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Born from 20 years of friendship, during which they navigated the trenches of autism parenting and advocacy, the Refrigerator Moms is Kelley Jensen and Julianna Scott’s way of reaching out to parents waging the same battles they were. Their purpose with this podcast is to clear the fog, silence the noise, and find a path through neurodivergence for parents that are stuck between bad choices. They tackle parenting topics such as mom guilt, tantrums, pathological demand avoidance, siblings, medication, comorbidities, social media, and much more.Â
Kelley Jensen 00:00
Does giving your child a choice between showering first or doing his homework first qualify as PDA parenting or an ABA technique? Today on the Refrigerator Moms, I'm here with my friend Julianna. I'm Kelley Jensen. We are the Refrigerator Moms. And today we are revisiting the conversation of pathological demand avoidance. After you got back from a neurodivergence summit and had an invigorating conversation, we really felt like our hypothesis that the techniques of PDA are not as diametrically opposed to many of the teachings of ABA as have been presented in social media and with my parenting coaches across the world, I guess because PDA has become such a dominant parenting style. So you did a deep dive.
Julianna Scott 00:56
I did.
Kelley Jensen 00:57
You, of course, in all of your research have outdone yourself with this one and this companion guide we're gonna make available. It's fully cited in research as all of your stuff. But we have brought.
Julianna Scott 01:10
We've got visual aids.
Kelley Jensen 01:11
Visual aids.
Julianna Scott 01:11
So you've gotta go to YouTube to see our visual aids.
Kelley Jensen 01:14
Yes. Yours, of course, is a huge binder.
Julianna Scott 01:17
It's a nice binder.
Kelley Jensen 01:18
And mine is what I could find,
Julianna Scott 01:20
which is my binder. Is even labeled behavior notes 2005-2007. This is a multi volume work.
Kelley Jensen 01:28
This is all I've got for 10 years. So. But no, it's all up here. It's all up.
Julianna Scott 01:33
I was gonna say it's not something that people normally keep. I mean, especially not color coded. Isn't that beautiful?
Kelley Jensen 01:40
Yes. Yes. But I'm great. You must have known that at some point you were gonna be a refrigerator mom, because I didn't. You had all of this to go back through. And we did a deep dive. And I even consulted with Beau for some of his old programs and we have had a pretty good PDA or ABA, can't really tell the difference.
Julianna Scott 02:03
It was good to go back to this because we've often talked about this is PDA parenting, ABA parenting, just sort
Kelley Jensen 02:12
of with a new vernacular.
Julianna Scott 02:14
Yeah. And to go back and actually read what we were doing and the approaches and everything like that. It really does. It did bring it all back, but also it did really align with a lot of the collaborative parenting and things like that. So what we're not gonna talk about, but what partly prompted this conversation was I've always been a little struck by the resistance to ABA and the absolute. Like, it's a no go. It's not just a we don't prefer that. It's a do not do.
Kelley Jensen 02:50
Yes.
Julianna Scott 02:50
And it's almost like, you know, don't even go there with PDA groups. And I was kind of curious and part of the conversation I had, it kind of just sort of dawned on me that with the rise of PDA was also sort of the private equity takeover of ABA. And I think that it did. ABA did change. Like what we went back to was in this binder with all of my lovely therapists notes and everything like that from the home visits and all of that. I know that things are done differently now, but like we've said before on previous podcasts, it's like, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's like there's still really good principles. In fact, they're so good that, you know, you may be doing them.
Kelley Jensen 03:34
And well, I. It seems like every other day I am quoting you a post from a social media influencer that has labored herself a PDA coach. And the offer two choice. Offer several choices. And if that's too many, scale it down, right? Scaffold it down to two choices, make one choice novelty. If they really only have one choice, right? Interject, humor, distraction, all of these things that, well, they're in your binder and they're in Beau's book of idioms.
Julianna Scott 04:05
Yes, I know, I love it. I mean, and we're not. The point of this isn't to just to bash PDAers at all. It's really to say, like, don't ignore a really big. I mean, don't ignore ABA as a real functionality therapy for your child. And you know, and resist it and say like, oh, I, you know, on principle, I can't really do those things.
Kelley Jensen 04:36
Especially if you're going to do it without any further context and without any background and without really an apples to apples comparison. Because we always say it's all behavior, right? I mean, you need your kid to take a shower, right? You need your kid to take a shower. And if you're getting advice that says no, your kid doesn't need to shower, okay, but eventually your child might need to shower. And then where are you? You're still back to at some point it's behavioral. I did want to say that this is a very important point that I highlighted. And I think the crux of people's legitimate arguments for all parenting is make sure the goal is comfort and function of your child. Right? And that's particularly important with neurodivergent children. We want comfort and function, function meaning continued growth, continued adaptation over compliance and appearance. So we do acknowledge that compliance and appearance is something that is distressing to us all. It should be the goal of no parent. And I admit that back in the day, people wanted you to look a certain way and children were to be seen and not heard and say please and thank you, hug adults that made them uncomfortable. And none of that was appropriate or right or effective parenting. So this is about comfort and function. And the two techniques are not mutually exclusive.
Julianna Scott 06:04
No. And if this, if a PDA parent is listening, I mean, we give you permission to use ABA, especially if it's covered by your. That's the thing. It's like if that's covered by insurance and not behind a paywall or something like that, like, you know, take advantage of that because you're probably going to be doing things that you approve of, actually. This episode of the Refrigerator Moms is brought to you by Brain Performance Technologies. Brain Performance Technologies is a specialty mental health clinic that offers Magnetic E resonance therapy, or MeRT, for autistic people aged 3 or older. MeRT is a transcranial magnetic stimulation protocol that utilizes an EEG diagnostic to deliver personalized magnetic pulses to stimulate the brain and build neural pathways effective in managing autistic symptoms.
Kelley Jensen 07:22
So let's get right into it. So the first contention that you uncovered was that PDA, all of the research that you read, common research, says that it began in the 80s in United Kingdom, but you traced it back actually quite a bit further than that, starting with Skinner, right?
Julianna Scott 07:33
Yes. So let me tell you about that. So that part of that B.F. Skinner, he's in the pantheon of behaviorists. So yes. So the idea is. So talk about the PDA idea of the low arousal. So that was one of the main features of PDA. PDAers is this, you know, the. It's a demand is put on a child and they, they are dysregulated. And so that anxiety, it's all wrapped up in the anxiety. So it's. So the point is to create a low arousal profile. So you want to reduce demands, avoid triggers like sustained eye contact, get down on the child's level, remove an audience during a meltdown. This is really close to ABA's antecedent behavior, behavior consequence. So what's interesting though, and talking about the B.F. Skinner, there's a term for this when they talk about equalizing and leveling. So that's like getting down with your child. So the PDA described pattern where a person takes control, resists authority on principle, or corrects an authority figure specifically to restore a sense of fairness when they feel dominated, so there's a term for this in behavior analysis, and it's almost 70 years old. And it goes back to B.F. Skinner, and he's the founder of the school of thought most PDA advocates think they're rejecting. So he named this exact pattern in 1953. So he called it counter control and behavior whose whole function is to weaken the other person's control, not just to escape one task. So researchers have described counter control as behavior that shows up specifically when someone feels controlled. And it doesn't just avoid the demand, it pushes back against that person, making it so. A 2022 paper reframed it as something like, if I let you boss me, something bad happens. If I refuse, I stay safe. Which is close to that anxiety and autonomy logic that PDA guidance uses. So it's just in different vocabulary.
Kelley Jensen 09:49
So this is a theory that describes a certain personality type that has been around for a long. I would argue that there is this drive for autonomy can be a person's greatest asset. Right. If they are. You know, I think we can all think of examples of people we know in our life who have relied on themselves because of their personality and of the fear of letting someone else have autonomy over them. So how to work with a child that presents that kind of personality is going to be a little bit more collaborative by nature. Unless you, unless you're going to go like an old school parent and do things that we don't recommend, things that are not in the best interest of parenting a child. But you never want to stomp out their spirits, you want to grow their spirits, you want to enhance their innate belief in themselves and their innate trust of what they can do for themselves. But developmentally it might not be possible. Right? A parent child relationship is by definition, you parent them, you have the oversight over their well being. And there are some, we have all read some loopy incidents there of parents not parenting their children in pursuit of their autonomy and not in pursuit of their care. So, right. Walking the balance between doing what you need to do as a parent, which is making sure they're safe, making sure that they're well cared for, making sure that their teeth are not rotted, that their medical needs are met, can be in direct conflict with their need for autonomy.
Julianna Scott 11:10
What was interesting is as I was looking at this information and looking back at the binder and things like that, I think my son would, if I were a mom now, I would say like, oh yeah, that definitely describes my child.
Kelley Jensen 11:27
I always say that 100%, every single person that has a 20 something year old autistic child reads the description of PDA. That's my kid.
Julianna Scott 11:35
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, this binder is full of, you know, his resistance to control, but it was never looked at as like, oh, we need to make him comply, make him comply.
Kelley Jensen 11:50
Take away his compliance and appearance was never the goal. No, it was always comfort, function. We were always walking the line between making him comfortable and helping him function to the best of his ability. Right. And sometimes those are diametrically opposed, depending on what the child's frame of reference is.
Julianna Scott 12:08
Right. And also what also struck me too is a lot of his autonomy. He wanted also to assert his own dominance over the rest of the family, including his younger brother and his parents. And so I think back, it's like, well, if I had not. If we had not embraced ABA and a lot of what we were working toward, what would that have looked like? I mean, how would he have kind of ruled the house and what would have happened to everybody else in the family?
Kelley Jensen 12:43
I mean, he certainly probably would not be as accomplished as he is today. Right. I think he, at some point the light bulb goes on and him as a member of the family and what that looks like and wanting to be part of the group and realizing is safest when he's part of his family unit occurred to him. And that's a maturity and that is sticking with it. And that's all of these exercises that sometimes feels like are progressing so slowly. It's like watching grass grow and, you know, hang in there because it clicks.
Julianna Scott 13:12
It's incremental. Yes.
Kelley Jensen 13:14
So let's start with what we found to be in common.
Julianna Scott 13:17
Yeah, yeah. So anyone familiar with PDA is probably also familiar with PANDA. Okay, so let's break down the PANDA framework. And what was interesting is we can break down the PANDA framework and then also see where there are parallels with ABA.
Kelley Jensen 13:36
Okay, great.
Julianna Scott 13:37
Okay, so P number one is prioritize and compromise.
Kelley Jensen 13:42
Prioritize and compromise.
Julianna Scott 13:43
So that's offering real choices and explaining the reason behind a request.
Kelley Jensen 13:49
Okay, so offer real choices. So two choices.
Julianna Scott 13:52
Like your example, your first example.
Kelley Jensen 13:54
Yep. So two choices. Do you want to take a shower or do your homework first? Right. So the message is you have to do both. So that might be a problem for some children or some children might feel that as long as they get to pick, they're fine.
Julianna Scott 14:06
Right.
Kelley Jensen 14:07
You kind of trying to figure out what kind of kid you got. Right. And you might have a kid that says, I don't want to shower at all, I will not shower okay, well then maybe you're going to compromise and. Okay, well then you'll shower tomorrow or do. You'll shower tomorrow morning or you'll shower tomorrow night.
Julianna Scott 14:24
But the shower is happening.
Kelley Jensen 14:25
The shower is happening. You get to pick when.
Julianna Scott 14:29
Right.
Kelley Jensen 14:30
So I would say that that is what I learned to do in.
Julianna Scott 14:34
Yeah, it's spot on with the ABA parallel of choice making. Choice making antecedent intervention. Yes. So, yeah, it's textbook.
Kelley Jensen 14:44
All right, so then what's the A?
Julianna Scott 14:46
The A is anxiety management. So this goes back to the low arousal.
Kelley Jensen 14:49
Okay.
Julianna Scott 14:50
So reduce uncertainty, treat. So PDAers will say they want to treat meltdowns as panic.
Kelley Jensen 14:56
Okay.
Julianna Scott 14:57
And so. And not defiance. And the ABA parallel is the antecedent based interventions.
Kelley Jensen 15:04
So figure out what's causing.
Julianna Scott 15:05
Yes.
Kelley Jensen 15:06
So in the example of wanting to shower, if my child doesn't want to shower, why does he not want to shower? Is it a sensory issue that he doesn't like being wet? Is it that it takes too long? Is it boring? So how can we build scaffolding around making this everyday necessity, you know, something easier for him? And that some. That's collaboration. Right. That sometimes that's investigating, that sometimes that's note taking.
Julianna Scott 15:32
Right, Right. But also what's interesting is PDA advice is to reduce uncertainty. And that's a lot of what ABA therapists try to do, like with visual schedules. And sometimes that is brought up. You've mentioned that sometimes that's brought up as the laminated.
Kelley Jensen 15:50
I saw a PDA coach with. She had her version of a laminate. And I was think those are some of his choices that he get to pick. So again, his choices where he was going to do a preferred activity and he liked. These are all the things he liked. So. But laminated choices.
Julianna Scott 16:09
Laminated choices, that was, I mean, PECS, good old PECS. Visuals, you know, a social story.
Kelley Jensen 16:15
I want to add a little bit to the conversation about communication and language. So don't assume. One of the things I don't like about PDA teachings is it assumes articulation of. My son might not have been able to articulate why he didn't like a shower.
Julianna Scott 16:35
Right.
Kelley Jensen 16:35
So he might not have been like, oh, the water is a sensory. You know, it creates a sensory panic for me. He might not have had that kind of language. He might have been able to tell me, too cold.
Julianna Scott 16:45
Yeah.
Kelley Jensen 16:46
So that would have been something that I would have had. Maybe it would have been an exercise for the ABA therapist. Gee, he really hates to shower. And we can't figure out what it is about showering he doesn't like. And we might have said, is the water warm? Is the water cold? Do we need to do bath? Do we need. And we might have been figuring it out because he might not have had the social skills or, I'm sorry, the language skills to be able to articulate what it was about the shower that he didn't like. So a lot of the collaboration approach, you're going to need crutches for. If you have a child, don't assume that because they can talk that they can articulate very complicated sensory needs.
Julianna Scott 17:22
I mean, sometimes they aren't sure what it is that's bothering them.
Kelley Jensen 17:25
You try different things.
Julianna Scott 17:26
A lot of that is, you know, being a detective. And you can often be a detective with your child.
Kelley Jensen 17:30
Collaboration, then that's part of the collaboration.
Julianna Scott 17:33
That's part of the collaboration. It's like, let's, you know, let's try different shower toys. Let's try different things.
Kelley Jensen 17:38
But I would say that in the example of showering, you certainly do it less often than you like. That's fine. But you. You're gonna kick the can, you're gonna hit the end of the road. So if the advice is don't make them shower at all until it's their choice.
Julianna Scott 17:53
Right.
Kelley Jensen 17:53
I would say that it's a very real possibility that there will be some sort of a skin rash, that there will be. That you. You'll be creating a bigger problem later, and that the longer it eludes them as a routine, the bigger the problem might be down the road. And that's kind of something. All, again, comfort and function. Right. So when will don't make them shower ever become impede their function.
Julianna Scott 18:15
Right, Right. So, I mean, anxiety management is a huge one, but I think that we're all in this same boat of wanting
Kelley Jensen 18:23
to reduce anxiety and naming anxiety and
Julianna Scott 18:26
validating it, naming it, making notes on
Kelley Jensen 18:30
it, and gee, have we hit the end of the road? Have we hit the end of the road? And is there medication necessary? So the more you do of this, the more you collaborate with other people, the more you can answer that question and kind of put your head on the pillow. We have a good system in place. And he still needs a bit of medication.
Julianna Scott 18:47
Right, Right.
Kelley Jensen 18:48
Okay.
Julianna Scott 18:48
So what's N? N is negotiation and collaboration. So PDAs work with the child as an equal and prioritized trust. And ABA is functional communication training, just like we're talking about teaching a real way to say, you know, not now, instead of escalating.
Kelley Jensen 19:04
Right. So I cannot shower tonight. I am fried. You know, how can I get that point across? And how can I help my child understand that at some point there will be a shower and I might have to let go. I want him to shower every night, but he might only be able to do every other. He might only have the spoons for every other night, but there will be a shower. But also, how can I make that comfortable for him?
Julianna Scott 19:28
Right. I think negotiation and collaboration is pretty much a hallmark.
Kelley Jensen 19:33
Well, and in the showering example, I will tell you that the. The. It does change to eventually. I mean, I. We had shower games and we had shaving cream, and we had, like, soap pens and all of this fun stuff. And, you know, eventually it got to be a. A coping mechanism for a long, hard day. I mean, I think everybody feels better after a hot shower. But eventually it started to be something that. It clicked with him that this is time to myself. And he started to like it. And I was so grateful for that because he did smell. But it was a long road of trying to figure out the boundary was, oh, no, we have to take a shower. The negotiation was maybe not as much as I'd like the negotiation.
Julianna Scott 20:28
I mean, and this overlaps. A lot of. A lot of what we were doing in these early years was also school preparation for school. And then when he started kindergarten. And some of the negotiation I saw here was also school based. Like, okay, like two days a week, he was going to be with all of the kids at recess. And a couple of days, the other days of school, he was gonna get to be alone, like, go to the library or do something. We negotiated, okay, this was. And it was hard without having somebody there to help facilitate that process. And instead of just leaving him out there to be anxious, we were like, okay, let's find a place where he can just be quiet and be alone.
Kelley Jensen 21:15
Yeah.
Julianna Scott 21:17
And we negotiated that with him too. And there's always collaboration. I think that the notion that there
Kelley Jensen 21:27
couldn't be collaboration, the notion that you're just gonna force your will on them, I think has long been abandoned with good reason.
Julianna Scott 21:34
Yeah. Yeah. So D is disguise and manage demands. So phrase things indirectly and match the demand to the person's current tolerance. That's a PDA point of view. And the ABA point of view is stack easy, already agreed upon, agreed to tasks before a harder one. Yep.
Kelley Jensen 21:51
So I love to do a game of Hangman. I'm going to do my list, my lesson, and I get a chance to do some hangman when I'm done. Or dominoes. Or we had. You know, and maybe on Tuesdays we get to do dominoes first, because that's really what I need. And I'm gonna make the chart of the list of things that we're gonna do. And to the extent you can do all that.
Julianna Scott 22:08
Right? Yeah. There's lots of examples in here of, oh, let's do the circles of intimacy that we've talked about or something like that. And it's like, let's make a fun poster. Let's name all of. Who are we gonna put in this circle, and we're gonna kind of disguise this. This as a fun activity and really get them to think about things.
Kelley Jensen 22:50
So that would be the ABA, because we did ABA, so that's what they're saying. So the PDA approach would be not so much a preferred activity as just hinting or trying to get them to see it as their own idea.
Julianna Scott 22:50
Right.
Kelley Jensen 22:50
So. Oh, I wonder if a shower would feel really. Seems really passive aggressive, doesn't it? Oh, I. I wonder if there's some new soap pens in the shower.
Julianna Scott 23:03
Yeah.
Kelley Jensen 23:04
How could I find out? I don't know. I. It feels disingenuous, and it feels like it's not good communication, and it feels. It does feel manipulative. And I've heard.
Julianna Scott 23:12
Doesn't seem passive aggressive.
Kelley Jensen 23:13
It does. It does. It doesn't feel honest.
Julianna Scott 23:15
Yeah.
Kelley Jensen 23:16
But if it works for your child. Right.
Julianna Scott 23:18
I mean, call it whatever you want. Again, it's the kind of the same thing.
Kelley Jensen 23:21
Right.
Julianna Scott 23:22
So. Yeah. So the A of PANDA is adaptation, and that's humor, novelty, flexibility, and a backup plan for PDA. So, yes, the ABA parallel is pairing a lower preference task with a higher preference one. Well, that's really the poster example I used. So let's do. Yeah, like, let's. Yes, let's do. There's. In here, there was a list of, like, what. How you should act when friends come over. I'm sure that's not something my son was like, yeah, this is a preferred activity, but they got to make a poster and they got to do some fun things with it. And he was a big. He was really big into crafts at the time, so that's really fun for him. And again, you know, there was definitely leaning into what he enjoyed doing.
Kelley Jensen 24:06
Yes. I remember Rosalie going over there and playing with fondant. Right.
Julianna Scott 24:11
Oh, there was lots of baking going on, lots of fondant.
Kelley Jensen 24:13
That was a. Definitely a preferred activity. And then he got to practice his social skills on.
Julianna Scott 24:18
Yes. And absolutely. That was a big thing. Like we were gonna do a preferred activity with another person. It's like, oh, well, you don't get to use the fondant unless you've got a friend over. So you need a friend to be a fondant.
Kelley Jensen 24:29
And so then that was kind of highly motivating to study his poster. And are you taking care of your brain? You've tried medication, you've gone to therapy, but has anyone talked to you about brain care? It is the mental health treatment no one has told you about. At Brain Performance Technologies, we help with depression, PTSD, autism and many other mental health conditions. Our treatments are drug free and non invasive. Reach out to us about insurance options. Brainperformancetechnologies.com so I had this, this little book was so cute. And it was a summer of fun. And I want to emphasize collaboration with not just ABA, but with speech. My son had extensive speech therapy and we had noticed that people speak in idioms all the time.
Julianna Scott 25:16
You know, that's a kind of a classic. You know, autistic people don't understand.
Kelley Jensen 25:22
They're literal. Have a ball means I don't have a ball. And for Beau, it would, it would cause some kind of behavior because he just, he really did not understand. And it was coming up in conversation and we thought that the school thought that working on it over the summer would be a fun project. And he did go through this whole love of bookmaking. I've got like cute little books everywhere that he made. And so he, the speech therapist would bring some concepts to the ABA therapist. And it was one of his programs over the summer. And they made octopus. There's all kinds of books about idioms. And then they would make it fun where they would try and do silly things like try to make it rain cats and dogs with little dog toys. And yeah, it would make him laugh and it would be silly. And then, you know, sometimes his sister would participate and sometimes he'd come home and, you know, show his dad an umbrella with dogs coming down from there. But all of this fun stuff and it gave him the gist of what raining cats and dogs means. Right? It gave him the gist of having a ball means fun and happy. And it was a lot of fun. And it was therapy.
Julianna Scott 26:28
No, absolutely. So I, one of the other thing about PDA that does come up that we wanted to address too is the notion of collaborative and proactive solutions. CPS. Yeah.
Kelley Jensen 26:42
Okay. Yes, yes, Ross Greene.
Julianna Scott 26:43
Yes, Ross Greene.
Kelley Jensen 26:46
Explosive child. Is that. I think that's his book.
Julianna Scott 26:49
Is that. I'm not sure.
Kelley Jensen 26:50
Yes. But it is this notion that rewards and consequences don't work. And yes, a hundred percent. We, you and I have collaborated on many meltdowns over a sticker chart and. Or where the reward was too far out in advance. If you had to wait till Friday to earn all of your stickers so that you could redeem, it was never going to work. And then we had preoccupation and meltdowns over the stickers and then we couldn't get through the day. So that was. I mean, it was just too much, right? It was too much.
Julianna Scott 27:21
It was definitely too much. It was often offered as an option and it is the go to. I will totally concede that tokens, sticker charts, all of those things. And it does work for some especially kind of rule followers that like to do that. And it did not work. I mean, I think this binder also shows like, started a sticker chart, started a star chart. It's fine for when he wanted to comply. But again, yeah, if he didn't want to do something, no sticker was going to be enough. No reward was going to come fast enough. And it introduced more problems. So the problems then became the token or the chart.
Kelley Jensen 28:10
So I would say that if you have that feature, that personality trait of your child, if that is something that is going to be high arousal, increase anxiety, the whole notion of rewards and consequences and, and the fear of getting in trouble, quote, unquote, that should be built into your ABA program, because it can be built. Since your ABA program. We had a whole thing about that where it, you know, we discovered that he liked high fives and, you know, the. Or just having a break. Right. So.
Julianna Scott 28:41
Right.
Kelley Jensen 28:42
So that if he had to have a reward that was as natural and close to the event as possible. So something about the event. Showering is perfect example. Showering is really, really hard. So earning a sticker for showering, not gonna do it. Right. And if I've got to do five stickers so that at the end of the week I could change those stickers in for something else, that was just gonna be a nightmare. But if there was something about a shower that we could latch onto that would be fun, that that would be its own reward.
Julianna Scott 29:12
Right.
Kelley Jensen 29:12
Then that was the currency that we traded in.
Julianna Scott 29:14
Right. Or our currency was something that we were already gonna give him. It was just maybe he got to choose the time.
Kelley Jensen 29:20
Yeah.
Julianna Scott 29:20
So, you know, if he wanted to watch a Clone Wars episode or something like that, then, you know, things needed to happen before that happened.
Kelley Jensen 29:28
Well, and I would also argue that. And I mean, those are really very valid points that the stickers and consequences can be a roadblock for many. But I would argue that changing the vernacular to dopamine hit right does not mask that. It's still just a sticker. A sticker chart. So the, the, the infamous donut hole example of, you know, the, the famous PDA coach that gave her child candy to get in the car every day. And that was not considered a sticker. It was considered dopamine. It was a sticker. And then the one day he didn't get his sticker, he had a massive meltdown, and so she had to buy him donut holes. And she was so proud of herself. And I was like that. That is classic autism. And no person would tell you differently.
Julianna Scott 30:17
On the flip side of the reward and consequence, a lot of those in the PDA camp hearken back to this idea of aversives, that there's also negative
Kelley Jensen 30:28
consequences and there should never be.
Julianna Scott 30:30
There should never be. And that goes back to its history with discrete trial training. And to that, I would just say, you know, be involved in your child's ABA program and if you ever see aversives being introduced or that kind of. Or maybe you, you disagree, like, okay, I don't really care if my, my kid maintains eye contact. Fair.
Kelley Jensen 30:53
Yeah.
Julianna Scott 30:54
You know, like, I mean, I, I, you know, but let's talk about. I don't think that people should be maintaining eye contact just for the sake of maintaining eye contact.
Kelley Jensen 31:03
For, for appearance and compliance. Absolutely not. But for collaboration and connection, sometimes I need to know that you hear me.
Julianna Scott 31:10
Right.
Kelley Jensen 31:10
So if it's not going to be your eye contact, how can you let me know that you hear me, that you are, you know.
Julianna Scott 31:16
Yeah. So, you know, you know what you want to want your child to know and function how they can function better. So have that conversation with the therapist. And if there's, you know, again, this binder is also proof of those tons of team meeting notes.
Kelley Jensen 31:34
Oh, yes.
Julianna Scott 31:35
And what we're planning on doing next and what worked and what didn't work. It's tons of communication about what works and what doesn't work.
Kelley Jensen 31:41
Yes.
Julianna Scott 31:41
This is not an exact science.
Kelley Jensen 31:45
And it's not a one, two, or even three year deal. It is childhood. No, no.
Julianna Scott 31:50
And so you have to be patient and just, you know, keep working and talk about collaboration.
Kelley Jensen 31:57
Oh, my gosh. I will say keep going to a penny parent that feels discouraged because it is like the progress seems so slow. We, for my son, we had to use the zones of regulation for emotional regulation just to be able to name feelings. And it was a very long process. It went on for years. And there were years where I thought, this is never working.
Julianna Scott 32:18
Right.
Kelley Jensen 32:19
But it did work. And one day I snapped at him. He was in his 20s, I think, maybe. Maybe it was about 23. I snapped at him and he said, you're red. Yeah, do you need a hug or space? And I thought, oh, it was all in there all the time, right? So hang in there, stick with it. These things, sometimes they come out a lot later. It's. It's a lot. You're playing a long game as a parent, aren't you?
Julianna Scott 32:46
You are. And going back to your first question, is it PDA, parenting style, or ABA therapy? It doesn't matter.
Kelley Jensen 32:54
It doesn't really matter.
Julianna Scott 32:55
It really doesn't matter.
Kelley Jensen 32:55
Whatever gets the job and whatever is good parenting, effective communication and moves your child forward.
Julianna Scott 33:02
Absolutely. So keep going.
Kelley Jensen 33:04
All right. Keep going. Thanks for listening.
Julianna Scott 33:06
Thanks for listening. And if you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe. And if you know people who would be interested in this conversation, please forward it along, let them know about it, and come back and listen to us again. Thanks.
Kelley Jensen 33:21
Thanks for listening.
Julianna Scott 33:21
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