One of the hardest aspects of learning about PDA for me was letting go of traditional parenting.
I was brought up in a very conservative family by a father who chose law as his career and sent me to a religious school with hundreds of years of history. Tradition was basically all I knew. The popular parenting approaches when our daughter was a toddler were 123-Magic and the naughty step. These weren’t working for us and we couldn’t understand why.
Even after we began to understand PDA, I clung to the traditional model. After all, it had worked for centuries hadn’t it? It worked for me didn’t it? Well, actually, no. I was a quiet rebel in school – always finding ways to circumvent the system – and I had to completely rebuild my relationship with my parents in adult life. Looking at the statistics for teenage mental health, it is clear that this model isn’t working for many, many, people.
As I finally let go of the ideas of rewards, sanctions, consequences and punishments, I found another problem: everybody around me knew better than me and they were more than happy to share their opinion of my parenting. It takes a huge amount of courage and faith to deliberately swim against the tide of popular opinion; especially when those opinions are coming from people you have trusted and looked up to your whole life. You need to be convinced in order to convince others.
Now, I have spent a decade learning and teaching about PDA. I have seen low demand and low arousal approaches work both in my own family and in others. I have studied the research and listened to amazing people who really know their stuff. Now, it is easy to be convinced. Back then, though, the self-doubt was constant.
If you are going through this now, have faith! Many others have been where you are and they have seen that changing your mindset really does work. When you are having a wobble, ask for support. The Facebook groups and the PDA Society enquiry line are great places to find reassurance that low arousal approaches really do work. You can do this!