Helpful approaches
Found 57 listings
The Family Experience of PDA
An Illustrated Guide to Pathological Demand Avoidance.
Eliza Fricker gets it. Describing her perfectly imperfect experience of raising a PDA child, with societal judgements and internal pressures, it is easy to feel overwhelmed, resentful and alone. This book's comedic illustrations explain these challenging situations and feelings in a way that [...]
Helpful approaches for special occasions
Special occasions, celebrations and holidays can be overwhelming for autistic people, so we've put together some general suggestions of helpful approaches for PDA families & individuals which can also be shared with wider family & friends to help everyone understand what helps.
This one-page information sheet is free to view and [...]
Helpful approaches for parents/carers
This 2 page information sheet provides a summary of PDA helpful approaches for parents and carers.
Autism and the PDA profile are ‘dimensional’ – meaning they vary a lot from one person to another and at different times or with different people – so parents/carers need a ‘toolkit’ of helpful [...]
PDA & school avoidance podcast with James
15 year old James shares his thoughts on why school is difficult for young people with a PDA profile. He openly talks about his experience of school and the daily challenges around demands, masking, sensory difficulties, school avoidance, friendships and transitions. He also offers some possible solutions and advice [...]
Information sheet for teaching professionals
This 2 page resource gives education professionals bitesize information about PDA, including how PDA may look in school, good practice and helpful approaches plus where to find further information.
Published by: PDA Society, August 2021 and updated October 2021
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Declarative Language Handbook
Declarative Language Handbook: Using a Thoughtful Language Style to Help Kids with Social Learning Challenges Feel Competent, Connected, and Understood.
This book was written to teach you how making small shifts in your language and speaking style will produce important results. You will stop telling kids what to do and [...]
PDA & masking with James
In this video 14 year old James kindly shares information about his experience of PDA and masking.
Hi, I'm James and I'm 14 years old. I was diagnosed with PDA at the age of 12 and would like to share some information about masking. A lot of people with PDA [...]
The Teacher’s Introduction to Pathological Demand Avoidance
Essential Strategies for the Classroom.
This essential guide for working with PDA pupils outlines effective and practical ways that teachers and school staff can support these pupils, by endorsing a child-led approach to learning and assessment.
Beginning with an introduction to PDA and how it can affect the education experience, it [...]
Online gaming with Max Toper
Max Toper, author of “Why Is He Still Here?” and a young autistic adult with a PDA profile has kindly recorded a three-part series of videos about online gaming for our home education “hub”. He shares insight into his experiences of the gaming world to help parents and carers of [...]
Winning a Blue Peter competition – Naomi’s story
Hi, I’m Naomi (age 12), I have PDA and I recently won a Blue Peter (BP) competition!
The whole filming experience was pretty overwhelming but also gave me some amazing and life-long memories. I think PDAers find it really difficult to experience and try new things as we usually try to [...]
PDA best practice – the professional voice
PDA best practice - what the professionals would like you to know
24 professionals from a range of backgrounds explain why they feel it's important to identify PDA and share their tips for best practice.
This is one of two videos created for PDA Day 2021 that share best practice about [...]
PDA best practice – the PDA community’s voice
PDA best practice - what the PDA community would like professionals to know
This is one of two videos created for PDA Day 2021 that share best practice about PDA for professionals from all sectors – including healthcare, education, social care, the law, therapists, counsellors, advocates and policy makers.
This video [...]
The Great Minds Podcast: PDA Society
PDA Society trustees Paula Webb & Vikki Threlfall chat with Emma and Meg from Great Minds Together about lots of topics including terminology around PDA, helpful approaches, differences between ODD & PDA, EHCPs, working with professionals and more.
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PDA in the Therapy Room
PDA in the Therapy Room: A Clinician's Guide to Working with Children with Pathological Demand Avoidance.
This guide sets out the most effective strategies for clinicians to provide the best care for children with PDA, adapting conventional modes of therapy to suit their needs. Methods include indirect techniques such as [...]
Introduction to PDA (2021)
An introductory video about PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance).
This video is just over 20 minutes long and covers lots of information, including:
What is demand avoidance?
PDA & Autism
Key features of a PDA profile
Research & clinical themes
Why identify PDA?
How PDA can feel
What are demands?
Demand [...]
What is PDA? video
This short video gives a quick introduction to PDA and was created to help raise awareness of PDA with the general public and convey some essential information about PDA in a quick and easily shareable format.
Voiced by a wonderful group of PDAers and PDA Society team members.
Published by: PDA [...]
What is PDA? booklet
This booklet is designed to be an introductory guide to the Pathological Demand Avoidance profile of autism for individuals, families and professionals.
The booklet covers an overview of PDA, how PDA can feel, an insight into what demands are and how they’re avoided, info about identifying PDA, helpful approaches and [...]
Strategies case study
Helping your child with PDA to play: eight strategies for supporting a child with Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome at home
This paper describes a case study of a young boy and the strategies that enabled him to learn skills while playing with others and developing positive relationships.
The eight strategies described [...]
PDA tools and resources – tes online
The following PDA-related resources are available to purchase or download for free from www.tes.com ...
New PDA Mind Map
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Identifying basic strategies that are used to support young people with a diagnosis of Pathological Demand Avoidance. It incorporates Communication in Print symbols.
PDA Profiler
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Developed to collect data about [...]
Support for siblings
It can be tricky to balance the needs of individual children within any family, and this can be even trickier in PDA households.
Our Siblings page offers advice around strategies and tips for supporting siblings.
A parent to a PDA child has also written two very helpful documents: a Q&A for [...]
Helpful approaches infographic: PANDA strategies
This infographic illustrates the key strategies which are helpful in working with and understanding someone with a PDA profile of autism.
Conventional support strategies, including those often recommended for autism, are often ineffective and counter-productive with a PDA profile of autism.
In place of structure, routine, firm boundaries, praise, rewards/consequences, is [...]
Keys to care
A single page information sheet for supporting and helping someone with a PDA profile. Ideal for those working with individuals whose care-needs have been identified as relating to demand avoidance. Useful as a grab-sheet for members of staff - a regular reminder of what can help.
Also helpful for family [...]
AET National Autism Standards
This extensive paper entitled 'The Distinctive Clinical and Educational Needs of Children with Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome: Guidelines for Good Practice' was written by Phil Christie and originally published in the Good Autism Practice Journal. It is reprinted by the Autism Education Trust (AET) to accompany their National Autism [...]
Workplace adjustments: employers’ guide
Businesses and employers are increasingly recognising the benefits of employing autistic people, but much more still needs to be done. The Chief Executive of the National Autistic Society recently said “most autistic people who want to work aren’t able to work” because conventional roles and workplaces can present many [...]
Tim’s Top Tips: ideas for adults
Tim Collins is an adult who was recently diagnosed with PDA. Along with sharing his story with us (please see his case study) he has kindly created a list of Top Tips designed to help adults navigate their way through life.
Daily life
Keep a notepad and pencil handy at [...]
Self-help, coping strategies and therapies for adult PDAers
Here we have included a downloadable PDF version of the Self-help, coping strategies and therapies for adult PDAers page, found in the Adult Life section.
It includes suggestions for self-help, coping strategies and therapies which were assembled from a variety of first-hand accounts shared by adults, diagnosed or self-identifying as [...]
Mind Map for schools
This 'Mind Map' is a useful resource for teachers, and anyone involved in providing support to a young person.
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Good educational practice
Examples of good educational practice for PDA pupils
These extracts showing good practice in education for pupils with a PDA Profile are shared with kind permission from the authors of these two books:
Fidler, R. and Christie, P. (2019) Collaborative Approaches to Learning for Pupils with PDA: Strategies for Education [...]
Bill Nason’s PDA insights
Bill Nason is a mental health professional with a masters degree in clinical psychology and more than 30 years of experience in treating individuals with developmental disabilities.
He regularly shares helpful posts relating to PDA on his autism discussion page on Facebook:
Anxiety, Opposition and Demand Avoidance
The Anxiety of [...]
Super Shamlal – Living and Learning with Pathological Demand Avoidance
This illustrated storybook is aimed at children aged 7-11 to help them recognise the features of PDA, and develop tools to support them. A helpful introduction for parents and carers explains how it feels to live with PDA, and the appendices at the back provide useful strategies to be [...]