The dissociation is in there, as is the lack of access to moral thinking when in the grips of an attack.
I’ve not seen a quality essay in the topic until now. I feel like it sits alongside a piece that gives access to the experience of it really well. I’ll save this for reference.
I appreciate you covering this topic. A child hitting a parent is not evidence of trust. It's evidence of a pattern that needs to change before someone gets seriously hurt.
I'm a licensed clinical social worker with extensive training in parental accommodation, and a large share of the families who find their way to me are dealing with child-to-parent violence. Some of those families come from the "low-demand" ideology, after their child's behavior and mental health have deteriorated as a result of that approach.
I've seen content in the PDA space telling parents they must tolerate their child's violence toward them because refusing to would be "activating" to the child's nervous system, and framing that tolerance as the compassionate choice. I've watched that advice do real damage. It doesn't reduce the violence. It creates an emotionally unsafe home for every other person living in it; it teaches the child that violence works, and it normalizes child-to-parent violence instead of interrupting it.
Parental accommodation is what perpetuates child-to-parent violence. Lebowitz's research on family accommodation and Omer's research on child-to-parent violence all point in the same direction. Reducing that accommodation in a structured, supported way is what actually changes the pattern.
Parents don't need to become harsher or colder to do it. They need to stop treating the violence as communication and start treating it as behavior that responds to consistent limits, the same way any other dangerous behavior does.
Families come out the other side of this. I see it happen regularly. I've covered this topic in several videos on my YouTube channel, @adhddude, for anyone who wants to go deeper.
I do think of behavior (including violence) as communication, but I think ‘behavior is communication’ got warped into ‘all communication is positive,’ and it just . . . isn't. If I'm mocking someone, I'm communicating, but I'm doing it with contempt.
Violence is communicating something closer to ‘I'm in a crisis,’ not "this is my safe space."
Like, if I have a diabetic ulcer and someone just keeps dressing the wound—yeah, that's helpful in a sense, but what I actually need is help getting my blood sugar under control.
I'm not against looking at environment and other external input as factors that might contribute to meltdowns, but a lot of what I see sold as ‘low-demand,’ especially taken to an extreme, would have made me feel completely abandoned at a time when I already felt extremely isolated. I really worry that some PDA advocacy advice is essentially encouraging parents to wash their hands of kids who are in a real crisis.
This is great 😊
I wrote a piece to bring to life the PDA/ODD rage attacks I would have as a kid and teen. I hope it brings the experience to life.
https://joannedoylewrites.substack.com/p/unladylike-chapter-one-the-final?r=3s9z4a
The dissociation is in there, as is the lack of access to moral thinking when in the grips of an attack.
I’ve not seen a quality essay in the topic until now. I feel like it sits alongside a piece that gives access to the experience of it really well. I’ll save this for reference.
Thank you 🙏🏼
Thank you, and thanks for sharing your writing with me!
I appreciate you covering this topic. A child hitting a parent is not evidence of trust. It's evidence of a pattern that needs to change before someone gets seriously hurt.
I'm a licensed clinical social worker with extensive training in parental accommodation, and a large share of the families who find their way to me are dealing with child-to-parent violence. Some of those families come from the "low-demand" ideology, after their child's behavior and mental health have deteriorated as a result of that approach.
I've seen content in the PDA space telling parents they must tolerate their child's violence toward them because refusing to would be "activating" to the child's nervous system, and framing that tolerance as the compassionate choice. I've watched that advice do real damage. It doesn't reduce the violence. It creates an emotionally unsafe home for every other person living in it; it teaches the child that violence works, and it normalizes child-to-parent violence instead of interrupting it.
Parental accommodation is what perpetuates child-to-parent violence. Lebowitz's research on family accommodation and Omer's research on child-to-parent violence all point in the same direction. Reducing that accommodation in a structured, supported way is what actually changes the pattern.
Parents don't need to become harsher or colder to do it. They need to stop treating the violence as communication and start treating it as behavior that responds to consistent limits, the same way any other dangerous behavior does.
Families come out the other side of this. I see it happen regularly. I've covered this topic in several videos on my YouTube channel, @adhddude, for anyone who wants to go deeper.
Thanks again
Thanks for your feedback!
I do think of behavior (including violence) as communication, but I think ‘behavior is communication’ got warped into ‘all communication is positive,’ and it just . . . isn't. If I'm mocking someone, I'm communicating, but I'm doing it with contempt.
Violence is communicating something closer to ‘I'm in a crisis,’ not "this is my safe space."
Like, if I have a diabetic ulcer and someone just keeps dressing the wound—yeah, that's helpful in a sense, but what I actually need is help getting my blood sugar under control.
I'm not against looking at environment and other external input as factors that might contribute to meltdowns, but a lot of what I see sold as ‘low-demand,’ especially taken to an extreme, would have made me feel completely abandoned at a time when I already felt extremely isolated. I really worry that some PDA advocacy advice is essentially encouraging parents to wash their hands of kids who are in a real crisis.
I look forward to checking out your videos!