PDA (Demand Avoidance)

What is PDA?

Support a Young Person by Reducing Demands

Professionals have identified two different kinds of ‘demand’, both of which can be equally stressful for someone with PDA. Here are just a few examples:

Direct Demands

Timetables, questions, laws, instructions, rules, orders.

Indirect Demands

Feeling hungry or thirsty or needing to use the toilet, desires, family days out, having to do things because of the weather or the time of day, wanting to do something but not being able to start.

Reducing some of these expectations where possible – often referred to as ‘low demand parenting’ – many people agree, can go a long way to reducing a young person’s anxiety and calming their behaviour. But we all have to eat, sleep, keep ourselves clean and go to work or school so how can family life operate in such a way?

Work Alongside the Child Rather Than Against Them

Firstly, a collaborative attitude, where you work with a child to find ways to complete tasks rather than telling them what they need to do can help establish an atmosphere of peace and trust. Would it matter, for example, if your PDA child chose to eat cereal for dinner, rather than joining in with what the rest of the family is eating? Would you be willing to negotiate an alternative activity if your child is resisting going to the park?

Naturally, this way of operating goes against traditional methods of parenting where mum and dad are in charge. In reality, although it can reduce a lot of tension in family life, it also requires great quantities of patience and flexibility on the part of adults and any non-PDA siblings.

Specialist tutors will also adopt this cooperative approach to working with a PDA child, helping them to be part of the decision-making process on what and how they will study. Again, this reduces the student’s anxiety.

Careful Use of Language

Using non-confrontational language is crucial, educationalists and health professionals agree, when it comes to creating trust with a PDA-er. Words such as ‘must’, ‘have to,’ ‘should’ and ‘can’t’ might be replaced with gentler phrases like, ‘Would it be OK if…..?’ or ‘How do you feel about….?’

Offering a child a choice between two options – ‘Would you like a bath or a shower?’ – can also allow them to feel a sense of control. With younger children, depersonalising requests using a toy – ‘Teddy says he’d like to go to the park,’ rather than, ‘Put your coat on, we’re going to the park’ – can lessen the perceived pressure they feel to obey instructions.

Strangely, praising a PDA is also best done using indirect language, experts maintain, as the young person might feel pressurised to maintain high standards. Better to comment that a child has worked very hard on a piece of homework, for instance, rather than saying the work itself is ‘excellent’.

Helpful approaches to supporting your child or young person with PDA

The PDAS website offers lots of suggestions on approaches and support such as allowing plenty of time for a child to complete a task, diffusing stress with humour, using indirect language and giving a youngster a choice wherever possible. Parents and teachers should aim to be flexible with a PDA child, they say, and to focus on the long-term aim of helping them to cope with adult life.

Tutors who have experience working with students with SEN often report that they work very slowly with children with PDA, persuading them to complete academic tasks little-by-little and never saying they ‘have to’ do something. This, they maintain, reduces anxiety and enables the young person to feel in control.