Well, Mollie managed about four weeks of school before the tell signs that all was not well began to show at home.  What I have learned is that Mollie, at age 12, now has a different presentation of PDA than she used to have.  With maturing years and better emotional regulation she now falls into the category of compliant child at school, where she masks her difficulties, compared to how she used to present which was explosive in all settings.

She was also masking her anxieties and fears at home because I was not detecting any inner angst or difference in behaviour at home. But eventually she could mask no more.  During an eight day period we experienced two massive internal / emotional meltdowns.  Again these were different than the past because they didn’t involve violence but did involve hours of sobbing and being in complete inner turmoil.  We haven’t seen the likes of these for years but Mollie has quite rightly linked this change in her internal state as coinciding with attempting to access school.

She has also described the intense emotional meltdowns as far harder for her to cope with than the explosive ones.  She states that an explosive meltdown gets everything out enabling her to be able to recover and move on from the incident far quicker.  Her desire to not show those behaviours is a huge internal battle which results in an emotional meltdown which leaves her exhausted, very low and can take days to recover from.

In a nutshell the demands and expectations that she has placed on herself by wanting to go to school and to do well by complying and trying to be ‘normal’ (her words not mine) have caused her to, in her own words, devolve.  Consequently she has withdrawn from school and only attended for three out of the past ten days.

She describes herself as being in a state of constant fear and experiencing a constant internal battle.  She desperately wants to do well and to behave in a typical fashion but her demand avoidant side is constantly battling against the compliant side telling her to avoid, throw things, shout and scream and so on.  She describes it as like having two Mollie’s in her head, two alter egos both trying to dominate the situation.

When demands are low and she is in full control the compliant Mollie becomes the stronger alter ego but when any pressure is applied either real or implied or even from Mollie herself then the demand avoidant alter ego becomes the stronger of the two.

I have become so used to living with Mollie and making the necessary adjustments for her that is has become second nature and totally normal for us.  I had even thought that the child often described as having an extreme presentation of PDA had perhaps, due to time and the correct handling strategies, become far less severe in her presentation.

The reality is that her avoidance and anxiety is as extreme as ever when she is not in the safe bubble of home.  The outward presentation may appear calmer and more accepting of demands but the internal fear of not being in control is as strong and as dominant as ever.

Mollie has proven that within the home the more control she has, the less that she is restricted by others and the more choice that she has over her own life the more she is able to succeed.  Let’s just hope that we eventually manage to secure this same flexibility and choice within education in order to give her a chance to succeed and to escape her emotional cage that has kept her a prisoner for so long.

So what to do now, well, all we can do is to try to reduce any triggers and to give her more control at school by making fair and reasonable adjustments in line with her SEN, while simultaneously ensuring that home is as calm as possible.

Hopefully by stripping back time and time again when her anxieties rise we should eventually be able to help her find a suitable plateau where demands and tolerance become more evenly balanced.  Will this be enough, well, only time will tell? Hopefully as soon as more support can be released we may be able to create a more flexible and less structured school day for her.

On a positive note I have learned a lot about Mollie and how she will cope in school and what type of provision may be suitable.  Although Mollie has come on in leaps and bounds over the past few years her extreme anxiety over demands and not being in control will mean that she will still require maximum support and flexibility within school.  Even following a very short timetable has been too structured, too routine and therefore to demanding for her to follow.

Tomorrow is another day and a fresh school week, so we’ll get up, dust ourselves down and try again.