One day, after my child’s pre-school day was over, I built up enough courage to walk up to their teacher, and just ask her the question I’d been curiously dreading. I was certain of what her answer would be based on my child’s behavior at home. “Does my child swear a lot- and in particular, do they swear AT peers in class?”
The teacher stopped in her tracks, turned and looked at me, jaw dropped, “Um, are we talking about the same child?” she asked confused, “Never could I imagine a mean word coming out of that child’s mouth. They are an angel- an absolute angel.”
In my sweatpants and droopy sweater, I just stood there, stunned. How could my child be so young and still have so perfectly executed such a brilliant “Jekyll and Hyde” act?
Years later, I’d learn the answer to that question: masking.
Parents of PDA children often have similar stories: “My child is totally different at school than they are at home.” (PDA Society) Teachers describe them as calm, capable, polite- even easygoing. At home, the child is anything but easygoing! Explosive, avoidant, oppositional, and completely emotionally overwhelmed is more like it.
When you’re raising Hyde but the teachers get Jekyll, parents can feel confused. Teachers and admins may look at you sideways when you ask for support: “Support for WHAT, exactly? Your child does great in school!”
First, let’s establish something: your child is not being fake, manipulative, or trying to save their worst behaviors just for you. In fact, it’s quite the opposite with a PDA child! Your child is working very hard to hold it together in one environment (the one they know is the least forgiving and they feel least safe in), and after their daily award-winning performance, they come home, exhausted and nerves fried, to finally take their mask off in the environment where they feel safest.
Your child is simply surviving.
PDA, or Pathological Demand Avoidance, is most widely recognized and described as a nervous system disability. Children with PDA avoid demands because demands feel like threats to their nervous system. Even simple requests can trigger stress, anxiety, or an urge to resist. PDA is not about defiance- it’s about feeling overwhelmed, unsafe, or out of control. PDA is not a standalone diagnosis per the DSM-5. It is a profile of autism. Yet, children with this profile often fly (way) below the radar in classrooms because they don’t necessarily present the way educators may be familiar with. PDAers may lack a lot of the stereotypical behaviors that teachers (including SPED teachers and psychologists!) have grown accustomed to seeing as indicators for ASD.
At school, the child may follow directions perfectly, stay quiet, and appear regulated (they are not) because their survival instincts are telling them that compliance is how they survive in this setting. Compliance, despite how horrible it feels in their body, is the way out of this dangerous situation. (Remember that the level of fear one senses in a particular environment is subjective to their past trauma and their current nervous system capacity.) Perhaps motivated by social pressure, fear of consequences, or the desire to avoid standing out, the child’s brain is in a sort of, “comply or die” mode. School becomes the place where they “perform” what is expected of them, even if it costs them a great deal internally.
When they get home, the mask comes off.
Home is usually where a child feels safest, so once they are no longer holding everything inside, all the stress they managed to suppress during their time in school, and all the effort it took them to do it, comes pouring out like a dam breaking:
Meltdowns. Refusal, Arguing. Tears. Rage. Total exhaustion.
For parents, it can feel like the child is saving all the worst behavior for them. In reality, home is their safe place and they can finally stop pretending they are okay- their brain senses safety and stops fighting for survival through masking. (Masking is a strategy some autistic people use, consciously or unconsciously, to attempt to blend into their environment, often causing extreme internal distress. (National Autistic Society, n.d.) This can feel confusing- even personal- to a parent who has been putting in the hard work of raising their PDA Child.
What’s worse?
The school doesn’t see the problem so they often insist that the problem- well, the problem is you, the parent. It’s the bruised maroon cherry on top of the rapidly melting sundae that is your capacity to cope.
The truth is that a child who performs well in one setting does not mean they are thriving there. A child who is barely holding themselves together all day at school can’t truly access learning- Maslow taught us that! Going through the motions to execute a performance should not be confused with validation that a child’s safety and psychological needs are being met.
Every school day is the performance of a lifetime for a masking PDA child! When we understand this, it’s much easier to understand that by the time a child walks through the door at home, they have nothing left.
This “school/home behavior gap” matters. Furthermore, the only way to help the child is to start by listening to the parent sharing the reality of the child’s life at home. I remember being a teacher in conferences with parents who were shocked that their son was doing so well in my classroom!
“He doesn’t bother other kids?”
“Not in the slightest! He’s quiet but he’s kind.”
“He doesn’t talk back to you?”
“Never!”
I was confused by their confusion- I could not fathom this child being anything but gentle.
I recalled this experience when I was speaking to my own child’s teacher- I recognized the disbelief in her face because I’d once worn that same disbelief.
I now teach educators that if there is a significant contrast in the reported behavior at home, and what you see at school, this is a red flag- not an opportunity to pat themselves on the back.
Instead of assuming that a child is choosing different behavior on purpose, it can help to ask: What is this environment asking of them and in order to meet those expectations, how much of themselves are they having to suppress? And the question that will span years of classroom time: what happens when the child no longer has the energy or capacity to cope?
The answer to the first question will be reliant on each school’s environment and approach.. The answer to the second question is one or all of the following:
- PDA burnout
2.School avoidance or refusal.
- School-induced trauma
What parents and their child with PDA truly need is not more pressure, but more understanding. Not the pushback of, “He’s fine in school, there’s not a problem when he’s here,” because there is indeed a problem when the child is in school! That problem may not result in other children being harmed or class disruption, but there IS a problem and it’s happening in school. The challenge is that a masking child is not easily “unmasked” through typical forms of assessment or observation used in schools. Getting to the heart of the matter first requires that the school team genuinely trusts the parent’s word with regards to what happens in the home.
Instead of schools approaching the school/home behavior gap with thinking akin to:, “that parent just needs to ___(fill in the blank)____ like we do at school and her ‘unruly’ child would start complying!” educators can approach parental input with curiosity and compassion.
Instead, educators often wave a finger at a parent who has chosen to lower demands for their child at home. Giving a PDA child time to recover after school with no demands is a benefit to everyone interacting with the child and may well be the only reason said child is even capable of white-knuckling through their school day! There is a time limit to the method acting a PDA child can manage. A significant time of rest that a parent permits at home, are likely the only reason that child is able to make it to school the next day.
However, eventually without proper accommodations or support from the school, a PDA child typically grows far too exhausted to maintain, and the mask comes off whether they want it to or not.. (This is a disability, not a choice, after all.) Often that cost is a steep decline in mental health during the teen or early adult years resulting in academic and professional goals falling to the wayside as a capacity for anything outside of basic survival becomes superfluous. Sometimes this is manifested through dangerous behaviors or an overwhelming depression.
Being “good at school” does not mean a child is “fine overall.” PDA children straddle two different environments the best they can. Once everyone truly understands this- and only then- can a school respond in a manner that authentically honors the learner’s needs. The first step in supporting students with an invisible disability is to employ active and compassionate listening skills when interacting with parents. Assume belief in parents and use their insight to create solutions that allow the team to successfully support their PDA students.
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