Reading the linked page has been like reading a summary of my interactions with one of my kids over the years. I’ll be talking to her counselor about it soon. But it looks like this is a condition that’s not well-recognized in the US so I’m not sure how it will go.
Anyone here know about this or even better, have experience with it either as someone with PDA themselves or as someone who has a kid with PDA?
An example that just happened this morning. I was moving a very large and heavy box from my porch to my living room. I said “Will you help me move this please?” and she looked at the box. “What is it?” she asked. I replied “A mattress.” She looked it for a few more seconds, then turned back to the TV without saying a word. I asked “Are you going to help me?” She said “No.” I asked “Why not,” and in perhaps the most honest reply she’s ever given to this question, she just said “I don’t know.”
(More usually the reply would be combativeness and, frankly, bullshit.)
A story from almost seven years ago, when she was five:
I asked her to clean her room. She said no. I told her it wasn’t negotiable. She again refused. I said “If you won’t clean your room, you are not caring for your stuff, which means you cannot have your stuff. I will take all of your stuff out of your room, and will leave only a mattress on the floor for you to sleep on.”
She walked to the couch, maintaining hard eye contact with me. She sat down softly, and said in an even tone (she was five, rememer) “In a long time, you’ll forget about saying that.”
It seems the main line of advice people have for PDA is “well, the kid can’t conform to demands, so the key is not to make demands.” I can make sense of this. But I’m wondering if anyone here has particular experience with the issue.
One thing I’m wondering is whether it would be a good idea to sit the kid down and lay out the nature of PDA and we talk together about strategies. She’s a smart kid.
But I fear this will backfire and give her more strategies for avoidance, having that background knowledge under her belt and thereby being able to see when I’m employing a strategy.
But it feels bad not being upfront with a person about something like this.
I hate to express something fundamentally unsympathetic (because I do, in fact, sympathize) but this is formidable and amazing on the part of your kid.
Yes, she’s had three sessions, and I’ve had some time to talk to the therapist on my own as well as together with my daughter.
At the last session Therapist said we have to be ready for the possibility that what’s going on with my daughter is not something that will change and that we will instead need to develop strategies for working with and around it.
In a session together, daughter therapist and I walked through a difficult situation that had occurred earlier that day. Therapist saw the way daughter refused or was unable to see things from another point of view, to give any acknowledgment or understanding, refused or was unable to accept any strategy for avoiding similar incidents in the future, was singularly focused on proving herself right to the extent of telling very bold and plain lies in order to do so.
Afterwards therapist acknowledged that this is a very difficult case.
Sounds just like one of our relatives. Went to therapy as a kid. The therapist was dating the mother. Um. No. Not good. Also one of those touchy-feely “do whatever you want” types which backfired horribly. (They later realized the mistake. Too late.)
Some of these features sound like Oppositional Defiant Disorder. In fact, on the Wikipedia page for Pathological Demand Avoidance, the first paragraph suggests that the syndromes may be the same.
I’m not sure they actually are the same - it sounds like there are some features distinctive to each that don’t appear in the other. But suggested ways of handling ODD are probably at least worth considering for PDA.
There’s quite a lot of literature available. There’s a website called livesinthebalance.org with a lot of resources related to “behaviorally challenged kids.” It’s run by the author of the book “The Explosive Child.”
There is also the book “Parenting Your Defiant Child” by Alan Kazdin.
I handle child’s disability claims, and have not encountered this one yet. Similar to what Chad Sudan observes above, I’m often curious about efforts to finely discriminate between various types of personality/behavior disorders. But best of luck to the OP.
I don’t actually have any helpful advice for you, but in all seriousness, you do have my sympathy. I taught high school for 10 years, and I can say that some kids (and adults) are simply wired differently, and some are simply, at the very core of their beings, vile, irredeemable assholes. (please understand, I am not suggesting your daughter is the latter)
I think that what you’re describing is a common element in autism (not that all autistic people have it). You’re only 3 sessions in to therapy. My advice is to keep working with a therapist, and look for community resources, like parents’ groups and better support for her at school.
Yes, this is something that can improve, but it’s not going to be overnight. Prepare yourself for picking your battles and moving slowly.
I am upfront with my son about his diagnoses, but we did hold off on telling him when he was younger. This was at the suggestion of his psychiatrist, who thought he was too young to understand what was happening. I would suggest that you speak with her therapist before you talk to your daughter.
What did you do after these encounters? Did you MAKE her help you move the mattress? Did you, in fact, remove all of her stuff out of her room and leave only a mattress on the floor?
“Would you be willing to make a minor and relatively unintrusive change if it would get these people off your back about aspects of your behavior that they keep complaining about? Would you be willing to work with a therapist-person to explore that possibility?”
If you wish her involvement & cooperation, she has to perceive it as useful and a reasonable use of her energies. She may have a very different threshold of willingness to make changes, or even to consider changes, and also a very different threshold of willingness to tolerate “devil that you know” types of intrusions such as people expressing annoyance with her behavior etc, than a different person in the same situation might have.
I’m not very therapy-centric but my inclination would be in the direction of cognitive-behavioral, or what they call “dialectical behavioral”.
Regarding the room, I took her up there with me and started packing away her things and it became a room cleaning session instead.
Regarding the mattress, it just happened two days ago, after I had already started thinking of this as probably a pathology, so I’m currently being a little hands-off about this kind of experience.
With that said, I want to make sure something is clear. At any time, I can force compliance through threats and constant vigilance. (And any compliance required from her for the threat follow-through (being grounded, having no screen time, etc) in turn will require constant vigilance and further threats from me.) This will come in the face of incredible amounts of attempted negotiation, different forms of excuse making, and eventually screaming and possible property destruction. But I can force compliance. The problem is that aside from the dubious benefit of simply securing compliance during the incident, nothing “works” in any more meaningful sense. Even if I force compliance consistently it does not change her behavior on future occasions. Realizing that was what made me start wondering about a pathology a few years ago, and being particularly confronted with it again recently is what made me get really serious about that idea.
It is understandable that someone might assume “the parents probably just weren’t forceful/insistent enough” but we’ve been there, done that, consistently over very long periods of time, through the most heartbreaking parenting experiences you can imagine, and no change resulted. Meanwhile we have three other children who are wonderfully sweet and sensibly (but not slavishly) compliant and cooperative.
Our followthrough and strength of will really hasn’t been the problem here, I promise you. Something else is going on.
Fair enough, thanks for sharing that info. Regarding the room cleaning incident, on subsequent times where you told her to clean her room, did you have to go through the whole “take her up there and start packing away her things” routine, or did she just do it? Or does she just not clean her room when you tell her?
Yeah, I was going to say that the symptoms the OP describes are very similar to the common symptoms of “being a five year old”. Although, I’m not surprised it’s on the autism spectrum. My son (also five) is diagnosed with mild autism. He displays a number of the characteristics the OP describes. He’s not as severe or obstinate as the OP’s daughter. But there is a bit of that rigidity in that he wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it.
Therapy seems to help. As he gets older, he seems less obstinate. It may take a couple of asks, but usually he just give a cute little Humph! Okaaay. I’ll put my Legos away."
So one of the things my son’s therapist does is an exercise where she defines “me” time and “you” time a few minutes at a time with a red/green stoplight card. “Me” time (from my son’s POV) is he gets to drive play. He can basically do what he wants, pay-wise (pick the toys, define the rules, etc). But when the card changes color, it’s the therapist’s time and she picks the toys, makes the rules, etc. and he has to comply.
