After a long day at school, many PDA, Autistic and neurodivergent children face what we refer to as the 'after-school meltdown'- where they have masked all day and let go fully at home with their main parent, carer or co-regulator.

But what really happens when that emotional storm hits?

In this episode, we peel back the layers on those tough moments, focusing on how they reveal deeper communication from our children—especially those with Pathological Demand Avoidance / Persistent Drive for Autonomy (PDA).

We break down the 'demand load' concept, shedding light on how seemingly simple requests can feel overwhelming to a child already at their emotional limit.

From internal pressures like hunger and fatigue to external demands from school, we explore how these factors contribute to that fateful 4 PM collapse.

This discussion revolves around the perception of demands and how they can feel like threats to a child’s autonomy. We highlight the importance of recognizing that while parents might approach their kids with the best intentions, it’s how those demands are perceived that truly matters.

It’s all about walking in their shoes—understanding that a day filled with expectations can lead to a meltdown at the end of it all.

We dive into relatable experiences that many parents face, making it clear that they are not alone in this journey. To wrap things up, we emphasize practical strategies to help ease the burden of demands in everyday life. From creating low-pressure environments to understanding the unique needs of each child, I discuss how parents can support their little ones through these challenging moments. This episode will serve as a reminder that while meltdowns can be tough to navigate, they also present an opportunity for growth and connection.

Links referenced in this episode:

• chantalhewitt.com/PDA

Takeaways:

• Understanding the concept of demand load helps us see what triggers meltdowns in our kids.
• The after school meltdown isn't just about that moment; it's a build-up of stress over the day.
• Every child's experience with demands is unique, and we have to pay attention to their needs.
• Recognizing that our kids may feel overwhelmed by what we see as simple requests is crucial.
• Even the most polite requests can feel like a mountain of pressure to a PDA child.
• We need to adapt our parenting to support our child's autonomy and reduce their stress.

Last week I gave you the language for the 4pm after school meltdown itself, and today I want to go beneath the behavior that you see in that meltdown moment.

Welcome to the Attuned Spectrum Podcast.

I'm Chantal Hewitt, an RDHD mom, experienced educator, and autism support coach who understands your path because I also walk it daily.

This is your space for real conversations that empower your autistic child, yourself and your family to thrive here.

We respect neurodiversity, cheer on advocacy, and leave judgment at the door.

Join me inside this week's episode.

If you haven't yet grabbed your free PDA language guide that I mentioned last week, I've also linked it within the show notes in this episode.

Or you can hit pause and head on over to Chantelle hewitt.com PDA because this episode that you are listening to right now will make even more sense if you have access to this guide.

The goal of today's episode is to actually look at what the meltdown is communicating.

What your child is communicating in that after school collapse, in the overwhelm that pours over essentially onto your lap at the end of a school day, at the end of a daycare day, the end of learning for hours on end.

And other people may not see what you see after school as well.

We're going to start by looking at the demand load concept with pda.

Pathological demand avoidance, pervasive drive for autonomy when the nervous system is overloaded with one demand or one instruction or request or one thing that they have to do that is in addition to all the other demands that have been placed upon them, whether those are internal demands or external demands as well.

So there are those two different things.

We have our internal demands that are actually the demands that our body is telling us is demanding upon us.

Things like when we are hungry that we might need to eat even if we don't want to, when we need to use the toilet, when we need to go to sleep.

All of those are internal demands.

It can be a demand and it can be one of many demands that have happened that day to your child or to your teen or your adult.

It could be additional demands that have happened that have kind of come on after a really long week or a long month or a long few months, or perhaps your child is in a chronic neurodivergent autistic burnout state.

And in that case, I bet what I'm describing to you of this after school collapse, these 4pm ish meltdowns that last four hours, maybe you get a Break around the transition to dinner time.

Maybe you don't.

Maybe it looks different one day to the next day.

I do invite you to think when we look at the demand load concept.

And again, you could have zero intention of putting pressure or demands on your child.

It is about how they perceive it.

So you could be asking them in the most respectful and polite way, but it is the perceived demand that they understand because they haven't come up with it.

They do not have autonomy at school.

Or they may have some autonomy, but the fact that they just have to be at school takes away autonomy in itself.

Then you look at the type of school that they're in.

Are they in a mainstream school where they do need to sit quite frequently or there's a lot of expectations placed on them, maybe they have to task switch often.

And there's a lot of different subjects going back and forth between reading, writing, math, numeracy and other subjects.

Even if they find it interesting, even if they do well in it, it's doesn't take away the fact that this is a demand, it is pressure, it is an expectation that they did not ask for.

And that kind of brings me as well to the more kind of heard about demand.

So the external demand.

So that is essentially what I've just said about that educational environment example or when they come home and there's an expectation within the home environment of let's put our bags away, let's do this chore, let's pick this up, let's do some homework.

Like all these things that they need to do, they may react quite strongly to.

And if we've heard the saying, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back essentially with the demand load.

If your child's autonomy bucket.

So their choice making their say in things throughout their day or even their week or their months, right?

So this is not just what happened the day of.

This involves us to think in patterns and what's happened previously and holistically and bringing in other health factors as well, like how did they sleep?

If the child goes between a few different homes, like if their parents are separated, if there's co parenting in place, if there are transitions happening, if routines have been broken, if they've come out of a school holidays, if they've had a new sibling enter the home, all of these things can affect the demand load, can affect their autonomy bucket, which I call it.

And what that means is that for a pda, er, their autonomy bucket.

So if you visualize a bucket for a non PDA person, the holes are minimal.

So they can withstand being asked to do things.

They can withstand and by withstand almost cringing as I say it, because essentially it's they can comply.

They can.

Yes, we do need to follow instructions 100%.

There are times when we do need to.

But for a pdao, even the ones that are fully necessary for health, for safety, for survival, they can be interpreted as I'm having a threat within my nervous system and therefore I will go into a nervous system activation response of either fight, flight, freeze, fawning, masking, and depending on how empty their autonomy bucket is.

So for a pda, their autonomy bucket has multiple large holes in it if we want to look at it as a difference between a PDAER and a non PDAer.

So if you have two children, one's PDA, one's not PDA and you put the same expectations on them throughout the school day and then you look at their buckets and one might be like medium full, maybe almost full, despite withstanding someone talking at them all day and asking them to do things and following someone else's rules.

Whereas a PDA er, it might be empty, they might be needing all the autonomy in the world.

We don't go into equalizing behavior in this specific episode.

However, if you are going what is equalizing behavior?

Then please check the show notes and click the linked episode to take you there.

So homework, for example, it may not be homework that broke your child that is quoted broke.

It could be that homework was demand number 158 that day and their tank with their autonomy bucket has been empty since 8am I don't know how you guys feel with capacity in your children, but I know that in the morning after a decent sleep when routines feel stable and my son has control, his capacity is so much higher.

The way I see it is that capacity does for a PDA ER start to come down and just fall through the holes in that bucket throughout the day as their capacity lessens as they take on more demands, more expectations.

So I do invite you to have a think of your PDA er in your life.

The one that has brought you to this podcast, the one that made you hit play.

The one that may be causing you to have big anxiety leading up to picking them up at school.

I have been there for years on end.

I have been out of that place as well and it is so nice to have a way forward and it is possible.

So think of their day, your PDAs day from their perspective.

Walk through their full day.

Expectation by expectation, demand by demand.

Question upon question, anything that they do not have control over.

And I'm not saying that they need to have control over every aspect of their day.

That is the opposite of what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that when we understand the demand load in a PDA er, we can work to minimize how depleting it can be.

And the way that we do that is, is we understand which demands or which boundaries are necessary and which ones actually push our children, our teens, our young adults, further into a burnout state.

So, for example, these taxing moments, they can be getting dressed, they can be being asked to go to the toilet, the car ride to school.

They can be a change in the weather.

Like if they have planned to put on a rain jacket because you told them it may be raining and then all of a sudden it's sunny, that could be something they don't expect.

That could be a demand placed on them that they do not need to carry their rain jacket.

And it could just be that you are letting them know.

A lot of the times, the demands we don't see as demands, but our children do.

The PDA ERs in our life, they feel them as threat.

And that is what is important to really remember as you parent a PDA er.

Unexpected instructions in class, a relief teacher, that they weren't prepared for a new child transitioning into the class, starting in a new class, all the sensory experiences that are too much for them.

And maybe they do not have the space to regulate themselves in a way that they may at home.

A change in their timetable, something out of the ordinary can be masking to appear fine all day.

So then what happens is that three o' clock rough, you know, time frame hits, their capacity is already gone because it was gone at like 8am So 4pm when they see you, when they melt down, when they freeze, when you pick them up, or when they lose it for hours when you get home, it isn't because 4pm is the problem.

It is the overflow of their capacity and it's coming out with you because you are their safe space, their safe person, their co regulator.

So it's not that your ask or your demand was specifically what set them off.

It was probably just the one that broke them in that moment and caused them to have their nervous system response that they had been holding onto all day.

And also we can think of it as if you have a high masking child.

I'll use my son.

He does not fight.

That is not his response at school.

He masks heavily.

He fawns at school and he also shuts down and he'll heal, kind of runs away as well and hides.

So at home his initial response is a fight response and there's a lot of panic in that.

And because he's been suppressing that all day, we get it tenfold, or we used to get it tenfold at home.

PDAs often do not mask at home the way that they do at school or in public because they feel safe, because they know that their parents, their caregivers, their co regulators, they are there for them.

Doesn't mean it is an easy job, but that is why they do it.

So the fact that you can now hopefully see that it isn't just one demand or one thing that you didn't mean to be a demand, it is the demand load in itself, an overflow capacity just hitting its absolute peak at that time of day, your child will be different than mine and another parent who's listening right now, the age of the child, the teen, the young adult, what's going on in their life, the context.

So any strategy that I give you to lower a demand, it will only work sustainably if you believe in the parenting approach that essentially is asked of you if you want to parent low demand for your PDA child and it will change person to person.

They each have their own unique roadmap, their own unique or their own individual sensory needs, sensory profile and their capacity changes.

And that I hope you can see is much bigger than any single script that I could offer you.

While they can be helpful within my PDA language guide, it is a great starting point.

But please know that following that guide to a T will give you a starting point.

It'll give you an understanding and it is helpful.

But there will come a point where we need to look at your child's unique pattern of demand acceptance, demand load, how they respond to demands within their environment and cross environments, as well as how their capacity fluctuates, why it fluctuates, and who their support systems are in their everyday life to support that low demand environment, which in turn supports their regulation and their nervous system safety.

Again, the guide is linked in the show notes.

You can head over to chantellehewitt.com PDA or click below in the show notes.

Stay tuned for next week when I will be going even deeper into the fact that once you understand all of this, that it still may not be enough on its own.

We will be digging into why that is and exactly what you can do now to start making positive shifts for your PDA or in your life.

Thank you so much for allowing me into your world today, wherever you are around the globe.

If you like what you've heard, I.

Would be so grateful if you would click that subscribe button and comment below to tell me one thing.

What support do you need?

This helps me create episodes that truly impact our shared community.

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That actually feels good.

I'm Chantal and I'll see you next week.