Raising a Demand Avoidant Child or Teen (PDA), with Casey Ehrlich

Debbie:

Hey Casey, welcome to the podcast.

Casey Ehrlich:

Hi Debbie, thanks for having me.

Debbie:

Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. Your name, I was mentioning this before I hit record, but your name has been coming up in my community for quite a while, specifically surrounding your work on PDA. And so I had to do kind of a deep dive into you and what you’re doing right now. So, but my listeners haven’t done that. Could you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing right now, kind of your work in the world?

Casey Ehrlich:

Sure. So right now I run a business called At Peace Parents, which focuses specifically on supporting parents to raise and care for their PDA children and teens through an accommodation lens, which just means focusing on supports for the nervous system and providing autonomy and equality. And I’m happy to talk specifically about how to do this in order to bring cumulative nervous system activation down, for example, if they’re in burnout, and help them create new neural pathways to stay in the thinking brain more so they can access learning and growth. And so it’s a long-term approach, but I bring my academic background to support parents to experiment with a different way of being with their child. And it started about three plus years ago with another mom actually who I met on the tilt parenting forum on Facebook. Yeah, I posted I think I have a PDA child and I’m looking for any information on a service dog. And this is where I live. And a bunch of people responded, but one woman responded. I don’t know anything about service dogs, but I think I’m 20 minutes away from you. So let’s meet. And then we started a project together called PDA Parents, which precedes the business. And we did a podcast season together, really, about the parent experience. And it just sort of evolved from there.

Debbie:

Okay, I love that story. It always makes me so happy to find out that people found each other and kind of upleveled through Tilt, especially the Facebook group that makes me so happy. So thank you for sharing that. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your own personal experience. So, you know, cause even three years ago when you posted that, like PDA was, I mean, I did an episode with Dr. Melissa Neff. I don’t remember, it was probably four years ago. And She was one of the first people that I knew of who was even talking about it in the United States. So this is still very emerging in terms of visibility and understanding. But can you tell us a little bit about your personal journey with PDA?

Casey Ehrlich:

Sure. So my son, when he was about four and a half, reached nervous system burnout, which was something that I didn’t recognize at all or understand. So he had always been challenging. And I always felt like you know, on a deep, deep level, I was failing him as a mother because starting when he was born, I couldn’t soothe him. And that’s like the most basic need as a mother or like what you’re wired to do, you’re supposed to be able to stop your child from screaming and crying and provide for their needs. And while I was providing for his needs, I thought he just wouldn’t stop crying. And so that began in infancy. And then throughout his young life like toddlerdom and early age, he was like two different versions of himself. One was with his grandparents and in daycare while I was working full time in Washington DC at the time and then at home. He couldn’t do anything independently and I would follow the parenting advice of like, you know, leave things out so they try things on their own at two and a half and you know, it was both. He was sort of defiant and avoidant, but he also couldn’t engage in anything independently, which is something that also stems back to the nervous system, I understand, now. But at the time, it was just like, my husband and I would just be like, why do we suck at this so bad? You know, like, why is everyone else just hanging out with their kids and not like improv-ing and entertaining? 

But things started to escalate with his behavior. And I started to apply more traditional parenting lenses, like one, two, three magic, positive discipline, and got advice from pediatricians, which were really behaviorally oriented strategies, right? And the response when it wasn’t working was, are you doing it consistently? Are you not following through and really putting it back on me? And so I doubled down. And so his trauma really is more about my parenting rather than school or ABA therapy, for example. I see patterns of both in my work, but he and then my younger son was born and we couldn’t provide that constant undivided attention when he was home and things really escalated to the point where he stopped being two versions and was just, you know, melting down having what I now consider panic attacks, but he appeared as if he was a traumatized child. And so my husband and I were like, did something happen at daycare? was their abuse, right? Because he was like, it looked like a feral animal to me, the way he was responding, he was scared of us, like if we tried to come near and soothe him, and he stopped eating. And he stopped walking, and he stopped speaking largely. So, you know, it seemed like a regression in some ways, but it was also not within the normal patterns of what I had read about autism. So it was terrifying. And I decided to leave my career in Washington, DC, and we moved to Michigan so I could be close to my family. And I spent the next couple years as a full time caregiver and applying my academic prowess and doctorate to understanding my son. So Um, that was a combination of learning from autistic and neurodivergent, um, testimonies, a lot of them on social media. So I went to social media, like an ethnographer of like, what is happening internally with my son. Um, the trauma literature, child development literature, like Dr. Dan Siegel, Tina Payne Bryson. Um. and polyvagal theory, and then my own tracking and lived experience. So those are like the three things I was looking at, but I started with sensory processing disorder. So when I first moved to Michigan, I was actually writing a secret blog about sensory processing disorder. And I was like, but I can’t really explain the why, you know, like this doesn’t explain it. Like I’m getting him the fidgets, I’m getting him the weighted blanket. I’m getting him the compression shirts and all the OT and it’s just not helping. And in some ways making it worse. And then my, during the pandemic, the very beginning of the pandemic, my. OT was like, have you looked into PDA? And I was like, no, and I’m not going to, because I’ve had enough acronyms and enough information. And then. you know, finally, four months later, I like posted that in tilt.

And then me and this other mom, I remember meeting on her front step outside, because it’s the pandemic. And it was just like the veil lifted, because every single thing was the same for our families. And then we found other moms in our area. And that was sort of the beginning because it was like, Oh, I’m not crazy. This is actually a unique pattern of behavior and experience. And that’s how everything sort of started and I’m still learning. Um, and now I learn a lot from the parents I work with because I’d say at least 20% are PDA identifying moms or dads. So, you know, the sample, you know, I’m a, I’m a researcher. So the sample size keeps getting bigger in my depth of understanding. from them and their children’s experience keeps getting bigger. So I hope to share that with people.

Debbie:

So when you say the parents you’re working with, 20%, are they themselves identify as being PDA?

Casey Ehrlich:

Yeah.

Debbie:

Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, and thank you, first of all, for sharing your story. There were so many things in there that really felt familiar to my experience, including that, why do we suck at this so badly phase, which we went through. I’m sure so many parents listening to this have gone through. And this idea that if you’re not having success when you’re doing X, Y, and Z, you’re doing it wrong. And that to me makes me think about ODD, right? Because that is something, I don’t know if that, we got exactly ODD. I think it was like more, it was disruptive and it was something in there. It’s something in that family of really lovely, you know, pathology, yeah. But. But it was very much focused on the parenting experience and that this is something that’s coming up because of the way that you’re showing up for this child or not showing up for them or that you’re doing this wrong and you’re actually like creating this dynamic. So I want to talk with you about PDA versus ODD. In talking about this idea of ODD, which I think is something that a lot of families get that label for their child. And I know it’s very controversial. You know, I know how I feel about it, but I’m not a psychotherapist, but I’d love to know kind of your thoughts on PDA and ODD. You know, are they? Does PDA need to replace ODD? Like, how do you see them kind of relating to each other?

Casey Ehrlich:

Yeah, so I remember hearing on the Tilt Parenting podcast, you didn’t know I was like such a big fan, did you?

Debbie:

I did not know. Bring it on.

Casey Ehrlich:

Bring it on. Riding the metro to my job in Washington DC and hearing Mona Delahook say, I do not believe in oppositional defiant disorder. And I was like, wow, bold, and I want to know more. But at that time, I didn’t know how much it would overlap in my world. So that was four years ago. I think there’s two things I’ll say. And I do want to caveat in the same way you did, because I’m not a clinician. I’m not a psychotherapist. It’s not my discipline. So I need to be humble in how I talk about this. However, I think one way to think about it, if a parent is confused, is that PDA’s root cause is the neuroception of threat, right? Like anytime there’s a perception of a loss of autonomy, freedom and choice, or a loss of equality, the subconscious autonomic part of the brain will tell the nervous system, hey, keep us alive, right? So it’s either fight, flight, or freeze. And those come with physiological processes. Right? Like fight flight is like adrenaline, cortisol, blood rushing to the extremities. You might have diarrhea or throw up in the way that I felt before this podcast because I’m like, okay, fight flight. I need to run away from the lion. And so this is not under anyone’s control. It’s the survival mechanism and it’s prompted by this neuroception. And so it’s not just behavior. If you look at it, it’s actually really impacting these kids’ basic needs, which is not talked about at all in the DSM-5 with oppositional defiant disorder. And what you see, even if the child is not in burnout, is a lot of medical practitioners looking at things like the child not eating or the child needing to co-sleep well past the age of eight. A toileting regression as… siloed from this nervous system experience of PDA and only looking at the behavior. So the first thing I would say is if you’re confused, I would encourage a parent to look at how are the basic needs impacted? Are there social communication and sensory differences? Because ODD really just talks about these surface level behaviors without a true explanatory root cause that makes sense across cases, whereas PDA, you can really find that root cause. And then the second thing I say, which harks back to what you said, Debbie, of like, I’m never going to tell a parent like something you’re doing is making it wrong. Right? So like, if someone’s working through an ODD lens, and it’s helping their connection, it’s helping their kid, like, I’m never going to be like you’re wrong, right? Or you shouldn’t do that. What I do want to encourage empower parents to do is to take an experimental lens of like, my hypothesis is ODD. They’ve asked me to consistently apply this behavioral protocol, observe the data in your home. And if it’s getting worse, you can infer that maybe that’s not the correct root cause. And then we can experiment with something different that’s more accommodating. And then we can track like, Are the basic needs better? Is the connection you feel with them better? Are they hugging you for the first time in a year? Are there meltdowns going down? And that’s when we really have to tune in to our own intuition and capacity as parents to trust ourselves, right?

Debbie:

Yeah.

Casey Ehrlich:

And I’m trained in the scientific method, so I try and bring that to parents like, you can do this. You can track your own data. Is it working?

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that researcher lens that being curious and taking note observing seeing what you’re doing, but it’s also non judgmental because you are just you’re learning you’re figuring things out there’s no expectation that you are going to do it right or understand this from day one.

Casey Ehrlich:

Totally.

Debbie:

So you have mentioned first of all, thank you for that. That makes so much sense. And I do remember when Mona Delahooke, she shared a post where she kind of came out and said, I don’t think ODD is a thing. I’m gonna include a link to that in the show notes page for readers to check it out. But you’ve mentioned burnout a couple of times. You talked about nervous system burnout and you recognize this in your child. Is nervous system burnout the same thing as autistic burnout? I’m curious to know if you could define that for us and explain what it looks like or what it could look like.

Casey Ehrlich:

Absolutely. So I’m not an expert in the autistic experience. I don’t identify as autistic and I only work with families who believe their child to be PDA. And so from my understanding, autistic burnout is very similar and overlapping in some ways to PDA burnout of like all the demands, all the masking, having their own survival response to a neuro-normative world where they’re sensing and perceiving they don’t belong, which like obviously shuts down the nervous system and creates burnout. That’s my understanding from other people’s perspectives of their lived experience. My understanding… in the PDA space is really that the brain is constantly perceiving threat because of these losses of autonomy and equality throughout the day, even if you can’t see the nervous system reaction. And so this happens a lot with kids in school, for example, they’re internalizing their threat response, they’re masking the threat response, not just imitating. 

And then you have a threshold for how much your nervous system can be activated before you’re at risk of trauma. That’s true for anybody, right? But these kids are constantly perceiving threat. We’re not perceiving it as parents unless we have the PD experience. And so what we suddenly see is what looks like a regression. It looks like a child stopping eating. It looks like a child who has suddenly moved into… a space that is way beyond behavior. And I think one of the reasons it’s so hard to understand in the medical field, for example, is like, I’ll give you an example of my son versus another family I worked with when they reached burnout. So my son has an externalized expression of his nervous system activation, which is fight flight, defiance, opposition, screaming, hitting, kicking, all the things, right? So he’s defiant and explosive and he stops eating and he stops speaking and he says his legs don’t work but he’s toileting fine and he’s sleeping fine right and then you have another little girl the same age who ends up in the ER because she’s all of a sudden not able to sleep at all like days she is having um trouble accessing hygiene She’s eating fine. And she also says her legs don’t work. And she has an internalized expression. So she’s just shutting down and disassociating. To a doctor or a nurse or a therapist, this looks very different, right? Those two kids don’t look the same. And so that’s why really understanding what’s going on inside the nervous system and understanding all the different indicators of what it can look like, especially even between kids and teens. is so important for parents because they might have to be the ones of like, no, it’s not IBS, it is actually an indicator of like nervous system activation. Or like not necessarily the diet that’s causing constipation, but the kid who’s going into freeze over and over, the metabolism is slowing down. So… So that’s how I think about PDA burnout is really to help others identify it. And, um, because, you know, I’ve experienced my own nervous system burnout and trauma, but not as an autistic adult, just as someone who has panic disorder and a trauma history. 

Debbie:

Yeah, I mean, I think as you’re talking, I’m reflecting on the conversation I had with Dr. Megan Ananaff about just how important it is to really understand the root cause of anxiety, for example. If it’s anxiety as a result of PDA or an autistic experience or some sort of neurodivergence, it’s very different than just to kind of a generalized anxiety disorder that is kind of outside the context of neurodivergence and you would treat that very differently if it’s like a rooted in this kind of nervous system shutdown that is a result of all of these other things. It’s so complex and I think it’s really, we can talk about this a little later, I think it’s really hard to find people who really understand the nuances and why it is so important to understand that underlying why and that’s what we’re focusing on.

Casey Ehrlich:

Yeah. I agree so much with the root cause because you know, if we look at the name pathological demand avoidance, it’s like, demand avoidance can be caused by lots of things, right? Like, I don’t want to get my shoes on because they hurt my feet. Sensory. I don’t want to get my shoes on because I don’t know which step in the routine it is. Maybe that’s executive functioning. I didn’t understand I needed to get my shoes on. Social communication difference. I don’t want to get my shoes on because you told me to. Survival drive for autonomy. So it’s like we can see the surface level indicators, but understanding that root cause is so important to support kids in the way that they need to be supported.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. Great examples. I want to talk about this idea of loss of autonomy and equality, which you’ve talked about a couple of times. Okay, so you’ve mentioned a couple of times this concept of someone with a PDA profile really experiencing that loss of autonomy and equality. Could you explain what you mean by that? I haven’t heard those exact phrases. I guess loss of autonomy I have, but I wanna have a better understanding of what you mean when you talk about those concepts.

Casey Ehrlich:

Sure. And so I want to be clear that I didn’t make this up. I learned it from adult PDA autistic advocates, right? So like the writings on neuroclastic, Kristy Forbes, although he’s problematic, Harry Thompson, Sally Cat, and just lots of writing out there about autonomy, equality, right? And so what’s unique about the PDA brain is that the nervous system reacts with this root cause, right? Of like, and this is why it’s also called pervasive drive for autonomy. And so when there’s a perceived loss of having a choice in a situation, like, let me give you an example with my son. Um, if he, if I say like, we’re going to go to the grocery store, it’s not just that he doesn’t want to go his brain will actually perceive that request without choice as like there’s a lion in front of me on a subconscious level. And so he’ll have activation. How big that activation shows externally depends on how much cumulative stress he has and because we accommodate, it might just be like, I’m not going rather than a huge meltdown or throwing and kicking and biting, which it would have been years ago. Um, but if I just say using declarative language, thank you, Linda K. Murphy. Um, Hey guys, I’m going to head to the grocery store. It’s like, I’m stating what I’m doing. I’m not telling anyone they need to come. I’m not putting myself above them or like I’m the authority. I’m just managing myself. They might, he might say, okay, can I come? Because he has autonomy and his threat response didn’t go off. Right? But it’s happening all the time, right? Like currently he’s in a tackle football team, his special interest is football. He’s obsessed, right? Like he collects the cards, he knows the stats, he watches YouTube videos, he goes to the Michigan football games, like he listens to the songs. It’s a special interest, which is regulating for him. At the same time, throughout his practice, his brain is subconsciously perceiving threat because he didn’t make the play, someone another kid is in front of him in line, he didn’t get to be the first one, right, so he doesn’t feel equal to. So he cognitively knows, like, hey, this is what football’s like in his frontal lobe, but constantly his body’s perceiving threat because of that perception of not being equal to a teammate, the coach, or the situation. And so it is a disability because it disables him from participating.

And it can disable a child in accumulation from being able to eat or sleep or, you know, toilet independently. Another example I like to use, which is a clear one, is the survival drive for autonomy and equality being overriding other survival instincts in the moment. So I’ll use an example from not my own life, but another family. I’ve heard multiple families have this resonate with them, where their child was getting close to a river or a body of water. And the parent was like, hey, don’t go near the water. And the more they tried to gently usher them away from the water, there was actually a fixation on getting into and under the water. Right? So the survival drive for autonomy is overriding the instinct to stay alive. And like, that’s a very like, specific example, but it can happen in accumulation, where it overrides the instinct to eat, where it overrides the instinct to sleep when you’re tired. So that’s what I mean by that. I’m happy to give more examples, like parents might see it in like, you know, why does my child like impulsively and reflexively fight past their sibling to get out the door of the van every morning, no matter how many times I tell them, and they’ll melt down if I prevent them or they’ll hurt their sibling. It’s because they don’t want the sibling. It’s not that they don’t want it’s their brain perceives threat when the sibling is first because it’s not equal. Or if they’re playing a game and As soon as someone else starts to win, they start to escalate or change the rules or cheat, but in an impulsive reflexive way every time. Not because they don’t cognitively understand or have the skills to play the game, but because their subconscious is like, hey, you’re going to die, do something to get back to safety, which is the equalizing behavior of cheating or changing the rules or controlling others.

Debbie:

It’s so fascinating. Those examples were super helpful. And you mentioned Linda Murphy’s work, and we’ve had her on the show, and I really love her book, the Declarative Language Handbook. So that is kind of one approach when parenting or supporting a child with a PDA profile. I’m curious if you could share a little bit about your methodology for working with parents raising PDA kids through at peace parenting, like what do you do to help them? Because it is a tricky journey for sure.

Casey Ehrlich:

Oh, yeah. I mean, okay, so I have what’s called a 5A framework. So we have awareness, which is sort of what we’ve been talking about, about like, how does this all work? Like, what part of the brain is activating? And why do they do this and not this? So that’s like the first step. And this is both for my programs, but also how I coach families. Then we have acceptance, which is like, radically accepting one thing. which is you’re either activating or accommodating your child. And that doesn’t leave a lot of room, right? That’s, and, and parents might spend the entire time we coach or the entire program, like we’re still coming back to that. Like you’re still looking for option C or a strategy to make that not your choice point, right? And that aspect is like within that, if we can accept this, then we can work through a cost benefit decision-making framework. and we can place it within the family system like the cost of setting a boundary is this, the benefit of this for the child. Like the cost of setting a boundary or saying no or limit will be nervous system activation.

The cost will be different depending on where you are in your journey, if the child’s in burnout, et cetera. Then we place it into the cost benefit of the family system. Are there siblings? Is the mom in burnout? Does she have childhood trauma? Is she neurodivergent? Is she PDA? Can she unschool? Yes, maybe the cost of school is too high for the PDA. But if the cost to the mom is like she’s going to end up in the hospital, then we have to make a different decision. And then we go through accommodations, which is I work through an experimental framework with families like we test it, we track it. Not everything’s gonna work well for your family, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong, as we said earlier. So there’s 12 accommodations that we work through. Autonomy is one, but how do we provide autonomy? Equality is another. Co-regulation of the nervous system, drawing on the trauma literature of like, how do we actually signal safety without words? paying attention to our facial expression, our tone, our movement, what can we learn from polyvagal theory, right? Then we have language accommodations of which, declarative language is one, but a big one is just not talking to your kid until they talk to you. Which sounds,

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. So easy. Not.

Casey Ehrlich:

It’s so hard, but so simple yet so challenging, right? So there’s nine proactive accommodations. And then there’s three responsive ones, which is like diffusion, de-escalation, and risk mitigation. Like, what do we do if the kid, what if my kid’s hurting the sibling? What if they’re pulling a knife on me? I mean, this stuff happens in this space. And then we work on, we work on affirmation, which is using all these accommodations to build towards guiding your child or teen. towards an autonomously decided upon identity and a process for naming the threat response. So we parse those two, so they’re not coupled. And this has been really helpful, because then the child can talk about how my nervous system works. I’m PDA, or not identify as PDA, full autonomy. And then advocacy of like, How do we set boundaries? How do we use nonviolent communication to ask for what we need? How do we use the cost benefit again? So that’s the methodology. When I’m coaching families, we get a lot more into the root cause of why it’s so hard as a parent, which might be childhood stuff. And then I refer to experts of, OK, if your kid also has pans and pandas and they’re with a clinic, we’re going to be. bringing in their expertise and putting the PDA lens into the game, and you’re as a parent going to have to decide how to apply it because there’s two things going on. So that’s the work I do primarily.

Debbie:

It’s such a great framework. Thank you so much for giving us the bullet points of it. It makes total sense. And I’m assuming it’s not like a linear, it’s probably very fluid back and forth throughout it as you’re working with families. Yeah.

Casey Ehrlich:

Yeah, yeah. And it’s, I mean, honestly, I’ll say, even for me, it’s always coming back to that radical acceptance of just like, this is a disability. I do have constraints that I can’t change. How can I find expansion and freedom within those constraints? Because a lot of this is accepting, as I’m sure you know, Debbie, like, your life looking really different than you expected. whether it’s finances, career, geographic location, etc.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. This is so fascinating. And I’m really like, I the people who’ve been talking about working with you, it’s all kind of making sense. I can see how you’re giving such a thoughtful and kind of a safe accepting container for parents to navigate what can feel really overwhelming and isolating if you’re going through this. So I love that framework. And I do want to talk just briefly about this idea of, of no demands, right? So this is something we’ve had, um, Amanda Diekman on the show who wrote the book, uh, low demand parenting. Um, we covered this in my differently wired club as a theme, low demand parenting. It was a very controversial topic to be discussing. And one of the things that was really hard for parents to wrap their head around is what does it actually look like with the PDA long term. Yeah, and long term and it was this very like all or nothing. Could you talk a little bit about the nuance of that?

Casey Ehrlich:

Yeah, sure. Okay, so I view lowering demands as one of 12 potential accommodations. I also view it a little bit differently than because it’s often viewed as like, okay, we can’t and I viewed that this, I want to just say like, this is what I thought too, at the beginning, right? Of like, oh my gosh, my kid’s in burnout. He doesn’t want to do anything except being on a screen. So I can’t ask him to do anything. And I can’t, you know, we can’t go outside. We’re starting to get out of burnout. So like, I don’t want to put the demand on him of like going to a pool or doing X, Y, or Z. And then I realized like, it’s not the demand itself, it’s the autonomy and the equality, right? So like, if he has a choice, and he gets dopamine and can intersect with a special interest. He often loves to go do activities, which have become, I think, and I’m not saying this is how Amanda presented them, just like in the inter webs, it’s like, oh, a demand is anything that places any pressure on a child.

And I like to think of lowering demands as more like a fluid practice that… is a reflection of cumulative nervous system activation and is something that you can physically do for your child that they may be able to do for themselves. So for example, brushing their teeth, putting their shoes on, picking up a Twix wrapper that they throw on the ground. In burnout, I always did that for my son. However, I now use it as like a fluid practice of like, oh, nervous system stress is high at the end of the week, he’s gone to football and school. And so I’m going to say, hey, I can brush your teeth for you. Like, strewing an offer of a lower demand to reflect his fluctuating nervous system stress. And then the other thing I want to say is, A, I think it’s really important to track your child’s regulation levels. in a dynamic way, especially once you’re out of burnout, as if you’re like a parent tracking insulin levels for a diabetic child. And so we can lower demands when they’re having a really hard week, if it’s, you know, the holiday season and there’s all the stress in the background and expectation, we might lower some demands and provide more accommodations then, but it’s not like we just drop demands and then we never do anything for the rest of their lives. And then second, we have to think of it sequentially. and intersecting with the connection and trust you have with them. Because I know that it’s kind of a dirty word in the neurodiversity space, but I feel like there is room long-term for some exposure and encouragement and resilience premised on and grounded in the connection and trust that you have demonstrated. Like I’ll never make you do anything. Like I had to go through that period of full autonomy and lowering demands and all the accommodations to signal to my son, like, I will accommodate you, but I’m also on your team. And we’re gonna, you know, if you say, you know, I don’t know if I want to go to this water park, but I know you love it and it’s gonna give you dopamine, I might encourage you a little bit to do the demand of leaving the house, right? So. It’s a dynamic practice, right?

And at its root, it’s about knowing your own child. And I think testing out, you know, I provide the framework because it’s like, experiment with these. Some kids on the distribution of cases I know are like my son and can go to school and sometimes play some sports. We’re still on the edge with that one. And other PDA kids or teens, I mean, they might have comorbidities and other things going on, but they might not be able to handle even school outside of the home because of the nervous system activation. It’s just not a blanket. Sorry, that’s kind of a long answer and it’s hard to convey nuance on social media, so I get why this is a question.

Debbie:

Yeah, no, it’s great. And I love that explanation of this very kind of fluid dynamic relationship. That’s how I see it too. And it could change from minute to minute from hour to hour from day to day. And I think it is really about being deeply connected and having that fluency, which is something I talk a lot about just really being fluent in who your kid is and how they experience the world so that we are able to be curious and make those observations so we can kind of gauge what’s going on at any given moment and then we can accommodate or not accommodate depending on the situation or make choices that would support where they are right then and there.

Casey Ehrlich:

Yeah, I love that.

Debbie (she/her):

So before we kind of wrap up, first of all, I just want to say thank you. This has been such a fascinating conversation and I really appreciate your lens and the way that you approach this. I think it’s very, again, supportive and practical and helpful and hopeful. Is there anything that you haven’t shared before we say goodbye, that you think would be really important for parents to know if they are raising a child with a PDA profile or they suspect their child has a PDA profile.

Casey Ehrlich:

You’re not crazy. And I know that it’s really hard to feel like you’re walking on eggshells and sometimes feel as if you’re being abused by your child or teen. But from a long-term perspective and working with hundreds of families at this point, I do believe that. it’s not under your child’s control and over time you will see the bright light and the divine light of who your child or teen is behind that threat response because that’s not who they are and I believe in you.

Debbie:

That’s so nice. Thank you. And I’m looking at Casey as she’s saying this and I can say she really does believe in you. I can see it. So Casey, thank you so much for everything you shared today. And could you just let listeners know where the best place to find you and engage with you is online, on social or anywhere else?

Casey Ehrlich:

Sure. So I think my main platform is Instagram. So you can find me there. I actually do a free live every Tuesday at 9:30am. if people have questions. I just pop on there. It’s called Coffee with Casey. So you can find me there. I’m on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, even though I’m too old for it. I have a podcast at Peace Parents. We still have PDA Parents too or my website. I’m all over the place.

Debbie:

Yeah, awesome. Well, listeners, I’ll have links to all of that in the show notes pages. And I love that you do a little coffee with Casey, I will check that out. And yeah, again, just thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. I’m so glad that you have, like so many people I talked to have turned their personal experience into something that is serving so many families. And so thank you for that.

Casey Ehrlich:

Yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for inspiring that journey.