Neurodiverse-Affirming Parenting: Building Connection Over Control
Neurodiverse-Affirming Parenting:
Building Connection Over Control
By Jill Jackson, BS
MSW Practicum Student
If you’re parenting a child with persistent challenges around change, anxiety about everyday demands, and big emotions during transitions, you are not alone, and you deserve strategies that honor both your child’s needs and yours.
At its core, neurodiverse-affirming parenting is about shifting away from “fixing” and toward understanding, connection, and collaboration. It's about learning how to work with your child, rather than against them!
What Does Neurodiverse-Affirming Parenting Actually Look Like?
Neurodivergence is when someone has social and learning behaviors outside of what is considered typical. These differences may require taking a course of action more specific to the needs of a neurodivergent person, involving adjusting parenting approaches. A neurodiverse-affirming approach isn't just a new fad, nor does it corroborate with the stigma surrounding the behavior and abilities of children who are neurodivergent. It’s an evidence-based, relationship-centered parenting approach to support your child’s development and emotional safety through daily tasks, especially when things like toileting, transitions, or demands are hard.
Think, Instead of asking: “How can I get my child to comply?”, ask: “What’s getting in the way of their comfort, regulation, or autonomy?” Addressing the barriers that exist rather than forcing progression through intense discomfort, is better for the emotional well-being and development of the child, and more effective in accomplishing the goals at hand.
PDA in Neurodivergent Children
To understand Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), it is important to recognize that it is not just defiance. If your child seems to resist everyday demands, even those we view as ‘easy’, like brushing teeth, putting on shoes, or answering questions, they may have a PDA profile. This is not about being willfully difficult. Kids with PDA often experience demands as threats, even when the task is neutral or fun. Their nervous system may go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. This reaction is not because they are choosing to be ‘disrespectful’, but because they feel threatened. PDA behaviors are based on the way that their nervous system operates, and should not be viewed as completely voluntary or mal-intended. Instead, we can use ways to navigate demands in a sensitive, neurodiverse-affirming way.
What Does Neurodiverse-Affirming Support Look Like?
Offering choices and collaboration, instead of commands
“Would you like to walk or run to the car?”
“Do you want to pick up your legos or your cars first?”
“Should we stay at the park for 3 more minutes or 5 more minutes?”
Using indirect language (“I wonder if…” instead of “Go do…/you need to…”)
In addition to indirect verbal communication, we can use visuals/postings with step-by-step instructions or images modeling ideal actions. This strategy can be a non-direct way to assist the child in completing necessary functions and tasks without the confrontation of a demand.
Respecting a child’s need for autonomy and control
Remember to give space and practice patience. Touch for a child who is overstimulated can be harmful in helping them regulate, as well as rushing through feelings.
Offer breaks, take time to regulate together and practice mindfulness.
Building trust through consistency & communication can reduce pressure and increase feelings of safety
Routines can be helpful for a child that is neurodivergent to know what is expected of them, allowing that demand to be internal rather than external. This consistency is less likely to trigger their fight, flight, or freeze response.
Validation of the child's feelings is huge for building a sense of trust and understanding. Whether the child is telling or showing you that they are feeling big emotions about an expectation, you can validate that emotion by offering them a description of their feelings that show your understanding.
Applying words to their experience when they are unable to do so creates a healthy connection of safety and relief between the child and caregiver. This can look different depending on the situation, a good place to start is first stating the feeling: “This feels really hard/scary/upsetting because”.
Then, explain the reason behind the request in a way they can understand.
If there is still resistance, offer solutions of comfort that can address the trigger, “do you need a break before continuing”, “should we play a silly song while…”, or “would you like your favorite toy (or transitional object) to play with during…”. Anything you can do or offer that can make the task less anxiety-provoking for the child will contribute to making the challenging task more manageable for them, which can build up their comfortability and tolerance over time.
Redirection can be a great solution at times, not everything needs to be escalated or addressed right away. If something is too distressing for right now, let's do something less demanding and work our way towards feeling less anxiety around this change. Sometimes, progress is not possible when there are high levels of distress. Taking a break and doing smaller steps, such as having conversations about what’s coming, why, and how we can be as sensitive to triggers as possible, will be more beneficial for the child in the long-run.
When we shift our lens from correcting “bad behavior” to accommodating nervous system responses, we can be intentional in our approach and use more effective practices for every parent and child.
What We Know
Instead of prioritizing external goals like “sitting still,” “potty trained by age X,” or “not throwing fits,” we can focus on goals that support your child’s internal well-being that allow these things to be possible. To nurture well-being, neurodivergent children need to feel safe and understood.
When using a neurodiverse-affirming approach to
reach goals, our kids thrive, and so do we!
Looking for More Information & Support?
My name is Jill Jackson, I am a MSW Practicum Student here at Mala. To learn more about me, you can view my bio here. I will be facilitating a support group for siblings of neurodivergent kids. For more information, you can view the flyer and website link below.
If you have any questions concerning care at Mala or would like to reach out for another reason, we’d love to hear from you.
Until next time,
The Mala Child & Family Institute Team
