PDA or poor parenting

[novaparty12]

I am not sure if this is the right board to ask but my friends son is 11 (year 6) and hates school. He now does 3 mornings a week (he decided this!!) and refuses to engage when he is there. He hasn't picked up a pencil since February last year and all he wants to do is be at home playing video games or reading Anthony Horowitz novels. I hate saying it but the downfall I think here is her free parenting style she has 3 kids who all make their own decisions. He is exceptionally bright and more than able to access the cirriculum. He has been assessed for autism but he will not comply or do anything any adult asks him to do and is mum doesn't agree with pushing him so at hospital appointments they cant really do any more. He is on a waiting list for CAHMS but it will be a long wait. School have told her he has no choice now but to co opeate and do the work that is expected of him or he could face exclusion. HIs books are blank not one piece of work has been done since he started the school in year 5. His last school didn't exclude him but made it very hard for him to make his own decisions so his mum changed schools. School and specialists are convinced there is no SEN as such but he gets violent towards property and people if you suggest he does anything that isn't playing video games or reading. Does that sound like PDA or is it just perhaps perhaps caused by poor parenting?? Just for context his older sister doesn't work (she is 19)she just stays home with her mum and his little sister is in nursery but still in nappies and has a dummy as her choice when she loses her dummy and nappies.

Has your friend asked you for advice?

The reality is it could be either or a combination of both. Sometimes what looks like permissive parenting can be borne out of the relentlessness of looking after a child with difficulties and it’s easy to judge when you’re not in the thick of it.

She is really really struggling and she does believe that her way is the best. She loves her kids soo much they mean everything to her and she doesn't have her own life because everything is about them. They are showered with love, but she doesn't live life conventionally. My worry and that of our other friends is that she is finding the battles with school so hard and because she will not meet them half way her sons education will suffer, we have tried talking to her about perhaps listening to others advice and taking help from professionals and maybe asking her son to try and co operate but with all her kids they make their own decisions about what they want to do and she encourages this. I know it isn't really my place and maybe we should just leave her too it but I think deep down she is really really struggling. She has been referred to professionals so many times but she won't accept their help. I can see her mental health deteriorating rapidly and I just want to help her but don't really know how too!!

The reality is the biggest issue is the lack of education, whilst the cause is important he shouldn’t be missing school whilst the reasons are investigated and interventions need to be in place now. He needs help regardless of reason. The school are not doing enough and if your friend is not careful the professionals will stop asking and start demanding. Your friend could easily be in denial and scared.

I think open has it right. It is incredibly difficult to tell from outside whether a refusal to engage with things is due to some kind of stubbornness/bad behaviour borne out of poor parenting, or the only possible parenting in response to a huge anxiety around school. The fact that her DS has a professional diagnosis of autism suggests to me that the latter scenario is at least as likely. If you haven't already, it would be worth reading up on the PDA Society website about what PDA is, the roots of the behaviour, and what parenting approaches they recommend. Dr Ross Greene uses a parenting approach that many parents of kids with PDA find helpful (which is kind of a middle path: trying to problem solve with your child, rather than against them).

You may find reading this stuff eye-opening if you haven't already. In the meantime I think all you can do is support your friend. I'm sure she's thought long and hard about how to parent her son - it's very unlikely that well-meaning advice from a non-expert outside is likely to sway her. If you think she could benefit from more external resources I guess you could encourage her to access that for the sake of her own mental health? But I suspect trying to intervene directly in her parenting approach will just drive a wedge between you.

It sounds very difficult for your friend but I think you are unlikely to get anywhere by criticising her parenting skills or choices. Suggestions that she "maybe ask her son to try and co operate" will not be new to her and she is not going to react with "silly me, if only I'd thought of that myself. Thank you soooo much for the advice."

Maybe read up on unschooling (there was a documentary on all4 recently) or look at the home ed board which might give you an insight into where your friend is coming from. Unschooling is a long game and the idea of taking a year or more to "detox" after formal education is expected I think. Also your friend's own experience of school and/or her own parents may well feed into this - she may even have been abused. If she has a very emotional response to her own experiences, she is unlikely to respond to your logical arguments in a logical way. Her job is to keep her babies safe - that is a powerful instinct.

I would approach this from a point of view of supporting your friend and her mental health, finding out where she is at and meeting her there.

I am not sure how helpful this is. Possibly not at all. But I do think most of the advice I've found useful is about what I need to do differently, and it sounds to me like your friend is not in a place where she is able, or wants, to listen. You could reflect perhaps in what skills her kids are missing that might matter to HER. She is not worried about them complying, fine, but what does she want for them? That they can communicate their needs better? Improve self esteem? But this is for further down the line in my view. You can't just step in and try to "fix" her parenting.

If she’s unwilling to accept help or advice then I’m not sure what you can do except continue to be there for her if she changes her mind.

There’s a good chance her parenting style is due to a childhood of authoritarian or controlling parenting and that she doesn’t want to do the same even though she may have taken it too far the other way.