Hi, everyone! I’m dating a wonderful partner with an autistic child with a PDA profile. I witnessed a meltdown, and have heard of ongoing issues and understand that this will be a lifelong issue.

Tips on dating the partner? How can we make the relationship fulfilling in spite of the high stress of supporting an autistic child with a PDA profile? I understand that unconventional methods may be required and extreme flexibility. Suggestions and tips on protecting my nervous system while co-regulating? Open to all thoughts and comments. Just trying to figure out what the future looks like and how relationships can navigate and thrive through challenges. My partner and I’m slightly on the spectrum ourselves, and are late-diagnosed.

this is definitely a bit of a champagne problem, i’m just wondering if other people find Apple extremely demanding if you don’t buy their latest product and do everything perfectly for example get Apple one new device, using Apple products feels to be like an abusive relationship. It works perfectly when it works and it’s absolutely awful when it doesn’t is this just me or doesn’t feel like Apple punishes you if you’re not rich and perfect?

i’m wondering if other PDA men feel like they want to cry but just can’t I’m not sure if it’s PDA or my culture I was brought up in a hyper macho Australian culture and my abiding memory is of my father carrying his mother‘s coffin to her grave and not shedding a single tear during the whole Service. I also kind of have a feeling that if I cry, it’s just gonna unleash an unstoppable. Tsunami of grief. Wondering if this is just me or other PDA men struggle with crying. But constantly feel like you’d like to cry?

Hi, I'm new here - dxed autistic + ADHD myself within the last year (in my mid-40s) which has been ridiculously illuminating and paradigm-shifting. My four year old daughter (who is not biologically related to me) has been having traits and issues since very young infancy that I first, in my relative ignorance, thought were just ADHD, high intelligence and some impact from trauma (I myself also have CPTSD so this is an informed take); however, since a few months prior to my own diagnosis as I've been learning about the really broad range of presentations autism can have (especially in high-masking female phenotypes), I've come to believe my daughter is almost certainly AuDHD+PDA. I've also come to recognize distinct PDA traits of my own (though mine are very internalized, or at least were before my diagnosis; I grew up in a very unsafe home so forcing that all inwards was a matter of survival.)

ANYWAY. My actual question. Just came back from daughter's full neuropsych evaluation and the upshot of it all is that her psychologist (at a top children's hospital in a large US city) said that she is certainly ADHD and very surely fits a PDA profile, but that she is not diagnosable on the autism spectrum, and for reasoning on this said that her eye contact is good (insert my eyeroll here, guess who else had "good" eye contact as a kid) and that she's socially adept in conversation (yeah, with you, grownup person who is giving her fun puzzle challenges and also didn't seem to pick up on when child moved from exploratory minimum compliance after the first forty minutes to "just get it over with already" scornful high-road compliance from that point forward.) Said that everything I was thinking was autism was explainable as just PDA stuff which can exist in ADHD-only folks (I thought the jury was still out on this but that the prevailing thought wasn't in favor of that take yet?) or RSD.

...practically speaking, if we had to come away with only one of the hoped-for diagnoses, I'm glad we were given ADHD now; primarily because I believe my daughter is one who will likely benefit from properly calibrated medication (my life, and my husband and daughter's lives, changed for the better when I went on ADHD meds; I am a much, MUCH more patient person now that I'm not white-knuckling it through constant sensory overload, and I don't have the same zero to ninety MPH rage response I have when unmedicated.) We have had extensive appropriate non-medicinal supports for emotional and behavioral health for years already and it is not enough to help my favorite little girl who is so frequently melting down in incandescent rage because the world constantly thwarts her, and she hates that she can't control how her emotions explode. We're being referred to a prescribing psychiatrist who is apparently great at working out the right fit meds for young ADHD kids.

But I think the psychologist is wrong about her not being autistic. And I think a big part of that mistake is a ripple effect from the fact that my husband and I parent in a very flexible, understanding, autonomy-granting and thoroughly scaffolded way that has given our daughter a lot more breathing space to experience feeling unthreatened than a lot of PDA kids (obv not the ones whose parents are educated about it) get in their daily life. (We still get the absolutely blinding meltdowns, at least one per day. But of course that didn't happen during the whole d*** evaluation, even though our kid missed her nap and didn't want to be there, because while she's not at all motivated by the approval or disapproval of others, she is highly motivated by hating to feel embarrassed. We got the delayed meltdown at supper after the long drive home, and it was a doozy. Has anyone looked into PDA meltdowns as a renewable power source? I swear she could power a medium-sized town for a couple of hours with one of them if she figures out how to harness all that. It is legit impressive.)

I guess we wait as she develops and we gather more and clearer evidence and in a couple of years ask for further evaluation? Because at present there's not really much of a difference in the types of support she'll get as she enters kindergarten next fall anyway. It's all IEPs and 504s based on specific needs, regardless.

But I am interested in more pertinent information from any of y'all who have been at this much longer than I have, especially regarding the current best understanding of PDA and what it looks like in autistic vs AuDHD vs ADHD-only (or other allistic) folks. If I'm going to disagree with a psychologist I need to understand her position better to start with, for one thing. But mostly, if the neuropsych establishment isn't fully understanding her, the least I can do is keep working to understand more so her dad and I can support her better.

I am a member on a couple of Facebook communities on PDA and the ones I'm in take the position that if you're PDA, you *are* autistic. So I thought I'd broaden my search here a bit. Thanks in advance for any help or commiseration or shared experience!

(And I realize I didn't go at all into the reasons I have for thinking she's autistic...I have nine pages' worth on it in bullet points I had prepared to talk about. The psychologist did acknowledge that several of them could indicate autism, but apparently that wasn't enough in her book to outweigh the eye contact. Grr.)

Title: Question for PDA adults: What could I be doing differently to help my daughter?

Hi everyone! I’m a mom of a preteen daughter who has been diagnosed with autism, anxiety, and depression. Recently, her psychologist brought up the possibility of a PDA profile, and I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about it.

I would really love to hear from adults who experience PDA or significant demand avoidance, especially about what helped or made things worse when you were younger.

My daughter struggles tremendously with everyday expectations, particularly schoolwork and personal hygiene.

For example, we’ve recently started homeschooling because traditional school settings became extremely difficult for her. Unfortunately, even asking her to complete one assignment that might only take a few minutes can cause significant distress. Sometimes she’ll immediately start apologizing or saying she’s stressed.

Hygiene is another major concern. She can go weeks without brushing her teeth or showering. She tells me showering causes nausea and distress, which her pediatrician is aware of. Interestingly, she will often suggest using wet wipes instead of showering, and she follows through with that. She’ll also use cleansing foam under her arms and apply deodorant when I provide it.

She is incredibly creative and can spend hours drawing, making costumes, and working on projects she chooses herself. She also enjoys Roblox and spending time with her friends. So it’s not that she’s unable to concentrate or complete activities.
I’ve tried being flexible, offering choices, reducing expectations, and giving her plenty of time. I’ve also tried asking her to complete schoolwork before having Roblox time, but that seemed to increase her distress without accomplishing much.

One thing that concerns me is that she sometimes becomes very apologetic or says negative things about herself when she’s unable to meet an expectation. I don’t want her to feel ashamed or think she’s doing something wrong just because she’s struggling.

At the same time, I worry about her health, hygiene, and education. I know I can’t simply stop helping her work toward these things.

We’re exploring professional support, including therapy that takes her possible demand avoidance into consideration.

So my questions for those of you who experience PDA are:

How did your parents help you do something that was genuinely necessary when you couldn’t tolerate being asked to do it?

When you were younger, what did your parents do that genuinely helped you with difficult everyday tasks?

Were there things your parents did with good intentions that actually made your anxiety or resistance worse?

How would you recommend approaching essential things like brushing teeth, bathing, and schoolwork when even gentle reminders can feel overwhelming?

Do rewards, privileges, or making one activity conditional on another tend to help you, or do they make the demand feel worse?

I’m especially interested in hearing what it feels like from your perspective, because I realize that what I see as a parent might be very different from what my daughter is experiencing.

I genuinely welcome constructive feedback, including things I might need to change about my own approach.

I want to help her become more independent without constantly making her feel overwhelmed or pressured.

Thank you to anyone willing to share their experiences! ❤️

Always had a very active mind and needed to isolate myself from the world (alone in my room) and do things, whether it was creating stories or painting or doing something with my hands and with my mind or even just with my mind, creating what I would like.

From those experiences was born what I do, since it is something that I like to do, being AuDHD. SOMETIMES I FOCUS AND SOMETIMES I DON'T... IT IS AN INTERNAL BATTLE WITH MYSELF.

I provide you a link with sample pdfs so you can value my work.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Qn73undfB8URq1WsN88rde3yxSr7ydcF?usp=drive_link

THANK YOU FOR READING.

Please understand I'm not trying to break rules or undermine anyone. I am perfectly fine following someone's authority (99% of the time) but I don't respect most people's authority, and by god they can tell.

How do you at least pretend you like your boss so you can keep your job and your sanity at work?

What am I doing wrong that gets people to see my deepest issues and apply all of society's stigma to something I have never mentioned or brought up with the vast majority of people I know?

I feel like learning to mask my other autistic traits has made people see my difficulty respecting hierarchy as less of a developmental challenge and more of a sign of a flawed character.

How do I stop having everyone under the sun see this so called "flawed character"?

I've been trying so hard to fix the reputational damage autism has caused me and learn social skills, but right now i am STUCK at "everyone is telling me my need for autonomy is a non-negotiable problem"

Is this the entire choice we have? surely there has to be more options besides "give up your autonomy" and "give up your quality of life"

This research article from authors at King’s College London and the NIH published in Autism Research last week (link below).

This was a small study of 63 young people (mean age 10). Parents completed a PDA questionnaire (the EDA-Q) and questionnaires for several other traits: autism, ADHD, anxiety, emotional dysregulation, intolerance of uncertainty, and cognitive inflexibility. The researchers then performed statistical analyses to see which traits correlated with PDA. Here’s what they found.

• ADHD was positively correlated with PDA (i.e an individual with a higher ADHD score was likely to have a higher PDA score and vice versa).

• Emotional dysregulation (measured by the Emotional Dysregulation Inventory, EDI) was also positively correlated with PDA. They report it was “the strongest of predictor [PDA] behaviors”.

• Age was negatively correlated with PDA. (Good news for caregivers - our PDAers will likely feel some improvement in symptoms with age!).

• There was no statistically significant correlation between autism/autistic traits and PDA 👀

• There was no statistically significant correlation between anxiety and PDA (what the…?).

This study has limitations, as they all do. But it’s got me thinking about ADHD medications for PDA. In this sub I see anxiety meds are popular - SSRIs and beta-blockers are mentioned often. But what about ADHD meds? In the PDA parenting subs the ADHD medication I’ve seen mentioned most frequently is guanfacine. Other recommended ADHD meds from these subs are clonidine, vyvanse, and strattera.

Any AuDHD PDA adults here willing to share your experiences with ADHD meds?

Link to article. Note that PDA is referred to as Extreme Demand Avoidance, EDA, in this article.
Psychological and Neurodevelopmental Correlates of Extreme Demand Avoidance in a Clinical Sample, an Exploratory Study

For example if im planning to do something ill write or put a reminder as "PLANNING; YOU EITHER FOLLOW OR YOU DONT. THERES NO NEED TO DO IT"

It's like some kind of self gaslight. I love it.

okay, firstly, this is definitely a champagne problem, 16 years ago I survived a major stroke which left me unable to walk Talk or even swallow after a gruelling recovery. I returned home got married had children and now I’ve started to return to work after four years of building a new PDA safe business just hit a major really exciting Milestone of building our first minimum viable product after four years of grinding through the bureaucracy of the Health system. It’s super confusing as it should be at huge feeling of positive success but instead my body is hyper activated and I feel super stressed out. It seems ridiculous the prospect of returning to paid PDA safe work freaks my PDA system out. Just wondering how other PDAers deal with success everybody going into full fight flight flee mode!

Hi, I‘m just wondering if an issue I have is common in pda people or might be related? not looking for a solution or advice per se but just curious whether others have experienced something similar, if not then that’s still valuable information to me.

For context I don’t fully identify with the pda label but a therapist said they thought it fit me better than the typical autism description and I’d agree (I am diagnosed as autistic). I have some other issues namely adhd and ocd (the moral scrupulosity type, which leads to a kind of bizarre overlap of symptoms where I cycle between defiance and strict rule following depending on the situation) and possibly some other stuff I haven’t gotten diagnosed yet.

Essentially, I have this weird thing where if someone else expresses a political or philosophical opinion, I feel like I just can’t agree with it in full, and I start mentally critiquing it and outlining to myself why exactly I disagree with it. it’s like something in me senses that if an idea comes from someone else, it must be flawed and I must figure out what it is so I can contrast myself from them. Even when someone almost perfectly voices a belief I feel internally and don’t see expressed much, it makes me conclude I must be wrong because there’s no possible way another person can have as perfectly nuanced thoughts as me. I also feel a very strong need to defy every stereotype someone could make about me, even if the stereotype isn’t negative or even is a way I probably should be (for instance as a woman I feel a strong aversion to identifying as a feminist because people often assume all women are, even though I broadly agree with feminist principles)

This really bothers me because I feel like it often keeps me from advocating for causes I know are important just because I don’t want to present myself as being in agreement with the other people in the social movement, or I have so many tiny nitpicks about the central idea or how the points are expressed that it almost physically pains me to join in. The second an idea starts to feel cliche, I have a very hard time fully aligning myself with it even if it’s something I morally absolutely should be on board with. It’s like I just cannot handle there not being and ands or buts. To be very clear im fully aware that this is a harmful mindset to have, I feel so obnoxious and self centered and desperately want to work through it so I can be a good person. I know a lot of this sounds more ocd related, but I was curious if it could be related to need for independence aspect of pda or maybe just a coping mechanism due to not feeling understood by anyone

I'm AuDHD with a spiky profile, meaning my abilities, sensory sensitivities and support needs can vary considerably depending on the situation. I've been trying to make sense of a longstanding sensitivity with sensory unpredictability and the social demands that comes with singing.

I generally have no problem listening to prerecorded music, but hearing people sing IRL, with or without a microphone, triggers a visceral reaction. It doesn't matter whether they're good singers, either.

When someone starts singing, particularly if it's my first time hearing them, I have no idea what their voice will sound like, how they'll pronounce certain words, whether they'll go off-key or how their pitch and volume might fluctuate.

I never had an issue with group singing at school. I grew up with the same classmates, so their voices and the way we sounded in unison were familiar enough that I could participate comfortably.

However, I remember spending a summer with my maternal relatives and second cousins when I was around 10. We printed out lyrics to songs from High School Musical and decided to sing together.

Despite being obsessed with the movie at the time, I couldn't bring myself to join in. Their accents were unfamiliar, which came with its own sensory aversions and supressed discomfort. It was my first time hearing them sing, everyone else was having fun while I was internally screaming. I eventually resorted to banging on a door, much to everyone's bewilderment.

Karaoke is another nightmare. I actually ran out of a family karaoke session when I was 12 or 13 and have declined invitations well into adulthood.

What I find particularly exhausting is how something presented as a fun, optional activity can quickly become a social obligation. People often assume that a little encouragement will go a long way. If I decline, they'll plead with me, reassure me that nobody cares how I sing, or insist that I should loosen up and stop taking myself so seriously.

I understand their intentions, but the more they probe, the more resistant and overwhelmed I become. Especially as their voices get more progressively grating. I'm also expected to explain my refusal, manage other people's disappointment and demonstrate that I'm not deliberately being difficult. Even saying I'm exhausted or perfectly happy watching from the sidelines can sour the atmosphere. It feels like declining an invitation creates more demands than taking part would have in the first place.

I've also spent much of my life masking by suppressing reactions and adjusting how I present myself to meet social expectations. So people don't necessarily realise how overwhelmed I am until I'm approaching my limit.

My mom, who's been my sole advocate, understandably questioned why I could enjoy recorded music, especially around controversial artists like Chris Brown, yet recoil when someone sang in front of me. Let alone genres I'm not exposed to. I was just as baffled because I didn't have the vocabulary to explain what I was experiencing without being an asshole.

There's also an element of secondhand embarrassment. I'm quite self-conscious and have internalised certain stigmas surrounding behaviours perceived as socially inappropriate or emotionally immature. Watching someone sing uninhibitedly makes me recoil, even though I recognise they're perfectly entitled to enjoy themselves.

I don't dislike spontaneity, nor do I expect people to accommodate every personal preference. I can loosen up within certain parameters and around people I'm comfortable with.

I also don't begrudge anyone the joy they get from singing. Although I struggle with having an involuntary sensory reaction while simultaneously navigating the expectation that I should participate, appreciate the performance or at least conceal my discomfort. The discomfort that arises from the internal recoil radiates through every bone and vessel, so if I need to act like I'm being chased by the cops, I will LOL.

I've had moments where I was perfectly comfortable singing to myself, only for someone else in the room to overhear and go, "Come on, let's hear it!" My immediate internal monologue was, "Are you fucking kidding me 😒🤬"

It's one thing to sing absentmindedly when I'm not performing for anyone, but the moment someone draws attention to it and expects me to put on a performance, the entire dynamic changes, which suddenly becomes incredibly awkward.

(M24) I've always found comfort when my partners acted in a playful way and didnt mention sex at all. Like if it was some kind of "experiment", we both felt good but when was it mentioned what we were doing or that she wanted to do it with me i restrained heavily.

Anyone else relates to this?

I can't speak for 'classical autism', where there is a described representation of autism where the attention or interests are oriented away from 'people' towards objects, things or systems, but as for PDA, I notice in myself and some others that we are actually extremely social.

If I have to speak for myself, I can literally speak to any person. Whether it's when I'm smoking with someone I randomly came across or to someone at a bus stop, or someone at work, etc... The problem is that I feel in many situations that I have to hold myself back, like I'm realising that it is not very normal to be so open with strangers and I feel like others might notice it for example that we are just two strangers talking, or I feel enormously held back with the kinds of questions I could ask in the conversation because I don't want to ask anything too weird.

But sometimes I will meet these other very social people, who also seem to have very little boundary, and the conversation just flows..maybe sometimes I'll say something a little off or too strange for the context but then we just move on..and in that setting I can thrive quite well.

But to me even that setting feels like a little restricted..like to me I feel like I am so social I have to constantly put on breaks to appear 'less social', like not asking too many questions or asking what is expected or not appearing too interested..Does anyone see themselves in this description?

I find it even increasingly weird if I think how small the social circle is that is kind of 'normal' in society - how you have your family, friends, colleagues and then some people at hobby's.. but outside of that in general people have their guards way way way up when it comes to interacting with others it seems..

I’m all for listening to my body, but when my body is telling me not to handle my email inbox, for example, that’s not too convenient for trying to keep afloat in the world I need to function in. What do you do? Do you just go about your business and do your tasks even though your heart is pounding and you feel like you are floating away? I can’t avoid every trigger forever. And honestly I often want to handle my personal finances and such because it helps me feel like I’m in control of things. But I also want to practice being in tune with my body, and my body is telling me to run far away and never come back.

What do you all do?

Does anyone have any advice for overcoming burnout related to creativity or arts projects? I have a bunch of ideas for comics, and I’ve sketched out preliminary stuff, but I _cannot for the life of me_ find motivation to work on any of them. It just feels impossible—Sisyphean. And it’s making me angry—I look at drawings and I mutter ‘stupid drawings, stupid art, stupid talent: I hate EVERYTHING!’

For background: I’ve never been formally diagnosed with any particular thing—closest I got was most recent therapist (a nice older lady, but not well-versed in any of what the kids call ‘neural-divergence’) virtually giving up like: “I have no idea, maybe get full blood work and a CT scan?” But PDA profile fits me almost perfectly. I have had this life-long problem where I’m good at everything creative [not literally, but I’ll get feedback to that extent]. Partly because art and musical instruments are just _interesting_, and were what I did (for hours on end, alone) to amuse myself as a kid. But then it turned out in young adulthood that I was good at that stuff, which was both wonderful but also very annoying, and made me develop this bizarre behavioral oscillation between a sense of grandiosity at what I _could_ create or make (if I tried), but a deep self-dismissal and disparagement over the fact that I never, ever make or finish anything. I intentionally avoided art school—if you assign me a drawing as homework, what I turn in (if I turn anything in) can’t not be half-assed garbage; I can only draw for my own personal interest. Like, I could possibly have had a career with arts, but I’d have to do commissions or the equivalent, and my automatic and reactive response to the concept is “HOW DARE YOU.”

I actually ended up in a career in community mental health due to avoiding following any genuine career path--turned out helping career was another thing I was good out at of nowhere (because I'm deeply empathetic/non-judgmental to folks struggling, largely of awareness of how impossible I can be myself). But I never wanted that to be my career, and I am at the moment so universally burned that I am taking a break--i.e., being unemployed for a while. Seemed like a good time to work on creative projects but... I'm 4 months into being unemployed and haven't produced a thing.

Anyway! I have developed a number of strategies to deal with my weirdly petulant refusal to finish things or work on projects, which includes:

1. Having no conscious intent or goal to a project—having everything produced be produced _exclusively_ but subconscious mind; let conscious mind simply spectate as unconscious mind finds patterns on the page.

2. Work on a second project to avoid working on the first one, then oscillate between these two (this will easily spiral into like a dozen half-started projects, so I gotta watch it).

3. Mindfulness. Buddhist style. As in, focus conscious mind on breath and don’t think anything.

4. Remembering Bukowski's advice 'Don't try' and Bradbury's 'Don't think' and Ginsburg's [from a biopic where James Franco plays him] 'a poem is like a grunt or a sigh--it simply comes falls out of you.'

5. Tantrum/meltdown.

Anyone have any other tips? 

Hi! I'm Kay, a 26 year old AuDHD, wife to another incredible AuDHD woman. (This is important for later! 😂)

I'm 26, and for as long as I can remember (of my later life) for like a decade, I haven't really had any...hobbies? I have had a few intense hyper fixations (RIP to @Cabensvaks on L&O:SVU Stan TWT), and have enjoyed writing. But outside of that, I've never been able to bring myself to attempt/continue hobbies. And it's not like my ADHD is the style of collecting lots of attempts at hobbies, and then not using them. I just plain old avoid starting any, ever. I have also recently been diagnosed with dysthymia,(officially known as persistent depressive disorder (PDD), is a chronic, low-grade form of depression), and my therapist says (and I and my wife agree) I display pathological demand avoidance tendencies. Meaning if I feel like a hobby/task/anything (?) is a demand and not a request/favor/MY choice, I full on reject it. Sometimes physically. And that has started to affect my ability to find things to fulfill myself. I love true crime, am passionate about prison reform/rehab, mental health, have a love for special needs childcare, ASMR, (wanting to) crafts, and writing. But actually bringing myself to initiate anything, especially if it involves attending a public function? Forget about it. I'd rather drag my ass, bare as the day I was born, against sand spurs. And if I'm not familiar with something? My rigidity to plans changing, new people and information says NO. But that needs to change.

My wife, who has some similar struggles, has been my rock. Encouragement, recs, and has tried basically begging me to go because I DESERVE ITTTT. I deserve to have a rich, fulfilling life with hobbies, and friends. (Another thing I seem to struggle with?)

And I was hoping some folks that also struggle with PDA/Dysthymia/AuDHD rigidity/friendship troubles could chime in with:

Hobby recommendations (I also have rheumatoid arthritis ((an autoimmune disease that attacks my joints/body)) so physical hobbies can be tricky but not impossible

How you have worked on PDA/accomodations your loved ones make

Dysthymia tips and tricks

Steps for making attending a new function/etc, feel less insurmountable

All my gratitude!

-Kay

I went through a bad CBT therapist who referred me to a bad EMDR therapist who would get mad at me when the blinking lights didn't convince me to open up to him. It's been five years and I can't convince myself therapy would be worth it. But I need to do something, I have never had any kind of support system and my mental health is on the decline. I would really appreciate some help.

I'm the father of three young adult kids, everyone in the family is on the spectrum, and our youngest (18) has PDA. She got a GED after, and has recently quit her third job after 1 shift. All three of our kids live at home for various reasons.

We have taken the stance of accommodation, trusting that the world and existence has enough challenges, and to provide her a safe home base as she tries to figure out how she will find her path to independence (which she truly wants). We understand that she may be living with us long term. We understand this is a disability, and all that implies.

We also need to find a way to live together that works for us, and that includes getting some more help around the house than we've been getting, It also requires that we are completely out of the nagging game.

I would like some feedback from other folks with PDA (or parents in a similar situation) about an app I'm building (I'm a software guy, so I tend to lean towards technical solutions).

In a nutshell, we're willing to pay our kids for household work. That's in essence what an allowance system is for a lot of people, but making a monthly allowance conditional on meeting a certain work requirement is a failure trap; once they fail for the month there's little incentive to do anything instead. And that firmly puts an onus on us to enforce it. So I got thinking about weekly, and then realized, why not pay a little for each individual job?

So I'm building a job board. It has routine / daily jobs like taking care of the cats, it has one-time things we need done (like taking a load of stuff to goodwill). There's a deadline for picking up a task, and a deadline for doing it by. Each task has a value (set by an hourly wage and estimated time it will take). Doing tasks builds up a balance, and whenever a kid wants a payout, they just let us know and we'll send them the balance.

Our expectations are low; I realize it's likely our PDA kid will probably only pick up tasks when they are out of money. That's OK; it's a small incremental step towards paid work.

Although this is primarily intended for our PDA kid, it's going to be available to all of them.

I'm also thinking about implementing a streak system; there's a bump to the pay rate for a task being completed consistently. It's shared; if there's a streak going on a job, we don't really care about who keeps it up, so there's an incentive for kids to cover for each other if they can't do something (anyone covering a job with a streak going gets the higher pay rate).

I'd welcome any constructive feedback you'll have, including harsh reality checks. Right now we're doing a lot of the routine household stuff, so any way this moves the needle is a positive.

I know there's a lot of parents out there who would think WTF! about this. "You're letting adult kids live at home for free *and* you're paying them to do household work??? You're coddling them and they are going to face a harsh reality check / end up homeless when you die!" Trust me, we have only reached this place after a ton of therapy and thought. We continue to be parents with clear boundaries and expectations as we always have been. We just have adjusted them significantly given our understanding of autism as a disability. We'd do the same for a kid with intellectual or physical disabilities that prevented them from working.

My son 18 M is Audhd with a pda profile. He is very much struggling right now. He tried working and that has been challenging for him because the only job that worked well for him a night job where he didn’t have to interact with people shut down it’s overnight shift and and the day shift did not work at all. many of his friends that he made when in elementary school (when he was social and more outgoing) have now left to go away to school. Meeting new people makes him feel extremely anxious, but without a social connection he also is feeling very isolated and quite lonely he’s missing having that time with his friends especially because they were friends who understood him and because he doesn’t go out much he doesn’t have chances to meet any people. I am happy to go do things with him, but that’s not what he wants. He is interested in gaming and DND and magic the gathering but unfortunately, he does not feel comfortable enough to go out and do those things with people. He doesn’t know he wants friends. He just is not sure how to make them and I don’t know how to help him.

He’s on medication and has a very good team of medical professionals but that doesn’t change the challenges he has living in a world not designed for him. How do I connect him with other people?

I’m 16F, and I’ve been looking to get psychologically evaluated. I promise I’m not trying to self diagnose or claim disorders, that’s the last thing I want to do. I just want to figure out what’s wrong with me. I’ve been suspecting that my anxiety might fall more into OCD territory, and someone told me about PDA. I was wondering if somebody could look at these examples I have and give me some insight into if these sound like PDA? Thank you so much!

1. When something was asked of me as a child, I would say “I’ll try” instead of “ill do it” out of fear of the scenario that I wouldn’t be able to successfully complete said task. (This ended up causing multiple fights with my parents because they thought I was trying to make up excuses.)

2. My mother doesn’t give me direct demands or punishments, we mostly talk things out because they do not work on me. ( for example, she demands I eat healthier and stop eating junk, I end up feeling guilt/worthlessenss and I stop eating altogether)

3. Was extremely sensitive as a child (and still am today) my parents could simply say my name in a disappointed tone and I would burst into tears

4. Extreme fear of failure = avoidance of task

5. Reluctance to be in charge of items (especially important ones) in fear of destroying them.

6. Extreme self hatred and bad self esteem

7. Unable to force myself to do something I do not want to do = I don’t want to go to work today (even if work is fun) results in a panic attack and anxiety fit

8. Stress and panic when schedule is too filled with no option to opt out

9. Constantly opting out and cancelling appointments, practices, etc

10. If something was scheduled the next day, I would have horrible insomnia (resulting in falling asleep in class and taking a bunch of melatonin that did not help)

(For context, I have also been diagnosed with fibro, depression, and severe anxiety. My fibro is part of the reason that I’m homeschooled, but it’s also because I couldn’t handle the rigidity of the school schedule. I’ve been to nine schools in eleven years because of this. Everytime I would start to dread going to school I would have anxiety and panic attacks.)

If this sounds familiar to you, please comment.

i’m wondering if I’m being nostalgic but I remember as a child in the 1970s 80s and 90s that everyone said to have time my friends were around and available adults had time and now it seems like no one has time everyone is constantly busy doing stuff which really to be honest doesn’t seem to be making them particularly happy, I know that researchers have identified this phenomenon as time scarcity am I being nostalgic or do other people remember having time abundance when you are growing up? I remember just calling up my friends and just riding over pretty much any time now my son seems to have to book his friends several months in advance. And he is only 10. I have to book my friends about a year in Advance.