Low-Demand Parenting and Why It's Important
Parenting can be a wild ride full of constant adjustments and tweaks. My husband and I used to joke that it was a "co-evolutionary arms race" as we tried to keep up with our daughter's changing needs. We have two doctorates (mine in clinical psychology, his in education). With my background in clinical psychology and my husband's in education, we thought we had all the tools and strategies to handle any challenge that came our way. But sometimes, nothing seemed to work, and we found ourselves at a loss for how to parent our daughter. We would often ask ourselves, “If we can’t figure this out with our backgrounds, who can?!”
We quickly realized that our bright, intelligent daughter could sense when we were trying to influence her into a specific response. Rewards and threats of consequences only made things worse. As the stay-at-home parent, I found myself getting caught up in her meltdowns and feeling like a terrible mother. My nervous system was constantly on edge, and I struggled to understand why parenting felt so incredibly hard.
When she was first diagnosed as Autistic, it helped explain some of our struggles, but we still felt like there was something missing. That’s when we learned about PDA, which became the missing piece of the puzzle in understanding our child. Through our exploration of PDA, we discovered the concept of low-demand parenting, which is often associated with PDA advocacy and parenting groups. But before we dive into low-demand parenting, let's first unpack what PDA is and what it isn't.
There is a lot of information in this article (my Autistic brain just kept going with it, feel free to save it for later in taking in the pieces of information that feel useful).
What is Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)
Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) is a term that has historically been used to describe a profile of autism. However, an increasing number of individuals identifying with this profile are beginning to use “Pervasive Drive for Autonomy” instead (coined by Tomlin Wilding), better capturing the underlying core need. Demands are only a problem insofar as they threaten autonomy, and for people with PDA, autonomy equals safety. Any threat to that autonomy is perceived as dangerous, triggering a fight, flight, or freeze response.
The neurodivergent nervous system tends to be more rigid, meaning it more easily flips into a stressed state. In the case of PDA, there is almost no window of tolerance, so simple, everyday demands like “put on your shoes” can lead to big emotional reactions.
People with PDA can vacillate in their mood. On the one hand, they can be absolutely charming and light up the room (particularly when they have control and autonomy). On the other hand, when they feel threatened, they can appear excessively controlling and dominating, engaging in ways that may feel manipulative to others. Understanding the neurobiology behind PDA can help parents and caregivers respond with more attunement and empathy rather than frustration and confusion (and for PDAers it can lead to greater self-compassion).
Characteristics of Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)
Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) is not yet an official medical diagnosis, but there are several core characteristics associated with it. While demand avoidance is the most widely discussed characteristic of PDA, other traits cluster with the PDA profile, which can lead to confusion for parents and healthcare professionals. The PDA Society in the UK has outlined the following core characteristics of PDA:
Resists and avoids the ordinary demands of life
Avoids demands to an extreme extent and to their own detriment, including things they enjoy
Uses Social Strategies as part of their avoidance
May be very good at ‘masking’ difficulties with certain people or in certain situations and using social strategies as part of the avoidance
May present differently in different settings depending on anxiety levels
For instance, PDAers may employ various tactics such as distracting, excuse-making, outright refusal, threatening, or engaging in role-playing to avoid demands. At other times their bodies may become immobilized in the face of the demand, and they will state, “my legs don't work”)
Strategies are “hierarchical,” meaning the PDAer may start with lower-arousal strategies like procrastination or excuse-making. However, they will progress to panic, self-harm, or meltdown if those strategies haven’t worked.
Appears sociable on the surface
Difficulties in social communication and understanding may be less obvious initially
Likely to have good verbal fluency, disguising difficulties in understanding and processing verbal communication
Likely to struggle to understand or see social hierarchy (will want to be co-teachers, co-parents and have the same social role as authority figures)
Experiences excessive mood swings and impulsivity
Experience extreme emotional reactions
Some individuals are ‘internalizers’ and become quiet/withdrawn; others could be described as ‘externalizers,’ and emotional reactions tend to be more obvious
Individuals’ flight, fight, freeze, or fawn responses are outward representations of the body’s instinctual response to physiological stress
“Obsessive” behavior, often focused on other people
Likely to have developed passionate interests and be able to be hyper-focused
‘Obsessive’ behavior that is often social in nature (may show up as an extreme love or hate)
Appears comfortable in role play and pretend, sometimes to an extreme extent
Play can appear imaginative
When they involve others in their role-play, children with PDA are usually very controlling of the themes, roles, and dialogue
Other features of PDA include masking and strengths such as a strong sense of justice and fairness, independence, charisma, creativity, compassion, humor, imagination, and tenacity. Individuals with PDA face a great deal of misunderstanding and are frequently misdiagnosed with behavioral disorders. This can lead to blame being placed on them and the parents for their explosive meltdowns and responses to autonomy threats, leaving parents feeling helpless and confused after trying a variety of therapies, medications, and parenting tactics.
In order to support individuals with PDA effectively, it is crucial to recognize and understand the characteristics of this condition. However, PDA can perplex many clinicians as it often goes unrecognized and can complicate the identification of autism due to its masking or influencing the presentation of Autistic traits.
Why Does PDA Cause Diagnostic Confusion
Dr. Donna Henderson, an expert on non-stereotypical presentations of autism, has identified several clinical characteristics of PDA that contribute to its diagnostic confusion. She explains in her blog post, “PDA: Not what you think it is!”:
"These individuals tend to have better eye contact and better social reciprocity than most with autism, and they can often appear to be socially typical. Their relatively good superficial social skills often make people wonder whether or not they are really on the autism spectrum (but in my experience, they are)."
Additionally, PDAers tend to be more socially savvy than most people with autism, and they can use sophisticated strategies (often perceived as manipulative) to regain a sense of autonomy. Furthermore, the presentation of PDA can vary depending on the context, making it difficult to diagnose. As Dr. Henderson notes,
"Individuals with PDA can do really well for short periods of time and then (seemingly) all of a sudden stop doing well (Jekyll and Hyde), which makes it look like their behavior is entirely volitional (it isn’t)."
This inconsistency can lead to misdiagnosis, particularly when the child is able to mask well in certain settings. For example, "Some PDAers only struggle in one setting. So, they might do well at school (camouflage) and then completely fall apart at home. Conversely, they might do well at home (if there are low demands) but fall apart with the demands of school."
Finally, PDAers may not exhibit the same need for a routine that is characteristic of autism. Dr. Henderson explains, "PDAers may not do as well with routine and seem to need more novelty than most autistic individuals." These differences in presentation make PDA a perplexing case for many clinicians, leading to misdiagnosis and misunderstanding of the condition.
Parenting PDA
Parenting a child with PDA can be a challenging experience, as demands and requests can trigger a threat response in the child. With hundreds of demands placed on children each day, parents may inadvertently contribute to their child's stress and anxiety. Everyday tasks like brushing their teeth, getting dressed, and answering questions can become a source of conflict and emotional distress for children with PDA. And when they go to school, they may face even more demands that exacerbate their difficulties. Interestingly, a significant percentage of children with PDA do not thrive in traditional school environments, further complicating the situation for parents.
Given the unique challenges associated with this condition parenting a child with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) can be a daunting task. PDA is characterized by an overwhelming sense of anxiety and avoidance when faced with demands or expectations. Traditional parenting techniques that rely on firm boundaries and consequences may not be effective for PDA children. This is where Low Demand Parenting comes in.
What is Low Demand Parenting?
Low Demand Parenting is a low-arousal approach that prioritizes reducing stress and anxiety levels in children with PDA. It is based on trust, flexibility, collaboration, and a balanced approach to demands. It involves adapting the environment and activities to the child's unique needs and preferences and allowing the child to take the lead in their play and activities. As Amanda Diekman, author of Low Demand Parenting explains it: “Low-demand parenting allows you to drop the demands and expectations that are making family life impossible and embrace the joyful freedom of living life with low demands.”
When working with PDA children, the goal is to help them stay out of fight-and-flight mode. If we try to do interventions to try to get the kids to change, it’s not going to end well. We need to build an environment that feels safe for the child. Gaining a lens for understanding demands and autonomy threats while becoming flexible in our demands is critical for fostering a safe environment.
Parenting a child with PDA can be challenging, but by adopting a low-demand parenting approach, parents can create a safe environment for their child to grow and thrive. Here are a few basic practices you can implement to support your PDA child:
Supporting your PDA Child (Credit: Adapted from PDA Society)
✦ Prioritizing flexible and collaborative approaches that foster a sense of autonomy, rather than making the child feel controlled by others, while still maintaining appropriate boundaries.
✦ Using indirect communication styles and depersonalizing requests to minimize the perception of demands and reduce stress.
✦ Employing low-arousal strategies that help keep anxiety levels to a minimum and provide a sense of control while also allowing for some flexibility and choice.
✦ Allowing plenty of time to process questions and information, and avoiding rushing communication, to reduce stress and overwhelm.
✦ Being mindful of sensory overload and taking steps to minimize it, such as creating a calm and quiet environment and providing sensory supports as needed.
Low-arousal approaches are essential when it comes to parenting a child with PDA. Traditional parenting techniques that rely on firm boundaries and consequences, such as those used with other children or even those recommended for autism, may prove to be ineffective or even counterproductive for PDA children. Instead, a low-arousal approach can be more successful, keeping anxiety levels to a minimum and providing a sense of control.
This type of approach is based on trust, flexibility, collaboration, careful use of language, and a balanced approach to demands. It aims to reduce the demands placed on the child and provide an environment that minimizes stress and anxiety. This approach recognizes that the child's needs are unique and require tailored solutions that take into account their individual differences.
Is Low-Demand Parenting Permissive Parenting?
When first learning about low-demand parenting, there may be some confusion as to whether it is a form of permissive parenting where there are no boundaries or expectations for the child's behavior. However, this is not the case. Low-demand parenting is a unique approach to parenting that prioritizes reducing stress and anxiety for the child while still maintaining appropriate boundaries and expectations.
Rather than imposing demands or punishments, low-demand parenting involves adapting the environment and activities to the child's unique needs and preferences and allowing the child to take the lead in their play and activities. Strategies such as redirection and reframing demands are used to provide structure and guidance while still respecting the child's autonomy.
Permissive parenting, on the other hand, may appear to involve reducing demands and allowing the child to do as they please, but it does not involve setting clear boundaries or expectations. This can create confusion and anxiety for the child due to a lack of structure and predictability.
Low-demand parenting involves finding a balance between meeting the child's needs and providing structure and guidance without imposing unnecessary stress and anxiety. The goal is to create a supportive and nurturing environment that fosters the child's growth and development while minimizing stress and frustration. By setting clear expectations and boundaries while prioritizing the child's emotional and psychological well-being, low-demand parenting helps children to feel more supported, connected, and secure while also learning important life skills and behaviors.
Incorporating Low-Demand Parenting in Practice
Low-demand parenting involves a variety of practices, but three core strategies stand out as particularly important:
Becoming demand-aware
Dropping demands
Reducing the perception of demands
Parents need to be aware of the demands placed on their children and drop non-critical demands to reduce stress levels. They can also use strategies such as redirection and reframing demands rather than imposing demands or punishments. By reducing the perception of demands, parents can help create a supportive and nurturing environment that fosters the child's growth and development while minimizing stress and frustration.
Becoming Demand-Aware
The first step in implementing low-demand parenting is to become aware of the many demands that our children experience on a daily basis. By putting ourselves in our child's shoes and considering life from their perspective, we can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges they face. One way to do this is to take an inventory of the demands our children experience throughout the day.
To get started, take a walk through your child's day and make a note of every demand they encounter. You may be surprised at just how many there are! This exercise can help us to recognize the sheer volume of demands our children face and can help us to better understand their struggles.
Dropping Demands
Once we become aware of the demands our children face, the next step is to consider which demands are truly critical and which can be dropped. This can be particularly important during times of burnout or overwhelm when reducing demands can help our children to feel more in control and less stressed.
It's important to remember that what constitutes a critical demand may vary from family to family and even from day-to-day. For example, going to a therapy appointment may be a critical demand for one family but not for another. By prioritizing critical demands and dropping non-critical demands, we can help our children to better manage their daily load and reduce stress.
As a parent of an Autistic PDAer, it's important to discern between critical and non-critical demands, especially during burnout periods. For instance, while eating dinner together as a family wasn't critical for us, we recognized that our child needed space during high sensory days and allowed them to eat in their room. On the other hand, attending the long-awaited occupational therapy appointment was a critical demand for us, while going to Tae-Kwon-Do was a demand we could drop.
One of the biggest challenges for our family, and many others, was that most interventions aimed at supporting Autistic children felt like demands, including therapy, medication, and occupational therapy. To balance expectations and autonomy, we took an option approach where we provided a buffet of options for our child to choose from.
We communicated the overarching need and let our child decide, creating a framework with clear expectations while also honoring their autonomy. I call this the “bucket approach” (because the bucket is non-negotiable, but within the bucket, our child has several options to choose from). This "bucket approach" is a frequently used strategy in our family.
Reducing the Perception of Demands
Finally, we can work to reduce the perception of demands by using language, tone, and other strategies that help to frame requests in a more positive, choice-oriented way. This can include using declarative language, rephrasing requests to talk about objects rather than people, and incorporating elements of choice into requests. The PDA society has an in-depth list of how to reduce the perception of demands, and several of the following recommendations are adapted from their recommendations.
Consider Your Language: Use declarative language, rephrase requests to talk about objects rather than people, and start requests with "please" to reduce the perception of demands. Phrases like "I wonder whether..." and "Let's see if..." also incorporate an element of choice.
Phrasing and Tone: Be mindful of using a low-arousal and non-demanding tone of voice, as tone and sound can signal safety or threat for the nervous system.
Take a Collaborative Approach: Engage in collaborative problem-solving to approach challenges together.
Monitor Your Energy: PDAers are sensitive to the energy of others, so be aware of your own energy and how it may impact your child.
Outsource Demands and Depersonalize: Explain that requirements are made by some higher authority or incorporate them into daily routines, post-its, or to-do lists to depersonalize demands and reduce uncertainty.
Support Sensory Safety and Regulation: Many PDAers have sensory integration and sensory disabilities, so create a sensory-safe environment and support their sensory regulation.
Limit Demands: Use declarative statements and be mindful of your language to reduce implicit demands.
Activate and Accommodate: Distract from demands by turning them into a game or incorporating interests to tap into intrinsic motivation.
Use Humor and Novelty: Use humor to make everyone feel more relaxed and incorporate novelty to keep things interesting.
Slow Down Communication: Give ample time to process questions and information to reduce overwhelm and prevent rushing communication.
Ask for Help: Say that you don't know or can't remember how to do something to perceive the child's autonomy while requesting support.
Offer Choices: Give the child some control by offering limited or free choices within certain parameters to maintain autonomy.
By implementing these core practices of low-demand parenting, we can create a more supportive and understanding home environment that helps our children to manage their daily demands more effectively.
Lower Demand Lifestyle
Before concluding the discussion on low-demand parenting, it's important to also highlight the value of supporting a low-demand lifestyle for the entire family. If we only focus on low-demand parenting within the home, we miss an essential component of creating a supportive environment for children with PDA. In today's fast-paced and high-demand culture, it's challenging to slow down and establish a lifestyle grounded in simplicity and connection. However, a low-demand lifestyle can be beneficial for the entire family by supporting natural rhythms and routines.
Prioritizing a lower-demand lifestyle involves creating a home culture that resists the culture of busyness and reduces the demands placed on both parents and children. This includes creating space for rest, reflection, and connection, simplifying schedules, and prioritizing self-care. By supporting a low-demand lifestyle for the whole family by reducing demands placed on both parents and children, families can create space for rest, reflection, and connection.
Adopting a low-demand lifestyle can help families align with their innate human nature and foster a more sustainable, connected, and fulfilling life. It's not just about reducing individual demands but creating a culture of simplicity and ease that benefits everyone. It's about embracing a more intentional and mindful way of living, where the focus is on what truly matters: connection, well-being, and a sense of meaning.
Where to Go From Here?
If you're looking for further resources and guidance on PDA, there are several great options available.
✦ Dr. Donna Henderson and I partnered up to host Neurodivergent Insights’ first Master Class, where you get a deep dive into understanding what PDA is and what it is not. The 90-minute master class is currently on sale for 19.99 (the normal price 29.99).
✦ Amanda Diekman (Author of Low Demand Parenting and PDAer) is hosting a 2024 Low Demand Parenting summit with a great lineup of speakers! It’s free if you attend live, or you can access all access pass to watch at a leisurely pace.
Other PDA Resources
✦ The PDA Society also offers a variety of free resources and guides, including a comprehensive booklet on what PDA is, as well as their PANDA approach to implementing low-arousal strategies in parenting. Their guide for parents of PDAers is particularly helpful.
✦Another excellent resource is Amanda Diekman's book, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with Your Uniquely Wired Child. This book offers practical advice and guidance for implementing low-demand parenting strategies in your home.
References
Identifying and Assessing PDA: https://www.pdasociety.org.uk/what-is-pda-menu/identifying-assessing-pda/
What is PDA? booklet www.pdasociety.org.uk/resources/what-is-pda-booklet and information sheet www.pdasociety.org.uk/resources/what-is-pda-information-sheet
Henderson, Donna, Ph.D. PDA: Not what you think it is! www.drdonnahenderson.com/post/grow-your-blog-community
Diekman, Amanda. Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with Your Uniquely Wired Child
