These are exciting times indeed for the PDA Community.  At long last this condition is finally gaining some recognition and mainstream media coverage.  Unfortunately along with this comes the usual and expected harsh, hurtful and uneducated comments from the ignorant, those who are simply blinkered and unwilling to learn or to understand.

To all of the wonderful parents out there who are living with PDA on a daily basis please, I implore you, simply ignore such rubbish and turn the other cheek.  We know and we understand each other and what an amazing job we do in such incredibly trying and difficult circumstances.  We are actually the polar opposite of bad parents because we have to be amazing parents in order to simply survive each day while simultaneously nurturing, guiding and managing the most complex of children.  Not to mention factoring in the extra skill of often having to be our child’s teacher, advocate, physiologist, psychiatrist and occupational therapist all rolled into one.

Although this awareness will bring out the worst in the ignorant it will, on a positive note, help to transform the lives and long term prospects of so many children and their families. So if we ignore the bleating’s of the bad parenting brigade and focus only on the positives then only good can come out of this exciting time.

When I discovered PDA, five years ago, awareness was very thin on the ground and information and support on the net consisted of the PDA Society (formerly known as the PDA Contact Group), the National Autistic Society (who still had PDA in their related conditions section), Autism East Midlands ( formerly known as Norsaca), The Maze and the wonderful You Tube videos by Neville Starnes https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6m8JcNEqX6e-2uBHE25BFw.  Since then awareness has steadily grown and now it is absolutely mushrooming.  I must confess that I did wonder if I would see this during my lifetime and I am stunned at how fast that it has all appeared to suddenly come together.

I can only hope that this coverage not only raises awareness for distraught parents who are desperately trying to understand their child’s complex and confusing behaviour but that it also raises awareness among professionals.

In the support group that I help to run we are having more and more parents joining us who have had professionals suggest PDA to them, in relation to their child’s difficulties, which is greatly encouraging. It wasn’t so long ago that NO professionals appeared to have heard of PDA.  It really was a case of parents trying to educate the professionals and becoming increasingly frustrated at hitting brick wall after brick wall.  Also, as a parent, when it dawns on you that your knowledge has become greater than the professional who you are turning to for support it does not instil a sense of confidence at all.  So let’s just hope that this is a massive turning point for awareness and acceptance of PDA within the professional community also.

With special thanks to Elizabeth Newson, Phil Christie, Ruth Fidler and the PDA Society for their long term efforts to get PDA recognised, accepted and for leading PDA to where we find it today, PDA is coming out of the shadows.

Also thank you to Dr R Jayaram, Dr D Harper and Maverick TV for making a very sensitively approached series and for being brave enough to go public with PDA and to stamp their colours well and truly to the PDA mast.

Born Naughty? Channel 4, Episode 1 http://youtu.be/pMTc_799URA

‘This Morning’ interview discusses PDA with Dr Jayaram http://www.itv.com/thismorning/are-children-born-naughty

For more information about PDA please visit http://www.pdasociety.org.uk/ and http://www.thepdaresource.com/index.html