Co-Regulation for Autistic & PDA Parents: Essential Tips for Wellbeing & Connection

In this episode, I’m diving into how I teach the first foundational pillar of Attuned Parenting — parent well-being and co-regulation. As a neurodivergent parent myself, I understand how overwhelming it can be to support a child when you’re already running on empty. But here’s the thing: you are the foundation. When we focus on our own regulation first, we can better co-regulate with our children.

In this episode, I talk about:

• Why more tools often don’t create real change for autistic and PDA children
• The importance of parent well-being and how it leads to co-regulation
• Why nervous-system safety comes first — and why behaviour-first approaches are doing more harm than good
• Unmasking and shifting away from societal expectations (if you’re a neurodivergent parent or feel you could be neurodivergent- this episode is for you!)
• How co-regulation transforms parenting and helps you show up for your child with more clarity and intention

Episode Summary:

Parenting an autistic or PDA child is hard — especially when you’re already feeling depleted. In this episode, I talk about the foundational pillars of attuned parenting that can make all the difference: parent well-being and co-regulation.

You’ll learn:

• Why traditional strategies often backfire and don’t work for neurodivergent children
• Why parent regulation comes first before any co-regulation with your child can happen
• How unmasking and understanding our own triggers helps us show up for our children with more clarity and patience
• The 4-step framework for co-regulation: Pause → Observe → Connect → Support (I’ll share a preview of this in the episode!)

Takeaway:

Ask yourself: “Am I regulated enough to support my child right now?”
This small, powerful question is the first step to shifting your approach to parenting and co-regulation.

What Next?

 Want to dive deeper into these foundational tools and receive 30 days of community support?

The Attuned Parenting Foundations course is live, free for now, and packed with practical tools to help you and your child.

Join the course here: CLICK HERE 

No credit card required — just sign up and start today :) 

Chapters

• 2:43 Introduction to Unmasking and Parent Wellbeing
• 7:01 Grab your FREE Foundations Course!
• 8:30 How to Co-Regulate, Well
• 12:48 Understanding Traditional Parenting Methods
• 16:25 4-Steps To Co-Regulation
• 20:55 Supporting Parents Through Community

Transcript

Chantal Hewitt (00:00)

I really wanted to share what unmasking meant for me, especially since this episode specifically is on parent wellbeing and co-regulation, on how we ourselves as the parent are the real foundation. nothing positive and sustainable will actually happen when we support our autistic or PDA child if we ourselves are not in control of our own emotions.

if we aren't parenting from a space of intention. And in order to do that, we do really have to look inwards and see how regulated we are.

Hello everyone and welcome. This is episode eight of Attuned Spectrum podcast. Quite proud of that, eight episodes. thank you so much if you've been following along and thank you for coming if you are just joining for the first time. If you have been following along, you might notice that I have a different background. I'm trying to get the lighting right. It's... ⁓

was one of those struggles where I really wanted to just do an audio podcast, but I also know that the parents that I want to support and serve each day do show up with video and on video platforms. So I thought, let's just record. That's where I was kind of uncomfortable in my first video, was kind of sitting at my desk. So what I have done in my own process of unmasking is...

I have allowed myself the ability to stand, so I'm standing right now in my kitchen. It's actually a bit echoey, so you might notice in my next videos that I'm somewhere else, but we will make this work for today.

And I really wanted to share what unmasking meant for me, especially since this episode specifically is on parent wellbeing and co-regulation, specifically on how we ourselves as the parent are the real foundation. nothing positive and sustainable will actually happen when we support our autistic or PDA child if we ourselves are not in control of our own emotions.

if we aren't parenting from a space of intention. And in order to do that, we do really have to look inwards and see how regulated we are. So because of that, I thought it was helpful to share that I have been, as a late diagnosed and realized autistic ADHD and PDA adult, I have been hyper aware of all the masking that I've done throughout my whole life.

in my personal, just home even, but more in my work environments and how I socialize and how much that impacted my anxiety levels and my mental well-being. And this is actually a part of the unmasking. So I wanted to share that with you. Another part of it as I create this work for the podcast and just in general for Attuned Parenting.

and for the coaching work that I do with families around the world is I...

kind of just come to.

I guess I'm coming to understand that I need the creative freedom, but my autistic brain also really needs the structure. So I need the structure of actually planning out what I'm going to say. And that's why you will see that I am reading off a teleprompter sometimes. But I mean, if you were listening on Attuned Spectrum podcast, you will have zero idea of this. But now I've just exposed myself.

But yeah, it really does help me to stay organized and to make sure that the points that I'm getting across are hopefully actually getting across to my listeners, which is you guys. And that's ultimately what I want.

However, on the opposite side of that coin, the ADHD side, that spontaneity, and then the PDA that comes in of this need for autonomy and control over what I do, the script for me actually removes that. So me actually looking at a teleprompter, it means that I can't be as authentic when I jump off into tangents. So what I'm trialing today, and hopefully this will work and I can just adjust moving forward,

is I will have my talking points, but I will not be reading specifically because it really frustrates my brain. And I feel like I'm almost closed in and can't jump off into tangents. So that being said, further ado, I will jump right into it. And I also did hope that if you perhaps are neurodivergent or if you're looking into that neurodivergence and if you're helping your child to unmask,

It's just really helpful to understand what masking does and how it really can affect your mental wellbeing. And I'm just saying that as a female, I'm 34, and I've been masking my whole life. Obviously all autistic children are different, but once I realised how much I was masking and how ingrained it was in how I ran my life and exhausting, how exhausting it was.

I was just kind of done putting up this performance and since I realized that, that actually drove how I support my son and other families to see if their children are masking and how they can support them to unmask and to be okay with unmasking and knowing that those quirks that the neurotypical society sees, they will come out and that's just who they are. Like for example, if you're watching the video, you will see that I don't actually make eye contact with the screen. I find it...

I'm really uncomfortable and even though there's no one in the screen that I'm looking at, I struggle to process. And I'm actually in that unmasking journey for myself, giving myself time to process what I'm and what I'm thinking and hopefully getting it out with clarity and then coming back to those talking points.

And I think that's really hard in a society where we are taught that we need to be perfect and what we have to say, what we are getting across needs to be perfectly polished and it needs to be...

Yeah, just like hitting these markers all the time. Like we always look at how you can do your best and how you can make everything great. But what that does is that doesn't actually take into consideration that there are people out there where that's great, that drives them, that motivates them. But there are also people who have...

neurodivergent traits and with that might come perfectionism and this really really big sense of failure, a sense of I can't get something out there, I can't if you're looking at it through a child's perspective, I can't complete this or I can't try this because I won't be perfect and that's not the message that we want to be sending. But anyway.

the end of the day, the way that I'm showing up or intentionally trying to show up is my authentic self, well researched, unmasked as much as possible, but then also in a way that you can digest the information in your busy day. So I'm trying to find a balance between that.

free Attuned Parenting Foundations course, which if you have no idea what I'm talking about, please jump back to episode seven. So that's where I introduce what the Attuned Parenting Foundations course is. It is a free course. At the moment, as I'm building up my content for you guys that I'm serving, I have this as free. And at the moment, it's my intention to keep it free. But I'm saying that because I don't want you to think that this is just...

a real quick like put together course. This is two and a half hours of very intentionally broken down videos. And this episode is that first foundational piece, that first pillar where we talk about parental wellbeing as being the foundation and then co-regulation. those pillars and how they're the foundation of the practice that I use every day as a parent.

with my autistic PDA son, well as how I show up in the work that I do to coach other parents. And this is the method that I have found, just brings everything back to who we are as humans, what our children need from us, even why we became parents a lot of the time in the first place is because we want those moments of connection

We don't want them to be undermined by an authoritative parenting approach or traditional style or an aggressive, I guess, like reaction parenting that genuinely doesn't feel good. And that's why something that I say is that this approach actually is meant to make you as a parent feel good. And that's really important because you became a parent for a reason. became, mean, myself, I love.

being a mum, but it is really, really challenging raising a PDA autistic five and a half year old. And the dynamics that that create in our home, especially with the other neurodivergence that we have within our family and within the parents of the family, it is really challenging. So this is why I will always come back to how important it is that we understand how to regulate ourselves above

and before anything else. Because if we are not well in ourselves, if we don't show up to be attuned to our child and regulated in just enough that we can support them through their meltdowns, their big feelings, then in the long run, we're just going into this burnout cycle with ourselves, with our child, and no one is moving forward into that calm and connected space.

So within the free Attuned Parenting Foundations course, you can head on over if you'd like right now or continue to listen to the episode and do this at the end. chantalhewitt.com/course And there you will be guided to sign up and then click through to the course and download an app. And within that app, you get 30 days of community support for free.

So just make sure you're clicking the free option. Don't worry, no one is taking any of your money. It is just free, this course, all for you and your enjoyment and to connect with other people. And I am actually inside that community. I am active in that community space and I cannot wait to meet you and to help guide you through the course if that's something that serves you and that resonates with you.

This episode specifically is meant to be an overview of co-regulation and how you can be supported and support yourself as a parent.

to co-regulate well for your child.

So when we talk about co-regulation, we're not thinking about behavior. What we're doing is we're thinking about a state of being. So how regulated are you as a parent? Because that will determine how well you can co-regulate with your child. That co-regulation is you are their mirror. They look to you to kind of steal your support, your state, your regulated state, and they build off of that. So if you are parenting from a space of...

feeling constantly on edge, walking on eggshells, if you are dysregulated or if you go from zero to a hundred really quickly, and I'm speaking to that because that's how I describe myself prior to harnessing this methodology. This leads to burnout, unpredictability for yourself and for your child, for your whole entire home, and everything is really intense and everything just feels really big and it is so hard to come out of that.

PDA children escalate when their parents are already at capacity because the reason why they are escalating in the first place is because they are also already at capacity. So those two things don't work well together.

then I will say this, a dysregulated parent cannot co-regulate their dysregulated child. This isn't me saying that you are failing as a parent because you are not. You just need these tools.

And if you are thinking right now, my gosh Chantal how in the world can I go from super dysregulated in one moment with my child to all of a sudden being completely calm? I just wanna restructure that phrasing or that shift within you. So the point isn't to be...

this super calm parent all the time. Specifically when your child is in meltdown and they need you as a co-regulator, it is about you being available. Like actually being available even if you do have to script things which I do have support for that as well within the community

Lots of us do benefit from scripts and we can use these scripts that are written through a connection framework which is what I offer to become aware and in a state not of pure Zen unless you want to be or if you can get to that state it is a practice but to be available so just to

be at a space where you are not reacting and doing something that you might really feel awful about later, which does happen. But what we're doing is we're trying to regulate ourselves as a parent so we can move away from always being in that dysregulated state and then instead kind of touching in and out and then having that awareness of going, okay.

I'm dysregulated. How can I use this framework to work through this to be there for my child, which is ultimately what we want to do in those moments or what we need to do. I sometimes those things are different.

Something that we also touch on is how traditional parenting backfires, but how deeply ingrained those traditional methods are within our brains, our bodies, because of how we've been parented. And I know a lot of the times I catch myself and I go, gosh, I hear my mom. I love my mom. And I'm aware that parents do the best that they can with what they have available. And I think the difference here is that...

we have different information available and we can harness that to create the sustainable wellbeing for our neurodivergent children. And it doesn't mean that how we were parented necessarily was wrong, but it means that we can take those lessons and we can shift the way that we parent and we can be aware of when those traditional parenting methods come in that we don't feel good about using. Caveat here, if you are listening to this and you're going,

Okay, Chantal, I use traditional parenting methods all the time. I don't understand what you're saying and I don't care to change the way that I'm doing it. I totally respect that. That's probably a good cue though that this podcast may not be for you because this will not be the first time that I touch upon this stuff. So no judgment, but this is...

my philosophy that I share and that I use and it will be everywhere within the podcast. So hopefully this resonates with you. If it doesn't, then...

I want to say that now just so you're aware that you will be hearing a lot of this. However, if this is how you're parenting, but you want to make shifts, then you are 100 % in the right place. That is what we are here for. Because I also dip back into those traditional parenting methods, the behaviouralism, the bribing, the...

first this, then you can have this or the here's your two choices and both choices are things that I want. The difference however is that I am so aware now of when I use them. I understand why they don't work and I immediately know how to shift and repair what I've just done. And it is a practice. It's taken me years.

And it just shows, I think, how much the way that you're a parent just comes back when you are in a state of dysregulation.

And something about traditional parenting and that behaviouralist approach, like those bribes and the sticker charts, the rewards, that's all extrinsic motivation, which, by the way, if you're listening to this podcast, you most likely have a neurodivergent autistic child, maybe a PDA child. And behavioural strategies make things so much worse for your autistic children.

The reason why is because it's not meant to support their nervous system. And also if you look at behavior, behavior that is challenging isn't intentionally challenging from a child, for any child I will say as well, whether they're neurodivergent or not, it is a method of communication. So when you come up with some quite challenging behaviors and you react,

You actually just don't have the right foundations, the right tools, or the right roadmap to get them through those challenging moments and to support yourself in the process without losing your cool and to create a calmer, connected home environment for everyone.

And something that I invite you to think of is, and I'll say it a lot, but is that connection versus control. And to notice in your parenting, if you are parenting from a space of connection, or if you're parenting from a space of controlling something in the moment. Those are quite big generalizations, because obviously you do need some balance, but I do invite you to reflect on that and see.

how you can make sense of that. And I would love to hear as well in the comments, through an email within the community, if you jump into the community in that free course that you have access to. I'd love to hear how that kind of lands and shows up for you.

There is a four step approach that I teach within this foundations course and that I use with families and that I use with myself to regulate. And I'm not gonna dive too deep into that right now, but I will give you the framework and then you can please head on over to chantalhewitt.com/course

You can really dive in, grab the template, grab the tools associated with this approach and join the conversations within the community to make sense of it for you. this four-step approach is pause, observe, connect and then support. So pause is all about taking that breath, that moment, whatever you need to do to interrupt the reaction that you are about to have and to...

calm yourself down. So pause is all about you. Within pause as well, we want to make sure everyone's safe. So I will say that safety is massively important. So if it is quite an aggressive moment that is happening in your home, the meltdown is really intense. Of course, do what you need to do to make sure you are safe, your child's safe, and your other children and family members are safe.

Once that is there and you've paused, you can then observe. So what is their nervous system showing? Okay. And again, this course walks you through a checklist. There's templates of how to figure out what their nervous system is communicating with you. You may already know, which is great. And then we connect on their terms. We look at their safety cues. We understand those cues. How do we show up? Is it fewer words? Is it presence that they need? Do they need space? Do they need physical contact? They may not.

This

is about knowing exactly what they need And then we support, that is removing pressure, restoring autonomy, making sure that they can feel more relaxed in their nervous system. Something that we don't do within this process is we don't lecture, we don't

bring up that logical thinking, that reasoning, because when a child is in meltdown, they're offline,

They're not in a space to reason with you or to understand. They are in survival mode, they're in meltdown. And if you work through this process, then you can over time sustainably begin to support them through it with less intensity, more calm towards the end and more connection.

In my experience, once I started using this approach, like intentionally, meltdowns, they didn't disappear because that is never the goal. It's about reducing them in their intensity and then it's about honouring your child's needs and then kind of preventing them. So there's a reason why the meltdown happened. And it's almost unrealistic, I think, to think that they will never go into meltdown again, because they will. Their nervous system...

does not fit into our neurotypical framed society. It's just, it's what it is. The pressure is too big, but that's why if you are equipped to support them, then you can change that support in the environment for them, which is going to make the biggest impact on the intensity of their meltdowns, the frequency, and how you advocate for your child to make sure everyone around knows this as well. So...

If we do go back to these four steps within the framework, the pause, observe, connect, and support, we can see that observed, connect, and support, that has to do with how you show up for your child, right? And how you support them through that meltdown.

If you just jump to observing, connecting or supporting and you miss pause, then that takes you out of it. And then you actually haven't checked in to see how you are well-placed or not well-placed to support them.

So within the foundations course, we walk through these steps slowly, specifically with examples and with tools that you can use. And then you can actually see how you can break that down

so you can see how to practice it in your day to day.

So if you do take anything away from this lesson, my biggest takeaway that I would invite you to reflect upon is this question, am I regulated enough to support my child in this moment? Not necessarily am I calm, am I perfect? Am I doing everything right to the best of my ability? That's not what it is.

just thinking, am I regulated enough to support them through this? And that happens within pause. So I invite you to pause.

you might be saying, but a lot of the times, no, I'm not regulated enough. And that's where we have to equip you with the tools to be able to do so.

So it's quite unrealistic if you're already very reactionary in these meltdown moments to then think, well, how in the world am I just going to become regulated or regulated enough in five or 10 seconds? You probably aren't, and this is a practice, so it does happen over time, but there's so much that we can do as parents to ensure that we are showing up regulated enough on a regular basis.

These aren't just one-off things, they're actually big mindset shifts that we have to take and things that actually will shift how we go about our day as well. Once again, we touch on in the course, if you need deeper support on that, ask within the community. It is yours, free access, you have the support there and it is instant. I can't stress this enough, so much of the support.

around the world is just inaccessible. So please, like I invite you, just take advantage of it, use it. This is my gift to you for listening. I would love if you really soaked up the community for those 30 days. I want to meet you inside. I want to see how we can all help and how we can come together to support your days to be a little bit less chaotic and hectic and a little bit more intentional and calm, starting with you.

I just wanna finish off this episode with kind of a mention about that heavy load that comes from parenting an autistic or PDA child alone. And when I say alone, I don't mean that you don't have a partner, however, you may be a single parent, which comes with a lot of challenges. I won't speak to that because I'm not a single parent. But the single parents that I've worked with, I can see...

the immense toll that it takes. So it's not necessarily about if you are solo in your household, but you could be. It's not if you are working with a teacher and they understand or semi-understand. That's great.

What I'm saying here is that we shouldn't do this alone, is that this aspect of co-regulation, if we think of it from our child's perspective, so our child needs us to be well, because they need a co-regulator to be regulated. And if we bring it back to psychology and attachment, and attachment theory, it is so important that a child is able to co-regulate. It is not a bad thing. I think a lot of people think that,

If you're co-regulating, you're being so hands-on, you're being a helicopter parent or whatever those kind of sayings are, that's actually so far from the truth because attachment starts from that co-regulation, from that bond, from that safety, from that sense of trust from child to parent and back and forth. And it doesn't matter if your child is autistic or if they're neurodivergent, they will...

have connection with you, perhaps not in the neurotypical ways that a lot of...

development courses and perhaps different theories or programs say, but that isn't wrong, it's just different. So you will know that your child connects with you and it doesn't need to be the way that the textbook tells you that they need to connect with you. My son often connects with me through sign language and my son is quite fluent in his speaking, but he often will revert to being non-speaking because he's more comfortable when he is overwhelmed.

in having the autonomy to sign and that's our own communication and that's how we connect and that isn't what the textbook tells me. The textbook actually would tell me that that is wrong and that I should be working to fix that. The difference about me being neurodiversity affirming in our practice in our home is that we are honouring the communication differences and the nervous system differences that our son is showing us.

and we are receptive to that and we are meeting him where he is. We don't have the goal and we never have of you must use your words, you must tell us what you need because he is telling us and non-speaking autistic children. So this is for parents of non-speaking autistic children or autistic children who have limited speech or who choose to communicate in a different way. That is okay. It is not something that we have to...

force verbal communication on them because we have to look at it through nervous system safety and that is I understand a pretty generalized comment to make because I don't want to discount that potential grief as a parent that you could go through especially when we hear everything developmentally of well my child will learn to speak and they'll say X amount of words before they turn two and all of this but I did just want to say that

about how we can respect your autistic child's communication preferences and that that is how they connect with you and that is so okay and it's something that we can lean into but also I do understand that it's a very heavy and perhaps grief that you could be feeling especially if you are early on in this journey of raising your autistic child or understanding that they're autistic.

I guess bringing it all the way back to the ending point here, is that you shouldn't do this alone. And you may have that initial support, that tag team, which is incredible. And I really hope that you guys are on the same page in your home or whoever's in your home. If not, bring it to the community. We can work through that as well. Because that is so important, but I won't get into that consistency part in this episode.

When we look at not doing this alone, I am referring to community and how important it is to have other people, whether they're a group of friends, whether they're a local support community, whether they're an online one, hint, hint, like Attuned Parenting which you have that 30 day free access for. But at the end of the day, it's a space where you can unpack

anything that is going on, make sense of it, but also have that support from other people who may have just lived it this morning as well, or who've already worked through that, who can jump in and lend a hand, lend some support, opposed to people who don't understand PDA, or people who don't understand autism.

especially if you have those neurodiversity affirming values, it can be draining and confusing as you work your way through this to be hit with all that well-meaning advice from people who just don't understand. It's okay that they don't understand, but it is so important to surround yourself with the people who do because it validates you and your parenting. It gives you that connection with someone else. So then you are actually...

and then your wellbeing cup like your connection with others is full if that's something that you like. Me personally, the reason why I love doing online stuff is because my capacity to connect in a face-to-face manner, especially when I've been face-to-face parenting all day, is really low. So I protect my own capacity that way, but that's why I've created this online space.

I guess the biggest thing is just knowing that if you are not regulated, you are not in the best space to co-regulate for your child.

as well as if you are isolated and if you are burnt out. So that is what we need to piece back together for you with support, with connection, with community, or even just with resources, with being pointed in the right direction if you have some questions.

Because once you feel better in your parenting within yourself, when you aren't as reactionary, or perhaps you even aren't reactionary, and maybe you just shut down and you do the opposite, where instead of going from zero to 60, you just shut down and don't say anything. or don't, you know, struggle to actually be in a space of being a co-regulator, but for the opposite reason, which...

has its pros and cons as well, but it's still something that means that you're not able to be present and co-regulate.

A lot of the mainstream advice or the traditional advice I think that we get, especially for me is within other parenting circles that I've actually removed myself from because I just find it's not productive, is that it leads to these feelings for me of shame or that I've done something wrong and that doesn't support the already failure feelings or exhaustion that I'm feeling.

and support doesn't necessarily need to be a huge village of people. It can be one safe person or a safe space or a few people that you go to. When you are held, when you are cared for, your child will feel that way too. So that's kind of just what I wanna end with there. I really hope that you found some value from this episode. If you did, I would absolutely love if you could...

follow along if you're listening on your preferred podcast platform. Please follow along. It just means that you will get access every week when I do drop a new episode and you'll get that access first. If you are on YouTube listening, please hit subscribe so I can make this support accessible to other people as well or more accessible. And I really want to build up this community with parents who

share in these values and where we can come together and offer this neurodiversity affirming non-judgment supportive space where we can learn and grow and share in a way that makes sense and feels good. So I will leave you with that.

I hope that you can take from this that you just need to be regulated enough, especially in the early days of you practicing. And I invite you to pause. You deserve the support. You do not have to do this alone.

And if anything that I've said today...

in your ears, when you're driving, when you're going for a jog, whatever it is that you're doing right now, maybe folding, washing, listening to your children or playing maybe alongside your children. If something clicked, the free Attuned Parenting Foundations course, this is where I break down everything I've just said and this is only one part of it with videos, with templates, with support from the community. When you head on over to chantalhewitt.com/course there will be two options.

free option. The other option is just your entry space into the paid community, which of course it is there for you. But for this option, if you're just looking for that free course, please just make sure you've done that. You do not need to enter any credit card details, nothing. Grab your course and it will invite you to download an app called Heartbeat, which is a very accessible and easy to use and navigate platform. That is where I have created this community space for members and the course

lives within this. So you have that access within there. And I just cannot wait to see you inside the community or as a follower on this podcast or on the YouTube channel. I hope you have an awesome day and thank you so much for giving me the space to unmask properly for the first time, I guess publicly. That actually means a lot. I will see you in...

Episode 9 next week, midweek, that is when the episode will drop. So keep an eye on your Spotify or your Apple Podcasts or your YouTube channel or wherever else you consume the Attuned Spectrum podcast.