Mother’s Day, Birthdays and PDA
Mother's Day can be really hard for a myriad of reasons. Having a child, struggling with pathological demand avoidance can make the day even harder.
There were many years that Mother's Days and my birthdays would "just happen" to have the most extreme behaviours. Mr G and I had no idea what sparked these huge breakdowns/meltdowns/blowouts of shit-storm proportions. I think there was a period when I had around five consecutive birthdays where all plans had to be canceled and I was the target for some extreme behaviours. That wasn't the most delightful or fulfilling period of my life for sure. I'm telling you this for you to know. You aren't alone and maybe, by the time you finish reading, you might have some other ideas about how to give yourself a chance for a celebratory break.
My birthday is at the beginning of May and so is two weeks away from Mother’s Day in North America. Sometimes it felt like an opportunity to have a do-over, learning from past experiences.
One year for my birthday, I thought I’d choose to do something that wasn’t exactly my first choice for birthday celebrations but would be a “safe” option: a walk in the forest as a family. Sounds pretty easy-going, right? I thought I prepared my son well. We went to the woods plenty and went there twice in the week running up to my weekend birthday. I explained that this is what we’ll be doing for my birthday, too. I talked him through it and we discussed it with joy and ease.
Then came the day.
The morning started off okay… My husband, having a bit of an idea of the absolute exhaustion and struggles I was having being the main caregiver to our son with autism, struggling with the many changes that moving continents brought, told me to stay in bed. At this point, our son had a diagnosis of autism but we had no idea of PDA, we didn't even know of its existence.
My son had made me a card… It was a piece of card with the words “happy birthday” scribbled on it. Just to put that into context, my son had been writing stories and drawing the pictures to go with it. He must have spent about 30 seconds on it and he refused to give it to me but he demanded that my husband give it to me. I graciously received the card, read it and told him I loved and thanked him. My son seemed upset with me. Annoyed maybe. We were both at the point where we were walking on eggshells around him.
We did make it to the car. We all got in the car but all the way on the drive, my son was calling me names and was telling us that he wasn’t going to get out of the car and go for a walk.
By the time we got to the car park and started getting out of the car, my son was escalating to the point where he was kicking the seat in front of him and getting really upset and angry about us going for a walk. He was calling me all the names he knew. Telling me he hated me and all the things. We were trying to negotiate with him for 10, maybe 20 minutes but it did nothing to help, he just got more and more angry and determined that we were not going to get him out of the car. In the end, feeling defeated and angry, I stormed back in the car and with a “FINE! LET’S GO HOME THEN!”, I demanded to be taken back home. I’m not sure if I cried or whether I was already at the point where my emotions were stuck inside.
I don’t remember much more about that day, but I do remember we had to just return completely to normal operations and the day would have been fraught with emotional outbursts. All-in-all, the days such as this felt like a disaster.
It doesn’t matter what the occasion of purpose of the day is. When there is a demand or an expectation, anxiety kicks in and flips a switch for a stress response within the brain.
Take two, Mother’s Day. I decided I just needed a break and so the plan was that I was going to spend the birthday money my mother-in-law gave me at the garden centre, alone. It was glorious.
There have been other ways that we have readjusted the way we decided to celebrate occasions. One year, we decided to spend the day like it was like any other, and at 3pm, we allowed our kids to go on video games consoles while I sent my husband out to get alcohol and takeout pizzas, we then holed ourselves up in our bedroom, drinking, binge watching Netflix and gorging on delicious food while we let our kids play on consoles for 6hrs. That’s probably not the best of examples, but it was fun.
Now, this year, for my 40th birthday, I asked my husband for his time as a gift and he took the day off work and just left me to do what I wanted. When we celebrate occasions, we see how our children would like to celebrate and if for my birthday, they would like to eat food that I hate and play video games all day as a celebration, we get that food in and let them play video games. You might be thinking that’s weird and awful but what it does is, it allows me to feel happy and confident that I will have the space to do what I want and my children will not feel threatened by my perceived absence.
The thing with PDA is that it is an autonomic nervous system disability. We can’t take time off from it. When there is a perceived demand, expectation or threat to autonomy or safety, the brain kicks off a sympathetic nervous system response: goes into a stress response. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and birthdays can all bring demands of what is expected to do and behave and depending on the stress level of your child to begin with will determine how their brains will react to this.
If you are your child’s main caregiver, their main source for co-regulation, connection and feelings of safety, you taking time out of that role of taking care of them can feel threatening to their safety. Your birthday and a day dedicated to you “taking time off” can be a huge threat to their feelings of safety. And so, these days are double whammies for our kids:
There is a demand or expectation placed upon them.
Their main support person is not able or seems unwilling to support.
The next piece of this is examining your why. Why do you want or need to celebrate these days as you are attempting or planning to do so? I ask you that because honestly, we did the whole breakfast in bed thing because we were surrounded by that idea. I actually don’t like having someone make my breakfast. I like it made in a particular way and I hate having breakfast in bed as I can’t stand the thought of crumbs in the bedsheets.
For me, being able to quietly potter about without a fuss serves me much better. I appreciate it can be a hard learning curve for the whole family to be able to do that though.
PDA is not a static disability. It’s not like not having legs where you cannot walk on legs ever. It’s a state which fluctuates depending on everything being experienced. If your child is in burnout, they will have extremely little or no capacity for self-regulation. If your child is fully seen, heard, valued and supported there will be many times when they have a great deal of ability to self-regulate and in those times, you will be so proud of them.
If your child is not able to handle Mother’s Day, please know, it is no indication that they do not love or appreciate you, regardless of how their fight, flight, freeze or fawn presents. If your child cannot handle Mother’s Day, it is an indication that they cannot bear to be without your regulating them and they need you immensely.
