Parenting PDA {Book Review}

The latest book to be published about Pathological Demand Avoidance is Parenting PDA: A Guide to Understanding and Supporting Your Child's Highly Sensitive Nervous System.

Author Rike Brand is a German mum who decided to write the book that she would have loved to read at the beginning of her journey of being parent to a neurodivergent child with a PDA profile. Originally titled and published as 'Neustart PDA' in German speaking countries, the huge success of this book means it has now been translated into English and republished. 

Rike interviewed more than 30 parents and included their quotes from everyday life with a PDA child throughout the book. These insights are hugely valuable and will have many parents and carers of PDA children and young people nodding their heads as they relate to the words. Alongside all the lived experiences, Rike has included many references to scientific sources and current research, something which makes this book stand out from many of those already published on the topic of PDA.

There are 15 comprehensive chapters to this book, titled as follows:

What is PDA?

What do we really know about PDA?

What does PDA look like in daily life?

From A-ha! moment to Diagnosis

When a child falls through the system: five parents share their stories.

Turning point PDA: Learning a new way of parenting

Your guiding star: A regulated child

Preserving capacity: Low demand parenting

Reducing stresses: PDA friendly accommodations in daily life

Burnout: Managing life in emergency mode

Recharging the battery: Four ways to support nervous system regulation

Family life with PDA

Adapting your environment

PDA and School

Looking Ahead

The first chapter takes a brief look at what PDA is and also introduces some thoughts on an alternative name/term that has been suggested by some in the PDA community; Pervasive Drive for Autonomy. Chapter 2 goes into more detail on current thoughts and research on PDA more generally, while chapter 3 examines what avoidance can be like alongside an in-depth consideration of topics such as equalising, masking, stress and burnout.

In chapter 8, Rike explores demands - what and where they are, with lots of examples given, and ideas for how parents can decide which demands to prioritise. Responses to common concerns about low-demand parenting are also put forward, after plenty of great advice about how to let go of demands after identifying what is causing difficulty. Proactively reducing demands is one suggestion:

To ease your child’s nervous system in a lasting way and establish a low-demand lifestyle for your family, it isn’t enough to simply review and drop demands only after your child shows you they're a problem.

Real progress happens when you use what you’ve learned so far to proactively shape new, less demanding routines and solutions for everyday life. This is the essence of low-demand parenting: continually finding creative ways to make family life more manageable.

This is where the real art of low-demand parenting lies: finding creative solutions, again and again, that ultimately make your own life easier too.

All the included quotes from parents help to validate the often exhausting reality of living with PDA, and they provide a sense of community for families who sometimes feel disconnected to the rest of society. As parent to an 18 year old PDAer, I especially related to the following quote from the section answering worries about PDA children not being independent:

"When Sascha was 10 and received the diagnosis of autism with a PDA profile, my husband was very worried about Sascha‘s future: "But he needs to be able to cope in the real world!" Still, we stuck to our approach of taking on many things for Sascha if he wasn’t yet able, or simply not capable in that moment, of doing them himself. Today, he does things independently that we never would have thought possible back then: he cooks for himself when he’s awake at night, helps unload the dishwasher without being asked, or takes the train on his own to meet his best friend. We still support him in many areas, and we trust that he’ll get there in his own time – even if it takes a few extra years compared to his peers."

    -- Carla, 16-year-old son

The idea of four pillars of regulation are introduced in chapter 11 - a safe nervous system, screens, dopamine and special interests. Rike writes about how these pillars can provide a framework for everyday life and help with transitions and activities as well as conserving parents' or carers' energy. Family life with PDA is a chapter I think many will nod along to - there are some great quotes from parents who are the main caregiver in here. Bear in mind that the main caregiver for children is more often than not (but not always) female, so these could come across as putting down male parents, but they are actually highlighting differences in parenting style and the challenges around relationships when one caregiver is more flexible and understanding than another.

Sometimes the other parent is open to learning, but the primary caregiver still ends up being the one who researches PDA and coaches the other parent. This adds to the mental load they already carry from their daily caregiving and accommodation work.

"My ex-husband only engages with a topic to a limited extent. For now, I still have to prepare things in advance and hand him the tools. I can’t really tell whether he actually uses them. But at least he’s making an effort."

    -- Barbara, 7-year-old son.

"My husband gets all his information through me. He’s not that interested in looking things up himself. Still, he agrees with me about 90 percent of the time – though sometimes it takes a bit of convincing."

    -- Frederica, 4-year-old daughter.

"It cost me a lot of extra energy to work my way through everything completely on my own and to have to pull him along with me. When the kids were finally asleep at night, I would spend another hour or two discussing things with him – going over the day, explaining why this or that happened, and how it all works. But yes, in the end it was worth it."

    -- Teresa, 4-year-old daughter.

Towards the end of the book there's a great chapter on PDA and school, offering some general but very helpful advice on how parents and carers can support children in school, or how to approach other kinds of learning. Tips on how to advocate for accommodations are included. 

Parenting PDA has a great foreword from another awesome PDA advocate - Amanda Diekman, whose book I reviewed a few years ago on my blog: Low Demand Parenting. 

I highly recommend this excellent, comprehensive book - it serves as a vital guide for those who have reached a turning point on realising that traditional, typical methods of parenting are not working for their child. 

Buy from Amazon here: Parenting PDA: A Guide to Understanding and Supporting Your Child's Highly Sensitive Nervous System

* The pictures and underlined book titles in this post contain Amazon affiliate links