20 simple ways PDA kids & teens can safely feel in charge of their adult

“WATCH Mama, WATCH!” My 6-year-old PDAer takes my chin in his soft little hand and forcibly turns my face towards the YouTube video he is watching. I take a breath, close my eyes for a split second to find my inner center, and open my eyes to the video.

***

My husband guards the door while I’m on a private call. My child is trying to get inside. He is furious at my husband, and begins to scream at him. After the call, my child lets out his tension with more screaming. “I need to take revenge on Papa!” He grabs my husband’s mouse pad, runs upstairs, and hides it.

***

What’s going on in these moments? How do we understand my child’s behavior through the lens of PDA, neurodiversity, and nervous system health?

***

In The PDA Safe Circle™ Approach, I describe PDAers as people who have four extra-sensitive threat detection "antennae" guarding our safe circle.

These antennae are on the lookout for threats, even tiny ones, to our autonomy, control, social equality or status, and source of co-regulation.

When the PDAer's antennae detect a threat, we can imagine it as an arrow jabbing at the safe circle. The arrow shrinks the safe circle, and the person may get ejected from it - out of their thriving brain, and into a threat response.

This is where equalizing comes in.

In the PDA community, equalizing usually refers to exerting control or status over another person or thing to feel safe when triggered into a threat response. Essentially, we are flailing around outside our safe circle, exerting control to try and calm that antennae down so we can find our way back inside.

PDAers may equalize over:

Another person

(i.e. “You CAN’T go on a walk now Mama!”)

Our own bodies

(i.e. withholding food or bathroom)

Our own behavior

(“I’m only allowed to wear skirts.”)

An external system or institution

(“I HAVE to get straight A’s in school.”)

Put another way, the avoidance for which PDAers are known is simply one strategy we use to regain a sense of safety and control when our highly vulnerable nervous systems feel threatened. Equalizing is another strategy.

If a PDAer is unaccommodated, equalizing may look like swearing, yelling, hiding or breaking a caregivers’ favorite item, physically hitting or moving a parent’s body, dumping water onto a parent’s dinner plate, etc. Without understanding the PDA nervous system, equalizing behavior gets labeled as selfish, rigid, rude, bossy, know-it-all, cruel, vengeful, or defiant misbehavior.

Being on the receiving end of equalizing behavior can be physically dangerous, and/or emotionally exhausting.

(In adults, equalizing can turn abusive. This is one of the many reasons why supporting PDA children and teens from a nervous system perspective is so important. The more time a young person can spend inside their safe circle, the less traumatized they will be, the wider their safe circle can get, and the more easily they will be able to learn self awareness and regulation strategies. Bridging these skills into a PDAer's safe circle is part of what I teach.)

Why do kids and teens equalize with adults?

PDA children and teens equalize with adults because as young people they are not offered a sense of social equality or high status, especially with caregivers. Interactions that caregivers of non-PDAers take for granted - like five minute warnings, requests to come to the dinner table, a cue to go to the bathroom or do homework - may be perceived by a PDAer's body as an arrow jabbing at their safe circle.

Where a neuromajority child can cope or even feel safe with this power imbalance, the highly sensitive social threat detection antennae" of the PDA body perceive the power imbalance as a major threat.

The more equal or high status a PDA child feels in relationship to the people around them, the safer they will feel and the less unhealthy equalizing behavior they will do.

PDAers will thrive best if the entire culture of their home (and school if they are in school) offers them social equality - i.e. the ability to make decisions, be in charge of their own body, be treated as a partner in problem-solving, etc.

So, adults can can proactively strew healthy opportunities to equalize. Then the PDAer can clock more time feeling high status in a safe way, and everyone can have fun, too.

This kind of play may be hard or impossible in burnout, but on the other hand it may help with recovery. It all depends on attuning to your child/teen.

Healthy equalizing is similar to the idea of a "sensory diet." Just as you might offer high impact physical play throughout the day to an Autistic child who needs that sensory input to regulate, so too we can offer PDAers healthy opportunities to be high status throughout the day to help their nervous system regulate.

Healthy opportunities to equalize allow PDAers to shine as decision-makers, creative problem-solvers, and experts in our areas of interest.

“But how will my child learn that they can’t always be in control of others if I allow them to equalize?”

If a child’s limbic system feels unsafe because of a lack of social equality, they cannot do any kind of learning, and certainly not social-emotional learning. No one can learn while their survival threat response is activated.

Paradoxically, the more adults allow PDA children to feel socially equal or high status, the more time the PDAer spends feeling safe, and the more they are able to develop self-regulation skills, empathy, perspective, patience, and the ability to let others take the lead sometimes.

It all starts with healthy equalizing.

One big caveat before I list the ideas:

Directly inviting a PDAer to engage in something can trigger our threat response and backfire. Instead of direct verbal invitations, you can:

Strew: Just start doing the thing yourself. Pick up a pillow and toss it playfully. Get out a game and start playing with it yourself.

Use declarative statements (not questions or commands) to cue an invitation “You are in charge of what shirt I wear today!” “Bet you can’t catch me!” "I might do a round of top chef in the kitchen before dinner if anyone wants to join me."

If the child/teen shows no interest, withdraws, or lashes out, drop the idea for now. Do not take it personally, and don’t necessarily give up on the idea forever. PDA is a dynamic disability and our ability to engage in something varies by day and even by moment. The safe circle expands and contracts.

20 Ideas for Fun, Healthy Equalizing for PDA kids & Teens of Various Ages

1. Hide and seek and you can’t ever find them

2. Chase and they always outrun you

3. Wrestling and they push you over and pin you down. Or a pillow fight and they win

4. You each pull one end of a physical therapy stretchy band and they pull you over, or pull you around the house (careful of it snapping on the kid). This one is great sensory input as well as high status!

5. Hot and cold where they hide something and direct you with warmer/colder cues to find it

6. They decide where you sit for dinner

7. They decide where you go on a walk

8. They decide what shirt you wear

9. They beat you in a video game, card game, or sport

10. They work with a different adult to play a prank on you

11. You pretend something is too heavy for you and they are super strong and help you carry or move the thing
    

12. You allow them to initiate conversations with you, instead of you initiating. Follow their lead on topic.

13. They lecture you (infodump) on their area of interest

14. They show off a project they’ve been working on

15. They teach you how to play a video game

16. They decorate or reorganize something in the house (their room, a bookshelf, pantry, your phone’s apps:) You ask their help in a declarative way (“I know you’re great at X. I wonder what you think about…)

17. They choose a recipe and direct you on what to do (chef and sous chef) or judge the results. (Thanks to @barefootinadress for this one!)

18. You engage in some sensory activity or exercise together - trampoline, biking - but they jump higher or bike faster.

19. They decide on a family outing or restaurant

20. Some PDAers enjoy compliments, others are triggered by them. If your PDAer likes them, you can use statements here to build up their sense of social status. “You’re excellent at...” “I appreciate that...”