At Peace Parents Podcast

This episode is an excerpt from a lesson inside the Paradigm Shift Program. I'm sharing it because the PDA lens is the foundation that all other skills in my work rest on, and it is not something most parents are going to hear explained anywhere else. In this lesson I walk through exactly what the PDA lens is, why it has to be learned as a skill rather than just understood intellectually, and how...

When I first heard Jan Winhall speak about the intersection of the nervous system and addiction, I immediately thought of the PDA teens and adults in our community who are reaching for substances or engaging in self-harm. In this episode she explains how addiction and self-harm function as nervous system state regulation strategies, what conventional models get wrong, and what it actually looks li...

In this episode I share the definition of PDA I use: PDA is a survival drive for autonomy and equality that consistently overrides other survival instincts, including eating, sleeping, toileting, hygiene, and safety. I explain how this is different from older definitions that consider PDA to be anxiety driven, and why that distinction matters clinically and practically. I also I introduce the conc...

If you are a parent who cannot unschool or homeschool your PDA child, or who needs practical support navigating the school system, this episode is for you. I am joined by Dr. Destiny Huff, a licensed professional counselor, non-attorney special education advocate, and neuro-affirming trainer who is also late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD and a mother of neurodivergent children. Dr. Huff shares the m...

When he was young, it seemed like my son Cooper was almost always active and agitated. I tried everything I was told to try - bubble blowing for deep breathing, emotion naming, zones of regulation, nature walks with candy as incentives - but nothing worked. Maybe the activity would occupy him once, but then he'd be agitated all over again afterwards. I thought I must be going it wrong, or just a b...

I sit down with Dr. Jennifer Huffman, a board-certified pediatric neuropsychologist, PDA woman with lived experience, and creator of the Neurodynamic Navigator System and the Neurodynamic Quotient. After twenty-five years working with children whose profiles were called often called ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), she developed a framework to make the dynamic, fluctuating nature of the PDA br...

This episode is an interview with my husband, Jake, about his path from well-founded skepticism of Pathological Demand Avoidance to fully changing his parenting to support our two PDA sons, and how that has helped all three of them. This conversation is for parents who aren't sure about PDA, their partners who are, and everyone who has wondered what it actually looks like to shift the paradigm as...

In this episode I talk about how I understand my autistic brain, my internalized pathological demand avoidance, and why it took me six years of working in this space before I felt certain enough to say this publicly. I also walk through my life, from childhood to the present, with renewed understanding, in the hope of sharing insights that can help you. This episode is for parents of high-achievin...

I speak with Stephanie Harrigan, a certified speech language pathologist with nearly fifteen years of experience working with the neurodiverse population, to talk about selective mutism, feeding therapy and more. Stephanie brings a regulation-first, child-led approach to all of her work, and this conversation is full of concrete examples from her practice, including what feeding therapy actually l...

This is the fourth episode in my series on PDA and restrictive eating, and this one is for therapists. If you are an occupational therapist, a speech language pathologist, or another type of therapist working with a child who isn't responding to gentle, play-based, sensory-based, or exposure-based feeding approaches the way you'd expect, this episode designed to help you. I share the full arc of m...

If you've heard me talk about autonomy, equality, and lowering demands before and thought, "But what does that actually look like at the dinner table?" — this episode is for you. This is the third episode in my series on eating and PDA, and it's the most practical one yet. I'm walking you through six concrete accommodations you can experiment with if your PDA child or teen struggles with restricti...

In this episode — Part 2 of our series on eating and PDA — I walk through the 10 misconceptions about eating that I personally had to unlearn in order to help my son. These are beliefs that are completely reasonable for most children and even most neurodivergent children, but do not apply to pathologically demand avoidant kids and teens. I cover why "kids will eat when they're hungry" isn't empiri...

If your child has dropped food after food, won't try new things no matter what you do, and every mealtime feels like a battle — this episode is the first in a four-part series where I get personal. I'm sharing the story of my oldest son Cooper, who at his lowest point was eating only Honey Nut Cheerios out of a single specific bowl. I walked through grocery store aisles sobbing, frantically lookin...

In this episode, I coach Danielle, a mom from North Idaho who is newer to the PDA lens and has already been making progress with her almost nine-year-old son — but is running into resistance from her husband and her parents, who help with caregiving. Her son has existing diagnoses of ADHD, sensory processing disorder, and disorganized attachment, and was adopted from South Korea. Since discovering...

This is the first episode in a new behind-the-scenes series I am doing with Kendall, one of the coaches on the At Peace Parents team. Each month, we pull back the curtain on our own lives as parents who are practicing the same skills we teach, and on what these principles look like inside real coaching work with families. This episode is about radical acceptance: what it actually means, why it mat...

In this episode, I coach Pam, a mom raising fraternal twin 10-year-old boys, both PDA and autistic, who present and react quite differently from each other. We talk through the socialization questions: what gets in the way, what actually helps, and why the issue for many PDA kids is not a lack of social skills but a nervous system that cannot access those skills in the moment. I introduce the conc...

Chris Deutch is a Chicago-based angel investor, founder of Lofty Ventures, and a PDA adult who only recently found the language to make sense of his own childhood. In this conversation, he and Casey trace his path from a kid being carried into school kicking and screaming to a twenty-seven-year career backing entrepreneurs. They talk about what PDA actually looked like in his childhood, including...

Ivy is a mom celebrating her almost 17-year-old son's GED . The years before this moment included school refusal, police contact, CPS involvement, inpatient treatment, and substance use. Things are calmer now, but the household is still walking on eggshells and Ivy is still trying to figure out what comes next. In this episode, Casey and Ivy talk through what addiction looks like through a nervous...

This is part three of my hygiene and PDA series, and it is focused entirely on practical strategies. I cover bathing and showering, hair washing, hair brushing, nail clipping, hand washing, and getting dressed. I walk through four types of accommodations I use with my own sons and with the families I work with: lowering demands, autonomy, equality, and novelty combined with nervous system safety....

This is the second episode in our three-part series on hygiene and PDA. In this episode we deep dive on helping your PDA child or teen go to the dentist and brush their teeth. Specifically, we support parents (and therapists) to understand: Why teeth brushing and going to the dentist are so difficult for PDA children and teens Practical tips they can use to help a PDA child or teen access teeth br...

This is the first of three episodes about hygiene and Pathological Demand Avoidance. In this episode I focused on how to think about PDA and hygiene struggles, and understanding the root cause of struggles around: Teeth brushing Going to the dentist Showering and bathing Hair washing Hand washing Nail clipping Hair cutting Getting dressed More specifically, in this episode I talk through: The Deep...

In this episode I coach a mom of a 10-year-old PDAer who is in burnout (Pathological Demand Avoidance / Pervasive Drive for Autonomy). The child loves to cook and bake but has a meltdown if family members clean up after her while she’s in the kitchen. She also melts down if others pass by her bedroom on the way to their own, which her mom has to do if she’s going to clean the kitchen after her dau...

In this episode I talk with our coach Donna Georgen - parent of PDA 28- and 21-year-olds - about her top tips for parenting PDA teens. This is the second of two episodes in which Donna and I discussed this topic. In the first episode we covered five of her tips, and in this episode we cover five more. Here they are: Reflect on success Normalize discomfort and fear Let go of future fears Pause soci...

In this episode I talk with our coach Donna Georgen - parent of PDA 28- and 21-year-olds - about her top tips for parenting PDA teens. We cover five of her tips in this episode and will release another episode soon with five more. Here's the first five: Try to keep autonomy and equality at the forefront Shift from parent to mentor-friend Be vulnerable and transparent Release the pressure to figure...

In this episode Clinical Psychologist Dr. Alex Klein and I discuss ten common misconceptions about Pathological Demand Avoidance or Pervasive Drive for Autonomy. Here are five from Dr. Klein: The parent of a PDAer is doing something wrong, especially if they've lowered demands. If a PDA child did something yesterday, they can do it again today. Accommodations won’t prepare PDA kids for the real wo...