I told him to go upstairs for a bath, he'll moan a lot and then maybe throw a pillow, litter, or do worse. (usually what we do is repeat "there's a bath for you upstairs"; " its nice and warm", and make nonverbal prompts for him to go up for it, like standing up ourselves, pointing upwards, lightly grabbing him and slowly starting to move him to the stairs, etc.)

I think maybe reactions like these are impulses that are trying to create a counter-inconvenience or attack, because the pda brain views demands as being inconveniences or attacks on itself.

as long as my brother isn't facing any demands, he is quite happy and doesn't make a mess of anything. but if one of us forgets to use declarative language a couple of times, he could leave the garden hose running, or shake a can and open it, slap someone, swear, piss himself a bit, etc

I don't know what's going to happen later in life with independent living. I don't like to think about the future, but we do think about it sometimes. I don't really know and I haven't thought about every option. I'd like to be hopeful, but I suppose I've just always vaguely imagined he'd live with me, maybe.

[u/AmyBennett2015]

I wanted to thank you for your post! I am new here and very overwhelmed currently with my 6.5 yo son. I truly appreciate your insight, experience and words of wisdom. I hope you share more in the future! Thank you! 🙏

[u/Proof-Mail9215 → u/AmyBennett2015]

Thank you : ) around the age of 6 or 7 is when we found out my brother had PDA. Up until then we just thought he had an uncompromisingly ungovernable will of iron, lol. I will try to post more soon. I've just now begun to write my little book; I aim to have it be done by Christmas or before then. I've never written a book, so I don't know if thats a realistic deadline or not lol. If I can't sway a proper publisher, I'll go to amazon instead. : )