Anyone in education supporting a child with PDA?

[Sometimeswinning]

Have been working the last year with a child who has been diagnosed PDA. Took me a while but I’ve finally got it and seen so many improvements. Anyone in education in the same boat?

If provision detailed, specified and quantified in F is not being provided, I hope the parents know they can enforce provision, including via JR if necessary. (No, not a judgement of you or saying you are doing anything wrong. Just a comment that I hope the parents know.)

Again, not involved. I kind of want to keep this specifically about PDA though. Thankyou.

I have my own child with highly complex needs, the most difficult to manage being a very extreme PDA profile and reading these experiences blows my mind… seeing what some children with the same profile are capable of when mine is so very disabled by it and was never a candidate for mainstream school (or in fact any school).

But, my advice to anyone who lives or works with PDAers is to remember that they are not PDA in isolation. Sometimes I find that people wrongly assume that a certain behaviour or difficulty is just the PDA when it sometimes isn’t - perhaps because PDA is the most obvious need.

For example, a very simple example might be a child who won’t wear socks and sometimes adults around them might assume it’s demand-related when actually it’s a sensory issue or there may be motor deficits which make putting them on difficult. An unwillingness to join certain activities may be related to noise or other sensory sensitivities, or a difficulty understanding what they’re supposed to be doing due to receptive language deficits or challenges with paying attention, not just rooted in a response to demands.

Personally for example I found that for a long time the extent of my child’s difficulties with transitions - some of which is definitely in a very “typically” autistic sort of way - were all written off as being demand avoidance. Of course it’s near impossible to support in the same way we would support a non-PDA autistic child with transitions, but if you don’t understand what you’re looking at then it’s impossible to find the right supports and adjustments.

What do you do when you reach rhe point theyve done the bits in that, that they don't mind doing, and are left with the handful of ones they find harder and do really need to do because gaps are forming in their learning due to topics /question styles they dont ever choose when choosing for themselves?

There will be gaps. But there will be bigger gaps if they spend their school year being excluded/suspended etc. The main aim for me is to set a routine. Have expectations and boundaries which get more and more as the child learns to deal with their emotions. Work genuinely comes second for me.

Plus it’s not behaviour as in they will refuse to do work, they are just as inquisitive and imaginative as any child. Any child can refuse to do work they struggle with. The avoidance skills of any primary school child is pretty impressive!