Low Demand Parenting

Permissive parenting has been labeled the boogeyman of modern parenting—but is it time to rethink what "permissive" really means? In this episode, I unpack the history of parenting styles, challenge the fear and judgment around permissiveness, and explore why flexibility, collaboration, and permission might just be the tools we desperately need to raise thriving, neurodivergent kids. Join me as we dig into neuroscience, attachment theory, and real-life parenting moments to rewrite the rulebook for a new generation of families.

00:35 The Permissive Parent Myth

02:27 Historical Context of Parenting Styles

06:04 Reevaluating Permissive Parenting

09:27 Modern Research and Neuroscience

13:51 Practical Examples and Strategies

21:45 The Need for Permission in Parenting

Read my article in the journal (Di)verge entitled, “Rethinking Permissive Parenting”

Follow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more! 

The Low Demand Parenting Podcast is your space to let go of the pressure and embrace a more joyful, authentic approach to parenting. We hope you enjoyed this episode and would be honored if you left us a review which helps us reach more parents just like you! 

Transcript: 

Welcome to the low demand parenting podcast, where we drop the pressure, find the joy and thrive. Even when it feels like life is stuck on level 12 hard. I'm  Amanda Diekmann, author, autistic adult, and mom of three. I'm not here as an expert, but a fellow traveler.  Together, we're learning how to live more gently, authentically, and vibrantly in this wild parenting life.  

If there's one boogeyman that modern parents have been thoroughly indoctrinated against it's the permissive parent.   I'll give some examples: So. You're working with a new therapist because your kid is really struggling .  After the second appointment where they've mostly been watching and getting to know you and your child. It's time for them to give you their assessment of what's going on. And they give you a long, what they hope is a compassionate look, and say, "I know this might be hard to hear. But I think that your child needs more boundaries. They're walking all over you. It's obviously killing you. It's time for you to start putting some consequences into place. Because you don't want to be permissive."

 And if you're like me, your stomach sinks. Because you know that this person doesn't get it.  Also they've just played on your worst fear, which is that secretly, you're the cause of all this. If you were just a better parent, if you were just stronger, and more consistent, more persistent, more diligent, more boundaried. 

If you had better control over your emotions, if you were more calm, if you were just better, you wouldn't be in this particular situation. 

That is the secret underbelly of the permissive myth. And I'm going to call it a permissive myth because I actually believe we have all been fed a pack of lies about permissiveness, and it is really hampering our ability to be great parents as a culture, as a, as a parenting community. That we desperately need to get some of our tools back that have been labeled and  shamed as being permissive. And that we need a new way forward that doesn't play by the rule book. Of authoritarian, authoritative, permissive. 

But first, I need to explain what we're even talking about here so we can all get on the same page because there's some important history. behind that conversation and the therapist office. 

In the  1960s, a researcher named Diana Baumrind, did some research on parenting styles.  She was really curious about three particular parenting styles that she had identified-- authoritarian. Authoritative and permissive.  For the purposes of her research, those were the only three parenting styles.  Importantly, Baumrind had her own ideas about  what made for good parenting.  

She infamously conducted a series of longitudinal studies published in the early two thousands that argued that there was no negative impact of corporal punishment and spanking on children.  Though, she personally insisted that she did not support spanking, her research was used for many years to support the use of violence against children. It wasn't until the  development of the ACEs studies that looked at adverse childhood experiences that found that spanking was on similar level to other kinds of emotional abuse that her research was overturned. 

And of course there's been much more nuance and shift in our cultural understanding. What we have not nuanced is her rejection of permissive parenting. 

Also neuro-diversity was not just in its infancy. It wasn't even on the table.  Getting an autism diagnosis was conceived of as a life sentence. Children were often sent away into institutionalization. There was really no widespread consciousness about what we now know as the neuro-diversity movement. So to say that she didn't take it into consideration and her research is an understatement. It was not even in view.  

And bomb rinse work. She defined permissive parenting as being nurturing and warm. But reluctant to impose demands, limits or boundaries. Baumrind stated that permissive parents don't closely monitor their children's behavior or use rules or any standards of behavior, and that they perceive their children as equals.  Permissive parents were largely seen as indulgent, lenient, lazy, and overly tolerant of their children's behavior. They failed to establish appropriate limits and forced consistent discipline, and that all of this led to negative outcomes in the child's development.  

Whether any of the parents in the original study were actually lazy, indulgent. Lenient and lacking a close eye on their children's behavior. We'll never know.  But what we do know is that that is how Baumrind interpreted the behaviors that she was witnessing. Of the three parenting styles that she identified, permissive parenting had the worst outcomes of the three.

Which is important because authoritarian parenting, especially at the time and probably even still today, would have involved excessive physical punishment, extreme control over children's lives and very rigid expectations. It often came with a coldness, lack of emotional connection between parent and child. For Baumrind’s research, she found that the permissive style was even worse. 

 That dominant understanding has carried with us to today, to the point where in every interview, every podcast recording. Every guest speaker, I go on for a summit. I can guarantee there will be some version of the question.  Now isn't low demand parenting permissive.  And when people ask me that question, they're really saying. Is low demand, parenting harmful. 

Is it going to have terrible outcomes for our kids? Is it. Even worse that all the other parenting styles out there, isn't this, the very worst thing you can be as a permissive parent.  

 When people ask me that they're generally setting me up to differentiate, to say no, Low demand. Isn't permissive. And then to state all these ways that it's different.  You'll see this in gentle parenting circles as well. When gentle parenting advocates, get the question. Isn't this just permissive, you'll see people bending over backwards to differentiate gentle parenting from permissive parenting. They'll talk about "no, we have really clear boundaries and consequences in our family. They're just natural consequences. We're not going to make up a consequence of go to your room for a week. We're going to say, no, you need to do X number of chores to earn back the money so that you can pay for the thing that you broke." They're going to say, "I'm still fully in control just because I listened to my kid  doesn't mean that they're equal to me." 

These parenting advocates are not eager to question the underlying idea that permissive parenting is bad.

The assumption of what permissive parenting is, is that it's a lack of discipline on the part of the parents. That the parents  letting their kids get away with things, that they're being soft on them, that they have a hard time saying no. Often it's associated with wanting to be your kid's friend, wanting to be liked by your child.  It comes along with this idea that kids are always testing grownups and unless grownups are providing really rigid guardrails, kids feel unsafe that they feel most unsafe when they don't know who's in charge.  When they're testing, they're really wanting you to be really clear and rigid. Permissive parents are missing that, they're seeing a kid testing boundaries and they're then waffling on their boundaries or they're giving up on their boundaries and letting the kid do whatever they want. 

 The idea is kids don't want to do whatever they want. They secretly want adults who tell them what to do. They're only pretending to want autonomy and freedom and respect. 

I don't play that same game where I differentiate low demand parenting from permissive parenting. I've done it at times. So you'll certainly find it out there-- "how is low demand not permissive" and all of my answers on that. But I really think even permissive parenting isn't permissive. And I want to talk a little bit more about what that means. 

I have found that a different body of research has been really helpful for me in reconstructing what it means to have a healthy relationship between parent and child. Where these assumptions around power and around permissiveness are not already baked in.  For that, we can turn to researcher Ross Greene. 

I talked a lot more about his method, collaborative and proactive solutions in podcasts too. So you can go back and check that out. But the essential theory that green is working with and that he has used for decades in his research is that kids do well when they can. That when kids are unable to meet our expectations, when it looks to us like they're testing our boundaries or that they're being deliberately obstinate, or refusing, that in fact, they are still trying their best to meet adult expectations, but that they lack the skills to do it effectively. Since all behavior is communication,  essentially kids are desperately trying to communicate with us that they want to do well, and that they can't.

 So this flips permissive parenting on its head, struggling children don't need unrealistic expectations to be more clearly stated or to have additional painful boundaries drawn or consequences imposed. When their behaviors show that they can't meet expectations. Instead, it's up to the adults to look at those expectations and determine which ones are realistic and which ones are not.   Then to reshape their parenting or their teaching or their therapy to meet a child right where they are. 

 To really understand this a level deeper, we can turn to modern neuroscience  and attachment theory to understand what it really looks like to develop a healthy relationship. 

In that early 1960s research bomber end believed that children would only feel safe and be regulated when they had high clear expectations and when adults were firmly in control. But this new research in interpersonal neurobiology and neuroscience and attachment shows that really the opposite is true. Children can only be regulated,  self controlled, and self-disciplined, when the expectations of adults are realistic and attuned. When those children feel safe with the adult.  

Much of this revolves  around the concept of boundaries and the idea that permissive parents in particular have poor boundaries. Which usually is narrating that permissive parents are not using power control, rewards and punishments in order to manipulate children's behavior.  We can get back to what the intention of a boundary really is. The purpose of a boundary is to make a child feel safe. To reduce their anxiety and to develop a secure attachment. 

The reality is that children are very different from one another. And many of us here. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably parent an out of the bell curve child. So dominant parenting practices that work for most kids may not work for yours. And that's okay. For some children, it's absolutely true that certainty and clarity and direction and adult control makes them feel safe.  And so for those kids, more controlling behaviors might be exactly what they need.   Then for other children and I'm looking at all of your children, autonomy and self-direction make them feel safe. For these kids, for our kids these traditionally imposed boundaries that revolve around control and certainty and adult direction make them feel deeply unsafe.

 By vilifying all the tools and habits of permissive parenting, we've taken away many of the primary ways that loads of children feel safe.  We're making it even harder to be responsive and adaptive to the needs of our kids by vilifying permissive, parenting up, down sideways and everywhere.  Because the tools and techniques that are associated with permissive parenting are listening, changing our minds and responding to our kids.   For example, you tell your kid it's time to go to occupational therapy. You've given them plenty of warnings. And you've noticed that they're dragging their feet about going to OT week after week. And you're getting really sick of it. You don't like being late. You don't like the way the therapist looks at you. 

You're telling them it's time to go. It's time to go get in the car. We need to go to therapy and your kids starts flipping out and they're like, "I won't go. You can't make me hate therapy. And I hate you. And I won't leave this house."

 A tool that would align with more authoritative parenting would be to say.  "I know what's best for you. We've made a commitment to this therapy. We're going to go when we're going to see it through and I'm going to get you there no matter what."  A tool that might be more associated with permissive parenting would be to say, "I hear you. It sounds like you really don't want to go today.  Let's make a plan to cancel and in the next week, I want to have a conversation about this. Because it costs our family a lot of money to cancel at the last minute. We need to have a proactive plan."  Option one looks strong confident sturdy and all of those descriptors that we love as parents. And option two looks weak and waffly and permissive. But if we back up and actually look at what's making this child feel safe, what is deepening the attachment between these two people and what is going to achieve the better outcome for the child's long-term thriving? 

I would argue that the second option is much, much better. An option to the parent has the ability and their mental framework and in their understanding of their relationship with their child, they have the ability to be flexible and to pivot, they can actually listen to what their kid is telling them, because if they were honest with themselves, they've probably been hearing it  week after week. In smaller, more manageable ways, the kid has been saying, "I don't want to go. I don't like this, this isn't working for me. Please don't make me do this.  It's not helping. There's something off here." And the parent has been disregarding those smaller indications. And so this week the kid ratchets it up and it's like, "okay, well I need you to listen to me. So I'm going to make it really clear."   Big, big behavior and  total refusal and  name calling. And that's their way of saying like “you aren't listening, I'm telling you this is not working.”  

And when the parent is able to say, “I hear you, this isn't working. Let's figure it out together.  It doesn't work for me to cancel at the last moment.” So we're not going to be able to do that every week and maybe they would be able to say some version of that in the moment to this kid. You know, it depends on how dysregulated the kid is. But that's where permissive parenting just misses the whole boat. It is about the responsive, connected relationship that develops when the grownup is able to lay aside their power and their pride. And say, okay, I hear you. 

There are so many times for me when I'm parenting in public and a moment like this unfolds where I say something is going to happen. And then my child shares with me, in some form of words or behaviors, "that doesn't work for me." The absolute dominant expectation among adults is that I will double down.  That this is a test, a test of my strength, my control as a parent. I am expected to say. "No, you will do it."  it has underneath it, "because I said so" that many of us heard when we were children.   When I say "I'm listening, let's make a new plan." I know when I look around and I'm doing this in real time. I know another people's eyes that they're like, "oh, permissive, parent." 

But they're completely missing what's happening in that moment. This vilification of permissiveness has really robbed us as a parenting community of really needed tools. Because when we're operating out of fear, Or out of shame. We don't do well as parents. We are deeply ashamed when other people call us permissive. We feel very ashamed of using a beautiful, vibrant parenting tool. Like showing flexibility and changing your plan.  We are deeply embarrassed about doing those things and being seen, doing them.   That hurts us and hurts our children.  

 If you're going to say, “Well, there are things that are destructive, right? Like you can't just wiffle waffle on everything. Kids do need some kind of boundaries, don't you think?”  And I would say, “Okay, it sounds like you're saying, ‘Aren't there some things that are unhelpful, like aren't there some parts of this whole premise of parenting that you would agree are bad?’”

I want to say this with a lot of compassion because I don't want it to turn around and shame other parents. Who are also doing the best they can with what they've been handed.  But I think that there is a practice that is not helpful and  I really like to help parents identify this pattern and their own parenting and work to shift it.  And that is saying whatever you can in order to get your child to be okay emotionally. Or to go away and leave you alone.  I believe that this comes out of a really dysregulated parent.  When your own internal system is really fragile and you're feeling super sensitive and any little thing can throw you off. Then you're going to understandably be hypervigilant about your child because you don't want them to scream and bother your sensory system or hit you and cue old trauma. And so you end up overly catering to your child's needs. As a form of protection for yourself.  It's a way of being really small in the relationship.   You're looking to protect yourself by saying whatever you have to, to keep your child happy.  The reason that's so unhelpful is it doesn't trust your child with the full range of emotional experiences. It doesn't show them that you're okay no matter how they show up. That you can be there and present and with them in their good times and in their hard times. And it creates a family culture of tiptoeing and walking on eggshells. This is a very understandable thing that happens, especially in family dynamics where there's been unhealed trauma. Or where there's a really vulnerable parent or when there's a lot of unrecognized neurodiversity, and a lack of accommodations or supports, and parents are just fried .

But even still. I believe that that form of parenting is only a small tweak away from a really robustly, connected, more vibrant and joyful form of parenting where the parent gets to show up fully themselves. And it has a lot to do with the parents' own healing. So I don't see that as like, you need to go and be taught new parenting techniques. You just don't have enough inside to show up for the challenge of the reality around you. You deserve more support. You deserve more healing.  Often I've seen this over and over again when parents are provided that support and healing, they're able to make that switch to sticking with their kids, even when they're really upset or frustrated and being able to bring themselves a little bit more into the picture or hold more balance or more nuance around meeting their kids' needs.

The last piece that I want to talk about it's the very likely reality that those so-called permissive parents and the 1960s were neurodivergent and disabled themselves. Or perhaps neuro-typical parents raising neurodivergent and disabled children. Without any kind of lens at that time for learning disabilities for mental health struggles for neurodivergence, everybody was tossed in the same bucket together. 

Anytime a study is using universal standards of good behavior for children, there's a really high likelihood that they're also intensely ableist and that they are neurotypically defining those norms and expectations, and then looking to see who meets them. And it's no surprise that the ones who meet them are the neurotypical children. 

So it's very possible that that group, that Baumrind identified as being permissive and having the worst outcomes– that the deck was stacked against them from the start.  Perhaps they were doing really well with what they'd been given as undiagnosed and unsupported families looking to parent off the beaten path in the late 1960s. 

I don't try to differentiate my approach from permissive parenting anymore because I don't want to perpetuate this judgment and fear that has surrounded a permissive parenting style. The core of permissive is permission.  And I view it as a central part of my mission in the world to give parents permission to parent like themselves.  I want you to do this like you. I want you to feel whole.  I want you to thrive. And if that involves giving up on this whole idea of boundaries and rules and punishments and choosing to live by a different rule book, then I support you whole heartedly. 

You do not need to live in fear that giving in is going to wreck your child or lead to lifelong consequences.  Instead, I think we should be really afraid of what the fear of permissiveness is doing to us as parents. It creates countless unnecessary arguments and battles between parents and children, where parents are rigid and refuse to budge. That could easily be healed by parents, simply adjusting their expectations to match the window of tolerance of the child in front of them.  Professionals are always admonishing parents for not being consistent enough or in control out of the claim that this is showing that they have a lack of boundaries and that it will make children unsafe when the research clearly shows otherwise.  In BioMarin's original study, she said that permissive parents view their children as equals. And I think perhaps we need more equality among adults and children.  If we're going to counteract the generations of adultism that has held that the opinions and needs and expectations of adults are more important and more worthy than that of children-- and discriminates against children based on that belief-- we're going to need to view our children as fully human and fully deserving of our adult respect.  We need to respect our children's innate personhood and believe that they deserve equal respect regardless of their developmental stage or a level of independence.  I want us to be free from fearing being permissive.  

I want us to let go of holding unrealistic boundaries out of a misguided idea that this will make our kids feel safe.  Thriving comes from an attuned and creative caregiver who has the courage to release unrealistic expectations and the flexibility to work collaboratively with their children.  

We need more permission as parents, particularly as parents of a new generation of neurodivergent children. We need permission to align with our kids and to use the tools that our kids need. We need permission to provide them safety and connection and secure attachment so that they can thrive in a world that was not built for them. We're not going to get this permission from traditional parenting. Or from the established cannon of parenting advice.  We may not get this permission from experts or therapists who are supposed to be helping us.  We may have to give this permission to ourselves.  

We need to embrace our freedom and autonomy, so that we can use our innate wisdom and intuition.  Maybe it's time to rethink and maybe even embrace permissive parenting.

If this podcast is speaking to your soul, you can subscribe through wherever you get your own podcasts. Even better. If you feel the nudge, head on over to Apple podcasts in particular, and leave us a review. It's such a helpful way for new people to also get to experience what this podcast wants to bring into their lives.

I'm Amanda. Remember, it takes great strength to let things go. I'll see you next week. 

In this mailbag episode, I answer listener questions about one of the things I get asked most: How to balance adult needs with low demand parenting. We dive into what to do when your family isn’t on board with low demand and how to meet your own core needs when your kid can’t leave the house for months. From finding support as a low demand parent to managing a PDA child’s need for closeness, we’ll explore how to identify our true needs and disentangle them from specific expectations. Tune in for real-life strategies, deep insights, and a reminder that we can meet our needs while respecting the capacity of our loved ones.

00:53 Understanding Adult Needs and Low Demand Parenting

02:53 Navigating Family Dynamics and Expectations

07:07 Personal Journey and Real-Life Examples

11:44 Addressing Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)

Follow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more! 

The Low Demand Parenting Podcast is your space to let go of the pressure and embrace a more joyful, authentic approach to parenting. We hope you enjoyed this episode and would be honored if you left us a review which helps us reach more parents just like you! 

  Welcome to the Low Demand Parenting Podcast, where we drop the pressure, find the joy, and thrive, even when it feels like life is stuck on level 12 hard. I'm Amanda Diekmann, author, autistic adult, and mom of three. I'm not here as an expert, but a fellow traveler. Together, we're learning how to live more gently, authentically, and vibrantly in this wild parenting life.

Today, we have a mailbag episode where I answer your questions about things that are concerning you, things that you're facing as a low demand family. And both of the questions for today address the way that our adult needs intersect with the demands that we make of other people. Our work to do as the low demand parent in this scenario is figuring out what we really need.

And once we know our needs, We can disentangle those needs from all of the various solutions that are coming to our minds immediately of ways to get those needs met. Typically, as parents, our first way to solve getting our needs met is to get our kids to change. Like, well, if I could just get my kid to go to bed earlier, then I could get more sleep at night.

Or if I want to go to the gym, I've got to get my kid to go to the childcare. Part of our process here is recognizing the core need, exercise. Sleep, and then separating ourselves emotionally and practically from the solutions that we've latched on to as the key way to get those needs met, especially if those solutions are proving too hard for our kids or, as we'll talk about in this episode, other adults in our network.

Once we're clear about our needs, We can let go of the demands and find ways that we can be okay and get our core needs met at the same time as we embrace other people's real live challenges, the places where they simply can't do what we're asking them to do. This is the core of Low Demand. Not that you let go of what matters to you.

Not that you sacrifice yourself while everyone else gets their needs met. It's not even an either or between you or your kid. We're stretching into the challenging, murky, and beautiful territory of the both and. What if we have a family dynamic where we can both get our core needs met as long as we can hold loosely to the way it happens?

When we bring our curiosity and our creativity to our basic needs, there is always a way forward. Our first question comes from a listener who is wondering a very simple, but actually quite profound question. How do I get my family members to get on board with low demand? I'm all about it. But they're dragging their feet.

What do I do? So this one's an interesting one because we really can't get them to agree with you about low demand, to take this seriously, to understand what it's all about. The get them language, when I hear that rising up in my own thoughts or my own wishes or my energy, like, Oh, how do I get them to fill in the blank?

It's usually a sign to me that I'm a little bit off track and it's time to go back to the low demand principles. There's can't not won't. If somebody isn't able to meet an expectation that you have, it's that they can't do it. Not that they won't do it. In this case, it's your expectation that your family.

Would listen and understand and agree with the approach that you're taking. They may not be able to do that right now. It's really important to remember too, that family is. Not a monolith. There are all of these different family members with their own journey, their own needs, their own expectations, and the particular places of intersection where this is coming up for you.

If someone lives really far away, they don't call very often, and they disagree with your parenting, it's probably not presenting a major issue for you unless you are really wrapped up in what they think about you. If that you see them every day, it's an active struggle to negotiate in the moment how you're going to respond to different parenting situations.

You're noticing that you parent really differently when this family member is around, um, or you have real needs for emotional connection with this family member. They're really important to you. They're a key part of your emotional support system. All of that is really going to impact how you go forward.

So, you know, the first thing with low demand is just having a demand lens, looking at what's too hard for them in this particular situation. What is the particular expectation that you have that they're unable to meet? Are they really unable to listen to you talking about low demand, but perhaps your partner or a podcast would be more accessible?

Is there one specific part about seeing that kids do well when they can that's really tricky? That they're able to absorb some aspects of the philosophy, but others are just too hard right now? Um, And then always coming back to why does this matter to you? Is the expectation growing out of your need for more support and validation?

Are you feeling lonely or under resourced? Do you really wish that you had somebody to call to talk about this with? Who could understand and process with you? And you're used to doing that with the assembly members, but when it comes to parenting, they're really not available for you. Figuring out what your need is that's growing into this expectation that's unrealistic and that's presenting as a demand for your family members and then going back to the need.

Is there another way you can get that need met while honoring what is too hard for the people that you love? In the long run, this kind of journey of self exploration and being more honest about our expectations and releasing other people from expectations that are really not aligned for them This actually enables us to have more closeness and more connection, or at least it allows us to have more aligned relationships where we are actually getting our needs met, where we are close with the people who are truly serving us, and where we can be more in honest communication with the people that we're connected to.

Sometimes it does mean taking actions that involve boundary setting around what makes you feel safe or what you need to protect the people that you love. That can come out of realizing what expectations are not reasonable or aligned for other people. It doesn't always mean it brings us closer, but it doesn't always mean it pushes us apart either.

It can often be this really nuanced journey of discovering how we can be close with people, how we can get our needs met and how we can release expectations that are really not aligned. I want to give you an example of what this can look like. So in the early days, when we were starting to drop demands, But I hadn't done a lot of the inner work about really knowing my needs and getting clear on what matters most.

I started dropping demands left, right, and center to try to get some stability back in our family dynamic. So at that time, we released all All screen limits and naturally, my kids, as they had been highly controlled around their screen use for a long time, and they were all struggling mightily with emotional regulation, they dove headfirst into screen time as a major regulating tool.

And that season lasted a lot longer than I thought it would, or than my husband thought it would. And my movement into low demand was pretty unilateral. I I was sure this was the right thing, and it felt like the only thing for us at the time. But I noticed, of course, that my partner was not as on board as I was, and at the time I would have said, I really need you to be on board with me, I need you to support me, I need you to back me up.

Those felt like real needs for me, but they were actually solutions. Those were all demands that I was putting on to him. You must, you will, you have to. And every time he looked at our kids on screens and invited them to go do something and they said no or ignored him. He felt so sad, and I saw that sadness all over his face, and it brought up a lot of stuff for me around feeling insecure, wondering whether or not he was judging me or judging the decisions that I'd made, whether we were really true partners in this time in our life.

And if I could go back, I would do a lot of things differently, including my partner more thoroughly in the process and being more transparent about what I was thinking and feeling. Bye. But one thing that we discovered together was that my demand that he support me actively, emotionally, was just not true for him.

He could not do that. He couldn't feel good about what he was seeing. He does now, and it's been his own journey. on his own time, but I couldn't make him feel good. I couldn't make him praise me or give me the emotional validation and support that I needed at the time. But that didn't make my core need any less valid.

My need wasn't my husband will look at me with shining eyes every time he sees our kids on screens and whisper to me, you're doing great. That is a solution to my real need. My need was not to feel so lonely. My need was not to feel so isolated and vulnerable as the brave leader of my family charting a new path forward even without my trusty best friend and life partner right alongside me.

So, a lot of what I did in order to meet that need was finding other people. Who were journeying similarly to me and discovering ways to get that core need met while honoring where my husband was on his journey and giving him space to feel what he felt and to be where he was, was a powerfully transformative experience.

reality for both of us that did end up bringing us closer. Because there were so many things he could do for me, so many ways that he could be a good partner to me. But specifically, this one demand that I was making of you affirm my choice to drop screen time demands, he couldn't do that. He couldn't do it at the time.

So there's this nuance where we hold space for other people to be right where they are. Acknowledging what they can and can't do in relationship with us. We hold tight to our core need while releasing the ways that we're trying to get that need met, especially when those ways aren't doable for the people that we love.

And so we say to our need, you matter, and I'm going to find a way to get you met. And also I'm going to let go of this one strategy, this one way, because that's what it means to love this other person that I really deeply care about. The same is true with our kids. And in the next question, we're going to move into a parent child scenario where the adult need is also really intense and not getting met.

And in this question, we're specifically going to talk about pathological demand avoidance, PDA, also known as pervasive drive for autonomy. However, people want to self identify, I eagerly support, and I identify as a PDA er, and many people in the low demand community where it originated also identify as being PDA or parenting PDA ers.

So we're going to talk about that reality in this section of the podcast. There'll be many more episodes to come where we'll dive more into the neurobiology of PDA, but in this case, I don't think you need to know too much more about it. Um, to be able to process the question and how I respond. Let's get into it.

My child can't tolerate me leaving the house right now. So I have left five times in two and a half months. However, when I'm home, I feel like I'm always on, even when I'm alone in a room. However, the lack of complete autonomy is wearing on my PDA brain and impacting my ability to regulate myself. This question asker is deep in it and not an unfamiliar place for many of us.

But also a place where we tend to just go into survival mode and clean up the mess later. And I get the sense with your question that you're saying, is there another way? I know what survival mode feels like, like I can just shut the whole thing down or use all my negative coping mechanisms or stew and anxiety, but I don't want that.

And is there something else out there? Or is there something I haven't tried? And as always, the first thing that I want to do is just honor your inner knowing and your resiliency. Children are often praised for being resilient. You're probably tired of hearing your resiliency is one of your great strengths.

What I would like the type of resilience that I want to particularly focus on here is your desire to be true to yourself, your inner knowing. That says, I don't want to be out of alignment with myself. I know myself now. I've done the whole thing where I just pretend I'm another kind of person, and I just do what everybody else tells me to do, and you've done that.

You tried that. You don't want to go back there. I'm trapped by my love for my child and their particular neurology. I'm trapped by my own neurology and myself knowing that I can't even use all the crappy mechanisms that I used in the past. And that is actually your resilience. That is your genuine, true self saying, I refuse to go into the night.

Like I will not do that stuff again. I will not deny my child full humanity. I won't suppress my love for them. I won't demonize them, but I also won't shut myself down. I won't pretend I'm somebody I'm not. And those two won'ts are hemming you in. And they're making it harder for you to sit in this season.

They're such a great strength and I want to honor so much of what that voice is bringing forward. The only piece that I have to offer because I can give you ideas and all those things, how to distract yourself, how to use coping mechanisms, how to use tools you already know. It's the only thing that I want to offer.

That might help is to recognize that your PDA brain is asking for freedom and core to this freedom is the ability to choose. And that part of what might be missing for you is I choose this given the shitty options on the table for me, given me, given kid, I won't deny what I know about myself. I won't demonize my child all given your nose.

What is your yes? What are you saying yes to by staying home? Are you enacting in your own life that is deeply aligned, that you are committed to, that is very much in your control? Because you could hurt your kid. You could just leave and hurt your kid. You could do that. You could drink yourself into a stupor.

And wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. Those are in your control, but you are choosing not to. So we're gonna, maybe, if this feels good, name what you are choosing and why you're choosing it. Make this an exercise of autonomy and control. I choose this. And it might crystallize into one or two words that you need to say to yourself when you feel particularly trapped.

And maybe it comes along with some other of your tools. Like, if you can create pictures in your head, maybe you have some kind of expansive vista, like an ocean that goes on forever that you create in your mind where your intention, you are choosing this. This lives right there in that expansive world where you have a thousand options.

You could deal with this so many other ways. And this is the way, this is what is you, this is your essence in a decision form is to stay in this home, to keep going, to love this child and yourself in these ways. And it may be depending on your brain and body and. How you exercise that freedom, it may be that you need to do some witchy woo casting around this intention, like if you had 30 sisters with you on the solstice gathering around you with this intention at the center and they were going to cast a spell in a certain place where the expansiveness of your options and the sacredness of your choosing was going to cast like a spell onto every wall on every surface so that every time you step in there it shimmers like a sanctuary of choosing.

What would that look like? And maybe it's one rocking chair or it's the time you use your acupressure mat. It's this one space that just shimmers with all of the possibility and the sacredness of your autonomous decision to be here. And when you do it, you're surrounded by all the ancestors who are cheering you on and every woman around the world who believes that what you are doing is the mightiest, most powerful expression of love that has ever existed.

And it ripples forward into your future generations, grandchildren and great grandchildren whose lives will be expanded because of the way that you are choosing to love your child. And all of it That is holding you up in those moments. That's what I wish for you, is that when you sit in this choice, that you don't feel trapped, that you feel like aligned.

This is me. I choose this. I am here for a reason, literally in this house, at this moment. It's deeply powerful, world changing work, me in this house, maybe. You'll feel just a bit more free. If you have a question for our Mailbag episodes, I'd love to hear from you. You can go to www.amandadiekman.com/podcast for a place to send me your questions.

If this podcast is speaking to your soul, you can subscribe through wherever you get your own podcasts. Even better, if you feel the nudge, head on over to Apple Podcasts in particular and leave us a review. We'd It's such a helpful way for new people to also get to experience what this podcast wants to bring into their lives.

I'm Amanda. Remember it takes great strength to let things go. I'll see you next week.

I'll say it: Holidays can be the absolute worst. This transformative course is tailored for families navigating the unique challenges of the holiday season. Discover impactful video lessons, a comprehensive workbook, and recording of an interactive Q&A to empower you through the festivities.

See all the details here!

00:34 Meet Megan Anna Neff

02:18 Understanding the Nervous System

04:29 Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Systems

06:50 Nervous System Responses to Stress

09:17 Interacting Nervous Systems in Parenting

10:31 The Science of Interpersonal Neurobiology

11:19 Understanding Mirror Neurons

12:42 The Pressure of Staying Regulated

14:58 The Importance of Repair in Parenting

15:43 Modeling Self-Regulation for Children

17:49 Honesty and Trust in Parenting

Follow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more! 

Welcome to the Low Demand Parenting Podcast, where we drop the pressure, find the joy, and thrive, even when it feels like life is stuck on level 12 hard. I'm Amanda Diekmann, author, autistic adult, and mom of three. I'm not here as an expert, but a fellow traveler. Together, we're learning how to live more gently, authentically, and vibrantly in this wild parenting life.

In our episode today, I am talking with my friend Megan Anna Neff. Megan Anna is a psychologist, an autistic and ADHD adult, co host of the Neurodivergent Conversations podcast and author of Self Care for Autistic People. This conversation about the nervous system is so important to me as a parent and a parenting coach because I think it's essential information.

People come to me all the time asking, are we doing this right? Is my kid doing okay? Here's what's going on in our lives. Are they developmentally on track? We have so many questions and we're always looking around and comparing our kids to other kids, our kids to the normal, our kids to what it says in the book, because we want to answer one fundamental question, which is, are they okay?

And the complicated answer is, yes. The only measurement we've been given is in our own bodies. We've been given an internal barometer. It's the nervous system. The only way to know really whether or not something is a reasonable expectation or something you need to drop, whether it's aligned and it feels good or whether it's totally not the right approach, is inside of your body and inside of your child.

Learning to trust the information that we're getting from our bodies and learning to read someone else's nervous system is complex and important work. And the conversation that I had with Megan Anna really opened my eyes and helped me understand a lot more about the building blocks of parenting. So here's our conversation about the nervous system.

Can you help us understand What is the nervous system? Maybe a really quick overview of what we know about Amanda. You're asking an autistic person to give you a quick overview of a complex construct, but I will do my best because you're right. Parents probably don't want a science lesson. Um, but I, yeah, I do notice that.

Um, nervous system is floating around there more in pop psychology, which I love because it's so important when we think about the nervous system. But I also realize people often say that word without realizing what are we talking about? So broadly speaking, our nervous system is our brains, our spinal cord, and then all of the lovely messages and messengers that go out in our bodies that are sending signals up to our.

or brain, but the brain is really the center of the nervous system. When people are talking about regulation and nervous system, they're typically talking about a very specific branch of the nervous system. Um, the nervous system kind of branches out, but what we'd be talking about here is what's called the autonomic nervous system.

I find it easy to remember because autonomic sounds like automatic. And this is the part of our nervous system that's operating automatically, meaning we don't have control of it. So there are parts of our nervous system that we do have more control over. If I say, I want to pick up a glass of water, or you just picked up coffee, we're telling our bodies to move.

That's voluntary. When we're talking about nervous system regulation, we're talking about a system that's not voluntary, which is really important in understanding our kids and our responses, responses to stressors. So things like our heartbeat, our breathing, um, all of these things are part of the autonomic nervous system.

I'll stop there. I do want to explain parasympathetic branches, but I'll stop there just to see. So far, are you tracking? Yeah, I'm tracking. Let's try the other ones. I've heard people describe this and read many books and it still hasn't quite stuck. So I'm excited to see if I can sort it out for myself here with you also.

So tell me about these other types. Yeah. So within the autonomic nervous system, there's two branches. Again, the nervous system, we can think about like branches off like a tree. They're sympathetic and parasympathetic. You can think of the sympathetic, the easiest metaphors to think of that as the gas pedal and the parasympathetic, like the brake pedal.

And we need both of these. So for example, When I was getting ready to meet with you, my sympathetic nervous system started to mobilize, which I could tell, which was good. That's eight 30 here in Oregon. And to be able to be alert and talk with you and have words to say, I need some mobility in my body.

Now, if we get too much of that's when we're talking about fight, flight mode, stress response, panic symptoms. And. For externalizers. So one more thing about PDA ers who are externalizers, they're often dipping into their sympathetic mode when they're getting stressed, because what you're seeing is you're seeing their fight mode get activated.

Um, or sometimes their flight mode, which can look like stereotypical, like aggressive behaviors or lashing out, which is it's their nervous system getting into that sympathetic mode. The parasympathetic mode, this would be like the break. So when we fall asleep to digest our food, we need to be in our parasympathetic nervous system.

Ideally, the break and the gas are working together in harmony. So again, to use this morning as an example, when I was getting ready to come talk to you, it's okay. My parasympathetic system could come online to be like, okay, you've got enough arousal here. Now we don't want to be so stressed out about being on video with Amanda that we're going to keep you in a regulated window.

Um, And this, when our body's able to do this, when these systems are able to work together, we're in what's called the window of tolerance, which means we can take in incoming stressors and adapt and respond. Now, our nervous systems need some flexibility to be able to do that because the flexibility of these two branches working together harmoniously.

It's not that one branch is good and one branch is bad. Sometimes it gets talked about that way, but it's how flexibly are these systems working together so that you can adapt to your environment? One other thing I'll say, and then I'll stop and dump in on the nervous system is when we, so the window of tolerance, when we enter a stress States, we tend to go one of two places.

So I already mentioned sympathetic dominance, fight flight, but autistic people particularly We're equally prone to go parasympathetic or dorsal vague shutdown dominance, which looks like a retreat, withdrawal, like low key disassociation symptoms or not low key. And this is where the person's slowed down.

So that can also be a response to stress. But it doesn't look as obvious. So for example, PDA or two internalize might be going parasympathetic dominant and going more into that dorsal shutdown area. So that was a lot of information. Are there any parts you want me to unpack more? That's a landscape of the nervous system.

That was so helpful. Thank you for giving such a, an introduction that allows I can already be thinking about my own body systems and how that happens. And one follow up question. So these this the speeding up in the slowing down the gas and the brakes is. Not at the level of conscious thought. It's not, Ooh, it's time for me to take a deep breath here or like, I better hurry so that I'm not late.

It's not like that. It's like our body systems react. Right. It's automatic. It's my favorite metaphor I've heard is it's like a sneeze. So when you enter the stress response in the same way that you can't necessarily control a sneeze, it's your nervous system having a response. So whether it's your child or you, this isn't something to.

Feel guilt or anger around because it's your body. And we all have different windows of tolerance, meaning for some of us, it is an ice thin window, which means we very easily get flipped into a stress state and there's research showing neurodivergent people have more sensitive nervous systems, meaning less flexible.

So we can't do that symmetry. As well. So we often are flipping into stress states. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means your nervous system is having a automatic reaction. I'm glad that the research is backing up what people have known. Yeah. So it's when research does that. Yeah, exactly. Some people have a razor thin window of tolerance.

We know this. So tell me about how nervous systems interact with each other because we're here talking about how parents calm their activated nervous system, but often we are activated because someone is screaming at us or because there are too many asks happening over and over, and those are symptoms of another person's stress response.

Yeah, so how did the use. Work off of each other. I love that question. So I run an autistic moms group, which is one of my favorite parts of my month. And there just needs to be more spaces for people with sensitive nervous systems, parenting, or divergent kids, because this, what you're describing is, I would say, From my personal experience, one of the hardest parts of being a neurodivergent parent is I have a sensitive nervous system.

My kids have sensitive nervous systems. Those things are going to be interacting with each other and it's hard. I know you also have a philosophical background a bit, and I have really loved learning from other cultures when it comes to how we think about self. And realizing this idea of having a buffered self contained self is relatively new and also a very white Anglo concept.

So most cultures have known this for a long time. Again, that idea of it's nice when science tells us what we already know. Most cultures have known this throughout all of existence and most cultures still know this, but for those of us who like the science to back it up, it will end. Need that extra layer.

There has been a lot of science around interpersonal neurobiology that's come out in the last I don't know, 20, 30 years. I'm not exactly positive on the timeframe, but Daniel Siegel is one person who's really been at the forefront of that. I love a concept that he uses. He talks about how we need to move away from me and we, and talk about the meaning that we are interconnected, like nervous system wise, we're interconnected.

Um, one of the, Pieces of research often cited here is mirror neurons. You've probably heard about mirror neurons. So mirror neurons are essentially the idea that when we watch someone do something, the same Brain circuits get activated in us. So they first discovered this in a lab. I believe it was either monkeys or apes.

What they noticed was that when the caretaker of the monkey was opening a banana or drinking water, the same brain circuits were active in the monkey. And that's what started this research around mirror neurons. That's one reason that our nervous systems are interconnected is simple mirror neurons.

Okay. So when someone around us is getting dysregulated, we might be having a similar reaction, especially if we're, if we have a sensitive nervous system. But then the other piece is a bit more functional. Like you're saying, if a child is dysregulated and it has a lot of requests, those are all demands coming in.

Or if they're crying and if the parent has a sensitive nervous system. Sensory profile that sound coming in. So there's also the sensory aspect of being around someone who's dysregulated that is going to kick up a fight or flight or freeze response for a lot of caregivers. So mirror neurons and then the functional aspect of just the environment, I would say, are two ways that.

Our nervous systems are connected. So the pressure to stay emotionally regulated is something that I hear about from a lot of parents and they may have picked it up through learning about the idea of remaining calm from maybe a more gentle parenting practice that it's crucial that the parent stay calm, or maybe they've recognized like, wow, you're right.

These mirror neurons are happening when I start to feel Like my head's going to explode is a better chance that my child is going to ramp up as well. My child is leaning on me, but I also know from personal experience that the pressure to stay regulated all the time actually makes me more dysregulated and it can either ramp.

It's either gas. It makes my whole system accelerate or it pushes me to dissociate. It's better if I'm just not even present to what I'm feeling then. feel it because it would, you know, be too dysregulating. So how, how do you think about that from a scientific perspective of what's happening inside the parent's body as they feel this pressure to stay regulated?

First, just that comment about dissociation, like If it's not a thing, people should be talking about that disassociative parenting. I think that probably that's happening a lot. What I call, uh, faux regulation. When we're in that dissociative state, it can look like we're regulated, but we're not, we're actually in a really stressed state and that's not Healthy for us or for family systems either as a psychologist.

This is something I spend a lot of time with people thinking through is what are the narratives you're telling yourself in any given moment? And so I love how you name it. So while they're partly because of what we're reading and absorbing and our Ideals of what a good parent looks like. And I think particularly moms have a lot of cultural scripts around what does a good mom look like?

What is a co regulated mom look like? I need a co regulate for my kid all of the time. There's so many scripts. And when those scripts are playing in our head, that absolutely is adding pressure to this. Pressure cooker moment, this idea of, I need to handle this perfectly. One of my favorite things to educate on is around what we know about attachment that ruptures are going to happen.

What's really important is repair. Are we circling back to the repair process? And that actually has perhaps more implications than the avoidance of rupture is, are you able to do that report? pair process with your child. For me, when I learned the science of that was one of those narratives that helped me in those moments of, I'm not going to do this perfectly and that's okay.

I don't have to do it perfectly. Every time I'm going to go back to my child when I don't do it perfectly. And we're going to talk about it and we're going to pair. So I think one, just releasing the pressure and the narratives around doing it perfectly. I also, I would love to see more parents model what it looks like to regulate themselves.

And I realize this is dependent on age. My kids are older now, but being able to say, I love you. And I want to support you. I'm going to go take a minute to calm my body down. And then I'm going to come back that I'm going to come back. Part's really important, but it's okay to model that. We also. Need to take space to regulate our bodies so that we can come back, lend our prefrontal cortex to our child and actually be a co regulating presence.

Yeah, this came up for me yesterday in a small way. We were in the car. My child had watched a YouTube video about a really elaborate costume and he started talking about costumes and how I could make this costume. I could feel my, I can get this right. My, my nervous system was getting activated. The gas going, my heart started beating faster.

I was gripping the steering wheel. And my brain was spinning because costumes are stressful for me because we have been through rounds and rounds around costumes, not looking right, not feeling right. Anybody who has a sensitive sensory sensitive kidness I'm talking about. And he said, mom, are you mad at me?

And I just show at tuned to say, no, I'm fine because of this pressure. Like, I need to, right. Give off her regulated. But what that would tell him is either you are sensing something that's not right, you can't trust yourself, or this is too big. I'm actually really mad and I'm, I'm not even gonna tell you because that, it's like, Mm-Hmm, , it's too big.

So instead I said. Yeah. I think I feel stressed about costumes and I need a little bit more time. Maybe I could watch the video with you and then we could talk it through. And he was able to say to himself, okay, yeah, I felt something from her that the mirror neurons that then turned into that was right.

But I could see another parenting approach saying either, or don't put this on him. Don't open up. Don't let him. Don't put your emotions on him. Yeah, totally. Totally. Totally. Whereas, and this is where especially it with autistic kids, especially, we need to be rethinking some of those conventional parenting strategies.

Being autistic, we're often second guessing our gauge of the other. So if we then are doing the check in and our parent is essentially yet denying our reality, It is eroding self trust and kids need to learn that they can trust what they're picking up, being honest and in an appropriate way, not of, Oh my gosh, yes, you're stressing me out so much stuff about costumes.

Yeah, you're right. I'm stressed in this moment. And here's some things we could do about it. That's helping him to develop that sense of trust, which is important for all kids, but particularly for autistic kids said really important that. We be honest about what's happening. And I see that a lot too, from my autistic child.

There's a lot of self check ins of, are you mad at me? Cause when they're picking up the emotional tone of the room, they're trying to figure out what that is about. And it's so important that we be responsive in those moments. Thank you for all of your time and wisdom today. I so appreciate it.

Absolutely. It was good to be with you. If this podcast is speaking to your soul, you can subscribe through wherever you get your own podcasts. Even better, if you feel the nudge, head on over to Apple Podcasts in particular and leave us a review. It's such a helpful way for new people to also get to experience what this podcast wants to bring into their lives.

I'm Amanda. Remember, it takes great strength to let things go. I'll see you next week.

The Low Demand Parenting Podcast is your space to let go of the pressure and embrace a more joyful, authentic approach to parenting. We hope you enjoyed this episode and would be honored if you left us a review which helps us reach more parents just like you!

In this episode of The Low Demand Parenting Podcast, I’m diving into what low demand parenting really looks like. As an autistic adult, mom of three, and someone who’s been on this journey myself, I’ve seen firsthand how letting go of traditional parenting pressures opens the door to more trust, connection, and joy in our families. Inspired by Ross Green’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, I share how releasing control and truly respecting our kids’ boundaries can change everything. We’ll talk about how meltdowns are a form of communication, how to build genuine trust, and the growth that comes when we parent from a place of understanding and reflection. It’s all about moving away from power struggles and toward a more peaceful, respectful home life.

I'll say it: Holidays can be the absolute worst. This transformative course is tailored for families navigating the unique challenges of the holiday season. Discover impactful video lessons, a comprehensive workbook, and recording of an interactive Q&A to empower you through the festivities.

See all the details here!

00:00 Introduction to Low Demand Parenting

00:59 Early Parenting Struggles

02:20 Discovering Ross Green's Approach

03:30 Building Trust and Letting Go

03:59 Core Principles of Low Demand Parenting

08:46 Proactive and Reflective Practices

10:46 The Path to Freedom and Joy

12:51 Personal Transformation and Final Thoughts

15:12 Conclusion and Call to Action

If you’re ready to dive deeper into low demand parenting, I’ve got some great FREE resources to help you get started!

Hello, we are going to talk this week about how low demand parenting is different from other parenting techniques. And after years of practicing low demand, what the most powerful demand drops have actually been. Let's talk about how low demand parenting is different from some of the other techniques and tools and strategies and mindsets that you might've encountered.

I want to go back to my early parenting days, when I was eager, so desperate, in fact, for strategies that would help me parent my three kids, who I adore with my whole heart, and who also seemed to struggle. Every day with what I had been taught to see as ordinary aspects of being a human and the strategies that professionals and books and blogs and podcasts recommended were things like timeouts or time ins, punishments or consequences or natural consequences, reward charts, sticker charts, praise, praise, Ignoring.

And every one of those techniques that I tried chipped away or outright destroyed the relationship I wanted to have with my kids. Clear kind boundaries and developing emotional vocabulary enraged and alienated them. Picture schedules, consistent routines, and enforced sensory breaks all fell flat.

Nothing worked. All of the best techniques that I was taught failed. And at every turn, it was my fault. I felt like such a failure. Discovering Ross Green's work changed my path. Ross Green is the author of many books, including The Explosive Child and The Parenting Approach, called Collaborative and Proactive Solutions.

When I discovered what Dr. Green describes as releasing adult controlled plans, or Plan A, and his encouragement for us to embrace true collaboration, it felt like freedom. When I truly gave up on My responsibility as the adult being to control the outcomes and the plans, I wept for days. I felt deep relief.

I told my kids, I'm not going to force you to do things anymore. If you don't truly consent to it, we don't do it. We didn't even know what kind of life that would look like. It felt like stepping off a cliff. But there was a method. There was a path. And I felt like if we follow this, we'll be okay. The focus in Dr.

Green's work is on collaborative problem solving. The hard part is that this kind of back and forth, genuine, collaborative approach was still way out of reach for us. My children's trust in me and in themselves was low. The new scripts and questions that they proposed that I use were triggering. And I could tell we were going to spend a long time just letting things go and building trust day after day.

And so that's what we did. We stuck right there, letting things go and building trust, and we developed low demand parenting. And here is what we have learned. I've learned that children's trust is earned day after day. We live in a world that disrespects children and routinely violates their boundaries.

Children are regularly controlled and manipulated by adults in full view of everyone. Low demand parenting restores genuine trust by fostering children's inner voice, by listening to their boundaries and respecting their needs. This is a fundamentally anti adultist approach. Adultism is when adults believe they're better or more important than kids and teens, leading them to ignore or control young people's opinions, feelings, and choices.

Adultism creates an unfair power imbalance where adults make all the decisions and young people aren't treated with respect or seen as capable. I have learned that parents meet their own needs while honoring their children's boundaries. Boundaries are a huge topic in traditional parenting circles. For traditional parents, parents meet their needs by controlling their kids.

Something like, I need my mother in law to think I'm a good mom so you must behave at her house. In low demand parenting, adults learn to identify the deep need, motivating their tendency towards demands. And to honor our own need while dropping what's too hard for the kid. In low demand parenting, we adults learn to identify our deep needs that are motivating our demands.

And then we practice honoring our own needs while dropping what is too hard for our children. As a low demand parent, I have learned to heal my relationship to myself. What if you had been trusted and listened to as a child? What if the people in your life honored your boundaries and found creative ways for you to flourish just as you were?

As we parent our kids, we give ourselves permission to grieve our pain and to heal old wounds. There's a lot of talk right now about being cycle breakers. And I believe that this kind of parenting is integral in that reality, that we have some cycles we're desperate to break.

As children, we knew things about the world.

We knew things about ourselves that mattered and somewhere along the way. As we were not listened to, not trusted, not respected, not centered, as adults used their power and control over us and told us who we were, and told us, more importantly, who we were supposed to be, we lost some of those threads. And so many of us, as adults, are desperate to come back to who we once were.

This journey of parenting our children becomes a healing journey. For us in our relationship to our own childhood and to our inner children who live in us today.

In low demand, we view meltdowns as a sign of trust and a communication that something was too hard. In other parenting schemas, meltdowns typically mean something is wrong. It's a failure, a mistake, a problem. In low demand, meltdowns are just more information. They share that our kid trusts us enough to share their big feelings and something came up that was too hard. The adult then becomes the demand detective, discerning what happened, what crossed the line, what was too hard about that situation, and what information does that give us about what to drop in the future.

Low demand works for easy kids and for tough ones. This was something that frustrated me so much as I explored different parenting techniques and trying to find ways to meet the needs of my really tricky kids. So many techniques work for lots of easy kids! But that's the reality with easy kids. Most everything works for them. But if it doesn't work for the ones who are extremely sensitive, if it doesn't work for the ones who feel so deeply, if it doesn't work for the ones who are disabled or have slower processing time or react to question asking, if it doesn't work for them, then it doesn't work.

Easy kids are easy kids. That's the whole point. Easy kids are often hiding their discomfort under a veneer of helpfulness and people pleasing. They are too scared of what would happen if they spoke up and named their needs. Maybe some of you were easy kids. You might remember how it felt. Easy kids can be jealous of their more reactive siblings ability to self advocate. They wish they could speak up. They wish they could say what they really thought. Low demand parenting pays close attention to these subtle forms of communication and proactively lowers demands for all kids, easy and tough ones, to find children's true zone of tolerance.

Low demand is proactive and it's reflective. It's proactive. If you regularly find yourself dropping a demand in the moment, something like, "no popsicles before dinner. Well, okay, okay, you can have it." Or, "we're gonna go to the store, but I'm not gonna buy you any candy. Okay, okay, I'll get you some." This is a sign that you might want to shift into the more proactive element of this method.

Proactively dropping demands means you're doing it ahead of time, intentionally, and wholeheartedly. You communicate these demand drops to your children, which then will enrich your relationship and empower their self advocacy. You don't just let it go in the background and hope no one notices. You bring it right into the center of your relationship. "Hey, I saw that that was too hard. I don't want to ask things of you that push you into that zone. It feels so bad to have a meltdown. So, I've decided that from now on, we're just not going to do that anymore."

When we drop these demands proactively and openly with our children, the first emotion that they typically experience is relief. They feel like, "finally, someone heard me. Finally, I can let this go. I've been trying so hard to please you, and it just isn't working. And I am desperate for some relief."

Low demand is also a reflective practice because we can never be proactive about everything. Stuff's always coming up. There's always unexpected demands that drop in no matter how proactive we might be. In getting reflective, we notice when things come up, and then intentionally pause afterward and look back so that we can learn for next time. We might open up conversation with our children or our partners in order to learn more about all of the elements that contribute into any given demand situation and discern " what do you think we would do differently the next time this comes up?

Low demand is a path to freedom and joy. Without control tactics or manipulation without external standards for behavior. Other people telling us what's right and wrong without punishments and battles. When we let all of those things go, it creates a genuine freedom and joy in our relationship with our children. We can embrace a radically respectful relationship. We're free to listen to our intuition rather than follow a script or obey some expert who's tolling, telling us what to do. We're free. We can customize our parenting to our unique child and our specific priorities rather than following some sort of external formula that's supposed to work.

Freedom and joy. That's the magic.

And last, in low demand, we can all be our true selves. Radical acceptance is really the heartbeat of what makes this method so powerfully transformative. Ableism , says that there is one right and best way to be a human. system that has its claws embedded in all of us. .

And when we mix it up with a little bit of capitalism, we get the belief that that ideal human is productive, independent, and generating wealth to support themselves and buy goods. If you've worried about your kid being independent one day, if you've worried they're not going to be able to get a good job, you know that this is the water we swim in.

It's the fears that we've been taught, and it's oppressive to everyone . The real gift of life lies in interdependence and connection. We spend most of our lives in interdependence. It's how we start, it's how we end, and when we are in deep relationship, It becomes the heartbeat of our entire life.

The real gifts are laughter, love, presence, and connection. And in this method, we can be our true selves, needy, struggling, and beautiful.

After three years of low demand parenting, I wrote down the most powerful demands that I've dropped. I considered writing down dropping eating altogether as a family around the dinner table, which was cataclysmically positive for us.

I could have written down dropping the demand that my kids speak to me nicely and embracing all of the forms of communication. I could talk about dropping screen demands and the way that that helped us to shed shame and to learn to trust ourselves, to use our screens without shame or limits, which is our family mantra.

There's so many things that I could mention, but in the end, the things that have mattered the most are the things that I have shed inside of myself. I drop the demand of being like everyone else, because I know that being me is a far more satisfying path. I drop the demand that I get it all right, because I am human, and I have the courage to learn from my mistakes.

I drop the demand that things go the way I want them to, because I know I can handle whatever comes.

I drop the demand that I do it all, because I know that this is an impossible trap, and because what if I don't want to do it all?

I drop the demand that you agree with me, because I feel grounded and aligned in my choices.

I drop the demand that you accept me, because I know my inherent worth and belovedness.

I drop the demand that you take care of me, because I know many ways to get my own needs met.

I had no idea when I started this journey that it would turn me inside out and upside down. I didn't know that it was seeking to change everything about my life. That small accommodations, like letting my kids yell without correcting them, or putting their shoes on for them, rather than insisting they do it by themselves.

I had no idea that these small daily acts would reshape most everything about my self identity and my understanding of the good life.

There's no script, there's no set plan, there's no have tos, there's no model. There's no formula. Yes, there are steps, but that's because it's a journey and you get to walk them out in the way that makes sense for you and your family. The great freedom of stepping off the path is discovering that there is a whole wide world out there.

So if you're out wandering around in the woods, I'll see you there.

  If this podcast is speaking to your soul, you can subscribe through wherever you get your own podcasts. Even better. If you feel the nudge, head on over to Apple podcasts in particular, and leave us a review. It's such a helpful way for new people to also get to experience what this podcast wants to bring into their lives.

I'm Amanda. Remember, it takes great strength to let things go. I'll see you next week.

In this very first episode of The Low Demand Parenting Podcast, I share the story behind my journey into low demand parenting. It all started when my middle child faced autistic burnout during the pandemic, and I realized that traditional parenting approaches were breaking us down. Through this episode, I explain how letting go of expectations and embracing trust, connection, and safety changed everything for our family. I also give a glimpse into what future episodes will cover, including interviews, mailbag questions, and more real-time reflections on parenting, neurodiversity, and behavior.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast

01:26 The Beginning of Our Low Demand Journey

02:09 A Turning Point: The Breaking Day

04:09 Understanding Autistic Burnout

05:36 Discovering Low Demand Parenting

07:44 The Origins of Low Demand Parenting

09:52 Developing the Low Demand Method

10:48 The Core Principles of Low Demand Parenting

12:54 Addressing Common Concerns

13:52 The Importance of Safety and Connection

15:37 Conclusion and Future Topics  

If you’re ready to dive deeper into low demand parenting, I’ve got some great FREE resources to help you get started!

This is a new podcast, and so we are going to be exploring in this episode more about how I came to be talking to you in your earbuds about low demand parenting, about my own journey, and what is low demand. In future podcasts, we're going to have all kinds of great stuff. We're going to have some of my favorite interviews with parents and professors and brilliant thinkers.

All around the questions of parenting, behavior, and neurodiversity. There's also going to be some mailbag episodes where you can send me your questions and I will reply directly to you. As well as some of my own thoughts, as they're evolving in real time, about what it means to practice this radical and beautiful parenting style.

Our story with Low Demand started five years ago. When my middle kid was five, turning six, we started kindergarten process for him. I'll note in particular that this was during the pandemic, and so everything with school was The option for online kindergarten was terrible. He hated the fact that he couldn't go to the playground, that his experience was so different from his older brothers.

He hated the fact that he wasn't making friends and that every single Zoom room was chaotic and overwhelming. We tried school environment, after school environment, and everyone crumbled. And then one day I was desperate, so desperate for this school to work out. And. He was telling me with his body and his energy, no, this is not for me today.

And I leaned on the dominant parenting narrative that I had been handed, which is to see this moment as anxiety and to push through. If we avoid something, then anxiety wins and it's only going to get worse. So he needs to face that. this today or else tomorrow is going to be 10 times harder and it's only going to snowball.

And so I picked him up and I cooed nice words in his ear like, I love you, I support you, you can do this. And I passed him off into his teacher's hands. She had to fully restrain him in order to keep him inside the school area. And I turned and walked away as he screamed at me to come back. And I share that knowing that many of you have had not just one, but dozens of moments like this, and we have two.

It just happens that this was the before and after day for us. This was the day that broke everything. If it didn't break everything, would we have gone on like this? What would have happened? I don't know. This is our story, and this is how it happened. That day when I came to pick him up, he was So angry with me, he began to bang on the windows of the van and scream on the way home.

His teacher reported that he'd had a great morning. He bounced back just fine. See you tomorrow. You know, from her vantage point, all was good, but I could tell immediately as soon as I hit the lock on our van doors that something was very, very wrong. For days, he didn't speak. He didn't leave his room. He communicated with growls and bangs and kicks and screams.

He knocked things out of my hands and cried every time I came close. He was like a wounded animal and it began what I now know of as autistic burnout. He was just barely six years old. We entered the very hardest months of his life. And of course, by extension, mine, his burnout would last for over a year in which he hardly spoke eight or communicated with us and in which he lost so many of the skills that he developed in his first five years of life up to that point.

I had been a gentle, understanding, compassionate, but fairly standard parent. I followed the same playbook, I read the same blogs, I went to the same psychologists, I drank the same Kool Aid. But staring at my six year old as he broke every rule of good childhood and challenged me on every assumption I held on good parenthood, I knew that I was looking at a crucial question.

Can I love him just like this? Is he enough just like this? What am I willing to let go of? What am I willing to let break and even to let die in order for something new to be born? And I just, I couldn't look at my precious one and see a failure. I could only see beauty. Honestly, this is where low demand comes from.

My deep hope is that you have not watched the light go out of your child's eyes. If you have, you're in the right place because man, there's so few places we can go, but if you haven't, my deep hope is that low demand can be a beautiful adventure into the unknown. It doesn't have to come out of desperation or a breaking point.

That's just my story. But we get to freely choose this deeply respectful, compassionate partnership with our children where we trust them to lead us forward into a genuine relationship and into a new way of parenting that isn't built on power, it isn't built on proving ourselves. It isn't about following the rules and showing the world that we're a good parent.

I believe that a good parent is someone who sees, respects, and loves their child just as they are. That's what I learned to do the absolute hard way. Just one note, we'll have whole episodes about burnout in the future, but one note is that I don't see burnout as a failure or even as a kind of Popped balloon anymore when I think about that period and when I help others to reimagine what the burnout period is existing in their lives in order to do, I think of it as a metamorphosis.

It's more like a worm spinning a sack, turning into goo and emerging a butterfly than it is about falling in some sort of deep, dark hole and then clawing your way out. It feels, it feels like a deep dark hole, like, oh my gosh, that is 100 percent the emotional experience of what's happening. But the life change that's emerging through burnout is actually about deep rest.

It's about unlearning and relearning. It's about becoming something new. So what exactly is low demand and how did that become the way forward? Low demand comes, it's origination, it's, it's origin story is from the community around pathological demand avoidance, which is currently, as the time of recording this podcast in 2024, understood as a, a subtype or a profile of the autism spectrum, although there's definitely some interesting research happening around the overlap between autism and ADHD and how those two things impact PDA.

The PDA community is the origin story for low demand. And in those early days of burnout, when we were first getting a diagnosis for what was going on, and I first heard about pathological demand avoidance, people would mention in Facebook groups and in blogs to practice low demand parenting. And it kind of intuitively made sense, like give the kid a break, let them off the hook.

Don't push so hard. Just let them go. Like, let it all go. And, and that made sense. And I tried that, but y'all, it was so hard. It was excruciating for me. I felt like I had, you know, those early cartoons where the, the character runs off the cliff and they get like five or six steps through midair. And then they suddenly realize there's nothing underneath them and they just plummet.

Yahoo! That is what it felt like to me. Like I got five or six steps out on just like, let it go. And then suddenly I felt like I was free falling and I needed more support. And so I did what I always do. I'm a deep researcher. I'm a book lover. I went and Googled low demand parenting. I need the book. I need the expert.

I need the method. Tell me how to do this. And so. Didn't exist. Not only did a book not exist, there wasn't even a standard definition for what it meant to be low demand. And here I was reading, this is the only parenting style that works for PDA ers. And there wasn't, there was no map, there was no road, and I was desperate.

One of the amazing things about being autistic and desperate is that my pattern seeking brain took over and I was like, well, I guess we're going to figure this out here together, you and me, little kiddo. And so day by day, as I read my kid's cues, what made him perk up and made his eyes sparkle and what made him shut down and withdraw, what made me feel steady and safe.

Sturdy and capable and what made me feel terrified and I noticed and I put the pieces together and I created patterns and soon enough I was like, okay, there's a method here before too long. I wrote the method down and that's the core of what became the low demand parenting six step method and the book that I wrote, which is the book.

I mean, it's just my contribution. There are so many other beautiful teachers and writers who are also sharing about what low demand means to them, but that's what we learned. So the way I understand low demand parenting is that it is a radically attuned method of parenting that takes our kids real lived capacity and adjusts our expectations around them.

Instead of expecting them to meet our expectations. It says that our kids do well when they can. Thank you, Ross Green of The Explosive Child. And if they do well when they can, then that means that they're already doing as well as they can given this particular moment. And so it's up to us to shift, to meet them where they are.

And then when our kids are met, when they're seen, when they're genuinely accompanied, that creates the relationship that leads them to stretch and to grow. I'm just going to say it plainly. We don't have to push our kids in order to grow. We don't have to punish them for not getting it right or dangle some really cool carrot out there to make them more motivated.

They're already fully intrinsically motivated to meet our expectations. They want to so And they just can't. Low Demand takes that really seriously and says, Well, if they can't, then why are we still expecting it? When I teach about Low Demand now, I like to say that Low Demand is a tool, or maybe it's a whole toolbox, that you get to choose.

You get to use. It doesn't have to be the sum total of your parenting approach, in fact, it never will be. I like to say that it's necessary, but not sufficient. You will always need other tools in addition to this, and there's no reason to be a perfectionist or an absolutist about it. For one thing, perfection is a myth.

It's just not possible. And so, also, though, it's not always the right tool. There are absolutely times where holding an expectation is really the right path. Dropping demands, lowering demands, adjusting demands is a tool that you get to pull out and use anytime. It's important to say, because everybody asks me in every interview and every podcast and every conversation with a neighbor, they're like, isn't this permissive?

Here's something. I guarantee an entire podcast episode on the entire idea around permissiveness, how it's gotten so wonkified in our current culture, and, well, all of my thoughts on why it is not a helpful category for our parenting. But that aside, let's just take the standard idea around permissiveness, which is that it's bad parenting.

It's weak, it's unhelpful, our kids are running the show, and most importantly, that it hurts kids. I think that's what people are really asking. Isn't this hurting kids? And to that, I can confidently say, no. And there's a ton of research to back that up. Over the last 20 years, relational neuroscience and polyvagal theory have looked really deeply at the nervous system and the brain and how we respond to each other and what makes us feel safe.

And these amazing scientists have been able to prove what countless parents have also experienced in their own relationships with their children, which is that safety, trust, and connection are the magic ingredients to unlocking our brain and body's full potential. When we don't feel safe, And I mean deeply safe on a psychological level, on a felt safety level, like we are deeply seen, nourished, respected, trusted, and central to the story.

When we don't feel that kind of safe, our brain and body starts an elaborate process of shutting down. We literally can't think our way through a situation, we can't learn, we can't problem solve when we don't feel safe. Safety is necessary. And then on top of safety, we build trust and connection. And that those are the essential elements that enable us to do well in the world.

This has been proven! In science, and of course it means that the whole series of rewards and punishments, it's just not effective, it's not necessary, and it's counterproductive, especially for those who have sensitive brains and bodies or who've experienced trauma, for whom that whole process of being manipulated and punished is just one more wound on top of an already gaping hole.

Thanks for watching! We're going to talk so much more about trust and connection and how it is the magic sauce to low demand. It's not actually letting go of the expectations that creates the transformation. It's the relationship that's possible when we let those things go. It's the stuff that's left over when we let go of what doesn't matter and we hold tight to what does.

Welcome to The Low Demand Parenting Podcast, where we drop the pressure, find the joy, and thrive—even when life feels like it’s stuck on level 12 hard. I’m Amanda Diekman, author, autistic adult, and mom of three. But more than anything, I’m a fellow traveler on this wild parenting journey. if you’re ready to parent with more joy, less pressure, and a whole lot of compassion for yourself and your kids, then I’m so glad you’re here. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and let’s do this together. We’ll laugh, we’ll learn, and we’ll figure out how to thrive.

I'm so glad you're here.

Remember: It takes great strength to let things go,

Amanda