Children who change the world

Demand Avoidant young people and clear-sighted honesty

I have had the luck to work with some very clear-sighted and forthright young people.  There was Jack, who would spend time with me until he’d had enough, when he’d say ‘Naomi, can you leave now?’. 

Then there was Amelia, who could walk into a room, pick up on any tension and would express it to everyone, usually by saying ‘Let’s go home’ (but not as politely).   Simeon, who would greet visitors to his home with ‘Go away’ when he was in the middle of doing something – he knew that they were likely to distract his parents and that his pleasant activity would be over.  Or sometimes he’d just shout ‘No talking Mummy’, to make it clear that this was not the time for distractions.

Then there are of course the many children who have given school a try, and who have had the bravery to say  ‘This isn’t a good place for me, I’m not going back’.   Children who break the mould, and who say very clearly ‘This isn’t working’. Children who say No.

We don’t tend to value clear-sighted honesty in children. It embarrasses us, for most of us have learnt as adults to keep what we think to ourselves, to hide our emotions and to pretend that everything is fine. 

We’ve learnt to keep our mouths close in case of upsetting someone else, and as a result, we end up doing things we don’t want to do, or spending time with people when we’d really rather go home.  Many of us have spent years honing the skills of NOT saying what we think, and now along comes a child who blows that out of the water.   A child who says No. No matter how hard we try to persuade them to say Yes.  It’s common for parents to feel lost. The harder they try, the louder the No’s get.

There are many different ways to understand these children, and one is through the lens of demand avoidance.   For some, this means a diagnosis of pathological demand avoidance (PDA) or autism with a PDA profile. 

May 8th is Awareness Day. Organised by the PDA Society, it’s a day for raising awareness, increasing acceptance and taking action. This year the theme is PDA In Our Words.

To celebrate, we are offering you 50% off our courses which are about demand avoidance or low demand approaches. That includes the low demand parenting series with Eliza Fricker, the best-selling Demand Avoidance 101 (for parents), The Art of Low Demand Therapy (for professionals) and the new mini-course for teens themselves.   They combine psychological insight with clinical and practical experience – and the mini-course for teens features clips of Chloe from Me Just Me, who is 16 and herself has diagnoses of autism and PDA.

This is a flash sale and will end this Friday (May 10th) at midnight. Please spread the word if you know anyone who would like to (or needs to) learn more about demand avoidance.

(illustration by Eliza Fricker, www.missingthemark.co.uk)