Confessions of a Former BCBA & PDA Parent

Many PDA autistic children and their families remain simultaneously misunderstood, underserved, unsupported, and at times judged by the very systems intended to support them.

Not because people do not care.

Not because professionals are not trying.

But because many of the systems designed to educate, support, and protect still operate from assumptions that do not adequately account for nervous system disabilities.

And that matters.

Because when behavior is viewed primarily through the lens of compliance.

When support is measured by increasing compliance.

When progress is defined by increasing compliance.

The people most disabled by threat responses often suffer the most.

Many PDA parents eventually find themselves trying to explain that their child's behavior is not simply a matter of motivation.

Or attention.

Or access.

Or escape.

Or consequences.

Or consistency.

They find themselves trying to explain that a child whose nervous system is constantly detecting threat cannot simply learn their way out of sympathetic nervous system activation.

They find themselves trying to explain that accommodation is not giving up.

That co-regulation is not enabling.

That reducing demands is not the absence of support.

That safety is not the enemy of growth.

And yet.

Many continue to be encouraged to implement interventions that further activate threat responses.

Many continue to be told that flexibility creates dependency.

That accommodations create learned helplessness.

That increased support reinforces maladaptive behavior.

And many continue to leave appointments.

Meetings.

Trainings.

Evaluations.

Feeling unseen.

Not because people are unwilling to help.

Because the lens itself often remains invisible.

At the same time.

Many professionals are struggling too.

Particularly those beginning to recognize that lived experience is revealing things their training never prepared them to consider.

Professionals who genuinely want to help.

Professionals who entered the field to reduce suffering.

Professionals who are trying to reconcile what they were taught with what they are observing.

Professionals who are integrating new understandings of neurodiversity.

Autistic experience.

Nervous systems.

And capacity.

Many are experiencing their own version of perspective shifts.

And perspective shifts are rarely comfortable.

They require us to reconsider.

To sit in uncertainty.

To hold multiple truths.

To acknowledge that inherited systems can be filled with caring people while simultaneously producing harmful outcomes.

That is not easy.

Neither is recognizing that some of the approaches we once believed were helping may have been increasing suffering.

But perhaps that is exactly where growth begins.

Not in certainty.

In curiosity.

Not in defensiveness.

In reflection.

Not in compliance.

In understanding.

Because there is a growing number of PDA parents.

Autistic adults.

Educators.

Therapists.

Physicians.

Behavior analysts.

And community members.

Who are beginning to recognize that something important is missing from many of our current conversations about behavior.

Capacity.

Context.

Neuroception.

Humanity.

And perhaps we can call a spade a spade.

Perhaps many of our inherited systems remain deeply influenced by assumptions that confuse compliance for well-being and behavior for humanity.

And perhaps recognizing that is not an attack.

Perhaps it is an invitation.

An invitation to reconsider.

An invitation to perspective shift.

An invitation to make room for a broader understanding of human behavior.

One rooted not in control.

But in compassion.

Because every person deserves the opportunity to be understood through the fullest context of their experience.

And every system has the capacity to evolve.

And it is uncomfortable.

And it is so important.