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| Steph's Two Girls, December 2017, aged 12 and 10 |
After much reading and research, we came to the conclusion that our youngest girl has a particular sub-type, or profile, of Autism called Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). Asperger's Syndrome and Classic Autism are two other sub-types.
My post 'when we first discovered PDA' is a short summary of the early years; more recently I've written a summary of our lives since Sasha was born, looking at everything from diagnosis to her path through education. You can find it here: Our PDA Story week 35.
The central difficulty for people with PDA is their avoidance of the everyday demands made by other people, due to their high anxiety levels when they feel that they are not in control.
People with PDA tend to have much better social communication and interaction skills than other people on the spectrum, and are consequently able to use this ability to their advantage. They still have real difficulties in these areas though, mainly because they need to control the interaction.
The originally noted main features of PDA (and how it may differ from other profiles of autism) were:
- obsessively resisting ordinary demands
- appearing sociable on the surface but lacking depth in understanding (often recognised by parents early on)
- excessive mood swings, often switching suddenly
- comfortable (sometimes to an extreme extent) in role play and pretending
- language delay, seemingly as a result of passivity, but often with a good degree of 'catch-up'
- obsessive behaviour, often focused on people rather than things.
Research into this profile of autism is ongoing. For more detailed information about PDA, please do visit the PDA Society webpage where there are many resources and more detailed information on research and diagnostic criteria.
To contact me, please email stephstwogirls@gmail.com
To find out more about our experiences, please check out our 'About Us' page. If you are looking for more information on Pathological Demand Avoidance, the posts below may help.
