I'm Steph, a 52 year old mum of two girls, now aged 19 and 17. When our youngest daughter was 2 and a half years old, we were told that she was autistic. That's the day I started this blog. Here's the link to my first ever post: Today - A diagnosis of autism?
I thought the blog would be a good way to explain how Sasha was different from other children her age, because at the age of 2 or 3 most people probably thought she was having a lot of toddler tantrums. But we could already see that it was something else. Our eldest daughter hadn’t found things difficult in the same sort of way. I named the blog Steph's Two Girls because I knew the diagnosis would have an impact on our eldest too.
After much reading and research, we came to the conclusion that our youngest girl has a particular sub-type, or profile, of Autism called Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA).
My post 'when we first discovered PDA' is a short summary of the early years and Our PDA Story week 35 was a later update on my blog. After that, I decided that it would be good idea to tell our story in a book format, in the hope that more families would benefit from our experiences and understanding in some way. I soon learnt that book writing is very different to blog writing! After a couple of years it was finally finished and our book, PDA in the Family, was published in January 2024. For more details please see my post 'PDA in the Family: Life After the Lightbulb Moment'.
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I have pulled some of my most popular posts together into this one post for key PDA info: Top Ten information posts about PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance).
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The central difficulty for people with PDA is their avoidance of the everyday demands made by other people, due to their high anxiety levels when they feel that they are not in control.
People with PDA can appear more sociable and have much better social communication and interaction skills than some other people on the spectrum, and are consequently able to use this ability to their advantage. They still have real difficulties in these areas though, mainly because of their need to control the interaction.
The originally noted main features of PDA (and how it may differ from other profiles of autism) were:
- resisting and avoiding ordinary, everyday demands
- appearing sociable on the surface but lacking depth in understanding (often recognised by parents early on)
- excessive mood swings, often switching suddenly
- comfortable (sometimes to an extreme extent) in role play and pretending
- obsessive behaviour, often focused on people rather than things.
Research into this profile of autism is ongoing. For more detailed information about PDA, please do visit the PDA Society webpage where there are many resources and more detailed information on research and diagnostic criteria. There are many older posts on my blog explaining how life was, as we muddled our way through after this diagnosis for our youngest daughter.
Contact me via email at stephstwogirls@gmail.com.
For updates with more PDA info and my latest blog posts direct to your inbox, please sign up for my Substack emails (it's free!)
For more information about PDA, please read any of the books in my post below
Books about the Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) profile of autism
To find out more about our experiences, please check out our 'About Us' page or the summary of our experience in Our PDA Story Week 35. If you are looking for more online reading about Pathological Demand Avoidance, the posts below may help.
- What is PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance)?
- Ten things you need to know about Pathological Demand Avoidance
- Does my child have Pathological Demand Avoidance?
- The difference between PDA and ODD
- Strategies for PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance)
- Pathological Demand Avoidance: Strategies for Schools
- Challenging Behaviour and PDA
- Is Pathological Demand Avoidance real?
- Autism with demand avoidance or Pathological Demand Avoidance?
- Books about the Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) profile of autism
