"Why does my child always have to argue?" "Why do they correct me all the time?" Why can't they just accept help?" These are questions I hear frequently from parents of children with PDA, and questions I have often asked myself. Have you ever been trying to help your child and have them shout and scream at you, "I don't want your help!" - knowing full well they do? Many of the behaviours that can feel challenging, controlling or even disrespectful are often understood through

As parents, we are often taught to look at behaviour as a choice. If a child is shouting, refusing, running away, lashing out or completely shutting down, our instinct is to ask: “How do I stop this behaviour?” But what if the more useful question is: “What is their nervous system telling us right now?” The concept of the Window of Tolerance, developed by psychiatrist Dan Siegel, helps us understand why children – and adults – can sometimes access their thinking brains and at

Before I became a parent, I had a picture in my head of what family life would look like. I think most of us do, right? My childhood in itself was not your "average" childhood, although what is normal now days. I was raised in a single parent home, my Dad and I lived on our own from the age of 4. My Aunt took a big role in my upbringing and I was raised alongside my 5 cousins; we see each other as siblings and always have. My Nan also played a massive part in my upbringing an

Understanding Pathological Demand Avoidance beyond the Misconceptions If you've recently come across the term PDA, you're probably also discovering how confusing, controversial, emotional and deeply personal the conversation around it can be. Some people describe it as life-changing recognition. Other's question whether it should exist as a separate profile at all. And somewhere in the middle are parents, autistic people and professionals simply trying to understand why ordin

There are moments that stay with you. The sudden shutdown. The fight that comes out of nowhere. The refusal that makes your heart race faster than theirs. From the outside, it might look like defiance, stubbornness or manipulation. But from the inside? It feels like survival. For a long time I have thought it was just anxiety, behaviour or maybe just lack of boundaries. None of those explanations fully captured what we were experiencing. We were self-critical of our parenting