The PDA Paradox: The Highs and Lows of My Life on a Little-Known Part of the Autism Spectrum

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Caring for a child or young person with additional needs or disability is tiring and, in a big county like Cambridgeshire, can be extremely isolating.

We were asked to leave several mother and toddler groups and therapy groups because when he attacked me, it was relentless, intense and full on. net/publication/329001126_An_Interest_Based_Account_Monotropism_theory_explanation_of_anxiety_in_Autism_a_Demand_Avoidance_Phenomenon_discussion (Accessed 24 November 2018). We have a number of trained volunteers who help out at our clubs and activities for children and young people. I also need the word “violence” if I am going to fully acknowledge how I unknowingly perpetuated it in my own home before I came to understand how my son’s brain worked -- the moments when I demanded that my Autistic son look at me, answer me, when I moved his body against his will, shut him behind closed doors for “time-outs” or insisted that he eat something he registered as a threat to his safety.Alison works within schools training staff on how to best support autistic children regarding sensory issues. minute read - Planned Ignoring, or attention extinction, is an abusive technique recommended by Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for autism treatment. Another way that demands affect us is that, when I do ask him not to do something, he, of course, generally avoids acknowledging that I have said anything, which triggers my need for control over the situation as he is refusing to be under my control – which, honestly, I can totally understand and respect. There’s an old saying ‘knowledge is power’ but I think there is a far more important benefit when it comes to autism or autism related conferences, and that is; ‘knowledge is understanding’. The goal is to help these people heal and to teach the world that this behavior is abusive and not tolerated.

During E's time in this hellish environment, she would have frequent Autistic meltdowns, for which she was severely rebuked and invalidated.There are several ways to either complain and ask for an investigation (family could do this) or by writing yourself to the CEO of the Trust involved. To not have control of my body or if I can speak or not is akin to sitting in a pit filled with spiders. There’s a diagnosis that describes these characteristics: pathological demand avoidance, or PDA (although many autistic people and professionals working with them prefer the term pervasive drive for autonomy — but more on that later. Then there was the young boy with PDA who wouldn’t learn how to read — until his Xbox broke and he couldn’t understand the instruction manual.