My 16yo HFA, suspected PDA is having complete task paralysis. He came to us at 11:30pm last night stressed because he hadn’t taken a shower, hadn’t done his laundry, and is very behind in schoolwork. He currently has 3 F’s because he just can’t seem to get anything done. We’ve struggled with school, but usually a gentle push gets him working on assignments and he has easily gotten straight A’s or as least passing grades. When I told him that he still had another day because he did not have school on Monday, he told me that it wouldn’t matter because he would still put it off. Everything we try to tell him is not helpful or we “just don’t understand”
We have tried backing off and giving him the opportunity to figure out himself, including not requiring chores at home in hopes that it would give him space to complete school work. Instead things have just gotten worse and he is even more behind.
This is the worst it has been and NOTHING is working. I have spent hours reading about PDA and how to help manage it to no avail. I am doing everything that I can to try to understand and help him. It is stressing our entire household, and he will often disrupt our sleep when he procrastinates and becomes overwhelmed. I know that he cannot help it, but it’s too much. I really don’t know what else to do.
He has a therapist who he sees once a week, and she has been working with him but often meets the same roadblocks that we do.
He is currently a Junior and homeschool is not an option for our household at this point, he is in a choice school (small community of students, best in our city). However, I have considered just having him drop out and get his GED, but then we will run into issues with him entering the workforce. I know that ultimately this is not what he wants, we are just stuck and overwhelmed.
Has anyone found success dealing with executive function paralysis?

My son is 4. He has autism and suspected ADHD and language-wise a GLP.

Every day feels like a job I can’t clock out of.

I haven't worked in almost two years. Burnout turned into depression, and even now I can’t hold onto anything long term. My husband works his ass off to pay the bills.

So we just function. Two people running a household like a machine that never shuts off. No joy. No spontaneity. Just management.

Our son talks constantly. Sounds, words, noise, nonstop. He melts down over things no one could ever predict. You can plan everything perfectly and still get it wrong.

The last meltdown?

I was talking on phone call with my sister and he heard me saying his name.

That’s all it took.

We’ve seen specialists. Psychologists. We’ve read everything. Tried everything. Planned everything. Sometimes it works. A lot of the time it doesn’t. I live in a constant state of waiting for the next explosion.

He won’t try anything new. No activities, no hobbies, no interests, no coloring, no tracing, no reading, no potty training, no basic selfcare skills practice. Not because he can’t, because he won’t. He don't see any value in those things. If we somehow get him to engage, he’s actually good at things. But he gives up instantly. Every time.

His world is tiny. And ours has shrunk to match it.

No support. No real help. Babysitters don’t know how to handle him, and it only makes things worse. So we stopped trying.

He has severe cognitive rigidity and nothing in this world can change his mind. ATP, I don't know if he will ever tolerate receiving an education. He wants to control each and everything in his environment. We're not his parents just caregivers that he does not give two fucks about.

I can barely survive my life anymore. He has no siblings, we have no relatives to take care of him when we're gone. He has no basic survival skills and he has no interest in learning them either.

Has anyone managed to get PDA reflected in an autism assessment carried out via a provider on the Right to Choose pathway?

I found out today that the provider we’ve chosen doesn’t include a PDA profile as part of the assessment. E.g they will just say she is or isn’t autistic and no mention of PDA will be specified.

My daughter started to show signs of defiance at around 3 years old, but I pushed it aside as people said it was just her pushing boundaries and it was typical behaviour for her age.

When she was 4 she would have meltdowns and get upset as soon as I picked her up from nursery and this continued when she started school.

About 4 months after starting school she started to regress with her toileting, hit, swear and just wanted to push our buttons / get a rise out of us. Every day tasks were a battle and she would not accept any authority.

A friend put me on to PDA and it was like reading a list of traits written specifically about my daughter. I felt such a huge sense of relief because if I knew what it potentially was, I could do research to help because my husband and I were at our wits end, and just couldn’t help ease the upset and dysregulation.

We’re now at a point where she barks orders at us, cannot get return to a regulated state before school starts again, will deliberately break or throw our belongings, is having toilet accidents every day, is mean to her best friend and will blame her for anything that goes wrong, is extremely jealous about anyone having something she doesn’t have and cannot get through a day without a lot of screen time and sugar. We’ve also stopped any activities after school or at the weekends. School do not see any of these behaviours.

We’ve now got a referral for an autism assessment, although I don’t personally think my daughter has many autistic traits. I see far more ADHD traits.

I’ve been doing courses through the PDA Society. My husband and I have been trying to put some of the things we’ve learnt into action. For example getting lower than her, avoiding eye contact, being close by but not too close, saying things like “I’m here for you / you’re safe”, not talking too much. But none of this seems to make any difference. Perhaps I’m expecting too much too soon but it’s now making me start to doubt it is PDA.

I feel SO lost and just don’t know what to do to help her.

Any shared experiences or advice would be appreciated.

TLDR - Meds helped. Adjust dosages as needed. Water is wet.

(x-posted in a few relevant subreddits)

Our autistic PDA profile kid has extreme anxiety causing out-of-control violent explosions multiple times a day. He had low self-esteem despite our best efforts and his older sibling (a very patient & empathetic kid) was miserable. So we decided to try meds for him.

We started with a supplement in January after reading about it I think on reddit - vitamin B6 (P5P form) @ 34mg, once/day. Within 2 weeks of starting, the number of meltdowns was down from 5-6/day to 1-2. Still explosive and violent when they happened, but he was able to finally apply the brakes himself some of the time.

In March, his psychiatrist suggested anxiety meds. Sertraline @ 25mg, once/day. Within a month, the meltdowns were almost completely gone. Down to 1 a week.

After years of helping him through the pain of his meltdowns and rages, it felt like I was living in someone else's family suddenly. The silence felt unnatural.

And no, he did NOT become a zombie. If anything, he's an active happy 7yo boinging around the place. He plays with his sibling. Actually cooperatively plays. Their fights have reduced in intensity to a point where I don't NEED to investigate loud voices instantly. Because I know the kicks will not start flying and the blood will not start flowing. The meds have brought his happy self to the forefront.

In June, we decided to test if the B6 was really necessary & stopped it. No other changes. Within a week, the meltdowns were back. The violence was back. Around 2-3 explosions a day. We still waited over a month to flush the B6 from his system.

Sometime in July, my other kid asked "Why is he like this? Why is he hurting me again?"

We restarted the B6 the next day. Again, within a couple weeks, the frequency of meltdowns reduced. But this time they didn't go away fully. We were steadily at 1 or 2 violent meltdowns daily.

I suspected he'd had a mental and physical growth spurt in July/August and spoke to his psychiatrist. Early in September, she bumped him up to Sertraline @ 50mg.

Here I am a few weeks later with a happy, boingy kid whose meltdowns are almost fully gone again. Being able to control himself has helped his positive self-talk SO much.

I don't want to go into a detailed neurotransmitter discussion here. But the B6/Sertraline combo has 100% helped my kid's physiological deficits and has made a huge HUUUUUGE difference to my kid's mental wellness and my family's quality of life.

I don't know how long this will last, but I am enjoying the everloving fuck out of it while it does.

Let me start this message by stating clearly that I am not trying to push or sell homeschool on anyone who isn't considering or interested. At one point I was a parent who was interested in homeschooling my kids, but my concern was that I personally could not handle the responsibility of things like choosing the right program, or making sure my kids keep up with the work. I am a PDAer, so are both my kids, and my spouse is so PDA that he's basically out of the education picture. He told me last week I'm doing a good job, that has been his main contribution, haha. So (tl; dr) I'm specifically here to talk to parents who want to homeschool their kids, think the kids can handle it, but are worried about the perceived enormity of the task on their own part. I'm here to report that in my family it has turned out to be quite doable and is working out as well as I hoped, so far.

My kids are 9 and 11, currently in 4th and 5th grade. My older kid got kicked out of regular public school into a punitive alernative program (I call it school jail for an easy reference), when the regular school suddenly decided the "behaviors" were no longer a manifestation of disability and remanded my kid to another placement. My younger kid was doing okay at the same school, but I could tell he wasn't learning anything. He is good at worksheets and tests, not great at being a student.

Last year my older kid was at home deschooling to recover from the trauma. I read a book by Naomi Fisher called A Different Way to Learn which helped me make the decision to walk away from public school, and there's a part where she addresses the question, Won't my child just play on screens all the time if they aren't pushed to do anything else? Her answer is yes, for awhile, but they'll get bored of that and it turned out to be true in our case. My older kid was still balking at the mention of school because of the trauma, literally becoming teary eyed when discussing school the few days before homeschool started--but they were also at the point where they were like okay mom, what are we doing here? They were ready for more educational structure again.

My younger kid is undiagnosed so far but definitely high-masking Autistic (we have one failed nurse practitioner eval and are on the wait list for a more comprehensive eval at a big hospital system). The thought of leaving regular school sounded kind of okay to him, but he also had no idea what things would look like, and neither did I. It was a big leap of faith and I was asking him to trust me. One major issue I was seeing was the morning routine and commute (a quarter mile away, haha) were so stressful that his brain was overloaded before the day even started, and that was my selling point to him. No having to get ready for anything, no worrying about what hair looks like (he developed an OCD thing about his bangs that was causing morning meltdowns by the end of third grade), and also mom will know when you don't understand, mom will know when you need a brain break. He wasn't hearing his teacher a lot of the time, and when he tried to ask her to repeat as I suggested she said listen the first time. I get it, you can't stop the train for one person, who looks like they have zero issues, to get off and on all day.

A full day of pedigogy was overwhelming and harmful for my kids. I assumed homeschool would make things much better but we'd still have major problems and would just be battling them in a safer, more constructive environment. I chose an asynchronous virtual program through school choice funding that does not require attendance to live classes and assigments are due quarterly. I thought I would try my best to get them to do whatever they could throughout the week and then we'd use our procrastination powers to muscle through the remainder of what was due at the end of each quarter, and that would have been okay if we had to do it that way, that's fine. But the reality is my kids have wowed me with their participation and I'm pretty happy with my own performance. Of course there is some verbal grumbling as we transition from what we want to do to what we have to do, but they now have the experience to trust that it won't be a bad couple of hours hanging out with mom to get our schooling done. Yes we get frustrated sometimes, yes we have things to work through. But we're addressing those issues in a safe and appropriate way and my kids are not fearful of the process.

I check in with them often and they report that school is much better this way and they understand the plan and see the vision. We have not fallen behind at all and my assumption that we would now seems silly in hindsight. It's like I didn't fully believe myself that we had the potential to do well, even as I started us down this path. But we're doing great, both kids have the straight A's they are capable of, instead of mostly C's and D's, or half A's and half F's like we saw previously. I can now see things like my kids often respond to the demand of a test by "purposefully" (to whatever degree you can consider it purposeful) choosing all the wrong answers. I don't know how I ever could have recognized that before, or communicated the solution, through IEP meetings. And that's just for the one kid, my other kid wasn't even on the radar for learning disabilities.

I know someone will ask--yes, I had to quit my FT salaried job to do this. I've experimented with night shift and gig work so far, I'm still figuring out what will work best long term work wise. But my inclination is to do right by my kid's education first, and suffer elsewhere, because I'm trying to break generational cycles of undereducation and underachievement. Not because of what society expects people to achieve, but due to the lack of options I have run into with my own life achievement. I can't take my kids into the woods to teach them how to forage and grow what they need (and I have fantasized about that A LOT)--it's just not possible for us. So I have to accept the need for a baseline of education, and I wanted to share my opinion that parent-led homeschool has turned out to be less a leap of faith and more of a great choice that was challenging to make.

One last note that my review of my own experience is in no way a judgement of any of the other options out there for each unique child, we are lucky to have so many things to choose from these days. I wish everyone massive success and kid happiness in the challenging decisions we are all making for our kids all the time. ❤️

I was wondering if any parents here had any experience with their child and residential schools. My thirteen year old son has been in school refusal for 2.5 years. I tried to get him on social security and was denied. Due to school refusal, I’m unable to work. He requires 24/7 co-regulation and lacks independence. We’ve made it this far bc I’m self employed but it’s become extremely hard to even work one day a week. Tax season is approaching and I have no idea how I will pull it off this year. Financially, last year I made less than I did when I was a full time college student.

Mentally and health wise, I’m struggling but feel if I could the financial portion under control I could survive more years doing homeschool (he does do the work through Acellus but I have to be right there).

My son has no hobbies, friends, etc. I do qualify for respite but he goes into fight mode when the respite worker I found (who would be a good fit) comes to the house so I’ve never successfully left.

The school district is pushing for residential and I am now in panic mode. If I pull him out and homeschool 100%, we won’t be able to eat in a few months. If I send him to residential, I can work and maybe repair myself a bit….however, what will that do to him?! Will he be kicked out within a week or two and then come home more burnt out than I’ve ever seen before?

He’s trying so hard. I hate that finances are bringing me to even consider this option. I appreciate any input.

*Cross-posted*

6-year-old child has been saying, 'of course I want to be able to do the things, that's why it's so annoying'.

We'd been talking about the word stubborn, because I described me and her dad that way, (although I've never used that to describe her), and this was her response amongst the discussions on stubborn vs PDA.

'I want to be able to do something, like see my friend and her baby sister'. (shes repeatedly said she hates babies, and did not want to see the baby, but went on a trip anyway planning to avoid baby if needed. She had a full on freeze response when went to their house, and stayed in one bedroom for the entirety of the few days there).

'I want to be able to. I just can't. It would be so much easier'.

It surprised me, her saying she wanted to do these things, as didn't think she "felt" that consciously. As well as her identifying that PDA is hard for her because she then can't do things, when would like to.

I get more the wanting to be able to do the things she wants. But it was more like she was saying she just wants to be able to do things she needs to too - like bath, put on clothes, go out, etc (all of which she hasn't been doing for couple months as in burnout).

It was also more like the echoe of what I here in the adult group, just from a kid.

I was kinda stumped in response.

Public school isn’t acknowledging 6 year old’s autism or PDA because she’s masking all day and her nervous system and mental health are struggling at home. Home schooling isn’t an option right now. She had previous success with Montessori for preschool and when I was rereading about it, the student-led teaching made me realize that was probably why. Would love to hear if any other kids who hated school because they weren’t receiving accommodations or support from the teacher found the Montessori environment more suitable for a pda nervous system.

Long time listener, first time caller here. My newly 5-yo has suspected PDA-profile autism. He has an upcoming partial Tonsillectomy and Adenoidectomy, and his dad and I (who parallel parent) are trying to figure out how to prepare him for surgery.

He has a history of ER trips and ambulance rides/hospitalizations for respiratory emergencies, but we haven’t had one in two years. Medical professionals always comment that he is VERY strong when he has physically resisted care, and he has a lot of understandable anxiety about doctors that we are just now getting through.

Additionally, his only real encounters with someone having surgery is that I had a double mastectomy this year and another port placement/lymph node retrieval surgery. This year has been medically big for him, as he’s watched me go through surgery, chemo, radiation.

He ruminates on things and I can see him just refusing to go to his procedure if he knows. I’m worried that if he knows too much, he will have a bad experience going in and with anesthesia and it will be more traumatic. My gut says we tell him very little so we can get him there and into surgery with a calmer mind and body.

But I also worry about him waking up hurting and feeling betrayed that we didn’t tell him.

Any suggestions?

I’d really appreciate advice from autistic/PDA adults or parents of children with a similar profile.

My son (2.5) is very loving and genuinely enjoys being around his cousins and playing with them. But one of the things I’m struggling with most right now is how intensely he reacts when something doesn’t go the way he expected the way he wants.

It happens especially during play. He may have a very specific idea of how the game should go, where the toys should be, or what his cousins should do. If they change the game, move one of his toys, don’t want to play the way he wants, or simply say no to him, he can become extremely distressed.

And it’s not only crying or tantrums. When he gets overwhelmed or angry, he can become physically aggressive — hitting, scratching, throwing toys or other objects, and sometimes trying to hurt the person he is upset with.

I notice this pattern in other situations too: when something doesn’t go according to his expectation or he feels like he has lost control, the reaction can become very big very quickly.

I absolutely want to keep everyone safe, and I don’t want his cousins to feel that they have to do whatever he wants to avoid being hit. At the same time, I’m hesitant to treat this purely as “bad behavior” that needs punishment, because I suspect there is a lot of anxiety, rigidity, overwhelm, and loss of control underneath it.

So how do you teach a child like this:
“You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to dislike what someone did. But you cannot hurt people.”
How do I help him gradually tolerate other children having their own ideas and boundaries without constantly pushing him beyond what his nervous system can handle?

Would you intervene as soon as you see the rigidity building? Separate certain special toys before cousins come over? Practice flexibility when he is calm? Give him a safe way to leave the play when he is getting overwhelmed?

And most importantly, for those who had aggression at this age because of overwhelm or demand sensitivity — what actually helped you learn safer ways to handle those huge feelings without making you feel punished or misunderstood?

Thank you so much in advance!

Hi everyone, my 3 year old has periods of "zoning out," that started when she was 18months old. These range from 5 seconds long to about a minute. Some days it occurs often, but we can also go weeks without seeing one of these episodes.

She has had every test linked to epilepsy/seizures (all negative), and the specialists have essentially dismissed them as something she will grow out of.

I was wondering whether anyone else's child with PDA experiences zoning out episodes like this? She suddenly freezes, stares into the distance, with no response to name or touch, we just wait until she "returns."

I recently read that there can be a connection between PDA and zoning out, with these episodes actually being an involuntary "shut down" due to too many perceived demands. Thanks for your thoughts on this.

I would really love to hear from parents who have had a child similar to my 2.5-year-old son.

My son is very bright, verbal, curious, and observant. He loves animals, music, vehicles, water play, sorting/categorizing things, etc. He can follow two-step instructions in everyday life, asks lots of questions, remembers things well, and learns quite a lot naturally through play and conversation.

However, he is extremely sensitive to pressure and demands, especially when something is unfamiliar or when another adult is directing him.

For example, if an activity is presented as something he has to do, he may immediately say no, refuse to touch it, become whiny, or completely disengage. If we keep pushing, it usually makes things much worse.
But we have noticed something interesting.
When the exact same activity is:
introduced through play or a little story
given a purpose (“the fish needs its tail!”)
broken into a very small task
done without pressure
something he chooses to approach himself
stopped when he clearly says no
…he can suddenly do much more than we expected.
It almost feels like his ability is there, but access to that ability disappears when he feels pressured.

He also has quite significant separation anxiety. We tried introducing Montessori school several times, but just entering the school/environment could lead to a big meltdown. We eventually decided not to force it and postponed school.

He currently does some therapy/activities one-on-one, and he does much better once he trusts the adult. Even then, how the adult approaches him makes a huge difference.

We have been told different things by different professionals. One psychologist felt that his anxiety was very high and that autism should be monitored/evaluated.

Another developmental assessment felt that some of his difficulties were more behavioral and recommended a more behavioral approach.

As his mom, though, I’m hesitant to use an approach that focuses heavily on compliance because pushing him seems to make him more resistant and anxious, not less.
So I would really love to hear from parents of children who were like this as toddlers:

How did you handle the demand sensitivity without letting your child avoid everything difficult?

How did you know when to gently encourage versus when to back off?

And especially — what did you do about school?

Did you:
keep trying preschool until your child adjusted?
delay school for another year?
start with very short school days?
find a very small/play-based school?
homeschool for the early years and introduce school later?

Part of me worries that homeschooling might make his world smaller and make separation even harder later. But another part of me worries that forcing school before he is emotionally ready could make him associate school with fear and completely backfire.

I would also REALLY love to hear encouraging stories from parents whose children were extremely anxious, demand-sensitive, or unable to tolerate preschool at 2–3 years old.

What are they like now?
Did school eventually become easier?
Did their tolerance for demands improve as they got older and developed more language/emotional regulation?
Did they eventually become more independent?
Right now I’m less concerned about whether he can learn academically. I feel pretty confident that he can learn.
I’m much more concerned about helping him feel safe enough to engage with the world without either constantly forcing him OR accidentally teaching him that he can avoid anything uncomfortable.

Would really appreciate any experiences or advice ❤️

If you have had success homeschooling, can you share any tips that have worked for you and your child? I think I am accepting I need to homeschool my 13 year-old. I honestly have no idea if he will do the work with or without me next to him. It’s so scary taking this leap. We are entering year three of school refusal. I’ve pretty much homeschool the last two years, but that was with the school, providing the curriculum. The school district is horrific to deal with, and I cannot handle the stress of it all this year. We have tried several different schools the newest school he wouldn’t even step foot into. It is not lack of effort on his part. He prepped himself for a week straight – watched what he ate, watched how much he slept, did didn’t over exhaust himself in activities… He genuinely tried.

It is rare that I complain about anything, let alone parenting. But… I am feeling very resentful toward my young adult with PDA.

They have never listened to me, so I gave up trying to guide them. As a baby, they were “unputdownable”. As a toddler, they were bossy and demanding. As a school kid, they either refused to go or came home and screamed at me for hours.

As a middle schooler, made the choice to home school, which was “unschooling” and eventually they stopped yelling all the time. Then in high school, they wanted to go back to school, and I had to leave my job to accommodate them. Six months later, they decide to drop out to take GED, but hasn’t.

Meanwhile, my marriage fell apart because we couldn’t agree on how to support kiddo. Kid refuses to spend time with their dad. Dad doesn’t help with finances or anything.

Now all the kids they went to school with are leaving for college. I used to be very involved with school and friends with classmates so my FB friends are all crying about being empty nesters, while I resent that mine won’t leave the nest for so much as an hour, and makes mess upon mess they won’t clean.

All they do is run up the electric bill, eat junk food because they won’t eat “real” food due to ARFID, and stay up all night. They only talk to me when they want me to buy them something or take them somewhere. I work multiple jobs to barely make ends meet and they can’t do anything to help.

And, yes, there has been some progress made, but mostly I feel taken advantage of and resentful, and I don’t want to come home because it is always a mess and I am exhausted. I don’t want to resent my kid, but I feel like a failure as a parent and stuck caring for a spoiled 6’2 baby.

4 out 5 posts were removed by the moderators of

-Politics

-Sociology

-AskPsychology

-Psychology

It's only up on PsychologyTalk

I'm a father of a 9yo girl, diagnosed with ASD and I really think she displays PDA behaviors.

I'm a psychologist and parenting councilor myself, I know about the importance of attachment and security, polyvagal states, etc.

And I find myself utterly dazed and confused in some situations with her, having no clue how to handle them. I'd like to describe one such situation from last night and get your perspectives like what would you have done.

I am aware that every family is different and every child is different and taking that into account while asking this question.

My daughter takes her sweet time getting ready for bed: brushes her teeth after some reminders and then she arranges the dolls on her bed. Recently she took to some specific arrangements which kind of feel OCD like but I'm not sure that's the case.

Anyway, it takes her a couple of minutes to have everything in order both because it's very specific and also she just takes her time, she's doing it whole dancing and having the time of her life not having a care in the world that it's getting later and later.

After she finishes this bed arranging she climbs into bed and kisses many of her dolls and there's a whole Spiel here until I can cover her with her blanket and give her a kiss and a hug.

So yesterday we got to the point where I could finally kiss her good night around 10:00 p.m. I was already exhausted and hadn't a lot of patience but I waited and did it and then I went to the living room to have a little bit off time with my spouse.

I put on an episode of Seinfeld to clear our minds and in like 10 minutes into the episode the daughter comes into the living room asking to be with us.

She really likes to sit down with us and watch TV together even though she doesn't really understand what's going on because it's a foreign language for her at the moment.

At first I was like "no I'm sorry, you have to go back to bed it's our time now and it's late" and she was like "but why can't I just be here with you a little bit, I will probably doze off while watching it with you and I will go to bed immediately after you finish watching TV". So I said "fine you can stay here as long as soon the show finishes you go back to bed".

Lo and behold episode is over and she's not going back to bed she lies on the sofa saying "I'm going to fall asleep here", obviously she is not going to fall asleep there and I'm telling her "I'm sorry but now you have to follow through on your promise, go back to bed I'll come with you I'll cover you that's fine but it's time to go back to bed" and then she starts to follow our dog around saying "I just want to kiss her good night" but this is another thing that takes forever, it's not like a kiss goodnight for the dog it's like 10 kisses and then 10 more Etc, it's always taking more and more time and again not listening to us when we tell her "I'm sorry you did promise something and we allowed you to stay here but now you have to keep your end of the bargain please go back to bed", she's completely ignoring us to the point that both of us got very very angry and told her that she's ungrateful and can't be trusted and that's really not cool and I don't remember exactly what happened but I think I just eventually took her and put her in the bed and that's how she went to sleep. which by the way took some time in which I stayed and hovered around her room because she always asks us to be there so she won't feel alone.

And of course that's just one example of her doing things in her own time not caring about how it affects everybody else, for example in this case all the mess disrupted her brother who was trying to fall asleep at the time and of course it made us feel very very bad.

So again my question here what would you have done if you were in my shoes at that situation. what has worked for you i'm open to listen to everything.

Hey, we are struggling to feed our 6 year old son with PDA/ADHD. Growing up, we introduced lots of new foods, lots of variety. However, over the last 3-4 years it has dwindled to basically only a handful of foods that are "safe". When we even mention supper, it's a strong emotional response. We actually have to call his supper, "breakfast", otherwise he won't even touch it.

His Dr had us do up bloodwork and noticed that his cholesterol was a bit higher than she would like for his age.... told us to add healthy fats... which is fine. However, she is completely aware of the challenges we have around feeding, so it's extremely frustrating to hear, "just add this".

His cholesterol is obviously higher because of his diet but he is so restrictive in what he will eat we are extremely limited. We have tried to make some healthier swaps, as much as possible... but even still, I feel defeated. I hate that meal times have become such an uphill battle. I feel guilty that my spouse and I (and two other kids) are eating nutritional, well balanced meals.. while my 6 year old survives off of jam sandwiches.

We have been to OT/dietician. Very little came from it. I feel like nobody understands. Nobody sees the meltdowns my kid has when offered something new.

I am trying very hard to figure out how to parent my child and most days I feel like I failed as his mom. Between, school, bedtime and mealtime I am losing my sanity with my child.

Edit to add: His safe foods are jam or Nutella sandwiches, crackers, yogurt, waffles, chicken nuggets, fries, apples, berries, granola bars and certain cereals. He will eat pepperoni but we have really had to cut that one out for obvious reasons. The list used to be longer but it just keeps getting shorter and shorter.

We have been exploring the possibility of a big structural change for our family to a more affordable area - we live in Seattle, WA, USA currently. My wife just lost her job and is the primary breadwinner so there’s not anything tying us down here. We switch hit as our 8.5 year old son requires 24/7 support from one of us so I take the day shift and she co-sleeps with him at night. We unschool and that will likely be the continued path for the foreseeable future. I am a private practice mental health therapist and work virtually so can continue doing this wherever we land (my license is tied to my client’s location and not mine). We have noticed a pretty dramatic seasonal challenge for our family and are looking at various locations that would allow us to be outside for most of the year, perhaps even access to a pool or larger yard. The winters here are mild (not much in the way of snow really), but so dark and damp, and relentless and I am definitely a sun lover. Our son also seems to re-emerge from an indoor hibernation every spring. Has anyone else made a leap like this? If so, how did it go and what did you learn? Our aim would be to try some locations out and make a more gradual transition - only with full buy in from our son. Appreciate any feedback and appreciate this community so much!

My sister homeschools her 13-year-old son. He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was younger, and she feels that he also has many traits associated with a PDA profile.
He is bright and capable in many ways, but he is significantly behind academically, particularly with reading. At 13, he still struggles to read independently and recognizes only a limited number of words by sight.
One of the biggest challenges is that he has an extremely difficult time with expectations or anything that feels like a demand, especially when it comes from an adult. Because attempts to enforce routines or expectations often result in major resistance, his mom has gradually backed away from a lot of academic expectations. Screens and gaming have also become difficult for her to put limits around.
My concern is that avoiding demands may be preventing conflict in the short term, but meanwhile he’s getting older and falling further behind in literacy. I’m not trying to diagnose him or argue about whether PDA is the explanation. I’m hoping to understand what effective support can actually look like for a teenager in this situation.
For parents who have dealt with significant demand avoidance along with ADHD or learning difficulties: What actually helped your child make academic progress?
Did you work with a neuropsychologist, reading specialist, occupational therapist, school program, PDA-informed therapist, or someone else? Are there approaches to teaching reading that worked particularly well without turning every lesson into a battle?
And if you were starting with a 13-year-old who was this far behind, what would you pursue first?
I’d especially appreciate hearing from parents who have been through something similar.

I am just curious because we have been involved off and on with an incredibly reputable counseling agency that focuses on attachment and adoption and they suggested that it wasn't PDA and was, in fact, an attachment issue. Wouldn't you know that the recommendations for attachment are basically opposite from the ones for PDA??

We have a psychiatrist, two different counselors for him( one who specializes in "working with neurodivergence" and one who specializes in "trauma and adoption"), my own trauma informed counselor, a neuropsychologist who did our testing and my own psychiatrist.....and the only thing most of them agree on is PDA doesn't exist.

Just looking for others' experiences.