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SUPPORT GROUP FOR SDE for PDA continues for 2024 with monthly live calls and in-your-own-time text forums in Discord – this is an ongoing group for PDA families exploring SDE/Natural Learning/unschooling and Democratic school staff and SDE Facilitators supporting PDA in their settings, you can sign up here or contact OurShYftCommunity@gmail.com
SDE for PDA – Getting Together
This will be an unstructured discussion call focusing on supporting social interaction for SDE for PDA at home either as a parent or as a private SDE facilitator, as well as exploring the possibility of PDA families creating group options for virtual and/or real life connection and even SDE education startups for PDA kids and teens. I invite you to join this stand-alone call –
Please contact
OurShYftCommunity@gmail.comto book
(For financial arrangements please contact ourshyftcommunity@gmail.com or theshiftwillcome@gmail.com No PDA parent is ever turned away – many thanks to those who make this possible.)
Adapting Your SDE Setting
to Support PDA
This call will unpack some useful ways that an SDE facility can prepare for a new PDA student signup. I invite you to join this stand-alone call –
Please contact
OurShYftCommunity@gmail.comto book
SUPPORT GROUP FOR SDE for PDA continues for 2023 starting on the 29th Jan – this is an ongoing group for PDA families exploring unschooling and SDE Facilitators supporting PDA in their settings, you can sign up here or contact theshiftwillcome@gmail.com
“It’s so comforting and helpful and soothing to hear other parents going through the exact same scenarios and struggles. These conversations blow my mind because they give me so much guidance and truly help me.” – Unschooling Mom T.H.
” I am SO grateful … to connect with people who are not responding in devastation and crisis (as so many parents new to PDA – understandably – are) but with a valuing of what these interesting, unusual children bring to the world and to our families. It makes it so much easier to be calm, to see what is fundamentally important (and what isn’t) and to see things in terms of opportunities rather than losses … ” PDA parent H.M.
SDE for PDA – there are several free, public videos to help you get started with SDE for PDA at youtube.com/@JeannaClements
Join me together with Casey Ehrlich for a free online workshop on 2nd Nov 2022 at 6pm SAST, 12noon ET, 4pm UTC. We will be taking a good look at what PDA is, what SDE is, and why Self-Directed Education is so helpful for Pathological Demand Avoidance. You can book direct with Miami Sudbury School or contact me on theshiftwillcome@gmail.com Although the session is free, if you are able, please make a gratitude donation for this session, to Riverstone Village SDE learning community in South Africa, Many thanks!
UPCOMING: supporting SDE for PDA at home/unschooling, Sat July 16 at 5.30pm SAST, $50, booking essential please contact theshiftwillcome@gmail.com to book or to arrange a discounted rate (no PDA parent should ever go without support merely for financial reasons!) Please view the recording of the foundational call here before attending this call.
I am excited to be joining Harry Thompson, Eliza Fricker and Laura Kerby’s USA event in Miami 2nd November 2022 – I will be Zooming in to present a session on SDE for PDA. Tickets are available here
UPDATE – sadly due to slow ticket sales, Harry&co had to cancel their Miami trip due to needing to cover physical travel costs. HOWEVER, the fabulous Casey Ehrlich and I will Zoom in to be there for everyone who was hoping to attend, see above!
Je’anna Clements PDA YouTube PlayList
PDA stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance, a neurotype that makes it hard to comply with ordinary everyday demands.
Je’anna Clements reframes this as “Perceived Demand Anxiety” because the core dynamic of PDA is that when something is Perceived as a Demand, even if other people don’t intend as such and can’t see how it can be interpreted that way, Anxiety escalates, making it increasingly difficult to comply.
This can mean that even slight interference with Autonomous Motivation, even implied pressure to learn something, can make it impossible for the PDAer to tackle the learning task. This makes mainstream education approaches an extremely bad fit. Self-Directed Education is a blessing for any child, but probably an absolute necessity for PDA kids.
Appropriate support for PDAers in all life circumstances including SDE settings is crucially important – and seldom achieved without significant effort to understand how PDA actually works.
PDAers are generally very kind, considerate, playful, creative, deeply just and generous people, blessing us with the complex depth of insight necessary to create truly non-coercive spaces and practices. They can catalyse deep personal growth for those who engage them, and bring about profound healing in family relationships. They can also act as litmus-tests to help SDE facilitators and facilities reach best practice standards.
However, the price of this gift is a hyper-sensitivity to particular kinds of stress that put them into fight/flight/freeze states in circumstances that most other people don’t even see as stressful whatsoever. The anxiety, vulnerability, panic and pain of the PDAer often only become visible once effective support begins. The tragedy that unfolds as a result, is that from the outside, PDA can just look like mood swings, bossiness, entitled brattiness, orneriness and extreme willful obstinacy, with bouts of ‘unpredictable’ explosive, extreme or even violent behaviour. For these reasons PDAers (and their parents) are almost always misunderstood, judged, and inappropriately treated to the point of trauma, even in SDE spaces. The more that the PDAer is mishandled, the more things escalate and the worse things get.
Trauma-informed practices and Horizontal Communication approaches can help significantly, but only a clear understanding of PDA specifically, brings the understanding that is necessary for support to be effective and for experience and behaviour to become manageable for all concerned.
If you do not have access to an official diagnosis but believe that you may be dealing with PDA, it can be useful to first try a simple strategy for dealing with Enneagram Type 8. “When you disagree, make deals. I know that this is also counter-intuitive, but this is what feels fair to an 8. When the 8 is adamant about his or her truth about what is or isn’t fair, don’t back away, don’t back down and don’t assert dominance. It will only trigger a huge power struggle that you can never win. Instead, make a deal. Say something like: “Ok, you win this time, next time it is my turn.” Ask him or her to give his or her word. Then whatever you do keep your word. The 8 will then feel compelled to keep his or her word and will reluctantly comply when you remind him or her of the deal the two of you made. And never back away from this, ever.
Begin with little deals, then the bigger deals as the 8 grows up. Teach that a true leader has power because they keep their word.” Full article by Katherine Fauvre here
Assuming that you manage to be consistent with this strategy, it might work briefly for a PDAer, but if it continues to work as time goes by, then not only will you have solved your problem, you will also have the insight that it’s unlikely actually PDA, because while PDA might be able to do this sometimes, it will increasingly become a pressure to do it because now it’s the respected routine thing. So for type 8 this will get easier and smoother, for PDA it will increasingly stop working. At that point Je’anna recommends that you read up previous posts and watch live hangouts posted on Harry Thompson’s Facebook page, check out Julia Daunt on Facebook – she also does consults as does Casey Ehrlich ; join a Facebook support group (there are several, with different feels, so you may want to audition a few), and consider doing a course or consult with Harry, Laura Kerby of PAST, or if you are an SDE parent or facilitator, with Je’anna herself. Je’anna’s support group for SDE/PDA is housed within Our ShYft Community on Discord – you can sign up here or contact OurShYftCommunity@gmail.com for subsidised membership or general updates.
Here is an introductory video on Supporting PDAers in Self-Directed Education