February 27, 2025 • 48 mins
As she explains in her new book The Unlocking - An Autism Story, Porscia Lam and her husband had a problem - their toddler, Harry, would not do anything he was asked to do. Yes, that's typical for some children, but Harry's reactions were extreme, with troubling behaviour escalating to the point it endangered Harry and his younger sibling.
The Lams discovered Harry has Pathological Demand Avoidance, a little-understood condition in the Autism spectrum. Through much love, frustration, fear and sacrifice, the Lams got Harry the care he needed and, yes, the Hulk played a role.
Liana talks to Porscia about her family's journey and how other parents can spot PDA in their child and get much-needed information. Learn more about Porscia's book at https://porscialam.com/
The Lams discovered Harry has Pathological Demand Avoidance, a little-understood condition in the Autism spectrum. Through much love, frustration, fear and sacrifice, the Lams got Harry the care he needed and, yes, the Hulk played a role.
Liana talks to Porscia about her family's journey and how other parents can spot PDA in their child and get much-needed information. Learn more about Porscia's book at https://porscialam.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty AM or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. Hello listeners
around the world on radio, streaming and podcast services. This
is it's not therapy. I'm Leanna Kerzner, and I am
(00:29):
not a therapist, but I am your source for navigating
the madness of mental health using my top ten sayings
for going good crazy. This week, we're going to talk
about a condition that's not officially diagnosed, recognized what everyone'll
call it in Canada, but it is listed on a
lot of Canadian resources about autism. Now, how is this possible?
(00:52):
Mental health diagnoses are not based on blood tests or
other clearly defined markers, and because what's consumed an official
condition changes with every new diagnostic and statistical manual, there's
room to talk about stuff that hasn't been recognized yet. Furthermore,
(01:14):
our current DSM that's the short firm for diagnostic and
Statistical manual our current DSM is getting a bit old.
The DSM five, Yes We're up to five was published
in twenty thirteen, and we did get a text revision
in twenty twenty two. But obviously awareness and approaches to
(01:36):
mental health have changed a lot in the past twelve
years and are continuing to evolve. Anyone who works in
the mental health space knows that diagnostic criteria alone isn't
enough for good mental health results. We know that each
DSM is the product of years of compromise, the averages
(02:00):
six years to get one out the door. The thing
is the accepted diagnostic criteria. That's the thing that therapists
have to work with for those all important billing codes yes,
so people can get paid. We knew that each DSM
was flawed when it came out, and most experts agree
(02:24):
that in twenty twenty five, the DSM five is outdated,
but it's the best we have until the DSM six
comes out and we can all fight about that one
all over again, right right now. There's something unique about
the DSM five. Specifically, one of the more controversial elements
of the DSM five was the consolidating of four different
(02:48):
diagnoses surrounding neurodivergency into a single diagnosis of what is
now known as autism spectrum disorder. A much more limited
definition of autism was combined with Asperger syndrome, childhood disintegrative
disorder also known as Heller's syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder not
(03:12):
otherwise specified, which is shortened to pdd NOS, and those
were the four that ended up getting turned into ASD.
A three level severity assessment scale was also added, based
on the level of required support. Now some would say
it's four levels because none is a level. Some would
(03:35):
say that's just being autistic about the severity scale, but anyway, right,
the proponents of these changes, the people who agreed with them,
said that it streamlined the system, may diagnosis faster and
unlocked more services for more people, which has turned out
to be true. You know autism rates are exploding, Well, yeah,
(03:56):
that's because more people are getting help, not because there's
more autism right now. The critics of these changes, not
the ones that are like, oh, autism and vaccinians are
that's all nonsense, right. The people who are informed but
were critical of the changes in the DSM five they
said that the people at both extremes of the severity scale,
(04:20):
those who are very low needs and those who are
very high needs were going to suffer from a lack
of support because the categories were too broad. Further More,
people with moderate needs were going to be flattened. To say,
somebody is very high needs in one category next to
no needs in another. That gets all flattened out. This
(04:42):
has also turned out to be true. So all the
proponents of the changes regarding autism spectrum disorder in the
DSM five were right. All the critics of the changes
regarding autism spectrum disorder in the DSM five were that's right.
So what does that mean. It means a lot more
(05:03):
people are getting access to services, and that's great. And
then there's someone like me who's right on the boundary
of a formal autism diagnosis. I get a seventy one
on the rads are scale, and people like what that.
Don't worry about it if you don't know. It's it's
borderline bordering on autism, right, not borderline personality disorder, a
(05:24):
borderline diagnosis. And this is confusing because someone like me
who doesn't have a formal diagnosis struggles to prove that
many of the sensory issues that I have are very real,
and I can't help them, and I can't just top
them out for very long right, And someone like my
guest this week also couldn't get an appropriate diagnosis for
(05:48):
her son with a severe subcategory of autistic symptoms. The
conditioning question here is called pathological demand avoidance and will.
It's RECOGNI in the UK. It's not formally recognized here
in Canada. However, anyone who has lived or work with
someone with demand avoidance knows it's very real. Now, what
(06:13):
does this sort of look like? Standard They spend a
lot of time sort of scoping you out. I'm talking
months years, right before they trust you, they engage in
very detailed play, pretend or role playing. The people with
PDA that I work with love AI chatbots, and there's
a lot of hate for AI chatbots. But for somebody
(06:34):
with PDA, oh it's an unlocker. Okay. Of course, then
there's a special interest and sensory differences that come with
any autism, but with PDA there's also the anxiety surrounding
control that's central to the condition. Someone with PDA can
(06:55):
be having a great day and they'll do something until
someone tells them to do it the minute there is
a demand, the anxiety within someone who has pathological demand
avoidance spikes so intensely that they melt down or shut down. Now,
(07:15):
this is different from someone will say oppositional defiance disorder,
which is marked by anger, and as the name says defiance,
someone with pathological demand avoidance gets a threat response or
panic when they're expected to do something, even something that
(07:36):
most of us wouldn't see as a demand, like eating
a meal or brushing your teeth or getting dressed. My
guest this week has an autistic son with symptoms consistent
with pathological demand avoidance. So if this description I just
gave sounds like someone you know, including adults, keep listening.
Poor Scha Lamb, a lawyer who will be talking to
(07:59):
us all the way in Australia. She's the author of
the Unlocking an Autism story and Porsche's story and the
story of her family is amazing. You will be on
the edge of your seat, not literally if you're in
the car right. But stay tuned. Even if this doesn't
sound like something that describes somebody you know, some of
(08:22):
the stuff you can pick up here just about communicating
and working with people who see things very different from you,
navigate life in a very different way. It's awesome. Do
you have a story you think would be good for
the show? Are you interested in sponsoring the show? Leannaat
Nottherapyshow dot com. Not Therapy Show is the website not
Therapyshow dot com at not Therapy Show on Socials. We
(08:45):
will be back with Porsche Lamb, Unlocking an Autism Story
and pathological demand Avoidance when we come back.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA ninety
six am.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two one one or
go to two one one dot ca. We're back in
It's not Therapy. I'm still Leanna Curser. I'm still not
a therapist. It is time again for the interview. And
(09:23):
you guys know, I like the stories of people. I
love interviewing therapists, but I am not a therapist, and
I like to talk to other non therapists in the
mental health space. And I have Porsche Lamb with me
this episode, the author of the Unlocking an Autism Story. Uh,
it's out this week. Uh and Porsche, your your story
(09:47):
is very very specific, so welcome to It's not therapy
And where do you want to start introducing people to you?
You know, your child and your story.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Leanna. Well, a quick intro
of me would be that I am a mum of
two young children. I've got a five year old daughter
and a six year old son, and my son is
on the autism spectrum and he exhibits a certain subtype
of autism called pathological demand avoidance or PDA, which we
(10:20):
will talk about a bit later. I'm also a corporate
lawyer and have been doing that for the last eighteen
or nineteen years or so, but I took a three
year career break basically to be the full time care
to my son Harry and manage his early intervention therapy,
which we did with the hope of getting him school ready,
(10:41):
and then I ended up writing this book about our
family's experience.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Now people think they know, oh, they know one kid
with autism, and they think they know all of it.
But you know, artistic kids are as diverse as they
are kids. But PDA, pathological demand avoidance, is its own thing.
And having worked with adults with pathological demand avoidance. It
(11:09):
is a very very challenging condition, made more challenging by
there hasn't been a ton of research into it. We
know kind of the markers of it, but we don't
know quote what causes it. It could be a form of
anxiety condition. But in Harry's case, what was going on
It started during COVID lockdown. Correct.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yes, so I live in Melbourne in Australia, and here
in Australia, PDA is not an officially recognized condition. In
the UK, you can get a diagnosis of autism spectrum
disorder with a PDA profile, but in many countries around
the world, PDA is not recognized by pediatricians or psychologists
(11:54):
or other clinicians. There is, however, this proliferation of parents
line who have discovered PDA. So there's a lot in
the online communities from this group of parents who say, oh,
my kid's got this pattern of behavior, and it ends
up that you discover a really quite distinctive pattern of behavior,
(12:14):
and that's what draws all these parents together because they've
usually got this autism diagnosis and it doesn't explain the
full story, and they go looking around for more answers,
more solutions and eventually, you know, six months or a
year down the track, they discover this term PDA, and most.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Of us are like, ah, there it is. That's my kid.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
So for those of you who haven't heard of PDA,
the best way that I can describe it, and I
borrow a lot from the definition of PDA that was
coined by the UK psychologist Elizabeth Newsom in the nineteen eighties,
who was the first psychologist to do a body of
work defining PDA, and you know, some of the strategies
(12:57):
that might help PDA kids. And I also add to
what some of the insights I've read about from PDA
adults who have now articulated what's going on in their head.
And so the working definition that I use for it
is that it is an anxiety driven need for control
(13:19):
or autonomy that is often exhibited by avoiding the demands
of everyday living or by attempting to take control.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
So what does that look like?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Well, I first noticed these patterns of so my son
Harry exhibited a lot of the early markers of general autism.
There was picky eating, extreme picky eating, in flexibility, sensory
aversions like you could not get a drop of water
on his pants straight away, need to change his pants.
And this was before he was even one year old.
(13:53):
And he had extreme separation, anxiety, and all of that
is what you tend to read about in if I
can use the word class cool literature on autism, that's
probably not the right term, but I think.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
And then he had this other pattern of behavior that
sat alongside that, and it was where we could not
get him to cooperate with anything at any part of
the day. So from the time he was sort of
six months old, we couldn't get him to have a
nappy change, we couldn't wash his hair, we couldn't get
(14:26):
him dressed, couldn't get him out of bed, couldn't get
him back into bed or.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
You know, down for nap time.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
And every time we tried to do one of those
transitions or one of those steps in the day, we
faced what I now look back on and can see
in his little brain was a life or death battle
for him, because when you're at that age, all those
acts of self care, you know, basic getting fed, sleeping, hygiene,
(14:54):
health and safety, all of those things are demands and
usually they're done either for you or done to you
because you're one or two and can't do these things
for yourself. And I think for him that was a
real infringement on his autonomy and it felt like a
loss of control, even from that really young age, and
he perceived that loss of control to be a threat
(15:17):
the way you know, I might give you a threat
if someone was running at me with a weapon. And
I think he viewed it as that kind of panic.
It was a brainstem response, you know, fight flight, freeze.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Kind of mode.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And he would scream, turn purple in the face. You
could tell his breathing was just it was gasp and cry,
gasp and cry, tears, frozen to the spot, body was stiff,
that kind of thing. And so every you know, fifteen
minutes of the day, we would find we needed to
do one of these things for him, change his nappy
or you know, change his clothes, put him in the
(15:55):
car for something, and we would meet him with this
life for death battle, you know, throughout the day, And that's.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
How we saw it.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
It does change, the pattern of behavior changes as they
grow up.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
So in Harry's case.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
He doesn't have an intellectual disability. He doesn't have a
physical disability. He's a completely able bodied kid, and he
is now almost seven years old. And the way I
see his PDA now is not so much.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
In the demand avoidance, but in the attempting to take control.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Or sometimes what's called equalizing behavior, where he tries to
flip the power in difference between being a child and
me the parent, around the other ways. So I often
see things like he might stub his toe on a
couch and he'll get angry at the couch, but he
will turn around to me and say say sorry, say
(16:51):
sorry for the couch. And my initial response to that
kind of thing when it first happened, because these behaviors
they come out of nowhere, and then it becomes a pattern.
It happens, you know, multiple times over the week. I'm like, oh,
that's a new thing that's just started.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Now.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
The first time that happened, I was like, I'm not
going to.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Apologize for an inanimate object.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And then he's like, say sorry five times, say sorry
ten times. Because the more I refuse, the more, you know,
it feels like a loss of control and there's a
greater gap in power and difference. And I could see
that he was getting back to that brainstem response.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
So I've ended up apologizing.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
I now apologize on behalf of the couch or the table,
or the wall or whatever it is to get him
through that moment of intense panic. And then maybe an
hour later I might try and explain to him why
that was not an appropriate thing to ask me to
do or to ask. You know, you can get away
with asking your mum, but you can't really ask someone
(17:45):
else to do, right. So that's kind of what we
see these days.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah, and you probably get judgments from everywhere on this
because people, if you've never experienced a person who has
a demand avoidance, you just think, oh, the kid's a
picky eater. And it's not that, you know, there's autistic
demand avoidance, which is they don't like, say, tomato skins,
(18:13):
and so if there's tomato skins in the food, then
they won't eat it. This is something where it can
be the absolute most favorite food in the world. If
you tell them to eat it, they're not gonna right. Yeah,
and you know when you said like an hourly battle,
I can just imagine how exhausting it must have been,
(18:35):
especially during COVID lockdowns, especially when you're dealing with your
own sense of instability and control, and everybody was probably
paying off each other in the house, right because nobody
knew what was going on. What did you do? You said,
there were online communities you turned to, but there's a
(18:56):
lot of conflicting information out there. So what happened next?
How did you go from Okay, there's a problem here
to figuring out solutions or a way forward together as
a family.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, So there were a couple of things that we
were dealing with which were particularly difficult with Harry. One
was his extreme separation anxiety, one was his extreme picky eating,
and then there was this demand avoidance. And we had
a psychologist that we were, a child psychologist that we
were seeing, who mentioned PDA and that was the first
(19:34):
time I'd heard of it. She said, I think he
has pathologically demand avoidant traits, but don't go look it
up and don't go on to.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
The parenting forums.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Interesting, and you know here in Australia it's not an
official diagnosis. I don't think the pediatrician who diagnosed Harry
with autism had heard of PDA, or if she had
heard of it, I don't know that she believed that
it was real because when I described these behaviors, it
sounds like an exaggeration.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
It doesn't sound like it's real.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
And that is, you know, that's the response that I
was getting from many clinicians. It was either a blank
face or they're like, well, that's not really an official
diagnosis here in Australia, we just work with the autism diagnosis.
So in some ways I was forced into the online space.
And even though I do have some criticisms about what
(20:26):
happens in those online forums, I first acknowledged that they
were helpful because at least I found a community out
there that also had children with these behaviors, and there
was like this kind of cross checking of yes, we've
got that, you've got that too. Okay, we are part
of a cohort of autistic kids, who are parents of
(20:47):
autistic kids who have got this really quite marked set
of behaviors, and we're not imagining it. And we're also
not alone. Because I felt very alone. I was locked
down in the middle of the pandemic and the traditional
professionals dealing with autism weren't recognizing it. So it was
really good to find those online communities, which led to
(21:10):
the next thing, which was that I threw myself into
it and spent hours on the phone just scrolling through,
and I scrolled back posts that went like five years back,
and I was reading through all of them. And the
thing that I've discovered is that people tend to gravitate
towards those forums when they're in crisis mode and they've
(21:32):
got a real problem to share. So you hear things
on the forums like I've locked myself in the bedroom,
my son's kicking down the walls outside. What should I do?
Should I call the police? Like if I call the police,
are they're going to come arrest in? What's going to
happen to him? People are typing these messages out when
they're at their absolute worst, but they don't always come
back to report on progress or like really good things
(21:53):
that happen. So you're getting you're getting this not a
cross section of the experience. You're getting the really few
bad phase of the experience. People are coming to it
with problems, problems, asking for solutions, but no one's actually
reporting back and saying we tried this and it was
really great at worked and it kind of took me
into a bit of a death spot. Were all like
(22:16):
I just got sucked in and started catastrophizing.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
It was really.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
What started out helpful for me to get a couple
of strategies and a sense of what other parents were doing,
quickly turned into this deep dark hole that sucked me
down and made me start worrying about where's my.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Kid going to end up?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
If his two year old behavior was taking place out
of a fourteen or a fifteen year old body, he
would be behind bars. Because we had a daughter as well.
She's only fourteen months younger. So we had a kid
that was one and two, and we're locked down in
the house during the pandemic, and our priority at that
stage was trying to keep the two kids safe from
one another because he had delayed language. Tessa had no
(23:02):
language at that point, so frustration levels were high, tolerance
levels were low, and he also, you know, at that age,
you don't really have a sense of, you know, your
ability to hurt someone else. So he would just lash out,
or he would throw things and it would narrowly miss her,
or she'd end up scratched on the face or pushed
off someone's lap or whatever it was. And it's very
(23:23):
easy to forget that this kid's still only one or
two years old, You've got so much time to find
the strategies you need to help them become a functional
toddler or school age kid. But at that point in time,
I just thought, my kid's going to end up behind bars,
He's going to end up.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
In an institution.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, and I don't have the skills to look after
him basically.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
So yeah, I feel like.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
It's easy to get sucked down that path in the
online world.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, there is so much emotion and when you I
mean you originally start working with these people and you
hear the stories of adults of them like screening in
frustration and believe it or not, one of the things
I find the adults find very helpful is a artificial
intelligence chatbots so they can work their frustrations out or
(24:15):
try to understand things with somebody who's not real, so
they can lash out at the bot, or they can
do things at the bot, and then I'm like, Okay,
what did you talk to the bot about? Well? This
stuff that's interesting. And one of the things I've learned
through that is there is a sense to it, right
if you sort of follow where they go, you see
(24:37):
that thing you talked about that it's about the in
an animal. We call it a challenge threshold. You know,
if you stare at a cat dead in the eyes,
it might swat at you. But if you just kind
of sit and you're good, it's a similar thing. But
it just goes. The minute something is a demand, the
anxiety spikes, the overwhelmings, and then you get the freeze,
(24:59):
fite fall or flight response. Yes, and I can completely
understand why you would be going, oh my god, what
do I do? So let's go to a break and
pause and come back and talk about what you did,
because I think this is gonna be a resource for
(25:21):
people going okay, this kind of sounds like my kid,
and you're, you know, significantly through the other side now,
So there is hope, folks. Questions, comments, concerns Leanna at
Nottherapyshow dot com. At Not Therapy Show is the website
Not Therapy Show on socials. We'll be back with Portia Lamb,
author of the Unlocking and Autism Story, when we come back,
(25:43):
and It's Not Therapy.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Stream us live at SAGA nine am dot C.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social service, please call or text two one one or
go to two one one dot. We're back in this therapy.
I'm still Aana Kurzner. I've still not a therapist. We're
still talking about pathological demand avoidance? What is it? And
(26:18):
what do you do if your kid is showing traits
of this? I'm here with author all the way from Australia.
We worked out the time zones in Melbourne, Porsha Lamb,
author of the Unlocking and Autism Story. It's out this week,
and before the break Porsche, we were talking about sort
of the setup. You're in COVID lockdown. You've got this
(26:38):
very young son, uh you know, uh, preverbal because he
was delayed, and then you've got a daughter at you're
trying to literally get them to not harm each other.
You've got this unofficial idea of what this thing is this,
you know, pathological demand avoidance. But you don't even have
(27:00):
the possibility of a diagnosis other than autism. So, I mean,
autism treatment is very specific to the kid. And there
is some great stuff out there and some not great
stuff out there, and that's the thing that makes us
so frustrating, right, It's a trial and error thing. It's fine,
(27:20):
it's accessing the services, finding the right fit with someone
to work with, your son who you love, and your
whole family. Because there are parts where there are parts
that are negotiations, and then there are parts where it's life.
There are some things they're just going to have to do.
And the big challenge here is what do you do
(27:42):
when that's precisely what triggers the response? Right? So where
did you go from there?
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Right?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
So the first thing that happened was in order to
keep our two kids safe from one another, we realized
we needed one on one.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
To child to adult ratio.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
It was not good enough to even have My husband
and I were not confident to have just one of
us there looking after both kids. So it was either
one of us to each kid, or one of us
plus a babysitter.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Or a grandparent.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
And that's how we managed to get through the COVID
lockdowns and keep the kids safe.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
So it met.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
My husband took six months off work to be the
primary carel because I had returned back from maternity leave
at this point and I just felt after having taken
two years off, I wasn't prepared to just quit.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
My job and do it.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
But then we started looking at what kind.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Of early intervention therapies we could do.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
And up until that point we had tried I guess
what you would call first line therapies. We had tried psychology,
ot speech therapy. All of them had some things in
there that were helpful, but a lot of it depended
upon us, the parents, implementing the strategies in the household,
(29:00):
and just in reality, that was not working out in
our household, and because of Harry's pathological demand avoidance, it
became extremely stressful to get him to appointments on time.
One of the things you have as a parent of
an autistic child is appointments on appointments, they just appointments
just breed more appointments, right, and getting Harry ready involved,
(29:24):
like an hour or two before you even get into
the car, just to get him dressed, and then to
convince him to come out of his room, convince him
to get in the car the car seat. Like getting
this two year old PDA kid clipped into a car
seat was one of the most challenging stressful parts of
the day because if we just pushed him in and
(29:44):
clipped the car seat, that immediately caused panic mode and
he was purple in the face, straining against the car seat,
just not even able to breathe properly.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
So we couldn't do that.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
We had to find through nago ciation and cajoling, like
some way to get him to agree to sit in
the car seat and get clicked in. So we were
spending sort of an hour or two before minus the
driving time, just to get him in the car for
the appointments. Then we turn up for the appointments and
there were forty five minutes long and then we've got
the same thing coming back.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
So it was really stressful.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Then when we found out about ABA therapy, which is
it's a different approach, it's time intensive, and quite often
it's done in your home.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
The therapists come to.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Your home and straight away that removes one level of
conflict because we don't have to get Harry out of
his safe space. The homes his kingdom, right like, he's
got all these toys there, he knows everything around the house,
he's comfortable there.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
So we thought we're going to give this a go.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
But it's recommended at twenty to forty hours a week
in that early intervention phase and Harry's separation anxiety meant
that someone needed to be with him that whole time,
and that's when my husband and I decided to switch
roles and I quit my job and I took a
career break. It ended up being for three years to
(31:07):
be basically his support person and his comfort as he
sat through this ABA therapy. And look, we didn't really
know what it was going to involve when we first started,
but we thought, if it's unfolding within our home and
one of us is there the whole time to watch
and monitor and make sure he's happy, it's not really
(31:28):
going to go that rong, like if it's not the
kind of therapy that's right for him.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
And this is kind of the key bit.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Like the whole journey of autism and finding an effective
support is trial and error. Like even if you find
the right therapy, it's still then got to find the
right therapist to conduct that therapy.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
The fit has to be right as well.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
And at least I was going to be there the
whole time to monitor and get feedback from Harry about,
you know, whether he was happy, whether we were get
seeing progress, whether there are any side eff it, and
you should be doing that with any therapy that you
engage with with your kid, but particularly one where it's
that time intensive, I think you want to be getting
(32:08):
progress and you know seeing that happen. So that's what
we ended up doing, and thankfully for us, the therapy
that unfolded in our house was all play based, and
it was all built around his special interests. So he
was really into the Incredible Hulk, and then he got
really into Harry Potter, and the therapists grew with him.
(32:30):
They became experts in whatever new special interest area he
took on, and they came armed with games and toys.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
That reflected those special interests.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
PDA kids are often really great with role play and
like to assume a character, and sometimes they find it
easier to perform a demand in character than they do
as who.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
They are in real life.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
So Harry learned a lot of skills being Harry Potter
rather than being you know, Harry my son. And the
therapy that unfolded in our house involved how he's swishing
around on a broomstick as he was learning how to
clean up the lego after himself, or take turns in
a game, or one of the things that he had
(33:16):
to learn was tolerate wearing shoes, because we went through
nine months where he would not wear a pair of shoes,
and the ABA therapy, in this really step by step fashion,
taught him how to wear shoes again. But it was
all driven by.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
These special interests, and they.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Approached it by breaking down all these challenges and demands
that he just couldn't he couldn't face doing into these
really small, bite sized pieces, like you know, touch a shoe,
and then the next day it was like step your
foot into the shoe. Two days later it's like take
two steps, and so every little increment's tiny, but he
gets rewarded each time with all of his special interests
(33:54):
and finally wear shoes and look, it's it's not a
quick process and it's absolute not a magic pill. I
don't want to make it sound like it was a
magic pill, because it was three years of really painstaking work,
but it was enjoyable and Harry was engaged most of
the time, and he picked up these skills that he
(34:14):
needed to be independent. And at the end of three
years we managed to get him to school and he
went to a mainstream school without an aid, and probably
most importantly, he has a really good time there, and
when I go to pick him up, he's not in
a hurry to leave.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
And for me, that was the goal to make sure.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
That he was not just able to go to school,
like I drop him off and turn around and I
don't know what's going on there, Like he's a happy
and engaged kid there. We still have a lot of challenges,
but I think that, you know, getting him school ready
was such a big part of this three years that
I took off to try and oversee his therapy, and
(34:55):
you know, for us, it was a really positive experience
and outcome.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I mean, that's that's amazing, And I mean it checks
every box of what they what they say works. And
it's funny because the idea of turning a need or
demand into wouldn't it be nice? Like wouldn't it be
good if we can do this? You know, that is
entering everything from autism to ADHD to all this stuff.
(35:20):
It seems like such a simple concept and yet it's
very effective. But meanwhile, your this is your full time
job for three years, you know, you were a professional,
and all of a sudden, you're this You're dealing with
your own stuff too, Right, how did you manage that.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
That's a difficult question to answer. I think when there's
not many parents of special needs kids who come to
that job with all the skills they need to do that.
And when it first started, you know, I gave up
my career. I didn't just give up my career. I
gave up my hobbies as well. I mean we were
in lockdowns to an extent.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I had to give up my hobbies as well.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
But also, like Harry's PDA was really controlling. He also
didn't like me talking on the phone. And I know
that that's quite a common PDA trait where you're talking
to an invisible person on the phone and all your
attention is on that conversation and the PDA just wants
to disrupt.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
It and get the attention back.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
So I didn't even talk to people on the phone,
or I'd have to like hide in the car in
the driveway to talk to people on the phone. So
it was a really isolating experience.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
How did I get through that?
Speaker 3 (36:41):
I think, Look, it was a rough journey, and there
are ugly bits, and I talk about that in the book.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
I won't go into detail about that here by the book,
but yeah, by the book.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
But it's I now see it as a process of
learning skill and I never thought about it as skills.
They're soft skills, they're not technical skills, like patience and
tolerance and compassion. I was a real a type corporate person,
you know. I was all about efficiency. I've never really
had anything stop me from being efficient before. And then
(37:16):
I had a PDA kid and so efficiency is out
the window because it's all about procrastination and how windy
a detour can you, you know, take to do the
task that's required. And when I first was landed in
this role of special needs mum, I didn't have any
(37:38):
of those skills. But with practice and exposure, I guess
I got them. And I learned to read my son
and I learned to read him in a way that
no pediatrician or psychologist or ABA therapist or OT could
read him, which was the nuances regarding when I could
push him a little bit, because you still do need
(37:59):
to push.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
A old otherwise they're always in the comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
They never learned skills, but you can only just push
a little bit to what's just beyond their edge, because
if you push too far, that's when meltdowns happen and
you know, it's distressing and traumatic for everyone.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
In the family.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
But I slowly, and I'm talking about over the course
of you know, a few years, slowly learnt those skills
on when to read him, when to use role play
to help him perform a demand that maybe he found
really hard. I learned about all of his special interest characters,
and those skills just slowly built up over time. We
(38:38):
ended up having a more cooperative relationship. Like a year
down the path of when we first got this diagnosis,
we were able to find ways to get things done
that we hadn't been able to do twelve months earlier.
And you don't notice it at the time because even now,
like certain days, you know, we clash about something or
(38:59):
multiple things in the day and field it takes me
right back, you know, right back.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
To ive got the diagnose. It feels like there's been
no progress.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
But actually if you stop on a good day and reflect,
there's so many skills that have been acquired and the
momentum builds. So I think, you know, there's no shortcut
to it. It's trial and error. It's you as a
parent learning some skills, them as the child learning some skills,
and somehow you close the gap like you move. You
(39:27):
close the gap by moving it in at both ends,
which is you know, which is how it should be.
And I see my role as Harry's mum now to
be trying to prepare the world to meet him, but
also him to meet the world, and hopefully there.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
Is a spot halfway.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
That that is an optimal spot for everybody. You know,
accommodations are made where they need to be made, but
also Harry learns the skills where he can to be
as independent and functional as he possibly can. And that's
a moving target all the time, because there's always a
new skills to learn, and you know, every now and
then there'll be one where I'm like, actually the gap
(40:03):
that that's too big. We need to do more to
accommodate him. Yeah, no, he's you know, now, he's showing
signs that he can grasp the skills. So you're always
having to assess and evaluate and watch for feedback and
side effects of whatever therapy and strategy you're trying. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, if the anxiety gets too high, you can almost
get a rebound and then you're going to go back
to basics. But Portia Lamb phenomenal story. Congratulations, on the book,
congratulations on doing about the best done. Half hour on
how you know how to meet people where they're at?
(40:43):
How can people find out more about you the book
and things connected to Do you have any resources that
you recommend on pathological demand avoidance?
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, so I often look towards the UK for information
on PDA because that is obviously where it was, you know,
most of the work was done. It's officially recognized. Their
research into PDA has got some funding that other countries
around the world don't. So I use PDA Society, which
is a UK organization, for sort of my resources and
(41:18):
when I'm trying to explain PDA to teachers or you know,
other educators that Harry has contact with, I kind of
They've got a print out that you can use with
some brief notes on PDA and approaches that are helpful.
So PDA Society is my recommended resource to.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Connect with me.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
I've got a website Porsche Lamb dot com. You can
also find me on Instagram or LinkedIn as Porsche Lamb
and the book is called The Unlocking and Autism Story.
Out on the twenty fifth of February. You can get
it at all major online retailers.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
All right, Porscha, thank you so much for coming on
and telling what's a harrowing but ultimately well really really
uh heartwarming story. The fact that you guys can come
up then he's in school and being a wizard and
that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
Thanks so much for that, Leanna.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
When we come back, some pointers, just a round off
the show kind of contextualize the amazing story we just
heard again Poor Schalem, author of the Unlocking and Autism
story out in stores right now. And if you have
any questions, comments, concerns, especially questions about this particular episode,
(42:34):
Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com is my email. Not
Therapyshow dot com is my website. At not Therapy Show
is socials. We do regular Monday mantras and Wednesday wisdom
on on our social media. When we come back, a
wrap up on It's Not.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Therapy, No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA
ninety six am dot caa.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot ca. We're back
in it's not therapy. I'm still in a cursoner. I'm
still not a therapist, and we are still talking pathological
demand avoidance an unrecognized condition in Canada. For now, I
(43:29):
suspect this is one that's gonna get many, many more
supports as people become more aware of the condition. Now,
what do you do if you or your child have
a mental health condition that is not yet recognized Where
you're listening right now, Well, the nice thing about mental
(43:51):
health conditions, this is no blood test, right, It's not like, oh,
you have to take insulin or another medication for diabetes.
It's not like you need blood pressure medication. A lot
of this stuff is cognitive behavioral therapy or a similar
kind of talk therapy or behavior modification. So there are
(44:12):
things you can do. First off, this may sound surprising,
but really it's not. Please seek a diagnosis, even if
it's not specific. You know, a diagnosis of autism spectrum
disorder severity three isn't very specific, but it's very important
to rule out other conditions. A lot of psychological conditions
(44:36):
and neurodivergencies can look similar, but they function very differently
with very different treatment protocols, and don't be surprised that
you'll get one, you know, diagnosis or temporary diagnosis, working diagnosis.
You start working on it a bit, it turns out
to be wrong and you have to change gears. It's frustrating,
(45:00):
but this is the reality of our current system. This
is the reality of working with the brain. Preliminary diagnoses
tend to be wrong, okay, and that's why it's really
important to use your compassion with others and with yourself.
Go easy. Like the Adele song. What works for others
(45:22):
isn't necessarily going to work for you, and what works
for you isn't a guarantee for other people. I personally
had a very bad reaction to EMDR therapy, but it
works great for other people, and that's amazing. That's why
there's different treatments for different types of people. Use online resources,
(45:45):
including forums and Facebook groups, as resources, not authorities. Don't
follow the advice of doctor TikTok Okay. There's some great
stuff out there, but there are also the crunchy moms,
you know, the ones who insist a natural lifestyle without
processed foods, technology, or modern medicine is best for their kids.
(46:07):
On the internet, Yeah, when you come up against something
it seems too good to be true or seems like
a contradiction, like advocating a no tech lifestyle on something
you're reading on your smartphone. Yeah, trust that instinct, right,
mental health TikTok's great, I am on it, but use
your critical thinking, okay, and trust your instincts. But also
(46:31):
you're gonna find a lot of scary stuff put out
there by people like the crunchy moms. Don't get scared
by terms, okay, like I set off the top. Mental
health terminologies have gone through a decades long period of consolidation.
So terms like ABA therapy that Porsia mentioned, they get
(46:52):
attacked online really badly. One person called it to me
conversion therapy for autistics. Okay, all applied behavioral analysis, that's
what ABA stands for. Applied behavioral analysis means that a
practitioner will work with your kid one on one to
(47:13):
encourage things that help and discourage things that harm. Emphasis
on encourage, not force, because it's a one on one process.
Some do it in small groups, but the standard practice
is one on one. There's going to be great experiences
and there's also going to be horrible experiences because it's
(47:35):
one on one. So don't be afraid to give stuff
like this a chance. There's no medications, you're not putting
anything in your kid's body, and you can be there.
Just again, trust your instincts and trust your knowledge of
your kid. All right, and I am out of time
(47:58):
for this week. I really enjoyed it is a Porsche
is such a great speaker. Check out her book, check
out some of the other books. Go to podbean, check
out past episodes. If It's not Therapy, not therapyshow dot com,
Leanna at not therapieshow dot com because conversations with regular
people is my favorite part of doing this job. Until
(48:19):
next time. You're crazy is only a problem if it's
hurting you. Cox soon
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty AM or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. Hello listeners
around the world on radio, streaming and podcast services. This
is it's not therapy. I'm Leanna Kerzner, and I am
(00:29):
not a therapist, but I am your source for navigating
the madness of mental health using my top ten sayings
for going good crazy. This week, we're going to talk
about a condition that's not officially diagnosed, recognized what everyone'll
call it in Canada, but it is listed on a
lot of Canadian resources about autism. Now, how is this possible?
(00:52):
Mental health diagnoses are not based on blood tests or
other clearly defined markers, and because what's consumed an official
condition changes with every new diagnostic and statistical manual, there's
room to talk about stuff that hasn't been recognized yet. Furthermore,
(01:14):
our current DSM that's the short firm for diagnostic and
Statistical manual our current DSM is getting a bit old.
The DSM five, Yes We're up to five was published
in twenty thirteen, and we did get a text revision
in twenty twenty two. But obviously awareness and approaches to
(01:36):
mental health have changed a lot in the past twelve
years and are continuing to evolve. Anyone who works in
the mental health space knows that diagnostic criteria alone isn't
enough for good mental health results. We know that each
DSM is the product of years of compromise, the averages
(02:00):
six years to get one out the door. The thing
is the accepted diagnostic criteria. That's the thing that therapists
have to work with for those all important billing codes yes,
so people can get paid. We knew that each DSM
was flawed when it came out, and most experts agree
(02:24):
that in twenty twenty five, the DSM five is outdated,
but it's the best we have until the DSM six
comes out and we can all fight about that one
all over again, right right now. There's something unique about
the DSM five. Specifically, one of the more controversial elements
of the DSM five was the consolidating of four different
(02:48):
diagnoses surrounding neurodivergency into a single diagnosis of what is
now known as autism spectrum disorder. A much more limited
definition of autism was combined with Asperger syndrome, childhood disintegrative
disorder also known as Heller's syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder not
(03:12):
otherwise specified, which is shortened to pdd NOS, and those
were the four that ended up getting turned into ASD.
A three level severity assessment scale was also added, based
on the level of required support. Now some would say
it's four levels because none is a level. Some would
(03:35):
say that's just being autistic about the severity scale, but anyway, right,
the proponents of these changes, the people who agreed with them,
said that it streamlined the system, may diagnosis faster and
unlocked more services for more people, which has turned out
to be true. You know autism rates are exploding, Well, yeah,
(03:56):
that's because more people are getting help, not because there's
more autism right now. The critics of these changes, not
the ones that are like, oh, autism and vaccinians are
that's all nonsense, right. The people who are informed but
were critical of the changes in the DSM five they
said that the people at both extremes of the severity scale,
(04:20):
those who are very low needs and those who are
very high needs were going to suffer from a lack
of support because the categories were too broad. Further More,
people with moderate needs were going to be flattened. To say,
somebody is very high needs in one category next to
no needs in another. That gets all flattened out. This
(04:42):
has also turned out to be true. So all the
proponents of the changes regarding autism spectrum disorder in the
DSM five were right. All the critics of the changes
regarding autism spectrum disorder in the DSM five were that's right.
So what does that mean. It means a lot more
(05:03):
people are getting access to services, and that's great. And
then there's someone like me who's right on the boundary
of a formal autism diagnosis. I get a seventy one
on the rads are scale, and people like what that.
Don't worry about it if you don't know. It's it's
borderline bordering on autism, right, not borderline personality disorder, a
(05:24):
borderline diagnosis. And this is confusing because someone like me
who doesn't have a formal diagnosis struggles to prove that
many of the sensory issues that I have are very real,
and I can't help them, and I can't just top
them out for very long right, And someone like my
guest this week also couldn't get an appropriate diagnosis for
(05:48):
her son with a severe subcategory of autistic symptoms. The
conditioning question here is called pathological demand avoidance and will.
It's RECOGNI in the UK. It's not formally recognized here
in Canada. However, anyone who has lived or work with
someone with demand avoidance knows it's very real. Now, what
(06:13):
does this sort of look like? Standard They spend a
lot of time sort of scoping you out. I'm talking
months years, right before they trust you, they engage in
very detailed play, pretend or role playing. The people with
PDA that I work with love AI chatbots, and there's
a lot of hate for AI chatbots. But for somebody
(06:34):
with PDA, oh it's an unlocker. Okay. Of course, then
there's a special interest and sensory differences that come with
any autism, but with PDA there's also the anxiety surrounding
control that's central to the condition. Someone with PDA can
(06:55):
be having a great day and they'll do something until
someone tells them to do it the minute there is
a demand, the anxiety within someone who has pathological demand
avoidance spikes so intensely that they melt down or shut down. Now,
(07:15):
this is different from someone will say oppositional defiance disorder,
which is marked by anger, and as the name says defiance,
someone with pathological demand avoidance gets a threat response or
panic when they're expected to do something, even something that
(07:36):
most of us wouldn't see as a demand, like eating
a meal or brushing your teeth or getting dressed. My
guest this week has an autistic son with symptoms consistent
with pathological demand avoidance. So if this description I just
gave sounds like someone you know, including adults, keep listening.
Poor Scha Lamb, a lawyer who will be talking to
(07:59):
us all the way in Australia. She's the author of
the Unlocking an Autism story and Porsche's story and the
story of her family is amazing. You will be on
the edge of your seat, not literally if you're in
the car right. But stay tuned. Even if this doesn't
sound like something that describes somebody you know, some of
(08:22):
the stuff you can pick up here just about communicating
and working with people who see things very different from you,
navigate life in a very different way. It's awesome. Do
you have a story you think would be good for
the show? Are you interested in sponsoring the show? Leannaat
Nottherapyshow dot com. Not Therapy Show is the website not
Therapyshow dot com at not Therapy Show on Socials. We
(08:45):
will be back with Porsche Lamb, Unlocking an Autism Story
and pathological demand Avoidance when we come back.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA ninety
six am.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two one one or
go to two one one dot ca. We're back in
It's not Therapy. I'm still Leanna Curser. I'm still not
a therapist. It is time again for the interview. And
(09:23):
you guys know, I like the stories of people. I
love interviewing therapists, but I am not a therapist, and
I like to talk to other non therapists in the
mental health space. And I have Porsche Lamb with me
this episode, the author of the Unlocking an Autism Story. Uh,
it's out this week. Uh and Porsche, your your story
(09:47):
is very very specific, so welcome to It's not therapy
And where do you want to start introducing people to you?
You know, your child and your story.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Leanna. Well, a quick intro
of me would be that I am a mum of
two young children. I've got a five year old daughter
and a six year old son, and my son is
on the autism spectrum and he exhibits a certain subtype
of autism called pathological demand avoidance or PDA, which we
(10:20):
will talk about a bit later. I'm also a corporate
lawyer and have been doing that for the last eighteen
or nineteen years or so, but I took a three
year career break basically to be the full time care
to my son Harry and manage his early intervention therapy,
which we did with the hope of getting him school ready,
(10:41):
and then I ended up writing this book about our
family's experience.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Now people think they know, oh, they know one kid
with autism, and they think they know all of it.
But you know, artistic kids are as diverse as they
are kids. But PDA, pathological demand avoidance, is its own thing.
And having worked with adults with pathological demand avoidance. It
(11:09):
is a very very challenging condition, made more challenging by
there hasn't been a ton of research into it. We
know kind of the markers of it, but we don't
know quote what causes it. It could be a form of
anxiety condition. But in Harry's case, what was going on
It started during COVID lockdown. Correct.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yes, so I live in Melbourne in Australia, and here
in Australia, PDA is not an officially recognized condition. In
the UK, you can get a diagnosis of autism spectrum
disorder with a PDA profile, but in many countries around
the world, PDA is not recognized by pediatricians or psychologists
(11:54):
or other clinicians. There is, however, this proliferation of parents
line who have discovered PDA. So there's a lot in
the online communities from this group of parents who say, oh,
my kid's got this pattern of behavior, and it ends
up that you discover a really quite distinctive pattern of behavior,
(12:14):
and that's what draws all these parents together because they've
usually got this autism diagnosis and it doesn't explain the
full story, and they go looking around for more answers,
more solutions and eventually, you know, six months or a
year down the track, they discover this term PDA, and most.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Of us are like, ah, there it is. That's my kid.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
So for those of you who haven't heard of PDA,
the best way that I can describe it, and I
borrow a lot from the definition of PDA that was
coined by the UK psychologist Elizabeth Newsom in the nineteen eighties,
who was the first psychologist to do a body of
work defining PDA, and you know, some of the strategies
(12:57):
that might help PDA kids. And I also add to
what some of the insights I've read about from PDA
adults who have now articulated what's going on in their head.
And so the working definition that I use for it
is that it is an anxiety driven need for control
(13:19):
or autonomy that is often exhibited by avoiding the demands
of everyday living or by attempting to take control.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
So what does that look like?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Well, I first noticed these patterns of so my son
Harry exhibited a lot of the early markers of general autism.
There was picky eating, extreme picky eating, in flexibility, sensory
aversions like you could not get a drop of water
on his pants straight away, need to change his pants.
And this was before he was even one year old.
(13:53):
And he had extreme separation, anxiety, and all of that
is what you tend to read about in if I
can use the word class cool literature on autism, that's
probably not the right term, but I think.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
And then he had this other pattern of behavior that
sat alongside that, and it was where we could not
get him to cooperate with anything at any part of
the day. So from the time he was sort of
six months old, we couldn't get him to have a
nappy change, we couldn't wash his hair, we couldn't get
(14:26):
him dressed, couldn't get him out of bed, couldn't get
him back into bed or.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
You know, down for nap time.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
And every time we tried to do one of those
transitions or one of those steps in the day, we
faced what I now look back on and can see
in his little brain was a life or death battle
for him, because when you're at that age, all those
acts of self care, you know, basic getting fed, sleeping, hygiene,
(14:54):
health and safety, all of those things are demands and
usually they're done either for you or done to you
because you're one or two and can't do these things
for yourself. And I think for him that was a
real infringement on his autonomy and it felt like a
loss of control, even from that really young age, and
he perceived that loss of control to be a threat
(15:17):
the way you know, I might give you a threat
if someone was running at me with a weapon. And
I think he viewed it as that kind of panic.
It was a brainstem response, you know, fight flight, freeze.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Kind of mode.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And he would scream, turn purple in the face. You
could tell his breathing was just it was gasp and cry,
gasp and cry, tears, frozen to the spot, body was stiff,
that kind of thing. And so every you know, fifteen
minutes of the day, we would find we needed to
do one of these things for him, change his nappy
or you know, change his clothes, put him in the
(15:55):
car for something, and we would meet him with this
life for death battle, you know, throughout the day, And that's.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
How we saw it.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
It does change, the pattern of behavior changes as they
grow up.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
So in Harry's case.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
He doesn't have an intellectual disability. He doesn't have a
physical disability. He's a completely able bodied kid, and he
is now almost seven years old. And the way I
see his PDA now is not so much.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
In the demand avoidance, but in the attempting to take control.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Or sometimes what's called equalizing behavior, where he tries to
flip the power in difference between being a child and
me the parent, around the other ways. So I often
see things like he might stub his toe on a
couch and he'll get angry at the couch, but he
will turn around to me and say say sorry, say
(16:51):
sorry for the couch. And my initial response to that
kind of thing when it first happened, because these behaviors
they come out of nowhere, and then it becomes a pattern.
It happens, you know, multiple times over the week. I'm like, oh,
that's a new thing that's just started.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Now.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
The first time that happened, I was like, I'm not
going to.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Apologize for an inanimate object.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And then he's like, say sorry five times, say sorry
ten times. Because the more I refuse, the more, you know,
it feels like a loss of control and there's a
greater gap in power and difference. And I could see
that he was getting back to that brainstem response.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
So I've ended up apologizing.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
I now apologize on behalf of the couch or the table,
or the wall or whatever it is to get him
through that moment of intense panic. And then maybe an
hour later I might try and explain to him why
that was not an appropriate thing to ask me to
do or to ask. You know, you can get away
with asking your mum, but you can't really ask someone
(17:45):
else to do, right. So that's kind of what we
see these days.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah, and you probably get judgments from everywhere on this
because people, if you've never experienced a person who has
a demand avoidance, you just think, oh, the kid's a
picky eater. And it's not that, you know, there's autistic
demand avoidance, which is they don't like, say, tomato skins,
(18:13):
and so if there's tomato skins in the food, then
they won't eat it. This is something where it can
be the absolute most favorite food in the world. If
you tell them to eat it, they're not gonna right. Yeah,
and you know when you said like an hourly battle,
I can just imagine how exhausting it must have been,
(18:35):
especially during COVID lockdowns, especially when you're dealing with your
own sense of instability and control, and everybody was probably
paying off each other in the house, right because nobody
knew what was going on. What did you do? You said,
there were online communities you turned to, but there's a
(18:56):
lot of conflicting information out there. So what happened next?
How did you go from Okay, there's a problem here
to figuring out solutions or a way forward together as
a family.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, So there were a couple of things that we
were dealing with which were particularly difficult with Harry. One
was his extreme separation anxiety, one was his extreme picky eating,
and then there was this demand avoidance. And we had
a psychologist that we were, a child psychologist that we
were seeing, who mentioned PDA and that was the first
(19:34):
time I'd heard of it. She said, I think he
has pathologically demand avoidant traits, but don't go look it
up and don't go on to.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
The parenting forums.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Interesting, and you know here in Australia it's not an
official diagnosis. I don't think the pediatrician who diagnosed Harry
with autism had heard of PDA, or if she had
heard of it, I don't know that she believed that
it was real because when I described these behaviors, it
sounds like an exaggeration.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
It doesn't sound like it's real.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
And that is, you know, that's the response that I
was getting from many clinicians. It was either a blank
face or they're like, well, that's not really an official
diagnosis here in Australia, we just work with the autism diagnosis.
So in some ways I was forced into the online space.
And even though I do have some criticisms about what
(20:26):
happens in those online forums, I first acknowledged that they
were helpful because at least I found a community out
there that also had children with these behaviors, and there
was like this kind of cross checking of yes, we've
got that, you've got that too. Okay, we are part
of a cohort of autistic kids, who are parents of
(20:47):
autistic kids who have got this really quite marked set
of behaviors, and we're not imagining it. And we're also
not alone. Because I felt very alone. I was locked
down in the middle of the pandemic and the traditional
professionals dealing with autism weren't recognizing it. So it was
really good to find those online communities, which led to
(21:10):
the next thing, which was that I threw myself into
it and spent hours on the phone just scrolling through,
and I scrolled back posts that went like five years back,
and I was reading through all of them. And the
thing that I've discovered is that people tend to gravitate
towards those forums when they're in crisis mode and they've
(21:32):
got a real problem to share. So you hear things
on the forums like I've locked myself in the bedroom,
my son's kicking down the walls outside. What should I do?
Should I call the police? Like if I call the police,
are they're going to come arrest in? What's going to
happen to him? People are typing these messages out when
they're at their absolute worst, but they don't always come
back to report on progress or like really good things
(21:53):
that happen. So you're getting you're getting this not a
cross section of the experience. You're getting the really few
bad phase of the experience. People are coming to it
with problems, problems, asking for solutions, but no one's actually
reporting back and saying we tried this and it was
really great at worked and it kind of took me
into a bit of a death spot. Were all like
(22:16):
I just got sucked in and started catastrophizing.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
It was really.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
What started out helpful for me to get a couple
of strategies and a sense of what other parents were doing,
quickly turned into this deep dark hole that sucked me
down and made me start worrying about where's my.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Kid going to end up?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
If his two year old behavior was taking place out
of a fourteen or a fifteen year old body, he
would be behind bars. Because we had a daughter as well.
She's only fourteen months younger. So we had a kid
that was one and two, and we're locked down in
the house during the pandemic, and our priority at that
stage was trying to keep the two kids safe from
one another because he had delayed language. Tessa had no
(23:02):
language at that point, so frustration levels were high, tolerance
levels were low, and he also, you know, at that age,
you don't really have a sense of, you know, your
ability to hurt someone else. So he would just lash out,
or he would throw things and it would narrowly miss her,
or she'd end up scratched on the face or pushed
off someone's lap or whatever it was. And it's very
(23:23):
easy to forget that this kid's still only one or
two years old, You've got so much time to find
the strategies you need to help them become a functional
toddler or school age kid. But at that point in time,
I just thought, my kid's going to end up behind bars,
He's going to end up.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
In an institution.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, and I don't have the skills to look after
him basically.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
So yeah, I feel like.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
It's easy to get sucked down that path in the
online world.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, there is so much emotion and when you I
mean you originally start working with these people and you
hear the stories of adults of them like screening in
frustration and believe it or not, one of the things
I find the adults find very helpful is a artificial
intelligence chatbots so they can work their frustrations out or
(24:15):
try to understand things with somebody who's not real, so
they can lash out at the bot, or they can
do things at the bot, and then I'm like, Okay,
what did you talk to the bot about? Well? This
stuff that's interesting. And one of the things I've learned
through that is there is a sense to it, right
if you sort of follow where they go, you see
(24:37):
that thing you talked about that it's about the in
an animal. We call it a challenge threshold. You know,
if you stare at a cat dead in the eyes,
it might swat at you. But if you just kind
of sit and you're good, it's a similar thing. But
it just goes. The minute something is a demand, the
anxiety spikes, the overwhelmings, and then you get the freeze,
(24:59):
fite fall or flight response. Yes, and I can completely
understand why you would be going, oh my god, what
do I do? So let's go to a break and
pause and come back and talk about what you did,
because I think this is gonna be a resource for
(25:21):
people going okay, this kind of sounds like my kid,
and you're, you know, significantly through the other side now,
So there is hope, folks. Questions, comments, concerns Leanna at
Nottherapyshow dot com. At Not Therapy Show is the website
Not Therapy Show on socials. We'll be back with Portia Lamb,
author of the Unlocking and Autism Story, when we come back,
(25:43):
and It's Not Therapy.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Stream us live at SAGA nine am dot C.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social service, please call or text two one one or
go to two one one dot. We're back in this therapy.
I'm still Aana Kurzner. I've still not a therapist. We're
still talking about pathological demand avoidance? What is it? And
(26:18):
what do you do if your kid is showing traits
of this? I'm here with author all the way from Australia.
We worked out the time zones in Melbourne, Porsha Lamb,
author of the Unlocking and Autism Story. It's out this week,
and before the break Porsche, we were talking about sort
of the setup. You're in COVID lockdown. You've got this
(26:38):
very young son, uh you know, uh, preverbal because he
was delayed, and then you've got a daughter at you're
trying to literally get them to not harm each other.
You've got this unofficial idea of what this thing is this,
you know, pathological demand avoidance. But you don't even have
(27:00):
the possibility of a diagnosis other than autism. So, I mean,
autism treatment is very specific to the kid. And there
is some great stuff out there and some not great
stuff out there, and that's the thing that makes us
so frustrating, right, It's a trial and error thing. It's fine,
(27:20):
it's accessing the services, finding the right fit with someone
to work with, your son who you love, and your
whole family. Because there are parts where there are parts
that are negotiations, and then there are parts where it's life.
There are some things they're just going to have to do.
And the big challenge here is what do you do
(27:42):
when that's precisely what triggers the response? Right? So where
did you go from there?
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Right?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
So the first thing that happened was in order to
keep our two kids safe from one another, we realized
we needed one on one.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
To child to adult ratio.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
It was not good enough to even have My husband
and I were not confident to have just one of
us there looking after both kids. So it was either
one of us to each kid, or one of us
plus a babysitter.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Or a grandparent.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
And that's how we managed to get through the COVID
lockdowns and keep the kids safe.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
So it met.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
My husband took six months off work to be the
primary carel because I had returned back from maternity leave
at this point and I just felt after having taken
two years off, I wasn't prepared to just quit.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
My job and do it.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
But then we started looking at what kind.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Of early intervention therapies we could do.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
And up until that point we had tried I guess
what you would call first line therapies. We had tried psychology,
ot speech therapy. All of them had some things in
there that were helpful, but a lot of it depended
upon us, the parents, implementing the strategies in the household,
(29:00):
and just in reality, that was not working out in
our household, and because of Harry's pathological demand avoidance, it
became extremely stressful to get him to appointments on time.
One of the things you have as a parent of
an autistic child is appointments on appointments, they just appointments
just breed more appointments, right, and getting Harry ready involved,
(29:24):
like an hour or two before you even get into
the car, just to get him dressed, and then to
convince him to come out of his room, convince him
to get in the car the car seat. Like getting
this two year old PDA kid clipped into a car
seat was one of the most challenging stressful parts of
the day because if we just pushed him in and
(29:44):
clipped the car seat, that immediately caused panic mode and
he was purple in the face, straining against the car seat,
just not even able to breathe properly.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
So we couldn't do that.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
We had to find through nago ciation and cajoling, like
some way to get him to agree to sit in
the car seat and get clicked in. So we were
spending sort of an hour or two before minus the
driving time, just to get him in the car for
the appointments. Then we turn up for the appointments and
there were forty five minutes long and then we've got
the same thing coming back.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
So it was really stressful.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Then when we found out about ABA therapy, which is
it's a different approach, it's time intensive, and quite often
it's done in your home.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
The therapists come to.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Your home and straight away that removes one level of
conflict because we don't have to get Harry out of
his safe space. The homes his kingdom, right like, he's
got all these toys there, he knows everything around the house,
he's comfortable there.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
So we thought we're going to give this a go.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
But it's recommended at twenty to forty hours a week
in that early intervention phase and Harry's separation anxiety meant
that someone needed to be with him that whole time,
and that's when my husband and I decided to switch
roles and I quit my job and I took a
career break. It ended up being for three years to
(31:07):
be basically his support person and his comfort as he
sat through this ABA therapy. And look, we didn't really
know what it was going to involve when we first started,
but we thought, if it's unfolding within our home and
one of us is there the whole time to watch
and monitor and make sure he's happy, it's not really
(31:28):
going to go that rong, like if it's not the
kind of therapy that's right for him.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
And this is kind of the key bit.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Like the whole journey of autism and finding an effective
support is trial and error. Like even if you find
the right therapy, it's still then got to find the
right therapist to conduct that therapy.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
The fit has to be right as well.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
And at least I was going to be there the
whole time to monitor and get feedback from Harry about,
you know, whether he was happy, whether we were get
seeing progress, whether there are any side eff it, and
you should be doing that with any therapy that you
engage with with your kid, but particularly one where it's
that time intensive, I think you want to be getting
(32:08):
progress and you know seeing that happen. So that's what
we ended up doing, and thankfully for us, the therapy
that unfolded in our house was all play based, and
it was all built around his special interests. So he
was really into the Incredible Hulk, and then he got
really into Harry Potter, and the therapists grew with him.
(32:30):
They became experts in whatever new special interest area he
took on, and they came armed with games and toys.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
That reflected those special interests.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
PDA kids are often really great with role play and
like to assume a character, and sometimes they find it
easier to perform a demand in character than they do
as who.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
They are in real life.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
So Harry learned a lot of skills being Harry Potter
rather than being you know, Harry my son. And the
therapy that unfolded in our house involved how he's swishing
around on a broomstick as he was learning how to
clean up the lego after himself, or take turns in
a game, or one of the things that he had
(33:16):
to learn was tolerate wearing shoes, because we went through
nine months where he would not wear a pair of shoes,
and the ABA therapy, in this really step by step fashion,
taught him how to wear shoes again. But it was
all driven by.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
These special interests, and they.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Approached it by breaking down all these challenges and demands
that he just couldn't he couldn't face doing into these
really small, bite sized pieces, like you know, touch a shoe,
and then the next day it was like step your
foot into the shoe. Two days later it's like take
two steps, and so every little increment's tiny, but he
gets rewarded each time with all of his special interests
(33:54):
and finally wear shoes and look, it's it's not a
quick process and it's absolute not a magic pill. I
don't want to make it sound like it was a
magic pill, because it was three years of really painstaking work,
but it was enjoyable and Harry was engaged most of
the time, and he picked up these skills that he
(34:14):
needed to be independent. And at the end of three
years we managed to get him to school and he
went to a mainstream school without an aid, and probably
most importantly, he has a really good time there, and
when I go to pick him up, he's not in
a hurry to leave.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
And for me, that was the goal to make sure.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
That he was not just able to go to school,
like I drop him off and turn around and I
don't know what's going on there, Like he's a happy
and engaged kid there. We still have a lot of challenges,
but I think that, you know, getting him school ready
was such a big part of this three years that
I took off to try and oversee his therapy, and
(34:55):
you know, for us, it was a really positive experience
and outcome.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I mean, that's that's amazing, And I mean it checks
every box of what they what they say works. And
it's funny because the idea of turning a need or
demand into wouldn't it be nice? Like wouldn't it be
good if we can do this? You know, that is
entering everything from autism to ADHD to all this stuff.
(35:20):
It seems like such a simple concept and yet it's
very effective. But meanwhile, your this is your full time
job for three years, you know, you were a professional,
and all of a sudden, you're this You're dealing with
your own stuff too, Right, how did you manage that.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
That's a difficult question to answer. I think when there's
not many parents of special needs kids who come to
that job with all the skills they need to do that.
And when it first started, you know, I gave up
my career. I didn't just give up my career. I
gave up my hobbies as well. I mean we were
in lockdowns to an extent.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I had to give up my hobbies as well.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
But also, like Harry's PDA was really controlling. He also
didn't like me talking on the phone. And I know
that that's quite a common PDA trait where you're talking
to an invisible person on the phone and all your
attention is on that conversation and the PDA just wants
to disrupt.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
It and get the attention back.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
So I didn't even talk to people on the phone,
or I'd have to like hide in the car in
the driveway to talk to people on the phone. So
it was a really isolating experience.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
How did I get through that?
Speaker 3 (36:41):
I think, Look, it was a rough journey, and there
are ugly bits, and I talk about that in the book.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
I won't go into detail about that here by the book,
but yeah, by the book.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
But it's I now see it as a process of
learning skill and I never thought about it as skills.
They're soft skills, they're not technical skills, like patience and
tolerance and compassion. I was a real a type corporate person,
you know. I was all about efficiency. I've never really
had anything stop me from being efficient before. And then
(37:16):
I had a PDA kid and so efficiency is out
the window because it's all about procrastination and how windy
a detour can you, you know, take to do the
task that's required. And when I first was landed in
this role of special needs mum, I didn't have any
(37:38):
of those skills. But with practice and exposure, I guess
I got them. And I learned to read my son
and I learned to read him in a way that
no pediatrician or psychologist or ABA therapist or OT could
read him, which was the nuances regarding when I could
push him a little bit, because you still do need
(37:59):
to push.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
A old otherwise they're always in the comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
They never learned skills, but you can only just push
a little bit to what's just beyond their edge, because
if you push too far, that's when meltdowns happen and
you know, it's distressing and traumatic for everyone.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
In the family.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
But I slowly, and I'm talking about over the course
of you know, a few years, slowly learnt those skills
on when to read him, when to use role play
to help him perform a demand that maybe he found
really hard. I learned about all of his special interest characters,
and those skills just slowly built up over time. We
(38:38):
ended up having a more cooperative relationship. Like a year
down the path of when we first got this diagnosis,
we were able to find ways to get things done
that we hadn't been able to do twelve months earlier.
And you don't notice it at the time because even now,
like certain days, you know, we clash about something or
(38:59):
multiple things in the day and field it takes me
right back, you know, right back.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
To ive got the diagnose. It feels like there's been
no progress.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
But actually if you stop on a good day and reflect,
there's so many skills that have been acquired and the
momentum builds. So I think, you know, there's no shortcut
to it. It's trial and error. It's you as a
parent learning some skills, them as the child learning some skills,
and somehow you close the gap like you move. You
(39:27):
close the gap by moving it in at both ends,
which is you know, which is how it should be.
And I see my role as Harry's mum now to
be trying to prepare the world to meet him, but
also him to meet the world, and hopefully there.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
Is a spot halfway.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
That that is an optimal spot for everybody. You know,
accommodations are made where they need to be made, but
also Harry learns the skills where he can to be
as independent and functional as he possibly can. And that's
a moving target all the time, because there's always a
new skills to learn, and you know, every now and
then there'll be one where I'm like, actually the gap
(40:03):
that that's too big. We need to do more to
accommodate him. Yeah, no, he's you know, now, he's showing
signs that he can grasp the skills. So you're always
having to assess and evaluate and watch for feedback and
side effects of whatever therapy and strategy you're trying. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, if the anxiety gets too high, you can almost
get a rebound and then you're going to go back
to basics. But Portia Lamb phenomenal story. Congratulations, on the book,
congratulations on doing about the best done. Half hour on
how you know how to meet people where they're at?
(40:43):
How can people find out more about you the book
and things connected to Do you have any resources that
you recommend on pathological demand avoidance?
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, so I often look towards the UK for information
on PDA because that is obviously where it was, you know,
most of the work was done. It's officially recognized. Their
research into PDA has got some funding that other countries
around the world don't. So I use PDA Society, which
is a UK organization, for sort of my resources and
(41:18):
when I'm trying to explain PDA to teachers or you know,
other educators that Harry has contact with, I kind of
They've got a print out that you can use with
some brief notes on PDA and approaches that are helpful.
So PDA Society is my recommended resource to.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Connect with me.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
I've got a website Porsche Lamb dot com. You can
also find me on Instagram or LinkedIn as Porsche Lamb
and the book is called The Unlocking and Autism Story.
Out on the twenty fifth of February. You can get
it at all major online retailers.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
All right, Porscha, thank you so much for coming on
and telling what's a harrowing but ultimately well really really
uh heartwarming story. The fact that you guys can come
up then he's in school and being a wizard and
that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
Thanks so much for that, Leanna.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
When we come back, some pointers, just a round off
the show kind of contextualize the amazing story we just
heard again Poor Schalem, author of the Unlocking and Autism
story out in stores right now. And if you have
any questions, comments, concerns, especially questions about this particular episode,
(42:34):
Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com is my email. Not
Therapyshow dot com is my website. At not Therapy Show
is socials. We do regular Monday mantras and Wednesday wisdom
on on our social media. When we come back, a
wrap up on It's Not.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Therapy, No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA
ninety six am dot caa.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot ca. We're back
in it's not therapy. I'm still in a cursoner. I'm
still not a therapist, and we are still talking pathological
demand avoidance an unrecognized condition in Canada. For now, I
(43:29):
suspect this is one that's gonna get many, many more
supports as people become more aware of the condition. Now,
what do you do if you or your child have
a mental health condition that is not yet recognized Where
you're listening right now, Well, the nice thing about mental
(43:51):
health conditions, this is no blood test, right, It's not like, oh,
you have to take insulin or another medication for diabetes.
It's not like you need blood pressure medication. A lot
of this stuff is cognitive behavioral therapy or a similar
kind of talk therapy or behavior modification. So there are
(44:12):
things you can do. First off, this may sound surprising,
but really it's not. Please seek a diagnosis, even if
it's not specific. You know, a diagnosis of autism spectrum
disorder severity three isn't very specific, but it's very important
to rule out other conditions. A lot of psychological conditions
(44:36):
and neurodivergencies can look similar, but they function very differently
with very different treatment protocols, and don't be surprised that
you'll get one, you know, diagnosis or temporary diagnosis, working diagnosis.
You start working on it a bit, it turns out
to be wrong and you have to change gears. It's frustrating,
(45:00):
but this is the reality of our current system. This
is the reality of working with the brain. Preliminary diagnoses
tend to be wrong, okay, and that's why it's really
important to use your compassion with others and with yourself.
Go easy. Like the Adele song. What works for others
(45:22):
isn't necessarily going to work for you, and what works
for you isn't a guarantee for other people. I personally
had a very bad reaction to EMDR therapy, but it
works great for other people, and that's amazing. That's why
there's different treatments for different types of people. Use online resources,
(45:45):
including forums and Facebook groups, as resources, not authorities. Don't
follow the advice of doctor TikTok Okay. There's some great
stuff out there, but there are also the crunchy moms,
you know, the ones who insist a natural lifestyle without
processed foods, technology, or modern medicine is best for their kids.
(46:07):
On the internet, Yeah, when you come up against something
it seems too good to be true or seems like
a contradiction, like advocating a no tech lifestyle on something
you're reading on your smartphone. Yeah, trust that instinct, right,
mental health TikTok's great, I am on it, but use
your critical thinking, okay, and trust your instincts. But also
(46:31):
you're gonna find a lot of scary stuff put out
there by people like the crunchy moms. Don't get scared
by terms, okay, like I set off the top. Mental
health terminologies have gone through a decades long period of consolidation.
So terms like ABA therapy that Porsia mentioned, they get
(46:52):
attacked online really badly. One person called it to me
conversion therapy for autistics. Okay, all applied behavioral analysis, that's
what ABA stands for. Applied behavioral analysis means that a
practitioner will work with your kid one on one to
(47:13):
encourage things that help and discourage things that harm. Emphasis
on encourage, not force, because it's a one on one process.
Some do it in small groups, but the standard practice
is one on one. There's going to be great experiences
and there's also going to be horrible experiences because it's
(47:35):
one on one. So don't be afraid to give stuff
like this a chance. There's no medications, you're not putting
anything in your kid's body, and you can be there.
Just again, trust your instincts and trust your knowledge of
your kid. All right, and I am out of time
(47:58):
for this week. I really enjoyed it is a Porsche
is such a great speaker. Check out her book, check
out some of the other books. Go to podbean, check
out past episodes. If It's not Therapy, not therapyshow dot com,
Leanna at not therapieshow dot com because conversations with regular
people is my favorite part of doing this job. Until
(48:19):
next time. You're crazy is only a problem if it's
hurting you. Cox soon
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
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