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New to the community and looking for views from other parents

Rover83

Hi,

I'm a proud Dad to 2 children, Son 15 and Daughter 9.

Daughter is diagnosed (Lv1) and has strong traits of PDA - She is really bright and excels in school, though finds friendships and connecting with others difficult, so much so that we have recently moved her school as she had exhausted any friendships she had made and had become isolated from the other kids due to them/their parents treating her unkindly which was hard to take for all of us.

At home she has a strong connection to Mum (safe person) and despite everything I try she is only interested in me when Mum is not around. Her behaviour at home is totally different than school, on one hand this is good because I wouldn't want her to have to mask in her home environment, however, at times I really struggle to distinguish between behaviours that are linked to her diagnosis and just typical child behaviour. This is where the issues really start to impact the family.

Mum who gets the brunt of the poor behaviour allows for it and doesn't seem to set or allow me to set any boundaries, using Autism/PDA as an excuse in all situations, this causes friction in the marriage but also for our Son who is often on the receiving end of the poor behaviour and doesn't understand why we are not dealing with it.

We are at a point where our Daughter literally dictates what happens in our household, what she will/won't do, what she eats, when we can go out etc and it has become very draining.

She has had therapy sessions, as have we as parents but again she decided that she didn't need it anymore and we are none the wiser about what was discussed as it was confidential between therapist and Daughter.

As much as I love my family I'm exhausted with the constant battles, lack of boundaries, the impact on our Son and on our marriage.

I suppose my question is, has anybody been through anything similar and have any helpful advice 

Many thanks

   

  • Hi,

    My son, now adult, had issues with what school would call non compliance, some staff even used words like controlling and some said demand avoidant. He was diagnosed with autism around aged 4. Otherwise really clever and really well behaved so stood out as out of character and i tended to, like your wife defend what was happening because behaviour is usually a symptom. I am so glad i did this as a few years ago we found out he had autonomic dysfunction (confirmed by a tilt table test) that causes unstable blood pressure which made so much sense in why he needed control. He has been like that all his life so didn't even know how to explain it so first of all please don't rule out anything else. Discipline doesn't work, can't stress that enough, it just creates battles. She will have a deep yearning for control so rather than telling her what to do or giving strict boundaries give a couple of choices. It will come second nature once you have been doing it a while. Maybe sit down with your wife and agree to try this approach. I ended up single parent as in all honesty, it was easier without him. There's no set right or wrong really, you do what works.

    Hope that helps