PDA Parenting Strategies: Shifting from Power Struggles to Relational Safety

If you’ve tried every strategy, consequence, or reward and nothing seems to help your child, the problem isn't that you haven't found the right technique. In this episode, we explore why traditional parenting fails for the Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) profile and how shifting to a safety-led, low-demand approach changes everything.

Episode Summary: 

Join Chantal Hewitt—AuDHD PDAer and parent—as she unpacks the essential move from "managing behavior" to "prioritizing the nervous system." We dive deep into the power of declarative language and why "safety-led parenting" is the opposite of being permissive. If you are navigating school refusal, autism meltdowns, or extreme demand avoidance, this episode offers the grounded, practical reframes you need to move toward connection.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Problem with Compliance: Why traditional rewards and consequences often trigger a "threat response" in PDA children.
• Safety vs. Permissiveness: Debunking the myth that low-demand parenting is "lazy" parenting.
• Declarative Language 101: How simple shifts in how you speak can reduce pressure and invite collaboration.
• The 24-Hour Child: Understanding that your child's needs don't stop when they leave the house or the classroom.
• Co-Regulation as a Tool: Moving away from "fixing" behavior and toward being a steady anchor for your child.

Resources & Links

✨ Join the Raising PDA Community: Join the VIP Waitlist for a special discount when we open again in March 2026!

✨ Free PDA Language Guide: Download the Low-Demand Language Guide — This walks you through the exact shifts mentioned in today's episode.

✨ 1:1 Support: Enquire about my limited-space 8-week coaching programme HERE.

✨ Connect with me: * YouTube: @chantal.hewitt

• Email: hello@chantalhewitt.com

If this episode helped you, please rate the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it helps more PDA families find this support!

Transcript

Chantal Hewitt (00:00)
that's the opposite of what we want to do. Safety-led parenting doesn't mean permissive parenting. I hear this all the time. It is not permissive to try to keep your child safe and to support their wellbeing. It's actually exhausting. Whereas if I think of permissive parenting, I almost think of the word lazy, and that is...

completely opposite to what you are doing when you are supporting your PDA child. Am I right?

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Attuned Spectrum podcast. I'm Chantal Hewitt, AuDHD PDAer, mum to three children, including my beautiful boy, my PDA autistic son. And your guide as we work through understanding PDA, understanding burnout and navigating neurodivergent life.

let's dive into this

Shifting from behavior to safety in PDA parenting.

I'm so glad that you're here. I would love if you could rate the show, if it has made an impact in some way, even in some small way, which I'm sure actually doesn't feel that small, but either way, whatever it has done for you, I would love to hear about it. If you're willing to share, please give a follow on Apple podcasts or Spotify or YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcasting or wherever you listen to the Attuned Spectrum podcast.

I would greatly appreciate your support.

If you've tried every strategy, consequence or reward and nothing seems to help your PDA child, the problem isn't that you haven't found the right technique. It is that PDA, persistent driver autonomy, or the clinical term pathological demand avoidance, requires a completely different parenting lens to see sustainable wellbeing and support for your child.

Within this episode, it is my goal. This is part three, by the way, part three of a three-part PDA series. If you have not yet, please jump on over to PDA part one, and PDA part two. Then come right on back.

One and two focused more on those foundations and understanding the why behind PDA behavior. If you want a deeper explanation of the why and the ins and outs and the three-part foundational approach that I use in my own home and in my coaching work with families and within the community,

we are going to get into some real examples.

So now that we know the, the why, now let's get into the how.

Most parenting advice that you will hear is built on behavior, correcting behavior, managing behavior and controlling behavior, often with an unspoken power dynamic. And by the way, this is also true for gentle parenting, positive parenting, just to name a few there. This dynamic is I'm the parent, so I'm in charge. May not be intentional.

but that is what the message is communicating. When you really pick apart the language that we use in parenting our children, specifically our PDA autistic children, language really does matter. And I will show you why in this video. And by the end of this video, it is my goal that you will have tangible actions that you can take away and begin using right away with your child.

So grab out your phone, if you use a notes app or grab a pen, grab a journal and jot down what stands out for you that you can do today to make the shift in your language, even if it's small. Small steps compound into big changes and see the difference, see what happens.

Okay, so back to that power dynamic. I am the parent, so I am in charge. But for PDA children, behavior is not the starting point, but it is often looked at as the starting point. That is what is addressed. The challenging or bad behavior is addressed before even considering everything else that has led up to it. And note

for autistic children, anyone who really struggles in their nervous system, these demands, they accumulate over time. So if a child is heading towards burnout or in burnout, the behavior could be completely different, could be way more intense than it has been in the past. Often that is actually that tipping point where parents start researching and they...

land on PDA information and they go, my gosh, this makes sense. This is the missing piece. We have not been supporting the autonomy in this particular way within our child. But once you know that your child is PDA, you are able to intentionally shift your parenting approach and your language to support them. I do want to say I wish it was that easy.

lot of the time just knowing while it's amazing and while that gives us something to go off of and to practice.

This parenting approach is very different from how we were raised a lot of the time. speak for myself and a lot of the families that I work with.

And it feels hard. It feels hard when something is so engrained in how you react, in how you respond to your child. And with a PDAer...

The way that you respond, even if everyone else around you would go, that is a great response. Or you might think, how did that set them off? This is why videos one and two are so important because we look at the why, what demands and instructions and commands and how they're perceived, what that does to a PDA, to a PDA child and the nervous system and how, when they perceive that threat.

They go into survival mode and that is where the challenging behaviors that a lot of the times we see as parents come from. And when we use traditional behavioral approaches to combat or address those behaviors, what happens is we are driving our child who's PDA way further down into burnout.

And we are also struggling to survive in our homes and in our daily routines and in our life. And everything becomes very, very hard.

I was working with a family and

For months and months and months, they kept saying, okay, I'm going to take a little bit of what you're saying and I'll put it into practice. By the way, they said I can tell this story. And it wasn't until months later, they actually realized one day when they, they felt like they were giving up and they just went, they let down their walls and they, they described it as giving in and I can relate to that. That's how I feel a lot of the time as well. And that's something that I'm working on with them myself.

as a parent.

that feeling of giving in that they felt like they were doing or being permissive for how they parent their child and letting them get away with things. It was kind of their space to rest where they kind of took a week and just needed to fully step back. But what happened was that they watched their child's nervous system settle and watching that happen while it wasn't intentional.

They did end up following a lot of the strategies by doing that because they were so exhausted. And that is my point. Parents of PDA children, we become so exhausted doing everything that we think will work that actually just pushes things further and further.

down. It just doesn't work. And once you discover why it's not working and that your child needs a different approach, that is where you can start to recover. As a parent who's exhausted, as the child who's in burnout, you can now support them because you will understand what they need and you will have a way forward.

Okay, so back to the core shift.

For PDA children, behavior is the signal. It is what you see first, but it is just the tip of the iceberg with everything else happening underneath being their nervous system. So the shift here is we need to start asking, what is my child's nervous system responding to right now? So just thinking about it differently from going, this is their nervous system responding, not this is the behavior that I need to stop.

once you separate them and go it's actually not behavior like outwardly yes it is behavior by definition that you were seeing i think it just holds such a ingrained negative connotation that word but anyway when we look at it as what is their nervous system communicating what is it experiencing that is causing them to respond this way

That is the question that once we address it and answer it and dig deep, that will increase their safety because we will be responding through connection and safety and understanding instead of punishing or disciplining or setting strict boundaries or rules. Separate note, boundaries are still important.

Just thought I'd say that is a question that I get asked often. Very important still to have boundaries and while they are very hard to put in place, we'll get into that. If that is something you're interested in, it is coming up in my content calendar, but please comment yes below and tell me a little story if you like as well of.

what boundaries you struggle to put in place or what rules are really important to you that you're finding really hard to navigate. And then we can workshop through them and see if other people are feeling the same way. And yeah, see if we can get some progress in there, share some stories.

Okay, so back to what is your child's nervous system responding to right now? That shift, that question, very important. For PDA children, loss of autonomy feels like a threat. End of the day, that's what it is. Even small, well-intentioned demands can trigger that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response in your child. Might actually pause there and define those things in case...

I feel like they've been implied and they haven't so big stop pause moment here. Obviously skip ahead if you already know these things. When a child's nervous system or a person's nervous system becomes activated you have a fight response that can come up so that is your kind of immediate like a response flight which is your kind of running away. Freeze your shutdown

For example, my son goes into freeze quite often when he is very overwhelmed and feeling unsafe in his environment or when he feels losses of autonomy. That comes up a lot for him. He freezes, so he shuts down. Sometimes this looks like loss of language for a period of time.

and it's reinstated once he settles down and once his nervous system has time to rest and fawn so that is your masking response.

And as we spoke about in video number two, we know how detrimental masking can be.

So when we focus on compliance, we often increase fear, not increase safety. And that's the opposite of what we want to do. Safety-led parenting doesn't mean permissive parenting. I hear this all the time. It is not permissive to try to keep your child safe and to support their wellbeing. It's actually exhausting. Whereas if I think of permissive parenting, I almost think of the word lazy, and that is...

completely opposite to what you are doing when you are supporting your PDA child. Am I right?

So what safety-led parenting means is it means supporting their nervous system first. That is the foundation. They need to be safe. They need to have trust. They need to feel grounded in their environment, in their safety, in everything else around them.

they can even think to rationalize or reason or use that part of their brain that parents love to poke at so much thinking that it's gonna make an impact or make a change because funny story the way that children learn is through watching their parents so that is why having awesome connection and conversations and

gentle language or calm language and the way that your body is positioned and your tone of voice with your child, that is not

you letting things slide or not being firm. What that is, is you are actually teaching them in one of the best ways and that is you're demonstrating how they can grow up and how they can act and how productive that is. Because if you scream all the time, been there done that. If you shame even without meaning to. If you

constantly lecture or criticize a lot of well-meaning parenting does fall into that category. What it does is it teaches them that that is what they can do. And I think we hear it a lot, don't we hear our children in one way or another copy what we're doing and we go, gosh, where did they hear that? And then you realize, my, they have heard that from me.

So practical tips supporting the nervous system first, what this can look like, reducing demands, adjusting the sensory environment to support your unique child sensory needs.

Reducing demands, adjusting the sensory environment, changing how we use language, getting back to that language piece and how important it is, regulating ourselves before trying to regulate our child. Safety would be the caveat here that I'm putting in is that if anything is physically unsafe, obviously that needs to be paramount. Just wanted to say that in case it wasn't clear. Everything I'm saying here assumes that the people around you are safe. If they are not,

I can post another video that looks at what happens with those aggressive behaviors and what we need to do as parents to support our children and the other children in our home and ourselves and keep ourselves safe when aggressive behaviors come in. Because everyone needs to stay safe. The end of the day that's safety is paramount. So when physical safety becomes something that you need to worry about then everything I'm saying here

Please don't do that first. This is all meant to holistically support your child throughout the day, throughout their days, throughout their weeks and months and life. But in the moment, if there is aggression and if it is escalating, then don't follow this, what I'm saying in the moment. You make sure that everyone else in your home is safe. Comment below safety. If that is something that you're going, yes, I want a video on that, then I will prioritize making that content as soon as possible.

You might hear people talk or use the word declarative language in PDA parenting, but declarative language isn't just about the words that you use that lesson how your perceived instructions or commands or things that you need, your requests for your child, how they come across. Because if used incorrectly,

Declarative language can still feel very controlling or threatening to a PDA child. They're quite smart. They are aware of when you're trying to manipulate the situation around them. Obviously time and a place, there may be very good cause to approach declarative language in this way.

Essentially, declarative language is when you say things that you observe, say things that you notice, you're declaring things, statements, sentences, things that are meant to reduce pressure for the child, and it genuinely does work. When it may not work is if your intention behind it is not to support your child's nervous system.

So if it is to get them to do something or to have a specific parent led outcome, that is when they may see through it. And that is when it may not be the best tactic or strategy because it does send them into a loss of autonomy because they will perceive what you're doing as taking away their autonomy. So if they do see through that, then that is when you have to be really careful when you use it.

It is genuinely helpful. I find in my daily conversations with my PDA son, even with myself and my husband, I feel way less threatened through just comments and narrative throughout the day. But I know I'm an adult, but I genuinely know when it's being said to get me to do something. And that actually triggers a response in me that is a fight response. So.

Just be careful with how you use declarative language. Make sure the purpose of it is really intentional.

Declarative language is about removing pressure and expectation as you speak words or as you say things to your child. But used incorrectly, even declarative language can still feel very controlling or threatening to your child. It is not about scripts alone, it is about an ongoing shift in how we speak, respond and relate to our PDA child or children. That makes all the difference.

If you get really good at declarative language, it doesn't necessarily make parenting suddenly quite easy. You will still have those hard days and you will still react sometimes. It just happens. You are not perfect. Nobody is perfect.

The goal isn't perfection, it's moving away from the power struggles and towards safety over time.

In addition to declarative language, can you make your environment as low demand as possible for your child? Lower any unnecessary demands. Anything that is something that you can let go of, even if it's a struggle to let go of. For example, I struggled to let go of having television on as a transition time because I just don't like it.

whether I don't like it because it adds background noise that I can't stand and that sets me off and makes me feel very overwhelmed or is it because of my control that I need and that I feel like I just don't want my children watching TV?

Another thing that you can do is lower demands as much as possible within your home. I'm really talking, let things go.

Again, not permissive parenting. You are controlling a safe environment for your child. And that is not a permissive parenting practice. That is very intentional. It is very smart because you are supporting their safety. Lower demands, give them autonomy and control. My son really struggles to brush his teeth.

It has always been a big frustration for me in the evenings and I have finally had to let that go. There are days sometimes where he doesn't brush his teeth and I sometimes will try to go back to behaviouralism and say, well, you can do this first and then you do this. But then what happens is if he feels forced and even if he does it, he will have a very intense meltdown.

shortly after that because of that loss of autonomy. And what I have realized is that maybe every third night he will brush his teeth in the evening and most mornings because he makes the choice and after a nice sleep most of the time he wakes up and he goes, ⁓ I will brush my teeth now. I don't say anything. So I really step back. That is another really good approach is speak

less, speak less to your child. You can still connect with them in other ways but follow their lead. You don't need to fill the room with noise.

And just watch what happens, see how they respond.

What control can you give them in planning their own day?

something I used to do and sometimes still do, but it has to be more.

flexible and spontaneous, but when my son wants to he will grab visual cards that we made together and Has to be led by him. I can't just put it out there anymore but I used to I used to just put something on the table and not say anything and then he might come to it and go ⁓ I actually want to try that and because I haven't said anything and He makes that choice he decides for himself and then

He doesn't have to equalize to come back up to safety in his nervous system. That is another thing that you can do. Declarative language, if done correctly, works really well, reduces demand, reduces pressure.

Increase autonomy as much as possible for your child. Let them lead. Really focus on their interests. What are they loving at the moment? What will they sit for hours and do or talk to you about? Even if it's not something you're interested in, can you sit with them or be near them and just be present and see what happens? See what happens to your connection there.

And can you give them so much control over their day? Obviously, we have our own routines, appointments, there's safety things to consider. You have other children. But if you look at again, that equity versus equality, even if you have multiple children, I have three. They're all very important. They're all extremely important, as all of our children are. They all have differing levels of nervous system, needs and how I need to show up in certain moments for them.

Another really important strategy is look at their sensory environment. A lot of the times we are not aware as parents of what

areas of the environment that our child is in every day. So not just in our home, but definitely in our home. But when we go out, when we go to the grocery store,

when we go in the car, when we drive somewhere. Those sensory needs, if their environment...

is not supporting their sensory differences, then this will also be really challenging for them to stay calm or in a better nervous system state, a more regulated nervous system state throughout the day.

The language that we use, is not about the scripts. It's not about performing. It is about an ongoing shift in practice and how we speak, respond and relate to our PDA child. And what that means is that the biggest shift comes from us as parents.

These strategies that I have mentioned and the things that you can try to do to help regulate your PDA child and co-regulate with them, this doesn't suddenly just make parenting easy. You will still have hard days. You will still react. The goal isn't perfection. It is moving away from the power struggles and towards safety over time. But you can do it.

If you want to understand these shifts more deeply and practice language changes that actually help your child in the moment, have a look at the resource in my description. It is a low demand PDA language guide, and this will walk you through very simple

reframes or shifts in your language that you can try today in addition to these strategies or you can focus on this one first. It goes into a bit of detail of why this works, how you can do it, and then you can give it a try and see if you notice any shifts or any change in your child and how they respond. I hope that you enjoyed this please subscribe so I can help.

get this community supportive of parents around the world who are looking for a more accessible and neurodiversity affirming parenting approach for their PDA autistic child that isn't rooted in judgment or shame or a lack of understanding. I'm Chantal. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next week.