Pathological demand avoidance

And this is a really interesting topic.

And it's something that there's a lot of debate about online, but it's thought that there's a sub profile on the autism spectrum called PDA that, Now, the language around that's changing a bit.

So if we move away from that kind of pathologizing language, PDA initially stood for or stands for pathological demand avoidance.

But people in the community are moving towards more affirming language like pervasive drive for autonomy.

And again, that can be the resistance of demands put upon people by others.

It kind of goes into that place of threat and feels unsafe and therefore you know, that kind of that demand just cannot be met.

So I think it's a really interesting topic.

Some people, um, are quite resistant to it, but certainly in the UK, I think we're a bit more forward thinking and we have a great charity in the UK, uh, called the PDA society, which has some amazing training, particularly for, for people like me who are parents of a child who has a demand avoidant profile of autism.

If you're parenting a PDA or suspected PDA child or teen, and it feels like your whole family is living in a long, slow burnout, you are in the right place.

I'm Casey Erlich, mom of two PDA autistic sons and founder of At Peace Parents.

I'm the co-author of the first peer-reviewed studies on PDA in the United States, and I've supported over 3,000 families as they learn to stabilize daily life with their PDA children and teens.

On this podcast, I help you understand pathological demand avoidance or what I call pervasive drive for autonomy through a PDA affirming trauma aware lens.

We'll talk about how to support your PDA child or teen's autonomy and nervous system, lower the daily conflict at home and protect your own nervous system in the process.

You can expect teaching from my own home and from my work with families, conversations with aligned experts, and simple experiments you can actually try in real life so you can see things start to shift.

The goal isn't a perfect household.

It's moving from constant crisis to more days that feel hard but doable, with moments of real connection, visible progress, and even some humor.

I want you to think what a difference it would make to the child and the family if but also the teacher.

If a teacher has never had a neurodiverse child, they deserve the holidays to maybe do my courses over summer and do the summer school or to listen to a few of my podcasts or doesn't even have to be mine, but get their find some information to understand this child if they're getting a child with PDA and they've never heard of PDA being able to listen to the two PDA podcasts I did this year that have been the most downloaded episodes by the way which just shows people want to know what is PDA and what to do then that is really important so I will let my high horse run away but I just want to remind you The more we prepare, the better for everybody.

Everybody.

It's so important.

And in addition to that, I've also built a, what I call the dashboard, which everybody uses dashboards for different things, but mine is basically a to-do list.

But because I'm autistic with what is called a PDA profile, which is, oops, I knew that was going to happen.

Anyway.

But being PDA, which, I mean, this is not a diagnosable thing, but I completely know that it's true about me, but which is a pathological demand for Demand avoidance, which is the thing that everybody rejects, because that's how it looks like when you're three years old and it looks like you're having a tantrum.

My nervous system kicks up to you.

even after my lived experience of almost 52 years now, and even after 28 years of doing this work, stay with me for this episode because I'm going to be talking about PDA in five ways that we can help support PDA kids.

Welcome to the Autism ADHD Podcast.

It's the place to be for neurodiversity-affirming parents and professionals.

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I think you're going to get a lot from this episode and I hope you consider joining us for other episodes too.

Today, we are talking about PDA, pathological demand avoidance.

You'll also hear it called pervasive drive for autonomy.

If you're parenting a PDA or suspected PDA child or teen, and it feels like your whole family is living in a long, slow burnout, you are in the right place.

I'm Casey Erlich, mom of two PDA autistic sons and founder of At Peace Parents.

I'm the co-author of the first peer-reviewed studies on PDA in the United States, and I've supported over 3,000 families as they learn to stabilize daily life with their PDA children and teens.

On this podcast, I help you understand pathological demand avoidance or what I call pervasive drive for autonomy through a PDA affirming trauma aware lens.

We'll talk about how to support your PDA child or teen's autonomy and nervous system, lower the daily conflict at home and protect your own nervous system in the process.

You can expect teaching from my own home and from my work with families, conversations with aligned experts, and simple experiments you can actually try in real life so you can see things start to shift.

The goal isn't a perfect household.

It's moving from constant crisis to more days that feel hard but doable, with moments of real connection, visible progress, and even some humor.