The school has been excellent. They have listened to me, they have listened to by husband, they have listened to my girl. But the thing is – they have a structure there that just isn’t working.
You see, in a classroom, a teacher is trying to teach, love, encourage, and support a whole group of students. They are all trying to learn the same things, the same skills, and in the same time frame. Even if you have the most wonderful teacher in the world, they are trying to teach a whole group of students and so there just are some things that don’t budge. They all learn division at the same time. And then they switch and all learn about writing together at the same time. There is a schedule. Recess is booked at a certain time. The teacher gets a prep and the French teacher comes in at a certain time.
PDA children have hypersensitive neuroception and thus perceive most things in their environment as a threat.
If a seemingly gentle or “natural” consequence is too triggering for them, for example, if their socks get wet after jumping in a puddle and this sets off a panic response due to the “internal” of autonomy – they cannot rationally understand cause and effect in that moment because the “thinking” brain is offline. In that moment they are operating from the amygdala, not the frontal lobe.
The conventional parenting wisdom tells us the firm boundaries make children feel safe. However, for the PDA child, the perception of safety is filtered through a different neurobiology than that of neurotypical kids. PDA children who are confronted with strict, never budging boundaries will not experience safety, but rather fear and panic. When boundaries don’t budge, PDA kids experience a complete loss of their control, autonomy, and perception of equality, which results in a nervous system response of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. This is not something you can change, it is simply part of their brian-wiring and an aspect of their disability. Allowing boundaries to fluctuate with levels of regulation in a responsive way, is more attuned to the nervous system disability.
Casey Elrich @atpeaceparents
(bold added by me)
Accommodations can be made. They have allowed for my girl to take breaks. But the thing is, if she takes a break, the class moves on without her. She cannot take a break when the math gets too much and come back to finish it. Because by the time she is ready, they are moving on to do writing, or art. The teachers have been wonderful about this- but already it is too much. To come in and see that there is a new demand, a new assignment and task, when she just barely was ready to face the last one- it’s too much.
~ Schools often use the terms self-control and self regulation interchangeably. What they want to see from a student is self control. Breaks and adaptations need to be in place proactively, set by the teacher, not the student.~
Paraphrase from a private Facebook group comment
We have talked a lot about putting our value and effort towards “happy and healthy” instead of academics. So what does this actually mean and look like? We have talked about “lowering the baseline” and I think this is really intuitive and on the right track. We have noticed that when we can just stop, just take away the demands for a while, it becomes much easier for this girl to function. However, we are falling short when we see that she is doing better and then just place her back in the situations that “set her off” without actually changing those situations to support her and keep her able to function.
The school can reduce the assignments. The teachers can shorten her work so that there is a lower demand and less to do on each page. This is so appreciated. However, it does not do much to create the feeling of safety which she so desperately needs. Once she is able to do the work, it might take her less time, but it doesn’t actually meet her need.
We have talked about ideas like “resilience” and trying to increase what she can handle. However, I think we have come at this from the absolute wrong direction. Rather than trying to increase the amount of stress she can handle, we need to increase the amount of supports and safety that she has, so that she can handle more. It’s a paradigm shift and it takes a lot of mental work. But I truly can see it now.
See, the disability she has will not go away. Her brain is plastic and will learn and grow, but she will always have a hyper-sensitive threat response. It makes no sense to try to numb that threat response. It makes great sense to increase the amount of safety and autonomy and work to not trigger that threat response.
“Lowering demands” in the home and designing accommodations is a necessary, but not sufficient element of creating a peaceful and supportive family home environment with your PDA child.
Trust and connection are at the very foundation of supporting your PDAer
Casey Elrich @atpeaceparents
It also makes great sense to recognize that once the threat response is triggered, that reasoning with her, putting her back into the situation that triggered the threat response, and asking for behaviour changes are terrible ideas. She is acting without the frontal lobe, without thought and reason, and the only thing that will actually help is to remove the trigger. Putting her right back into that situation damages the trust and relationship, which degrades the sense of safety which she so desperately needs to have built for her.
Once the trigger is removed, it will be very difficult to re-enter that situation or to deal with that demand. This is not willful defiance, but much like asking a neurotypical person to go back out in front of a crowd naked. It’s still a bad idea. So, the demand must be changed, the situation lightened, and the supports increased. This time, wear some clothes, and its just a few people, and they will come to you.
In a school environment, this will require 1:1 support of a person who actually listens to our girl all day long, understands her neurology and disability, and can adapt and change things on the fly.
~ A good plan could be to notice times when your PDA’er is able to handle things, and then try to recreate those environments. If instead you are trying to push them harder or remove supports that have been effective, that will end up backfiring on you. The absolute key is to trust your kiddo and build that relationship.~
Paraphrase from a private Facebook group comment
I do not want to gaslight her and not believe her. What she is experiencing and telling us is real. She is doing her best. She is trying. She cannot help that she panics. She cannot control it.
The more you can prioritize signaling autonomy, safety, and acceptance for your child’s neurotype and nervous system disability, the more quickly you will move towards a more collaborative relationship. Gentle reminder that they can read your energy and intent, so words and actions should be grounded in a true acceptance, which requires a lot of mindfulness, deliberate thought work, and allowing and processing your grief and your own trauma.
Casey Elrich @atpeaceparents
The reason that at some times she can handle more than other times is that at those times her amygdala has not registered that there is a threat. So, she might feel more safe or autonomous at those times. It is not a case of choice or building up “resilience,” or “grit.”
I don’t quite know where that leaves us. But I do know I am doing a lot of thinking and learning.
Queen in Crazy Town 