#70 - Your PDA Questions Answered with Kristy Forbes

Kristy Forbes is a neurodiversity advocate, former classroom teacher, PDAer herself, and parent of four PDAers. She's also a School Can't kid — she left school at 15 — who has since built an internationally recognised body of work supporting PDA families. She brings all of that to this conversation.

In this episode Kristy answers questions asked by the School Can’t Australia community in their peer support Facebook group. 

The questions cover a lot of ground. How do you figure out if your child is PDA when professionals don't know much about it? Does the label even matter, or is the more useful question just: what is their nervous system protecting them from? How do you handle sleep, eating, and basic life tasks without everything turning into conflict? What does a healthy parent-PDA child relationship actually look like? And is "maintaining authority" even the right frame? What about goals and aspirations when the act of wanting something can trigger the very resistance that stops it happening?

Kristy shares experience from her own lived experience as a PDAer herself and as a PDA parent. She talks about how we do the best we can, but still get things wrong, and the importance of the repair that follows. And why she thinks modeling being human is more useful than modeling perfect regulation. And she ends the conversation with something this topic doesn't always make room for: what she genuinely loves about being a PDAer.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Kristy’s website with with free resources including self-care guide for adults in crisis and free PDA masterclass: https://www.kristyforbes.com.au/
• Kristy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_kristyforbes/
• Kristy on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inTunePathways

Transcript

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Leisa Reichelt 0:05

Hello, and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who's struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia and many more around the world face similar challenges and experiences every day. I am delighted to be joined by Kristy Forbes for this episode. Kristy has professional experience as an educator and a classroom teacher, but is most widely known these days for her advocacy and education work on PDA, which is variously understood as either persistent drive for autonomy or pathological demand avoidance, depending on your perspective. So in this special episode, I have taken questions asked by our School Can't Australia parent Facebook community and put them to Kristy on their behalf. And the conversation that's resulted certainly gave me a lot to think about, and I hope you also enjoy our conversation. Kristy Forbes, thank you very much for joining us on our podcast today. We are delighted to have you with us

Kristy Forbes 1:10

Thank you for having me

Leisa Reichelt 1:12

We are doing something a little bit different. We've reached out to our School Can't community Facebook peer support group And I have got a selection of questions for you today.

Kristy Forbes 1:23

Excellent

Leisa Reichelt 1:23

So that's what we're gonna do. I've kind of grouped them a little bit thematically, and I thought we would start, like, let's start at the beginning. Let's start with some basics. We had some questions, including one from Emma, which basically just says, "How do you figure out if your child is a PDAer, especially when so many health professionals don't really seem to know about it?"

Kristy Forbes 1:46

Hmm. Yeah. Uh, I am so passionate about parents and carers trusting their own instincts, and I think that journey around figuring out what's happening for our children in our homes and at school or whatever the situation is. Although we're seeking support, for many of us the experience is that time we slowly become more and more disconnected from our intuition and our knowing and our, our connection with our children because other people start defining who our children are. And so I would say, and I, and I have to say from the beginning that I can only speak from my own personal lived experience. I'm not an expert, and I certainly can't answer other people. I think the So if we think about demand avoidance, because PDA is so much more than just not doing things, and I think that's really important to know. Um, I feel like there's PDA culture, but we don't really talk a whole lot about that. We're just focusing on what people, what children won't or can't do. If the demand avoidance, or inability to do things doesn't have rational or obvious reason... Actually, I don't wanna say obvious, but if it can't be explained by other things like ADHD, executive functioning challenges, sensory sensitivities. I mean, there's, there's so many different reasons and origins for demand avoidance. But if we're looking at a young person who- Is pervasively unable to do things, and it seems so outside of anything and everything that we've tried, I think we might start asking the questions then. But, gosh, it's hard to answer that question, but I think I would always come back to trust what you know about your child, trust the relationship you have with your child, and if you think that there's PDA, it doesn't hurt to explore that. But I would also say, you know, there are some really fantastic professionals out there, but I, I think that starting in community is the best place. Speaking to other parents and families, PDA adults, um, with lived experience who can actually offer information, because sometimes we're waiting for the research to catch up with what we already know and live. yeah

Leisa Reichelt 4:44

And Kristy, for f- anyone who's listening who doesn't feel 100% confident in their understanding of PDA, how, how do you describe it?

Kristy Forbes 4:54

Oh.

Leisa Reichelt 4:56

Simple one to get us started

Kristy Forbes 5:00

Ah! a nervous system response to life. It's just a completely different way of being and doing. think Yeah, that's a huge question, isn't it? Because it looks different for everybody as well. I think also it's important to know that two different behaviors can look exactly the same and have completely different origins. Like I said before, there can be demand avoidance that comes from or autistic inertia or, uh, executive functioning challenges, and then there can be pervasive. So I guess me as a PDAer, even prevents me from being able to do things that I really want to do. And I often tell the story about how it took me 10 years to build my rose garden because I just got too excited about it. And we think about dysregulation as a negative emotional experience or a negative nervous system experience, but for, for many PDAers, that too excited is also a form of escalation, therefore dysregulation. So for me, you know, I'd make a Pinterest board of all the roses that I loved, and I did a budget. Because the advice typically, if you talk to a professional and say, "I'm autistic," or, "I'm ADHD," and usually PDA goes along with some other forms of neurodivergence, the advice we so often get is, "Oh, have a routine. Plan. Have some structure." That's the worst thing in the world for me as a PDAer. Not always, when it came to my rose garden, it was the worst advice ever, because the more I delved into planning around it and having information about it, the more resistance I had. So in the end, one day, I think I was just pottering around the house and I had this feeling of, my God. Right now in the moment I can go to Bunnings and buy the roses. I have to do it now too, and I, I can't think about it." If I started getting excited or thinking about it, the resistance would set back in. So I got in the car and I went and I bought the roses. It's so unpredictable, spontaneous, and I think too it leads into sometimes when we think we are arming PDAers by giving them more information and preparing them for something, sometimes it can backfire because the brain goes into getting ahead because that amygdala is scanning for all the threats. If I have lots of information about something, like today when you said, "I can send you the questions or we can just, I can ask you in the moment," I would never read the questions ahead of time because then I would just be like, "I can't answer that now," because I already know what's coming and my brain knows I'll get excited because I'm passionate. So yeah, it, it's that, it's so much more than not being able to do what other people ask us to do. Its also for me having this really deep sense of integrity, and I don't say that to put myself on this moral pedestal. I make a lot of mistakes and sometimes I'm a terrible person just like anybody. But I have this inherent sense of integrity, these values around honesty and being true to myself, and I have a nervous system that protects that. So I can sniff out agenda, sniff out things that other people might not know. And, and an example of that is a parent asked me once, you know, "When I try and play a board game with my child to get them out of their room, they're not coming out and they love this board game." And they were asking me, "Well, why do you think they're not coming out?" And I said, "Well, why are you asking them to come out? Is it to play the board game or is it to get them out of their room?" Because they'll know ahead of time. They'll know before you know what you're actually asking for. So even though our intentions are good, it's still an agenda that's hidden behind this thing that the PDAer loves. So that's just a couple of examples that we don't talk a whole lot about

Leisa Reichelt 9:34

I think a lot of that will resonate with a lot of people. We hear, uh, in our lived experience stories loads of examples where kids really, really wanna do something and just kinda in the moment of it are unable to execute on it. And that's a really common situation with school as well. Like, so many School Can't kids

Kristy Forbes 9:54

YESS

Leisa Reichelt 9:54

would do anything to be able to be at school. That's what they really wanna be doing,

Kristy Forbes 9:59

Absolutely

Leisa Reichelt 10:00

but they can't. And I imagine that not all of those are PDA kids. And, and this is another question that came through. A couple of people were asking about how do you draw the distinction between a kid who has PDA, a kid who has just got straight up anxiety because they've had bad experiences and they don't wanna go back and have more of those bad experiences, and a kid who is autistic, say, or ADHD, and is just, like, out of spoons.

Kristy Forbes 10:31

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 10:32

Like, how Yeah, is there any, are there any tricks to be able to tell, understand which of those is, is o- in operation?

Kristy Forbes 10:43

Mm. Thi- this is where my response will differ probably to other people's, and I, I always have questions for the questions, and my questioning response would be, does it really matter? Does it really matter? Because at the end of the day, the response is rational and wise. It's the brain and body working together to protect the individual. So as much as it might be inconvenient for adults, and when I say inconvenient, I wanna be really clear, I'm not saying, "Oh, you just want the child to do this so you feel good." I never ever mean that. I've parented four PDAers, and I totally understand the crisis and the challenge and the pressure put on us by systems. So I think we focus a lot on thinking that children need to build resilience, biggest eye roll ever at that one, honestly, or that they just don't wanna do something. But behind that, whether it's ADHD, whether it's autism, PDA, burnout, chronic anxiety, no matter what it is, we're looking at the individual in front of us, and this is the trap that we fall into sometimes, I think, when we're seeking support because a lot of people think that we have to approach an individual based on their label, based on their diagnosis. But when we're talking about at home, relationally, at school, a good service provider, a good educator, a good professional is going to pay attention to the individual in front of them and say, "Well, maybe it's not so important that we know why," but why on the level of what's the body protecting? What is their nervous system actually protecting them from? Because at the end of the day, the answer to that is what we need to address. If the anxiety is because they've had a terrible time at school, then we look at that, and we go into it, and we operate from that standpoint, not what I see a lot of people doing, which is... And I've been a classroom teacher, so I understand our training is to sometimes go to professional development on PDA, hear somebody talk about, "Here's what you do in a classroom if the child's PDA." That might help some children, but if we're not-- it's not individualized, then how do we know that it's going to help? So I think addressing the actual problems, and the challenges, the rational responses that our children have is more impactful than focusing on whether it's this or that, or this or that. And I think for the people that might say, "Well, it would help me to understand because then I know what to put in place," trial and error sometimes, especially with PDAers, it's going to be trial and error. And I know that sometimes the error can result in huge steps backward, but there's also repair, and I think that's just human nature, figuring things out, figuring out what supports and what doesn't. But I also wanna say that when we are parenting PDAers, it is going to look unconventional. It's, it's going to be... I actually think all parenting is, to be honest. I, I think that we've been very conditioned as human beings to look for quick solutions and right answers instead of being focused on what we know about this individual in front of us, what we know about ourselves, what's realistic. Because we get caught up in, "Other people don't do it like that, so I must be doing it wrong."

Leisa Reichelt 14:51

I think, uh, I think that's exactly it, Kristy. I think that's, in a lot of cases, I think that's what people are looking for. You know, s- asking for a friend. Um, you know, c- because you're, you're, you, you feel as though you're stepping out of line with what normal parenting looks like, and dropping demands and, and all of this stuff. And I think what I, what I certainly have felt, I imagine others feel as well, is like you just want some reassurance

Kristy Forbes 15:27

Yes

Leisa Reichelt 15:27

that you're doing the right thing, because so many of our societal messages are, are saying that you're not.

Kristy Forbes 15:34

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 15:35

and that feedback sometimes takes a lot of time, right? Especially if your child's been through, you know, a certain amount of trauma before, you know, at least some of the adults start to realize what might be going on.

Kristy Forbes 15:50

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 15:50

can take a lot of time before you get the feedback to go, "Well, I've dropped all the demands, and it's still not working." It, you know, quote marks for the not working there for anyone who's listening.

Kristy Forbes 16:03

Yeah. Two things I think about that is you're exactly right. That is a huge part of what we face as families, thinking that there's no, there's no, um, yardstick. There's no goalposts. Especially if we're parenting a child who's in burnout, who won't come out of their room, who's on screens 24/7. I think it's important to understand how the nervous system works, first of all. If a child is chronically distressed and they've been facing the same environment over and over, and I wanna say about that, sometimes we do that as PDAers because we want to. Sometimes we put ourselves through that because there are even children who will have school-related trauma who insist on going back to school, and that's challenging for us as families as well. But I think we're so accustomed to thinking if a child is on screens 24/7, if they don't come out of their room, if they're stuck in bed, that's bad. That we're enabling them. That they're going further and further into the darkness. Sometimes it's that actually, they're getting better because it's the first time they're coming out of survival mode. They're truly able to rest. The screen is the only thing that they can exercise control over, and it might be stopping them from attacking siblings or attacking themselves. The other thing I would say is instead of looking at, is this working? What have we already tried, and what do we know about those things we've tried? So did we try setting alarms and timers, and what impact did that have? And I think we'll have a pretty good idea of the impact that that already had on our children. That doesn't mean we can't try things again later. But, if I've set a timer for my child to get out of bed at 7:00 and be ready for school at 8:00, and they've- had this almighty meltdown and been in a puddle on the floor, that's pretty good information. If I have insisted on my child sitting at a table and eating a meal without their iPad, that's resulted in throwing food across the table at someone, there's pretty good information there. So I think sometimes we don't believe ourselves because other people have such power, especially in positions of power, such as professionals who read books. And not all professionals, I, I always wanna be really clear about that because there are also professionals with lived experience. We know what goes on in our homes. So it's very easy for us to be influenced to not believe ourselves and not trust in our own experience. And I think that is the tension that we hold internally a lot of the time. Well, I'm being told to do this thing over here, but when I did that, this awful thing happened. But then over here we're still being told, "Okay, yeah, that awful thing happened, but they're children, they need boundaries. They're, they're testing their limits." There's a difference between testing limits and going into burnout or being traumatised. Significant differences. So I think looking at what we've already tried and what the outcome was is really important. Probably more important than looking into the future of, well, if I let them be on screens all the time or stay in bed forever, what will their future be like? Because if we're always living in the future of what if, what if, what if, we're not really here now. We're not here. We're not noticing what's happening now, and we don't get that time back either. And I have deep grief about that as a parent that, you know, I'm sure many of us wish that we knew now, uh, back then what we know now, but... And it's easy for me to say, "Oh, trust what you know. Trust what you think." When you're in it, often it's crisis and it's very hard to do that. But again, touching base with other people who have lived through this, who are living through this, is crucial because then we get to compare notes and hear other people say, "Yeah, I went through that too, and here's what helped me."

Leisa Reichelt 20:32

Amazing. Kristy, let's move on to some kind of really practical questions. I've got a couple of questions from, uh, Emma and Karen and, and a few others who are really just asking, like, when it comes to the things that are part of being a human, you know, sleeping, eating, maintaining temperature control, basic things like that, how can parents help to support their kids to do life things without it turning into, like, pushing back and meltdowns and just endless conflict?

Kristy Forbes 21:10

Yeah Tricky question. So I'll start with sleep. Um, something I know about myself, and very annoying being a PDAer, if I'm honest. I mean, I love lots of things about it, but it's made my life exceptionally challenging, and I do carry residual trauma from being the child that doesn't understand myself and nobody else understands, and being on the end of punitive measures, and rejection, and abandonment. So when I say these things, I, I speak from a parent perspective as well, and a person who's been through it. But again, this is only my experience. Original thinking is very important to me. I can't do what everyone else is doing. I wish I could. If I could have just complied, if I could have just done what everybody else was doing as a young person, I would have been safe, and I wanted to be safe. But this nervous system said no, and continues to. Sleep, as an example, believe it or not, sleep, bedtime, just because it's dark and it's night, represents unoriginal thinking for me as a PDAer. It's like, "Oh, everyone's doing the same thing just because it's dark." It's like, just because it's morning, we have to eat these types of food because they're considered breakfast foods. So anything that seems arbitrary, believe it or not, sleep is included in that for many PDAers. So, even as an adult now, I never ever say to myself, "Oh, it's 9:30. I've got to get up at 8:00 AM. I have to go to bed," because I'd lay awake all night. There's no way I'd get to sleep. So instead, I create a sanctuary. I have a sanctuary in my bedroom. I have beautiful fairy lights, and have my devices when I go to bed. Now, this won't be everybody's answer, for myself and for my youngest, we instead just retire to our room when we're ready to, and we watch TikToks, we might watch our favourite YouTubers, or I might have some music on. But for me, it's noticing I'm bored watching TV now or, you know, the brain and body has a way of recognizing safety at a certain time rather than being told it's bedtime. So I will retire to my comfy sanctuary, and then eventually I just go to sleep. So that's how I've framed it for my children. Co-sleeping has been the way with every single one of my four children. I mean, still had... My eldest is 28 and lives- in London now, but she slept with me until she was 16. So I think as a society there's a lot of things we demonize, and I think that's very odd because they're very nurturing things and there are so many cultures that adopt such things like co-sleeping. I loved sleeping with my children

Leisa Reichelt 24:34

I think there are a ton of secret co-sleepers listening to this right now. Every time, 'cause I, we, we had a s- a, a, you know, there was a period where one of my sons was very distressed and, you know, societally well beyond the age where he should be sleeping with his mum,

Kristy Forbes 24:52

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 24:52

that was the only way that we could get to bed. Um, and so, you know, I occasionally mention that to people that I'm talking to, and it is extraordinary how many people then confess, confess to me, "Oh, yeah, no, we're still co-sleeping." That's why I, I actually, you know, I think there are a, there are a lot of people doing it. Um, and yeah, like the more we can normalize it, the better. Because, yeah, it is a beautiful way to support your kids.

Kristy Forbes 25:20

Yeah, and I think, I think that anyone that I mean, I've heard people say, "Oh, it's a bit weird." Is it? I think it's a bit weird to think that it's weird. what are you thinking? I mean, that I'll just leave that with those people

Leisa Reichelt 25:34

Yeah

Kristy Forbes 25:35

this is a mother-child thing. This is a parent-child thing. It's from a place of absolute love. when my own parent ended up saying to me, "W- you know, you're getting older now, we can't do this," I would sleep in a sleeping bag at the foot of their bed. So I It's that closeness, it's that connection. Connection, I can't say this enough, it's so important for PDAers. So yeah, that, that's something with the sleeping. And the eating, I mean, yeah. I think there are so many arbitrary rules around food. I went through a stage of, you know, my child having chocolate ice cream for breakfast every morning, only because I had said at one point, "No, you can't have sugar for breakfast, it's unhealthy." And I paid for that for a good six months. So I think it's really important what messaging we're putting out there, even if we are worried about it. And most of the time, let's be real, we're worried about our children when we're parenting PDAers, because they are radically resistant. I think knowing that there is a course that we'll need to run, it'll run its course. If I say to myself, "Don't eat Ben Jerry's," if I tried to go on a diet My whole life I was in and out of diets because my PDA nature was I really wanna be healthy. But then if I'd restrict anything or limit anything in any facet of my life, any limits, any restrictions, my brain would have a frenzied response to need more and more of that thing

Leisa Reichelt 27:20

I may never be able to eat ever again. I better get onto it right now.

Kristy Forbes 27:23

Yes,

Leisa Reichelt 27:24

Yeah

Kristy Forbes 27:26

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 27:27

Kristy, there's a, a few questions that are around kind of that parent-child dynamic. Some which are like, how do I just not lose it at my teen that pushes back on every little thing? Another one which is around this kind of like this notion of authority, which I think is like it's very part of how we've been taught to parent. You're in charge, you're responsible, you have the boundaries. You know, you've got a PDA child who wants to feel equality, but they're six.

Kristy Forbes 27:57

Mm-hmm.

Leisa Reichelt 28:00

How, do we help parents get their heads around how to relate effectively?

Kristy Forbes 28:06

Yeah. Oh, so much compassion. Just memories of sitting up at 3:00 AM on parenting forums saying, "What the hell is this?" You know? Like, "What am I doing wrong?" I just wish we could be more real about this and more human. We're gonna lose it. That's normal. That's completely normal. If our limits are being pushed constantly, we're humans and we're going to lose it. I've yelled, I've sworn when my children were younger and I didn't know better. I smacked, I grounded, I took things away. I did all the things, all the things that contributed to really harming my kids. And I was so deeply conditioned to do that, and I continue to make amends for that, but I still lose it. I still say things to my PDAers that I know isn't helpful, and I actually think that this is important because it's the repair that matters. What we do after really matters. When we're parenting PDAers, the messaging there is that we have to be perfectly regulated, and people think regulated means calm all the time. And I know for a lot of our children, they can fixate on one eyebrow being raised. "Why does your face look like that? You look like you're angry. Are you angry? Why does your voice sound like that?" So sometimes we feel like we have to be perfect so our child feels safe. That may be the case for a while because we're creating safety in the PDA brain. But as we go along, the way that my children have learnt about boundaries and the way that they've learnt about, um, respecting other people is by having experiences where they've pushed far too hard and the other person has not responded well. And I know in many cases that may not be ideal because then we have this huge explosion in our child. But I also think if we keep modeling to our children that we are going to be okay all of the time and, and they know we're not, PDAers know when somebody's pretending, and that is more dysregulating than actually having somebody in front of them lose it. Because we would expect that to happen, because that's a rational response. So if I'm pretending I'm okay after my child has sworn at me or called me a name or screamed at me, whatever they've done that has really upset me, they're going to feel more unsafe and more dysregulated. And this is just in my family, if I pretend that that's not a big deal. Now, I'm not saying tell your child off or tell them that's not okay. But in the moments where we lose our cool, and we regret it, and we wish we hadn't said the thing we've said or done the thing we've done, there's an opportunity there for modeling. There's an opportunity to show our children that being human is being exhausted sometimes. It's having limits. It's showing others that when you say those things to me, I become dysregulated too, and then I can't respond in the way you'd like me to. But Also, there's an opportunity to model repair. To go back later and to say, "I really feel crap about how I responded before. Can we try that again? I'm really sorry I said that." Sometimes I do have to pretend if I don't feel sorry, and if I feel like it was totally warranted, you know? And I I really wanna get in there and say, "You deserved it." But I'll even go back and say, "That's not how I wanted to handle that. I'm really sorry about that." So there's opportunity there, The more pressure we put on ourselves as parents, the more we're carrying around with us, and the more dysregulated we truly are. I mean, we're under so much pressure all the time just with social and cultural constructs of what good parenting is. That's in our head constantly. So bullying ourselves because we have limits, I just don't recommend it. I think it's okay to be human, and the repair is what matters

Leisa Reichelt 32:47

That's... I find that so interesting, Kristy. I have always felt as though it's my job to try to be the oasis of calm and, you know, that no matter what gets thrown at me, I just need to, like, not react. But as you're talking, I'm thinking about times when, you know, I come home and just got a really bad headache, and I just have to, like, go and rest. And, you know, not that my kid's not a loving, kind kid. He is. But in those moments, he kinda goes into loving, kind overdrive.

Kristy Forbes 33:17

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 33:18

so I just, yeah, I guess I, as you're talking about that, I'm thinking, you know, maybe it is actually about showing more of your w- weaknesses and making that more available. 'Cause it must be weird, mustn't it? Now that I think about it, when somebody's, like, being really abusive and the other person is just, like, passively taking it.

Kristy Forbes 33:37

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 33:38

so, yeah.

Kristy Forbes 33:39

And it's, it's a time really I think sometimes where then that becomes an expectation all the time. So then when we do start losing it, there is a lot of anxiety for the child because they're like, "What is happening now? What... I'm so used to having this person in my life that never, ever wavers." But I think it's important for us as adults to know that we can carry stuff, and we can hold it in forever, then there's the crash, and the crash will come. The burnout comes. So I think, I'm not saying yell at your children all the time or be honest all the time, but if we do explode or lose it, that's rational. That is a very important thing to know that that's not a wrong thing. If we're hearing ourselves being called names, having things thrown at us, listening to screaming, fixing holes in walls. I remember several times a week I was patching up walls and thinking, "What else could I be doing with my life for God's sake?" You know? Learning skills I didn't know I'd ever have to learn. There does come a point where there's an explosion for us, whether it's internal, external, in burnout, whatever it is. So I think being honest sometimes and knowing that we're human is really important

Leisa Reichelt 35:03

I wondered if, if you wanted to talk a little bit more about this kind of question of maintaining authority

Kristy Forbes 35:08

Yes. Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 35:11

Yeah

Kristy Forbes 35:12

Maintaining authority. Uh, there's a few things around that. I think, hmm, maintaining authority, undoing that, unlearning it, challenging it, unpacking it is like it's so embedded and so automatic that it's almost robotic. And it's like, um, this fragile balloon that lives inside of us as parents and adults, and it gets moved around when we're challenged by our children. I mean, I, I have a child who calls me out on everything. Absolutely everything. when you're a PDAer, it's even more exceptionally challenging, especially if you don't know you're a PDAer. The idea of authority is an interesting one because really we're talking about power. See, this is the thing that really upsets a PDAer. When we read about that, um, characteristic that we don't recognize authority- I just wanna challenge that so much. As a PDA-er, it's the first thing I notice. It's the first thing I recognize because it's an absolute threat to me, and not in the way that people think. It's not that I don't respect authority. It's not that I don't understand it. But what I'm sensitive to as a PDA-er is how is someone wielding the power they have? It's not gonna be okay if somebody just assumes that power because they think, "Well, I'm an adult and you're a child, so therefore I have power over you." Its the way this person relates to me that is what matters. So it isn't necessarily that PDA-ers don't respond to authority, it's that we're incredibly sensitive to power dynamics and injustice. And a form of injustice is, "Well, I'm 55 and you're six, therefore you just need to do what I say, accept what I think. Let me set the tone and the rules." What we lose sight of is that impacts the entire life. The, the environment that I'm growing up in as a PDA child. Let's be honest, there are plenty of adults in the world who are dangerous in positions of power, who actually won't examine their power, won't examine the impact that their own thoughts and actions and behavior have on other people. And a lot of PDAers have experiences of that, such as, well, you just go to school because that's what you have to do because you're six years old. What if you're being exposed to an adult every day who's screaming at children? And this is a reality. Who's screaming at children, who's belittling children, who's excluding, rejecting, who's asking things of us that we can't achieve, and then punishing us for it. That's a very rational response to resisting that person's authority. It's about are they meeting me where I am? Do they respect me? Do they listen to me? And so a lot of parents, we often might get caught up in that, "Well, I'm failing if my child doesn't do what I say." And there's so much pressure around that. You've only gotta jump into the comment sections on, know, parenting posts on the internet where people say, give them to me for 10 minutes, I'll sort them out," which is actually a threat of violence. Let's be real. If the only way that you can control a child is to threaten them, to exclude them, to abandon them or reject them, why aren't we talking more about examining that power, examining that form of authority? Instead, we're looking at, well, if a parent can't control their child, then that's on them. And these narratives about, you know, children being a, a direct product of their parenting, absolute rubbish. It, it... I find that so harmful. I wanna say that being an adult who's grown up in a society where this messaging is and continues to be, everybody is expected to toe the line. And often intergenerational trauma is very real in our families because there have been layers and layers of unidentified neurodivergence that looks like drinking problems, eating disorders, institutionalization, family violence, all the things, because we haven't known what might have been helpful. As adults, one of the hardest things we can do is unpack and examine, why do I feel so uncomfortable? What is so disturbing inside of me when my child says no? How important is this? And I think asking ourselves those questions is really, really important and really powerful, because do we really believe that a dysregulated child who's having a panic attack, and I think for PDAers a meltdown is very often a panic attack, equating that experience with, well, they're going to be abusing their partner when they're an adult, is not the same thing. We're talking about a dysregulated child in a fight or flight state and somebody who abuses people. They're not the same thing. Children can only respond to threat with behavior, if we're in a position of authority and we're dictating to them how they respond, of course, they're going to be explosive.

Leisa Reichelt 41:35

Kristy, if we were gonna replace authority, position of authority, with a different kind of relational concept between a parent and a PDA child, is it partnership? How would you describe a good dynamic between a parent and a PDA child?

Kristy Forbes 41:53

I don't think it's replacing authority. I think it's modeling what healthy relational dynamics are. If you say no to me, why does that make me feel rubbish? And I narrate my experiences, so I model that to my children. So if I say... I mean, we, we have this ongoing thing where say to my youngest, "When was your last shower?" and they'll go, "Argh." And I'll say, "It might be an idea to have one tonight." And, and I can get away with that because we have that relationship of safety. But they will still say, "Oh, I know. You don't have to tell me." And sometimes I'll say, "Well, I kind of do, because if I don't, you won't." I think it's, you know, saying out loud when, when they have that response, "Argh-" God, my chest goes tight and I feel, I feel really wobbly and shaky inside when you respond like that. And I know it's a demand, and I know you're having your response. I'm not really sure what I should do here. You know? Do I remind you, or So I think it's, for me, it's narrating. I know we talk about collaboration, but I think then sometimes people get caught up in negotiation, and negotiation or offering choices is still demanding for many PDAers. So saying, "Well, if you have a shower tonight, you can do this thing tomorrow," that's also, you know, it, it's, it's using authority and it's power dynamic that feels unsafe. So I think it's just constantly bringing it back to ourselves and then being honest when there's times where we say, "I know that you are terrified of seeing the doctor today. I know, and I totally get it. And I also know that being healthy and well is something I want so much for you, and I'm just not sure what we're gonna do about this." And I know every family's going to be different, but coming down off that pedestal that we put ourselves on just because of our age and because of our position, and treating our children like human beings that have wants, needs, fears. Yeah, I don't know whether that's helpful or not

Leisa Reichelt 44:32

I think that's very helpful. Let's talk about school

Kristy Forbes 44:35

Oh, yay.

Leisa Reichelt 44:37

So the... Let, let me, let me just read a couple of questions. Is it best just to immediately abandon any attempts at structured learning once you figure out your School Can't Kid is a PDAer? How possibly to do school with a twice-exceptional PDA child? Is there any hope that PDAers will ever be able to manage in a mainstream school environment? I see a lot of comments from parents in parenting groups saying homeschool is the only option and that persevering only damages your child. Thoughts?

Kristy Forbes 45:08

Thoughts are pay attention to the individual in front of you. Um, maybe reexamine what hope means because I think

Leisa Reichelt 45:17

Uh, to be fair, it did have some scare marks around it

Kristy Forbes 45:20

Yeah, totally. I So my four children have all had very different experiences. My eldest, exceptionally PDA, loved school. Went all the way through and is now a published author living in London, living their life. Do they have challenges? Yes, of course they do. But I just wanna say they had a- an experience of moving through a mainstream very happily. In fact, I would offer them to have days off and they would say no. And I have a child who made it to high school and couldn't go anymore. And I have one in a specialist setting and one who I home educated from, you know, they spent a year in school and that was enough for them. Six years we were at home. We attempted structured learning. Um, a lot of parents will think, "Well, I'm not a classroom teacher, so I don't know how to do this." I am a classroom teacher and I didn't know how to do it. So I wanna just wipe that away for anybody. My child needed to recover from the experience they had in order to allow their nervous system to have enough messages of safety before they could engage with anything. I wanna be really honest, my child learnt to read and write through messaging friends on gaming forums and playing Minecraft, and reading books about how to build Minecraft features. They learnt maths by cooking with me and, you know, incidental learning can happen in everyday life for people that are really worried about not doing any structured learning. Bringing it back to the unoriginal thinking, curriculum can feel like arbitrary learning. It can be like, "Why are we learning this again? What, how will I ever use this? What has this got to do with anything?" And that resistance to learning something just because someone says we have to. I had times where I absolutely worried and I would return and try every now and then to do things like IXL, which I actually think is a great resource online. We'd do a lot of play activities. You know, we'd create cafes in the kitchen and set up a McDonald's drive-through and we'd learn through play. And I never said to my child, "Today we're doing maths and we're going to make a McDonald's restaurant to do that." We would just play. They returned to school this year. They're in year seven. They absolutely love it. They won't miss a day. They've never missed a day, and I thought there's no way they'll be able to cope with this. So, there are so many varying experiences. Some children will respond well to structured learning. Many children will say, "I want structured learning," and still not be able to cope with it and continue to insist that they want structured learning. Sometimes that's because they don't have the full insight into their nervous system response. And I think this idea that people stop learning, or that there's a window of opportunity around learning, I'd encourage people to let go of that. I'm 47. There's so much I don't know. I get excited about learning new things. We don't stop learning, and we don't only learn inside of the window of when children go to school. There are so many ways of learning, especially for gifted children, especially for, um, 2e children. I mean look,

Leisa Reichelt 49:10

Let me read one particular example to you, Kristy. Um, Julie is talking about her child. She said, "Once the PDAer is against learning," scare quotes again, "or education or whatever term you try to use for it due to the trauma that they've cumulatively experienced, given we still need to educate them one way or another, how can we help them regain that? They are so clever and can then see through any attempts to link things subtly through their special interests and immediately shut it down. How long do we wait it out without pressure? Even that gives off an expectation that will find resistance." I share this one because I, too, have been through this experience. I've ruined a lot of special interests by getting too enthusiastic about using them as a learning experience

Kristy Forbes 49:56

Yeah, 'cause that's what we're told to do, right? We're told to-

Leisa Reichelt 49:59

Strew things around and they, yeah.

Kristy Forbes 50:01

Yes.

Leisa Reichelt 50:02

No, I can see it a mile off.

Kristy Forbes 50:04

I remember I even said that to people. You know, I used to say, "Just strew things."

Leisa Reichelt 50:08

Yeah.

Kristy Forbes 50:09

like our children don't know.

Leisa Reichelt 50:11

Like red flags all over the house.

Kristy Forbes 50:15

"Oh, I thought we might visit the train station and look at this type of engine that we're learning about." Yeah, no. I would say, and I know that this probably isn't the response that people want. I do have a free masterclass on my, the homepage of my website entirely about this, if anybody's interested or if that's helpful. Um, having more trust in your child's intelligence and their drive. They're not unmotivated. It's just that that curriculum and that way of learning is not suited to them right now. So they're not unmotivated. They're not unintelligent. They're still all of those things. Trusting that they will, they are learning all of the time. I can't tell you the amount of people I've been in consultations with, parents who have said, "You know, they won't write. They won't write and they won't read." And then I will often say, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean that they can't or that they don't in their own private space." I've never seen somebody type as quickly as my child does on a, on a PlayStation controller. Wow. So I think having more trust in the fact that our children do learn and they do find a way. And honestly, I wanna challenge the notion of behind. "My child is behind." Because if we think about the entire world, there are countries that don't even send their children to school until they're eight years old. So I think those first years are so crucial in setting the scene for, um, nurturing the nervous system, offering opportunities where the child knows they're safe and unpressured, and then they will find their way to learning. I think that, you know, strewing and offering opportunities, it's okay to say, "Why don't we go and do this thing today?" Or, but sometimes just living our lives and learning actively without making it or announcing it as a thing is the most powerful thing that we can do.

Leisa Reichelt 52:29

Yeah.

Kristy Forbes 52:31

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 52:31

Uh, Dagmar kind of has the opposite situation, and you alluded to this as well. What if your PDA teen, who is obviously not coping in a mainstream school environment, refuses to shift to a different model? You're trying to suggest ideas about home education or a special assistance school. Any of that leads to pushback and defensiveness. We're really concerned about the enduring damage of school, but we can't get her to make a different choice. Any suggestions?

Kristy Forbes 52:57

Yeah, that's really hard. It's so hard because we can see what's happening in the moments at home. And unfortunately, you know, we can't force them to leave school. I think- The, the hardest thing about PDAers in particular is experiential learning. I'd have to say that most of the most profoundly and important things I've ever learnt have been the hardest way to learn them. And PDAs aren't going to just accept what we tell them, even if we're saying to them, "You're not sleeping, you're not eating. I'm worrying that you're being traumatised." that does sometimes is adds to what we're concerned about is actually happening. And yeah, I, know that we want to care for our children and prevent any further harm, and sometimes we have no choice but to allow them to have the experience they need to have to learn the thing they need to learn. And I know that's probably a disappointing answer, but the alternative is to force them to stop going to school, and I think that that, sometimes you're in a no-win situation. A child might say years later, "Why didn't you take me out of school? Why, why didn't you step in?" Or, uh, "Why did you take me out of school?" So sometimes we also have to allow for the maturity to develop in the young person to understand the decisions that we made as well. So yeah, I just have full compassion and empathy for that. It's really, really challenging

Leisa Reichelt 54:47

Yeah. No, me too. And I think it's that real recognition, isn't it? That it's not just you that's making the demands. It's like demands come from society as well.

Kristy Forbes 54:55

Absolutely

Leisa Reichelt 54:56

My kiddo is obsessed... Well, not obsessed with, but he's very committed to getting his Rosa, um, which is like the formal year 10 qualification at the end of, uh, in New South Wales.

Kristy Forbes 55:06

Um, all right

Leisa Reichelt 55:07

um, and like I say to him all the time, "I don't care. Do it, don't do it, doesn't matter. It's not that important. You know, there's a million ways to do life."

Kristy Forbes 55:14

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 55:15

so, but he's like, he's made that commitment to himself, and so he's... Although it's causing him all manner of stress along the way, but, hmm

Kristy Forbes 55:25

really hard, yeah

Leisa Reichelt 55:28

Thinking about the future, Veronica is asking about, like, goals and aspirations. How do you help PDAers have goals and aspirations if the very act of having them stimulates their PDA? She says, "My 15-year-old definitely freezes just as much, if not more, based on demands that they put on themselves rather than those of others."

Kristy Forbes 55:47

Hmm. So I guess there's two different scenarios in that. The first one I would say is I'm never gonna have goals or aspirations that other people decide for me or think that I should do because I'm skilled at something. I used to play the piano. I started playing the piano at five, and someone in my family decided I should be a concert pianist and got me piano lessons, and every Monday the piano teacher would turn up and I wouldn't have practiced, and I just stopped playing the piano after a while. I think this is the thing for me, intuition. My life is so largely intuitive, and the reality for so many people is- You know, we might have goals and aspirations, and they change. They change over time. We might have a career for five years and then do something completely different. Life on life's terms, and I think again, it's that unoriginal thinking. Why do people have to have goals and aspirations? And I, I totally understand why we do. Purpose, drive, looking forward to something, honing our skills, but it's also a demand. I don't set goals for myself. I'm aware that there are things I'd like to do, and I'm aware that if I think about it too much or get excited, like my rose garden, it's never gonna happen. Or I'll become way too perfectionist in my drive for it and develop chronic anxiety. OCD, for me, becomes very, very real if I push myself too hard into achieving. I live my life very intuitively, and yeah, I don't have that conversation with my youngest. It's more centered around celebrating their interests when they bring them to me. "Look at this thing I've drawn." Or when they share snippets of what they've done. And just recently, you know, they've come and said, "I think I'd like to study this at university, um, because I wanna animate my drawings." And I'm like, "That is so cool." But I never, ever go, "Okay, let's have a look at universities. Let's look at courses." Mm-mm. That would end it immediately. So I think it's not that we don't have goals and aspirations, what we're... I mean, I'm not likely to tell you about them because the fear is that you'll encourage me. It will become a demand, and I'll never be able to do it, and I'll feel this crushing weight. So yeah, I think there's a difference between encouraging someone to have them and trusting that they're developing and they exist internally, but we might just not know about them, and we can just allow them to live their life as they are

Leisa Reichelt 58:50

Flipping back to school, I have a series of questions around how do we educate schools on PDA kids and help schools understand how to deal with my PDA kid better? What are your thoughts on, on where schools are at with understanding PDA, um, and, and how that could be improved, assuming it does need to be improved?

Kristy Forbes 59:15

Yeah. That's like asking do adults like Vegemite on toast. I mean, some do, some don't. I think this is a cultural problem more than it's a PDA is hard to understand. I don't think PDA is hard to understand once we really learn about it. I think that there is a culture, and there's so many factors that go into this. There are schools that respond very, very positively to their students. So instead of saying to PDA, I'd say to their students, because again, I think it's important to come back to the individual in front of them. I've had my children who are PDAers in school environments where we never even had the conversation about PDA because they got to know my child and what works well and what doesn't, what they feel anxious about, what works best for them, when it's time to switch things up, and that's a good educator. A good environment, knowing your students. And when we talk about relationship, I know a lot of educators would say, I do have a relationship with the student." But relationship isn't just knowing their name and saying hello and chatting to them. It's sharing who we are. It's bringing this down to here, our authority again, how are we using it? So I don't think it's a problem of schools not understanding PDA. I think it's a resistance problem on their end sometimes, and I think that it's a projection. Because if we think about when we say things like, "Well, we can't offer this child this accommodation because it's not fair to the others," then how do reward systems work? Because we can't give a child a reward and not the others. I mean, it's the same thing. It's an act of exclusion if they, if they think that accommodations are exclusion. We're doing that with reward systems and children who are able-bodied and able-minded. I think it comes down to the adults and their examination of the impact of their power and how they relate to students. But I also think that letting go of the idea that every child should go to school because school exists for children, there are just going to be some children that school is not a, not a good fit for, and that's not bad. It's not bad or wrong. There are just some minds that are beyond a standard curriculum, and that doesn't mean they're better than or less than. It just means they need something different.

Leisa Reichelt 1:02:05

Kristy, I wonder whether teachers are, in a way, even more socialized than parents because you have all of this language around, you know, controlling your classroom and, and you know, that kind of thing, don't you? Which maybe doesn't put you in the best mindset for having kids who have got power dynamic challenges

Kristy Forbes 1:02:26

Yeah, and I think there's also the issue of that workplace culture again. Some of the best educators you could have for PDAers are pushed out of the system because they're, the way they relate to children is, is not in a means of controlling everybody. I mean, I loved being in a classroom with 15 and 16-year-old kids 'cause I felt like one of them. And, know, I remember, I remember the leader of the school at one point asking me in a meeting, you know, praising me and saying, "You're an excellent teacher. The parents wish that, you know, they're always asking for their children to be in your class. Do you think you'd make a better social worker?" And, you know, when I'd say, "Why, why would you ask that?" And he would say, "Well, because you're friends with the students instead of leading them." And I would say, "No, no. I lead by example by treating them with respect not trying to control their thoughts and feelings." And I think that this is reflective of larger society and the way that we look at children and, and childism, we, we talk about in education developing critical thinking skills, but are we really? Because we are actually coming at education with already decided curriculum that looks to shape and mould what, what children think, what they feel, what they think, their idea of history, who's right and who's wrong, what's good and what's bad. Anything that moves beyond that will either be celebrated by an educator who is not threatened by, by true critical thinking, or it will be pulled back into line. So I think there's a lot of problems there, but I do see good educators pushed out of the system and lot of burnout, but just a lot of workplace culture that is really not conducive to accommodating all types of learners

Leisa Reichelt 1:04:48

Kristy, earlier in our conversation you said that there were things that you really loved about being a PDAer. Let's end on a hopeful note. What, what for you are the great things about being a PDAer?

Kristy Forbes 1:05:00

I was thinking about this the other day. I, I've just been accepted into, um, a master's in inclusive education

Leisa Reichelt 1:05:08

Amazing.

Kristy Forbes 1:05:09

yeah, It was a rollercoaster filling out the form because the first question was, how far did you get in high school? And I always have to click grade eight because I left school when I just turned 15, and I thought, "Oh, God." I still have a lot of grief around that because I was a School Can't kid. But then I get to when it talks about vocational education, what's the highest grade? Post-graduate, which is great. So my first message is, there are so many paths to different destinations. Then this application asked me to create a CV, and I thought, "Oh, my God," and I'm thinking about all my failures in life. I'm thinking, the amount of jobs I've had that I didn't stay at and, you know, the amount of courses I started that I didn't finish, and all of that. And I really felt resistance to putting together this CV. But when I put it together, I thought, you know, based on living my life the way I have and what I've considered failures, I've actually gathered so much incredible experience in such a variety of different environments. I've worked with families, and children, and professionals, and I've been homeless, and overcome addiction and all sorts of things in my life that many of us, you know, we don't want our children to experience any of those hardships. But I get to be here today at 47 and say, "My life has been so hard," but I also have this drive for autonomy that when I want to achieve something, when I wanna be in a certain space in my life, I find ways to get there, and they might be unconventional, and they might even be painful. But I find ways to get there. And that is very inconvenient in childhood for the, uh, for the adults around us, even traumatic. I love, I, I love PDA humor. It's very dry and sarcastic and a bit cutthroat, and I get that. It's not for really sensitive people, but I love PDA humor. I love- I love my sense of integrity. Sometimes it's very inconvenient because I want to do things the easy way. I want to be able to take shortcuts, but I don't get to because my nervous system doesn't allow me to. I love At 47, I love my difference. I love that I am a person who is centered and focused and grounded in dissent. And I know that that can be inconvenient for people too. I don't think that PDA is, um, non-compliance. I think it's dissent. It's asking the important questions. Well, why do we have to do that? How long have people been doing that? And who decided it in the first place? Doesn't anyone see how ridiculous this is? You know, sometimes my 12-year-old, I'll tell them stories about my childhood and things I had to do just because they were normal, and my child will say, "Oh my God. What? Weren't you asking questions about that?" I love that about PDAers because most of the time they're so right. So, and I love that I get the privilege to share my experience with others, to normalize can be actually a very traumatic experience for people who are looking to live in the ways that we're told we have to. I think the last thing is, as much as I get annoyed because there are things I wanna do, but my PDA will decide, no, we're not doing that, the timing of things in my life is extraordinary when I, when I have hindsight, when I look back and go, that, that actually really wasn't for me, but this other thing was. Learning to trust in that PDA nature has been extraordinary.

Leisa Reichelt 1:09:42

That's incredible. Kristy, if folks want to learn more about PDA, where do you recommend?

Kristy Forbes 1:09:51

Uh, if you jump on my website, you'll find a few free resources, actually. I've got some printable guides. One in particular is a self-care guide for adults in crisis. So it's practical, um, things that we can do when we can't leave the house, or when we can't make it to the shower, or when our child's attached to us. Um, I would always suggest learning from lived experience. There are some great professionals out there, but lived experience is so crucial.

Leisa Reichelt 1:10:23

I know you put so much out into the world on social media, on your website, and all the different places, so

Kristy Forbes 1:10:28

of people offering lived experience. And can I just say thank you so much for what you are offering our communities as well. It's so important for people to hear real stories and real lived experience because it normalizes and it provides community and

Leisa Reichelt 1:10:46

100%.

Kristy Forbes 1:10:46

Yeah

Leisa Reichelt 1:10:47

yeah, yeah. I lo- I, I love hearing it and I love sharing it with other people as well, so yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you for, for joining us today. Really, I know people were so delighted to know that you were gonna come and, and speak with us, so really appreciate you taking the time, and thank you

Kristy Forbes 1:11:02

thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Leisa Reichelt 1:11:05

Well, I really hope you were able to take something helpful away from that conversation, and we weren't able to get to every single question, so we might have to get Kristy back another time soon. I have to say, I particularly enjoyed hearing Kristy talk about the things she loved about being a PDAer. It was really great to hear some joy on this topic, which is often quite a difficult one. If you know someone who needs to hear this episode, please take a moment and share it with them, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode or give us a rating or a review. It really does help us get the podcast in front of more families who haven't yet found our supportive community. If you have some feedback or maybe a guest suggestion, or perhaps you would like to share your own School Can't lived experience, you can email us at schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com and we would love to hear from you. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, please remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Thank you so much for listening. We will talk again soon. Take care