Helping Your Child with PDA Live a Happier Life

I found this book to be helpful and informative. Written by someone who has experienced the problems first hand and learnt how to handle, not only tricky situations, but negotiate her way through the system to seek support for her children and the difficulties encountered.The book is easy to read and understand. It gave me the knowledge and insight required.

This is a reasonable book on PDA although there was not much on how PDA children present as very young children and frustrating lack of information on education which is one of the reasons I bought the book, one of Alice's son got his GCSEs but there was no explanation at all really of how he went from school refusal to obtaining his GCSEs and strategies as my PDA son is extremely demand avoidant of any vaguely academic learning and to get GCSEs involves exams so I found that to be a huge gap. I felt there was more about her son's autism that the specifically PDA aspects of their presentations, and not enough detail into how PDA strategies differ. I think its a good introductory book but every PDA child is different and I did not find a lot to relate to in this book in terms of the level of my own son's demand avoidance especially in relation to education and learning, which is a big trigger for him, despite years of very low demand environment and at home environment. It did not appear that Alice's sons had significant additional learning needs which can often co-exist alongside PDA and be another source of their demand avoidance.

As a parent of a PDA child, I have accumulated a lot of books on the topic. This is the first one I’ve actually read right to the end! It is well written, easy to read and really helpful for parents to try to understand some of the reasons behind their child’s behaviour and what it actually means. It really made me think about my behaviours too and how they could also be affecting my child without me even realising. Lots of good, useful information without being too technical. Definitely worth a read.

This concise and helpful book is just brilliant. It’s helped to confirm what things were doing right, what strategies don’t work and introduced us to a range of new ones to try. What a straightforward and helpful book this is.

The first book I’ve read that sets out the reality of raising a PDA child. Can highly recommend this informative and easy to read book. Wish it had been available years ago. Lots of sound advice from someone who clearly ‘gets it’.

All additional information I have to help my child the better.

Very informative. I believe my son has pda but not yet diagnosed. It's empowering to know that other people have similar struggles, as it can be really hard navigating through the education and health systems.

I've learnt lots of new tips and strategies which are already making my daughter's life easier.

Practical tips, helps me understand my child more, and was short so I was able to read it quickly. I love how supportive the author is of PDA kids.

This was so validating of life with a PDAer while being super autism affirming, which makes sense as the author is autistic as well!! Thoroughly recommend!

If your child is (close to) age appropriate communication levels and you suspect PDA, this book is for you. There was a lot to be learned from this book regardless, and if nothing else, it made me feel less alone as a parent. But overall, many of the (very good!) suggestions Alice Running makes in this book are a little bit out of reach for us at this time. That being said, let me give you the take-aways that did resonate with me.The author talks about taking her two boys out of traditional education and allowing a long (two year!) recuperation period in which their stress levels reduced and needs were minimized. She identified her three non-negotiables and those were the only (and I mean ONLY) demands she put on her boys. I will be evaluating our non-negotiables, too, to see what really needs to be done on those days everyone is stressed out.From there, patience, patience, patience is key. Kids with PDA need to be able to go at their own steady, calm, pace. Something I had never considered: high praise can actually increase anxiety in certain kids: they know they’ve done well this time, but are worried they might not be able to achieve that level of performance again. So building self confidence incrementally without too much pressure is extremely important.I will be looking into doing a sensory profile for M before we go back to traditional school, in order to help pinpoint her specific needs that might arise outside a familiar home environment. The author also provides handy list of school adjustments that may be helpful. Finally, we will be creating an emergency response plan that includes hand-out cards for any sort of law enforcement or EMT’s she might come across. Hopefully this is something we’ll never have to use, but it’s much better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. M is not prone to self-harm or violence…but we haven’t hit the teenage years. Also, there are plenty of examples of law enforcement moving straight to physical restraint even when whoever they were interacting with was doing nothing to cause that sort of response. This isn’t a guarantee against something like this ever happening, but it will be one more tool in our toolbox.In all, I believe I got a better understanding of what it is going on in a PDA brain and why they may react the way they do. While not all the suggestions work for us right now, there were plenty to make this book worth reading, and I have a strong belief that we will get to a point in M’s communication where some of this book’s cool ideas (talking boards, mindfulness exercises…) will be useful in the future.