About this episode

In this episode, Casey coaches Danielle on how to get her husband and parents on board with understanding her son's Pathological Demand Avoidance.

In this episode, I coach Danielle, a mom from North Idaho who is newer to the PDA lens and has already been making progress with her almost nine-year-old son — but is running into resistance from her husband and her parents, who help with caregiving. Her son has existing diagnoses of ADHD, sensory processing disorder, and disorganized attachment, and was adopted from South Korea. Since discovering PDA a few months ago, Danielle says everything clicked in a way that previous frameworks hadn't. Her question: how do you get the other adults in your child's life on board — and how do you trust yourself — when the people around you see things through a lens of disrespect and shame? We talk through why PDA is so hard for other adults to believe, especially because of masking and the fact that the child's most intense behaviors tend to happen with the safest person in the home. I walk Danielle through the PLATO framework for making nonviolent communication requests — specifically, how to make a concrete, bounded request of her parents and husband without needing them to believe in PDA at all. We also talk about how to track three observable indicators — connection, nervous system…

People in this episode

Host: Casey

Guest: Danielle

Topics covered

• Pathological Demand Avoidance
• parenting
• communication strategies
• family dynamics
• child behavior

Keywords

• PDA
• ADHD
• sensory processing disorder
• nonviolent communication
• family support

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: South Korea

Places: North Idaho

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• My Son Only Ate Three Foods - Eating and Pathological Demand Avoidance Part 1 | Ep. 158 · April 14, 2026 · 37 min
• What Radical Acceptance Actually Looks Like for Pathological Demand Avoidance Parents | Ep. 156 · March 31, 2026 · 55 min
• Raising Twin Pathologically Demand Avoidant Boys: Socialization, Therapeutic Equalizing, and the Long Game | Ep. 155 · March 24, 2026 · 1h 2m
• Ep. 154 - Entrepreneurship and Pathological Demand Avoidance · March 17, 2026 · 1h 12m

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