PDA - A Parents Tale.

One of the hardest things, that I have found as a parent of a PDA child, is the remarkable persona that Mollie can play of a totally compliant child to other people.

This has often left me looking as if I have ‘Munchausen by proxy’ to other people who are then even more bemused by the rapid change in non-compliant behaviour that is directed towards me. I thought that I would try to explore this feature of PDA in this post.

Children with PDA have a remarkable ability to role play a persona that they know others will find acceptable.

Mollie is fully aware of what constitutes acceptable and compliant behaviour and so when she is in a new situation or with new people she can play this role by suppressing her true personality, thoughts and anxieties.

The stress of holding in her true personality and complying with demands in a new situation with new people means that Mollie is like a pressure cooker just waiting to go off.

When she sees me or her dad that pressure cooker then rapidly expels all of that pent-up and well contained steam. We are her release valve, her comfort blanket, her emotional sponge and the only people that she is truly comfortable being herself with.

Mollie knows that she is allowed to relieve all of that pressure safe in the knowledge that she will still be loved.
Some children are so adapt at their ability to role play this persona and to fly under the radar at school that parents are left with an impossible task. Extreme and challenging behaviour is exhibited at home when the pressures of the day are released on to parents but there is no evidence of this extreme and challenging behaviour for the school to report. This can often lead to Doctors and Teachers wrongly assuming that the difficulties lie with the parents.

I was very lucky to a certain extent because Mollie’s ability to hold it in would only last for a certain period of time and then her explosive and challenging behaviour would also emerge at school. The school was baffled by her and nothing that they did worked which really helped to back me up with anyone that thought it was a parenting issue. However, what was interesting is the pattern that the behaviour took. Weeks of good behaviour would be followed by weeks of challenging behaviour and it seemed to alternate between school and home. A good day at school would result in a huge release of pressure the minute she came out of the school gates or an explosive day at school would result in a much calmer child for me. It was as if it just had to be released somewhere and to someone on a daily basis.

I have recently been able to understand and empathize the exhausting process that our children must feel from constantly being in role play.
When Mollie and I are together we are both in role-play. I am playing the perfect, bouncy, cheery voiced ‘kids TV Presenter’ to try to keep her anxieties low. Simultaneously Mollie is playing the role of cute little girl, baby voice, calling my mummy as a younger child would instead of mum, fluttering her eye lashes and so on. We are both mimicking the personas of people that we have seen on TV and we are both doing it to keep the other one calm.

However this is exhausting and it has really given me an insight into how hard it is for children with PDA to keep their true personalities in for any length of time.

Pretending to be somebody that is not naturally you will only have a certain shelf life. The role cannot be maintained indefinably and sooner or later it becomes impossible to keep it up.

Mollie can sustain her role with other people but the more time she spends with them the more likely it is for the pretense to slip.

Mollie can often sustain her role for several weeks when she starts a new school or meets new social/outreach workers leading Professionals that are new to her to believe that she can control herself, her behaviour, her need to control and to avoid demands.

It is important to remember that this ability is a temporary phase that she will be unable to sustain long-term. Anyone and Everyone who spends substantial periods of time with Mollie rather than the odd visit or occasional meeting does eventually experience all aspects and dimensions to her extremely complex character.

When Mollie begins to struggle to hold in her inner self and she can feel the cracks beginning to show on her exterior persona she retreats back to the safety of home.

This is why she is a persistent school refuser and a recluse. She does have pride and self-awareness and she does not want the outside world to witness the loss of pride and self-awareness that a meltdown brings.

This sense of pride and self-awareness was late to develop and it is impaired and not what you would expect from a nine-year old child but it is there never the less.

To be in a permanent state of role play is impossible to keep up and exhausting and I should know because I just can’t keep my ‘Kids TV Presenter’ persona up for anything other than a short spurt. Mollie is a far more accomplished and effective role player than I will ever be.

I hope that this post has helped to develop a little bit more understanding and insight into why children with PDA can appear to behave so differently in different settings. Each child with PDA is an individual and some children may be so good at maintaining their role play persona that their true difficulties are never even noticed or acknowledged at school. This makes it impossible for parents to be listened to or taken seriously by the Professionals that they will be seeking help from.

Please spread awareness of PDA and help me to reach as many people as possible with this blog.

http://shiggs55.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/she-doesnt-behave-like-that-with-me-arghhhhhhhh-oh-how-i-want-to-scream/