Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) advocates and coaches often define PDA as an anxiety-driven nervous system disability, where real or perceived demands trigger the body’s stress response: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

But here’s the wild part: ‘experts’ talk about PDA like we've already figured out exactly what's going on in the brain. And we haven't. It's not even ambiguous—it’s not a “some studies say yes, some say no” situation. There's no neuroscientific evidence that PDA is a distinct nervous system disability. There's some preliminary work trying to characterize PDA traits, but nothing even close to establishing a mechanism.

And y’all, before anyone starts writing angry comments about PDA denialism, I have PDA. I think PDA is a useful term for describing real, similar lived experiences, but “this is something people struggle with and no one knows what’s causing it” and “this struggle is definitely caused by your autonomic nervous system malfunctioning” are two wildly different sentences.

My non-expert, lived-experience-flavored guess is that people who identify with the PDA label almost certainly don't all have the exact same issues, and that people who insist they have all the answers are selling you something.

Comparing Controversial Diagnoses: PDA and Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning that clinicians rule out everything they can prove, and then make an educated guess based on the patient’s symptoms. The leading theory for fibromyalgia is central sensitization, the idea that the central nervous system misfires and amplifies pain signals. It's a real theory that’s taken seriously, but it’s also unproven and contested.

And even the proponents of central sensitization don't agree on why it happens. The proposed factors include genetics, prior injuries, stress, personality traits, and trauma—a choose your own adventure of potential causes.

And the honest answer is that we don’t know what causes fibromyalgia. Even a supportive clinician is just making an educated guess and doing their best to make their patient feel better. This doesn’t mean that people with fibromyalgia aren’t genuinely suffering, it just means we don’t understand the source of their suffering yet.

Spoiler: It's Several Different Conditions in a Trench Coat

When a condition is defined by a checklist of symptoms instead of a known biological cause, that label commonly winds up describing several different distinct conditions that look similar.

This happens for multiple reasons:

Equifinality

Complex health conditions don’t usually have one single cause, so different starting points can lead to the same finish line.

Two people can both end up with severe depression for completely different reasons. One person’s depression might come from a genetic predisposition, while another’s comes from traumatic experiences with no genetic link at all.

The diagnosis is identical despite completely different causes.

This is why precision medicine tries to tailor treatment to the individual—knowing why someone got somewhere matters when you’re figuring out how to help them.

Variable Trajectories

Two people with the exact same diagnosis can have completely different experiences. One person responds quickly to a standard treatment and gets better, while another gets worse over time or cycles through sudden flare-ups. The actual path each person's illness takes is unique, and they may need totally different treatments to see any progress.

Overlapping Boundaries

Medical conditions are often grouped by their symptoms, but symptom groups rarely have clean, sharp edges—fatigue, chronic pain, and brain fog are symptoms of a ton of unrelated conditions. It can be incredibly difficult for doctors to tell where one diagnosis ends and another begins, which makes drawing a clear line between two distinct conditions with similar symptoms tricky.

The important point is that neither PDA nor fibromyalgia have a confirmed mechanism. Both are defined by their symptoms, which is the exact setup that tends to produce a single label accidentally used to describe multiple conditions. While fibromyalgia has actual neuro-imaging studies suggesting distinct subgroups, PDA just hasn’t been studied that rigorously.

Is it possible that PDA is a distinct nervous system disability? Sure. But ‘it might get proven someday’ is an argument for research funding, not support for an established fact.

Again, in both cases, many people are genuinely struggling. The argument isn't the distress isn't real, it's the mechanism behind why people are distressed hasn't been proven—a very different argument that keeps getting muddied by the former.

So Why Did ‘PDA is a Nervous System Disability’ Take Off Like a Rocket?

It makes money. Lots of money.

Summits. Podcasts with recurring guests, where coaches interview each other and cross-promote. It's a closed loop where the same names circulate across each other's platforms, amplifying one another's reach until the whole thing starts to look like consensus instead of what it actually is: an echo chamber.

The enthusiastic embrace of the "nervous system disability" framing isn't incidental—it's marketing.

When a parent or caregiver is dealing with a child in severe, daily distress, and traditional clinicians only offer compliance-based behaviorism or a blank stare, that parent is desperate. The system has entirely abandoned them.

Capitalism smells the desperation and circles like a vulture.

The strategy is simple: convince a struggling family they're dealing with a specific nervous system disability, brand yourself as an expert, frame the accommodations as incredibly specialized knowledge, and lock that knowledge behind a paywall.

Done? Congratulations! You just created a market to sell your framework.

But a framework that can't be checked against ordinary evidence isn't really functioning as a diagnosis anymore. Its real message to the parent or caregiver is trust the framework I'm selling you, not here's what's actually going on.

Here’s the thing: predatory marketing doesn’t require the underlying idea to be false.

I absolutely agree that behaviorism and compliance-based parenting practices suck. Not just for PDA kids—they just suck across the board. The problem isn’t that PDA coaches believe an unproven hypothesis, it’s that they present an unproven hypothesis as established scientific fact and use that false certainty to market their services to a desperate, vulnerable audience.

And PDA coaching programs are not cheap. Let’s examine one that I think is blatantly fucking predatory:

Case Study: At Peace Parents and Why I Think They Fucking Suck

• Private coaching with Casey Ehrlich of At Peace Parents costs $5,000 a month and requires a 3-month minimum commitment.

• Other coaches working for her cost between $575 and $1,750 a month.

At Peace Parents explicitly promises coaching that uses a “scientific approach to understanding your unique child's brain” despite the fact that there are no biomarkers to diagnose PDA, no standardized diagnostic criteria, no validated diagnostic tests, and no consensus on evidence-based treatment.

But don’t worry, they’re using an “experimental method that has worked for 100s of parents.”

Worked . . . how?

Worked to reduce meltdowns? Worked to calm the parent? Worked to help the parent feel like someone finally believed them? All of those are real and potentially valuable things. None of them are the same as ‘this experimental method is effective.’ By definition, if a method is proven effective, it’s not experimental.

The Paradigm Shift Program

Can’t afford three months of coaching that costs as much as a year of licensed family therapy? Don’t worry, the Paradigm Shift Program ‘only’ costs $1,450, or $1,690 if you use a ten month payment plan—an implied APR around 34%, which seems a wee bit outrageous.

The Paradigm Shift Program is marketed as “the first and only proven effective program for parents of PDA children and teens,” referencing a pilot study conducted by The University of Michigan Medical School. The problem is that this study has a number of limitations, and absolutely does NOT prove that the Paradigm Shift Program is effective.

A pilot study isn't asking "does this actually work?" It's asking "can I even pull this off?" The Paradigm Shift Program Pilot Study only concludes that the program "was both feasible and acceptable."

In other words:

• Can this program actually be run?

• Will people stick with the program?

• Do people find the program acceptable?

Questions about feasibility and acceptability have a much lower bar than questions about efficacy, and pilot studies are explicitly understood in research methodology as a precursor step used to justify running a real randomized controlled trial, not as a substitute for one.

The Paradigm Shift Program Pilot Study:

• Is self-reported with no control group. Everyone who signed up for this study was using the Paradigm Shift Program, and their results are just their own before-and-after answers on a survey. There wasn’t a separate group of similar families who didn't take the program to compare against. That means any improvement observed could be explained by things having nothing to do with the program itself, like:

  • Regression toward the mean—people often enroll during a crisis, which naturally eases somewhat over time regardless of intervention.

  • Increased parental attention and effort from focusing on the problem.

  • Natural childhood development over time.

  • A placebo-like effect from finally getting the sense of ‘an expert with a plan is helping me.’

• Featured 76 families who’d already paid to enroll in the January 2024 Paradigm Shift Program—which again, is at least $1,450. When people spend a lot of money on something, they tend to push down or ignore any doubts they have about it so they feel better about the value of their purchase.

• Is 'statistically significant'—in the narrow technical sense that the changes reported probably weren't random noise. That's it. The study says nothing about why the changes happened, even though the marketing strongly implies otherwise.

Let’s Take a Deep Breath and Look at the Numbers . . .

In statistics, a probability value higher than 0.05 means the results could easily be due to random chance. This study establishes this right in the methods section: “P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.”

If you look at the actual data table from the pilot study, you can see that the parents’ metrics showed statistically significant improvement, though there’s still absolutely no proof that the Paradigm Shift Program had anything to do with those improvements.

But what about the actual PDA children?

Not a single metric for child behavior cleared the study’s own bar for statistical significance.

Conduct problems? Failed (P=0.08).

Total behavioral difficulties? Failed (P=0.055).

Externalizing behavior? Failed (P=0.054).

The Paradigm Shift Program is marketed as showing “measurable, statistically significant improvements across . . . child behavior,” yet its own data shows zero statistically significant changes in child behavior.

And somehow the abstract calls this “a trend for significant improvement.” What?!

Even the researchers noticed some of their numbers don’t line up. When participants were asked directly whether their child’s behavior or their quality of life improved, most said ‘no.’

And here’s the kicker: buried in the discussion section, one paragraph before that closing summary, the same authors write, in their own words: “this study did not examine the effectiveness of the Paradigm Shift Program.”

The authors also call, explicitly, for a randomized controlled trial with an actual comparison group. That’s the researchers themselves telling you this study doesn’t answer the question the marketing claims it does.

And what really kills me about all of this is that Casey Ehrlich has a fucking PhD in Political Science. She knows what a pilot study is, she knows it’s not designed to prove effectiveness, but she uses it to disingenuously market her ridiculously expensive product as the “only proven effective program.”

In fact, she literally markets herself as “the leading researcher on PDA in the United States,” while doing some classic credential laundering. She just drops “PhD,” right next to "leading researcher on PDA," and lets your brain make the logical connections.

It’s not technically a lie, it's just designed to make you assume the credential and the claim are related. If the bio actually said "Casey Ehrlich, PhD in Political Science, is the leading researcher on PDA in the United States," that sentence would sound batshit insane.

So it just . . . doesn’t say it.

Sure, research methods generalize across fields, but familiarity with research methodology doesn't confer domain expertise in autism or PDA, and it especially doesn't make Ehrlich "the leading researcher" in a field she has no peer-reviewed publication record in outside her own company's pilot study that used her paying customers as the sole data source.

Then there's "using empirical evidence, cutting-edge science." WHAT EVIDENCE? WHAT CUTTING EDGE SCIENCE? The only research behind any of this is that one pilot study that concluded the program was "feasible and acceptable."

Remember, Ehrlich uses this kind of scientific language to justify a $15,000 minimum for private coaching. For 15k, you could hire a respite care worker for months so you’re not running on empty. You could soundproof a room in your house. Instead, this buys you three months of someone with a Political Science PhD telling you she has a scientific-but-experimental-but-also-proven-effective approach to your kid’s brain.

Look, I'm picking on At Peace Parents specifically because they're a huge name and a clear example, not because every PDA coach is running their exact playbook. But the structure—high-price paywalled 'expertise,’ selling certainty that doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny—shows up all over this space. There’s just a fucking chasm between the evidence that actually exists and the snake-oil salesmen confidently charging thousands of dollars for definitive answers that they just . . . made up.

Desperate families don't need proprietary frameworks based on hunches and locked behind a monthly mortgage payment. That’s not a paradigm shift. It's exploitation with a pretty landing page.

WTF PDA?! is written by a PDA/AuDHD adult, married to another PDA/AuDHD adult, raising three neurodivergent kids. This newsletter is the running commentary on how I keep us all alive and (mostly) sane. I’m not an expert. I’m just really, really experienced.

I always wanted to play make-believe as a kid. For months, I insisted I was Minnie Mouse and refused to answer to my own name! As an only child, my mom was my primary playmate, and I ran our games with a fierce, non-negotiable intensity. My favorite game structure was simple: “I’ll play the princess and the witch—you play everybody else.”

Adults saw it as a vivid imagination, but looking back, I think it was much more than that.

Finding Sanctuary in Pretend

As a child, I didn’t have the language to explain that living under modern social hierarchies left me feeling like a trapped animal ready to gnaw off its own leg. I couldn’t understand why seemingly minor demands, things that registered to other people as harmless or automatic, caused me agonizing internal friction.

It was a constant, exhausting cycle where my brain screamed DANGER at the ordinary mechanics of being alive. Activities of daily living, deadlines, social obligations, and even goals I set for myself could trigger a visceral panic response.

But in my fantasy worlds, the relentless expectations vanished. If a situation felt too threatening, I could rewrite the narrative on the spot. Inside a story, I could step away from the pressure of the real world and enter a space where choice, creativity, and agency were endless.

Playing pretend wasn’t a cute childhood phase. It was a survival mechanism.

Imaginative Reframing as an Accommodation

Make-believe is often seen as a developmental phase we’re supposed to outgrow—something children use for entertainment until they’re mature enough to meaningfully engage with reality. But as an AuDHD (Autism and ADHD) and PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) adult, I still rely on make-believe to navigate and understand the world.

Honestly, I’d go so far as to say that playing pretend is my most effective accommodation.

Executive dysfunction is a huge barrier in my daily life. The ADHD part of my brain struggles to generate enough dopamine to initiate tasks, while the PDA part interprets pressure to engage with those tasks as a threat. I can’t start the task, and the more I try to convince, trick, or bribe myself to just do it already, the more threatened I feel.

I’m stuck. The harder I try to push myself, the higher the barrier becomes, and it feels like I’ve lost without ever even starting.

Make-believe is like a psychological exoskeleton that allows me to expand what I’m capable of doing without completely draining my mental and emotional reserves. When I’m unable to move forward, I can attempt to step into a persona designed to handle that exact stressor: maybe I can’t do it, but my character can.

For example:

Imagine a simple winter morning.

I need to:

• dress in layers of clothing (a multi-step sensory nightmare)

• leave the house

• walk through the ice and snow

• get to the bus stop on time

Viewed through a real-world lens, this task often feels impossible. My brain immediately fixates on the cold, the discomfort, the time crunch, the ridiculous number of literal and metaphorical steps required, and the lack of meaningful choice. I don’t have the internal resources to complete this task, and I’m only trying to force myself to do this because I have to.

But what if I change the script?

Instead of walking to a bus stop, I’m crossing the frozen Arctic in a desperate race against time. I cast myself in a Balto-like scenario: I’m transporting life-saving medicine to an isolated village, and the fate of the entire community depends on me reaching my destination.

Externally, nothing has changed. The weather is still miserable. I’ll still miss the bus if I’m not there on time. But internally, I’m no longer a tired adult dragging myself toward an obligation. I’m a hero on a life-or-death mission.

When motivation emerges from a story I chose to engage with, my internal resistance gets quieter. I’m less likely to panic over expending my limited personal reserves because I’m borrowing from the resource pool of a fictional counterpart.

Adults who readily accept calendars, reminder apps, and standing desks need to understand that imaginative reframing is simply another accommodation. It lowers the executive dysfunction barrier and helps me access abilities that would otherwise remain locked away.

But the reality is that society rarely treats this tool with the same basic respect given to a planner or an app. We pull the plug on make-believe right when the pressures of growing up start to compound.

When the World Says You’re Too Old to Pretend

Adolescence is hard on almost everyone, but the difficulty level is brutal if you already struggle with meltdowns, emotional dysregulation, and executive dysfunction. My teenage years were some of the hardest of my life, and I frequently hear from caregivers of PDA tweens and teens that puberty has made their child’s distress seem completely unmanageable.

Personally, I don’t think hormonal changes are the whole story.

For me, a massive contributing factor was that adolescence is the exact point we’re considered “too old” to play pretend.

In middle school, I suddenly found myself in a social environment where make-believe was heavily stigmatized.

The pressure to stop pretending wasn’t always explicit. No one sat me down and banned me from using my imagination, but the social cost of using it became incredibly high. Kids who still immersed themselves in fantasy were dismissed as immature by adults and labeled as freaks by their peers.

I used pretend play to process confusing feelings, experiment with social boundaries, and reclaim a sense of agency in a world that’s not built for my neurotype. Suddenly, my primary method of emotional regulation felt like a shameful secret I needed to hide.

It’s totally unsurprising to me that my mental health and behavior deteriorated during my adolescent years. We often talk about the challenges of peer pressure and increasing academic demands, but we don’t talk about the intense stress that occurs when a neurodivergent kid loses access to the only tool that helped them navigate those challenges in the first place.

Stripping away fantasy didn’t make me grow up, it just left me utterly defenseless.

Fantasy as a Bridge to Reality

In high school, I remember attending a theatre workshop where an actor mentioned that he felt more like himself when he was playing a character than he ever did in real life.

It was a massive click moment. That’s it, I thought. That’s me.

As PDAers grow older, reliance on pretend play can evolve into a variety of creative interests. Many of us find ourselves drawn to fantasy-oriented hobbies like TTRPGs (Tabletop Role-Playing Games), story-driven video games, cosplay, immersive theater, LARP (Live Action Roleplay), or creative writing.

These spaces offer something that can be incredibly difficult to find in the real world: structured freedom.

As an adult, I gravitate toward roleplay-heavy Dungeons & Dragons games that focus on character immersion and storytelling, leaning closer to Nordic LARP traditions than tactical combat simulations. These fictional worlds are where I process a lot of my real-life experiences.

Processing the world through a character allows me to approach heavy, difficult experiences that would otherwise feel too threatening. I can experiment with risky decisions, explore interpersonal conflicts, and experience profound emotional catharsis without imploding my real life. In roleplay, the stakes are transformed: the emotions are real, but the danger is gone.

Many people assume roleplay is about escaping reality, but for me, it’s always been the bridge that allows me to participate in it. Playing a character gives me just enough distance from the expectations, anxieties, and social rules attached to being “myself” that I can finally access my genuine thoughts and emotions. Inside a story, I can see myself clearly.

An Underutilized Tool for PDA Kids

Despite how fulfilling and restorative fantasy can be, it’s one of the most misunderstood and underutilized tools for supporting PDA children.

We’re not inherently more difficult, stubborn, or oppositional than other people. We live in a permanent state of internal resource exhaustion while constantly being expected to try harder, do more, and smile while we do it.

We’re being asked to learn to swim while we’re drowning, and no one ever bothered to ask us if we wanted to go into the deep end of the water in the first place.

When the basic demands of regular life constantly outpace your internal resources, protecting those resources becomes a matter of survival. You quickly become hyper-attuned to power dynamics and hidden agendas.

If a caregiver for a PDA kid changes their wording but continues to operate from a control-based mindset, the child will sense a trap. The phrasing might sound gentle, but the underlying pressure to comply with demands that outpace the child’s personal reserves remains.

When adults genuinely enter a child’s imaginative world, the power dynamic changes. In the real world, the adult holds all the authority. In fantasy, the relationship shifts away from a vertical hierarchy built around power and compliance and towards a more egalitarian partnership—you’re two Jedi, a harpy and a sea-witch, or a ranger and his faithful pet wolf.

Inside a shared story, the rigid roles of “adult who commands” and “child who obeys” cease to exist. You are both standing on level ground, playing by the rules of a narrative you wrote together.

There Are No Magic Hacks

But here is the critical catch that trips up well-meaning caregivers: this can’t be used as a sophisticated tool of coercion.

You can’t say, “Space Ranger, we have sixty seconds to seal our environment suits before stepping into the alien atmosphere!” when what you really mean is, “Hurry up and get dressed for your appointment because we’re going to be late.”

Sorry, there’s no magic hack.

Real connection isn’t built on finding clever ways to trick the PDA child into obedience. It’s built on a foundation of radical equality, trust, and shared joy. You’re teaching them that fantasy is important and that this is a safe place where they can process their emotions, not that it’s only valid if it “works.”

When you step into a story with a PDA child, you have to leave your real-world agenda at the door, embrace play, and let the story go wherever they need it to go.

WTF PDA?! is written by a PDA/AuDHD adult, married to another PDA/AuDHD adult, raising three neurodivergent kids. This newsletter is the running commentary on how I keep us all alive and (mostly) sane. I’m not an expert. I’m just really, really experienced.

Mixed PDA support groups—groups that welcome both PDA adults and parents/caregivers of PDA kids—introduced me to the idea of declarative language as a parenting technique. Posts from unsure, struggling parents (mostly folks new to the PDA community) often have dozens of comments hailing declarative language as a near cure-all for PDA stress responses.

And almost as often, I see posts from parents and caregivers who are frustrated and defeated after attempting to follow this advice.

Declarative language isn't working.

Am I doing it wrong? 

Does this mean my child doesn't have PDA?

After all, declarative language is supposed to be a PDA panacea…right? 

So, what do you do when declarative language doesn't work?

What is Declarative Language?

Declarative language is information-focused language that doesn't demand a specific response—comments, observations, ideas. It's the opposite of imperative language—questions and directives.

For example, an adult wants a child to get their shoes from the hallway and put them away:

Declarative:

• I noticed your shoes are in the middle of the hallway. 

• Your shoes are in the hallway; I'm worried someone will trip over them.

• I put my shoes away so no one will trip over them; I think it would be safer if you put yours up, too.

Imperative: 

• Put away your shoes—they're in the hallway. 

• Can you get your shoes from the hallway and put them up?

• I need you to go put away your shoes.

For the most part, the popular view of declarative language as a parenting technique seems to be that PDAers will be less triggered by indirect language and, therefore, more likely to comply.

What's the Problem With Declarative Language?

Declarative language isn't a problem—the problem is that it's a knee-jerk recommendation for folks new to the PDA community, and a laser-focus on declarative language can undermine more critical work—unpacking bias, creating genuine safety, and building trusting, collaborative relationships.

While PDA support groups almost universally recommend declarative language, PDAers do not have a universally positive view of declarative language.

I asked a support group exclusively for PDA adults about declarative language, and none of the respondents preferred that other people speak to them this way. Commenters described declarative language as:

• passive-aggressive

• confusing

• manipulative

• exhausting

• something they "can't stand"

PDAers are autistic—many of us need clear, detailed communication.

If someone continuously issues me directives disguised as a neutral comment, my stress levels are going to shoot up pretty quickly. I now have an external demand to deal with, and:

1. I have to guess what the person using declarative language wants. Is this a simple statement of fact, or are they expecting a specific response from me?

2. I may feel like the other person is manipulating me, making me less likely to trust (and cooperate with) this person in the future.

3. I bear the brunt of their frustration if I don't "get the hint."

Feeling forced to guess what other people want because they're avoiding assertive communication—and navigating the minefield of reactions for guessing wrong—is highly frustrating.

Many commenters in my support group (and myself!) note that context is essential. We're more likely to interpret any communication style as hostile if it's coming from someone who has historically tried to control us.

Declarative language isn't a substitute for relationship building.

The best starting point for caregivers of PDAers is almost always a lens shift from hierarchical parenting toward collaborative parenting. This shift is a long, challenging process for most people. It often involves some pretty heavy stuff—dealing with childhood trauma, unpacking internalized bias, exposing vulnerabilities, and confronting social norms about hierarchy, punishment, power, and control. Building authentic relationships is hard work, but it really works.

When non-PDAers say declarative language "works," they don't typically mean that it grants PDAers more autonomy or provides the framework for building trusting, egalitarian relationships with us—they mean it coerces a PDAer into complying with a demand that they'd typically resist. 

Declarative language can seem like a shortcut to harmony—get an obedient child with only a simple change of phrasing! This has a strong pull for overwhelmed caregivers navigating chaotic lives. But it's not a shortcut. It's a trap.

The backbone of this line of thought is that PDA (autonomy-seeking) traits are bad and that complying with demands is good—reinforcing the exact hierarchical, authority-driven, ableist point of view that caregivers of PDAers need to shift away from. 

At its worst, declarative language is passive-aggressive manipulation. PDAers are pretty perceptive people. If your language has changed, but your attitudes and expectations haven't, we'll see right through you. Declarative language disguises demands but doesn't reduce them.

Should I Avoid Declarative Language?

Nope! Declarative language is a problem when caregivers attempt to use it to "override" PDA traits and gain compliance. Declarative language can be beneficial when it doesn't have hidden strings attached. Helpful ways to use declarative language include:

• Outwardly signaling to PDA children that you're making an effort to reduce demands

• Inviting collaboration by sharing ideas 

• Expressing your feelings about a situation and inviting your PDAer to express their feelings

• Modeling your own problem-solving and self-regulation techniques

One way I love to use declarative language is to reduce the number of questions thrown at my children. Adults ask children SO MANY questions! Think about a child coming home from school:

How was your day?

Did you have fun?

What did you have for lunch?

What did you learn? 

Do you need a snack?

Did you see your friends?

And all those questions can happen within two minutes of a kid opening their front door! I'm a PDAer who appreciates when other people ask me questions instead of making assumptions, but many PDA folks react to questions as demands for answers. A barrage of questions can be a big struggle, and declarative language can change the dynamic of these situations:

It looks like you had fun today! If you want to talk about your day, I'd love to hear it.

There are cookies on the counter if you need a snack.

I saw you had pizza for lunch today. I hope it was yummy!

Long story short: declarative language can be great when used without an underlying agenda, the way adults typically use it with other adults.

What Should I Do If Declarative Language Isn't Working?

First, let's define working. What goal do you envision when you think about "success" with declarative language? Dig deep and ask yourself:

• Am I hoping my child will obey commands if I disguise them with less assertive language?

• Do I feel stressed or threatened by the idea of non-hierarchical, collaborative parenting? Am I hoping to have a more compliant child if I change my language?

If you answered yes, you're probably operating from a control-based mindset. That's okay! Everyone starts somewhere, but I highly recommend worrying less about mastering specific communication styles and putting your time and effort into shifting your lens and building your relationship. 

In Play We Trust has some great suggestions for alternative questions caregivers of PDAers should ask themselves (instead of asking how to get their PDA child to obey) in this excellent TikTok, including:

• Is my child as autonomous as the bounds of safety and kindness will allow?

• Did they get to explore their values, interests, and identity today?

• Did they get plenty of flow, play, and rest?

• Have I truly accepted their neurodivergence?

• Have I released neurotypical expectations and unpacked internalized adultism and ableism?

• What tools do I have other than control to regulate my nervous system? 

• How can I feel better regardless of other people's ability to comply?

If you answered no, you may be looking to improve communication with your PDAer without expectations of obedience. Great! There's no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are general preferences.

In my PDA support group, most PDAers prefer some form of clear, direct communication without expectations or deadlines. Personally, I like a more verbose style of communication:

"Your shoes are in the hallway. Can you put them away when you get the chance? I can grab them if you're too busy; it's no big deal."

For me, this style of communication is both clear to understand and low-pressure. But this isn't universal! Some PDAers said they'd feel coddled by this approach and preferred a clear, concise communication style. Just like non-PDAers, we're all individuals with unique preferences, and who we're communicating with matters—a lot.

Your relationship matters more than your communication style. 

The one thing that PDAers seem to agree upon (mostly!) is that the relationship trumps all. If we communicate with someone who sees and treats us as equals, supports our drive for autonomy, respects our interests and values, and provides accommodations when they can, we're more likely to view any form of communication through a positive lens. "Put away your shoes" sounds much less demanding when it's coming from someone who allows us to do things on our own timeline and in our own way.

WTF PDA?! is written by a PDA/AuDHD adult, married to another PDA/AuDHD adult, raising three neurodivergent kids. This newsletter is the running commentary on how I keep us all alive and (mostly) sane. I’m not an expert. I’m just really, really experienced.