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In this episode of The Low Demand Parenting Podcast, Amanda Diekman breaks down why the dominant parenting paradigm of rewards and punishments isn’t serving our kids—or us. Grounded in brain science and personal insight, Amanda shares how focusing on connection and attunement unlocks long-term trust, regulation, and growth in our children. Through real-life examples and a compassionate lens, Amanda encourages parents to step away from control-based strategies and embrace the transformative power of safety and belonging.
Low Demand Reset: Reflect, Release, Realign
A gentle guide to closing the year with intention and compassion.Get yours here: www.amandadiekman.com/reset
Key takeaways include:
Why rewards and punishments miss the mark.The science of behavior as communication.Shifting from “earning love” to modeling unconditional connection.Practical strategies for supporting dysregulated children.
Additional Resources:Low Demand Reset (Free Gift): www.amandadiekman.com/resetLow Demand Parenting book: a love letter to exhausted, overwhelmed parents everywhere. Get the first chapter free! Why is everything with my kid so hard?: Take the quiz to find your first step forward!Low Demand Parenting Blog: a treasure trove of low demand wisdomFollow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more!
InstagramFacebookPinterestThe 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 life feels stuck on level 12 hard. I'm Amanda Diekman, 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.
Before we dive in, I want to share a free gift I’ve created for you as we move from one year to the next. It’s called the Low Demand Reset — a gentle, reflective mini-course designed to help you release expectations, let go of what’s no longer serving you, and realign with what matters most. It’s free and available in the show notes or at amandadiekman.com/reset. I hope it brings you clarity, compassion, and a fresh start.
The Dominant Paradigm: Punishments and RewardsThe dominant parenting paradigm many of us inherited is rooted in punishment and reward. Even if we’ve decided not to follow this path, it’s still the framework shaping much of modern parenting.
At its core, punishment-and-reward parenting is built on the belief that kids need external incentives to behave well. This system assumes that the primary things children lack are motivation and self-control. Rewards and punishments are used to manipulate their behavior toward desired results. Children are often labeled as manipulative, but really, this system is designed to manipulate children into compliance.
These rewards and punishments can be straightforward, like sticker charts, prize boxes, time-outs, or spanking. They can also be more subtle, like approval or disapproval, giving or withholding attention, or ignoring behaviors. For instance, if you’ve ever worried that comforting your child during a tantrum might ‘reinforce’ the behavior, or been told that ‘giving in’ will teach them bad habits, you’ve encountered this paradigm.
The belief underpinning this system is that kids only do well when they want to, and that it’s a parent’s job to teach control by making it more pleasant to do the “right” thing and unpleasant to do the “wrong” thing. But brain science tells us otherwise.
What Brain Science Teaches UsBrain science shows us that behaviors, especially those we consider “negative”—hitting, screaming, whining, shutting down, hyperactivity—are stress behaviors. They indicate a brain system under stress.
Punishments and rewards don’t address the root cause of these stress behaviors. Instead, they often exacerbate the problem. The number one factor that helps children regulate and thrive is attunement and connection with a trusted adult. This connection activates their brain’s reward centers and fosters safety, which is the foundation for behavioral change.
Longitudinal studies confirm that having a connected, attuned adult is the most critical factor in a child’s long-term positive development. When children feel safe and connected, their brains can access creativity, courage, executive functioning, and the ability to try again. Disconnection—through punishment, disapproval, or ignoring—leads to negative outcomes in both brain development and long-term well-being.
When the Reward and Punishment Mentality Shows UpThis mentality can show up in surprising ways. Let’s say your child struggles with school avoidance, or as we often call it, “school can’t.” You might think, “If I make staying home comfortable, they’ll never want to go back. I need to make it unpleasant for them here at home.”
Or during a meltdown, you might feel torn: “I can’t comfort my child right now because they’ll learn that throwing tantrums gets my attention.” This fear—that by connecting with your child in hard moments you’ll reinforce unwanted behavior—is rooted in the punishment-and-reward paradigm.
These thoughts are deeply ingrained in us. We’ve been taught that humans are motivated by pleasure and avoidance of pain, and that it’s our job as parents to manipulate these motivators. But this lens is not only unhelpful; it’s often harmful.
Shifting the Lens: Connection Over ControlThe most transformative aspect of low demand parenting is not just dropping demands. It’s creating space for safety, trust, connection, and acceptance. These elements are the real drivers of change in our relationships and our children’s behavior.
Consider the mantra, Kids do well when they can. This simple truth shifts our focus from trying to control behavior to understanding the unmet needs and lagging skills driving it. Behavior makes sense when viewed through the lens of a child’s circumstances, neurobiology, and nervous system. This understanding fosters empathy and helps us meet our children where they are.
For instance, if a child’s behavior stems from hunger, tiredness, or sensory overwhelm, punishment won’t solve the issue. Addressing the core need will. Similarly, a meltdown is a sign of dysregulation, not manipulation. The best response is attunement—helping the child feel safe and connected so they can return to regulation.
Unlearning the Punishment and Reward ParadigmUnlearning this paradigm takes time. It’s seductive because it offers a neat explanation of behavior and a sense of control. But as we shift our mindset, we begin to see that the goal isn’t to manipulate behavior but to support core needs.
One common example is food. If your child has a hard day and only wants McDonald’s for dinner, you might feel conflicted. Reward-and-punishment thinking tells you that getting McDonald’s rewards bad behavior and reinforces negative patterns. But what if instead, you view it as meeting a core need—nourishment, comfort, and connection? What if showing up with McDonald’s is an act of attunement, not capitulation?
Another example: After a tough morning, one of my kids wanted donuts. Part of me resisted, thinking, “I can’t reward this behavior.” But I got the donuts. Later, my child looked at me with love and said, “I had a hard morning, and you got me donuts anyway.” That moment wasn’t about rewarding or ignoring behavior. It was about connection and unconditional love.
Letting Go of “Good” and “Bad”Much of this paradigm is rooted in the idea that “good” behavior is rewarded and “bad” behavior is punished. For many of us, this belief is tied to perfectionism, religious teachings, or relationships where love and belonging felt conditional. Unlearning it is hard work, but it’s essential for healing.
Instead of tying rewards to behavior, we can celebrate intention, effort, and connection. For example, if we promise a post-dentist treat, we still follow through even if the child is too dysregulated to complete the appointment. We’re celebrating their courage to try, not their compliance with an expectation.
Moving Forward: Healing and ReconnectionAs we unlearn the reward-and-punishment mentality, we open the door to deeper healing and connection. This journey invites us to examine our own beliefs and wounds. It’s an opportunity to free ourselves from the pressure to earn love and belonging and to model this freedom for our children.
When we focus on connection over control, we create a foundation where both parents and children can thrive. Let’s keep peeling back the layers of this paradigm and choose a path of attunement, trust, and unconditional love.
If this podcast speaks to you, please subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more parents discover the transformative power of low demand parenting. And don’t forget to grab your free Low Demand Reset at amandadiekman.com/reset. Thank you for being here, and remember: It takes great strength to let things go. I’ll see you next week.
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In this deeply empathetic mailbag episode of the Low Demand Parenting Podcast, Amanda Diekman answers two listener questions about navigating the challenges of dysregulated kids:
Physical Aggression and Meltdowns: What do you do when your child is physically aggressive, whether toward you or siblings? Amanda shares strategies for:
De-escalation: Dropping demands in the moment to reduce tension and prioritize safety.Co-regulation: Staying grounded so your child can borrow your calm to find their own.Practical tips for balancing priorities like safety versus expectations, and the importance of repair after meltdowns.Name-Calling and Emotional Pain: How do you handle deeply painful words from a dysregulated child? Amanda dives into:
Why name-calling is a symptom of deep dysregulation, not malice.How dropping the expectation that “hurtful words won’t happen” fosters connection and healing.The transformative work of exploring why certain behaviors hurt you, healing your own emotional wounds, and modeling resilience for your child.This episode is filled with actionable strategies, personal reflections, and encouragement for parents navigating the complexities of dysregulated kids.
Time Stamps:
00:46 Understanding Dysregulation in Children
03:14 De-escalation and Co-regulation Strategies
10:16 Addressing Name Calling and Emotional Safety
18:39 Healing and Self-Reflection for Parents
20:38 Conclusion and Listener Engagement
Additional Resources:
Low Demand Parenting book: a love letter to exhausted, overwhelmed parents everywhere. Get the first chapter free! Why is everything with my kid so hard?: Take the quiz to find your first step forward!Low Demand Parenting Blog: a treasure trove of low demand wisdomFollow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more!
InstagramFacebookPinterestThe 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.
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. In this mailbag episode, I'm responding to two questions about kids who are really dysregulated. We'll cover aggression and meltdowns and picking fights and calling names in this episode, but I just want to note that not all kids show their dysregulation through external behaviors.
This It is called externalizing, when we can see the fact that their nervous system is overtaxed, that they're having big feelings, that they don't have tools to manage, and when they're beyond their window of tolerance, basically a kid that's dysregulated, we see it on the outside in the way that they behave and act.
And many kids do this. They take their insides and they bring them outside and we can see it easily. Anyone can. But some kids are just as dysregulated. They're just as outside their window of tolerance. They're just in just as much pain on the inside. But rather than bringing it out, they will internalize their dysregulation.
They'll bring it out. inside their own bodies, often by controlling their bodies through perfectionism. It can result in eating disorders or self harm. And all of these internalizers are much harder to spot. Their dysregulation and is masking as a good kid who's doing just fine. And that is how they want to be perceived often.
And so it takes a really astute eye, whether you're a parent or a caregiver or a therapist or a teacher, it really takes a keen adult to sense a kid who's struggling and who's hiding their struggle. All of the responses and all of the ideas in this episode will still apply, even if you're Disregulated kid is imploding instead of exploding.
Let's get into the questions. We have a question about physical aggression against mother or against siblings and what to do. My first answer is always pay attention to the situation where it happened. Ask yourself, what was too hard for my child in this situation? How can I drop it next time so that we don't have this situation?
So that my child is not even escalated in the first place. Let's say you can't and it's already happening, which is what we call in the moment. So in the moment, there are two priorities. You're going to deescalate and co regulate. The principles of de escalate are that first you look and see, is there an obvious demand that I can drop that is too hard?
Let's say you're pushing your kid to get in the car and they are hitting you or their sibling on the sidewalk and screaming at you. It feels like there's a ton of pressure there because you've got a full grocery cart and the car is loaded up with frozen stuff and you need them to get in the car so you can get this stuff home.
It might seem really hard, but can you drop the demand that they get in the car at that moment? Part of the reason that we drop the demand in the moment is that your child is not capable of meeting this expectation and that continuing to hold it right now is only going to give you worse and worse options.
By dropping the demand, you back up to bad options, and that's where we want to go. That's the right direction. We've got worse, we've got bad, and then we can get to better. Better and good are all going to happen in prevention and proactive planning. Bad and worse is what happens in the moment. But you assess your options, you notice what is going to make this situation worse, what's going to make this situation better, and prioritize what matters most.
So the popsicles getting a little bit melty or your chicken thawing a bit is probably less significant in the moment than you getting hurt, your child running off in a crowded parking lot, or a sibling becoming traumatized. In those moments, sometimes it seems so desperate. I've got to get these groceries home.
You have got to get in this car. And holding the demand seems to make more sense, logically. But actually, when we bring our priorities online, and we bring our thinking brain back online, and we step out of autopilot, we can recognize what matters most, what actually matters most, and sacrifice the things that are less important.
Which in our hypothetical situation is our popsicles. You're gonna de escalate by dropping the demand that your child get in the car and instead allow them to cry or to flail or to whatever they need to do by letting the things that are too hard go. In the moment you tell your child, I see you, I see what you're struggling with.
I know what matters most. I will be your calm in the storm. I will let things go. And you are allowed to have this moment. You are allowed to have a hard time. I'm not going to hold it against you. In that moment, you do your own work to actually let those popsicles or that chicken or whatever it is.
That's your sacrificing to actually let it go. If you toss those items straight in the trash because it took a full hour and they're not good anymore, then that's okay. All of this is hypothetical, but I hope what you're hearing me say is that you let go of the demand that you're holding in the moment, look for how to reconnect and reestablish safety for the child who's melting down and you sacrifice the things that are less important for the things that are most important.
So you've de escalated. You've dropped the demand that's too hard. Now you're going to co regulate. Co regulation is where your brain actually sends signals to your kid's brain to give them signals to calm invisibly. And this sounds so woo and like fake science, but it's actually real science. When you practice co Regulation in your body, your regulated brain is actually the primary thing that your child will use in order to regulate themselves.
You allow your child to tap into your prefrontal cortex, your regulation center. The core of co regulation is do what you need to do to regulate your own body so that you are a stable place for your child to land when they're having a hard time. This is an excellent place to get proactive, which is figuring out what are you going to do in the moment, practically.
Are you going to take a deep breath? Does that actually feel good to you or does it make you spin out of control? Are you going to do like me and wiggle your toes to try to stay present so you don't dissociate because a dissociated brain cannot actually co regulate for another person's brain? Are you going to notice five things around you?
Close your eyes for a second and say, I can trust this. Does that give you the ability to be a presence for your child? You don't have to be miraculously calm if that doesn't feel accessible to you. You don't have to fake it. What you want to do is find your own way of coming back into yourself and being present.
and noticing that you are okay. If you can access that feeling of, I am okay, then you are co regulating for your child. And then beyond doing something for yourself, whatever that quick reminder or mantra is for you to get back into your body, to get back into your okay ness, then you think about, what does my kid need in this moment to get back into their okay ness?
Is it something sensory related? I don't know. Do they need to scream? Do they need to punch? Do they need to kick? Do they need to squeeze? Do they need to grab? Do they need a hug? Do they need a swing? Is it something emotion related? Do they need some space to feel their feelings? I know in our family and different things are needed in different times.
And so co regulation is often thinking really nimbly on my feet. How can I use the space I'm in and the time that this is? To meet this kid's needs as much as possible and sometimes it's simple math like is the least painful option right now. How do I get us home in the most accessible way? Or how do I have the fewest people hurt?
Because there's not always a magical great option. Sometimes there's just terrible and even more terrible. And so you do the math and you figure out which one is less terrible. Do that in order to get back to your safe place and then do what needs to be done to do healing and repair. I just want to diffuse the myth that there's a really great way of handling this out there and that you're just messing up because you're not doing that really great way.
Sometimes there's not. Sometimes you get home, you get safe, and you repair, because that's the best you can do in this situation. It's always wise to weigh consequences. Letting your kid ride in the front seat without a seatbelt, which seems crazy unsafe, but maybe that's less unsafe than having them ride in the front with a seatbelt, actively hurting you and hitting you while you're driving down the highway.
Make your real time decision. About what is your best option? Not in a hypothetical, ideal world, best case scenario. No, we are operating in worst case scenario right now and it is okay. That first question is really practical. It's about what do you do when things are going off the rails and you're out in public and you, you need strategies in the moment.
Our next question is a lot more about your mindset and your approach. It's more about how you set up your family support structures to help both you and your child feel safe and seen. And, as I'll mention in this question, it comes out of my lived experience and a deep desire to help you move more quickly into a state of more ease and joy than I did and not to get stuck in the same pitfalls.
So, here is question two. It's a question from Mary. She is ready to drop the demand of being polite in neuro normative ways, but wants to hold a line at no name calling for anyone at any time. Because the reality is that when her daughter is feeling really dysregulated, some of the things that she says are just intolerable for Mary.
So I'm ready and really eager to step into this with you because I completely get where you're coming from on this and I want to help you make progress faster than I did. I learned the hard way that holding on to these non negotiables in order to protect myself Ultimately, worked against my long term goal of healing the relationship with my child so that they can show up in their best way towards me, so that I don't always get the worst of the worst.
Ultimately, name calling. On point, very specific, very mean name calling. Is just another behavioral signal of dysregulation. And you, you mentioned this in your question that this happens when she's dysregulated, when dysregulated name calling happens. That's right, a brain and nervous system Detecting threat at such a high level so far beyond the window of tolerance We're expressing that I feel like my life is at risk.
I am Existentially like I feel like I could die. My very existence is on the line. So I'm going to use it Every protective mechanism that I have in my arsenal in order to protect myself because ultimately your daughter Mary is looking both to thrive and to stay safe. So here is the reality. The brain and the nervous system essentially have two modes.
There it's either safe or not safe. It's an on or an off. And if your child is in not safe, Then their prefrontal cortex, our highest level brain functioning, the place where they have stored things like mom told me that this is a non negotiable, that it hurts her when I say these words, that part of their brain is literally not functioning in that moment.
It is a survival mechanism. So she literally cannot Remember that this is a family role. She cannot remember this hurts mom. And I will feel devastated that I said these words to her. It's not there. It's not possible. It's as though she were in a wheelchair. And you were expecting her to get up and walk.
Literally not possible. Then what is the function of a rule? Let's say you say to your child, we don't do name calling. It's just how we are in this family. Can we both agree that we don't want to do this, that we just want this to be not a part of our dynamic anymore. We don't want to hurt each other this way.
And she's feeling connected. Her whole brain lit up with connection and trust. And she's, yes, mom. Yes, I don't want to hurt you this way. I really don't. You're like, yes, we did it. And then what happens? Another meltdown happens, and boom, you're right back to the same behavior. The part of her brain that would stop her isn't functioning in that moment.
You might say yes, but she doesn't say this to anybody else. Yes, that is true. This is the hard part for parents in order to remain their safe person. Her body perceives safety with you. She isn't doing all of the extra neuropsychological things that are required in order to remain hyper vigilant. That's the complex reality of masking.
Masking requires. So much from our brain, our body, and our nervous system, it requires this radical disconnect from our bodies and from the real emotional reactions that are happening inside of us, but the body never forgets. I can never let my guard down. I am always prey and the predators are everywhere.
I must remain hypervigilant at all times. That comes at a severe cost. The meltdown has happened. The words came out, you got hurt. She felt so deeply unsafe, that she said things she didn't mean to, which comes along with a whole layer. self loathing and it comes at a cost to the relationship with you.
Maybe she's lost the one person in the world that she can actually be safe with. What happens when we drop that final frontier, that last barrier that we want to desperately to hold, to say that the only way I can be okay as your grownup. is to hold this last line. This is just not okay with me. When we let that go, what it does is tell our children, no matter what you say, I will be here.
No matter how you wound me, I know how to take care of myself. I know how to show up for you. Because I know how to repair. Because I am the person who will model for you what it looks like to be safe. Inside of myself that no matter how the world comes at me, I know how to repair with myself. So that is the hard message that I have to share with you on a simple level.
I would love it if If you could just hold one last thing, the last thing you want to hold is you can't hurt your siblings. They've been hurt enough. I will not let this go. Or maybe it's, I won't let you use this particular word with me. I just won't. You can't do it. I want that to be true for you. I want you to be able to hold onto that.
I so do. The simple, hard, heartbreaking message is. It doesn't work. Ultimately, holding that deepens your child's shame, disconnection, and sense of unsafety in their relationship with you. It makes it even harder to repair. The memory of rupture without repair breaks down that relationship. Ultimately, what we're trying to do here with low demand is put more and more investments in the safety column, in the trust column, in the connection column, letting go of the expectation that you won't say mean things to me actually makes it more likely that she won't say mean things to you.
It's so counterintuitive. It's mind blowing. I know. Letting go is your fastest, surest path to the thing that you want. But I can totally hear you getting upset and saying, But Amanda, are you saying every time my daughter gets upset, I get my feelings hurt? I have to feel this terrible way just so she can feel safe?
What about me? What about my safety? I can't be safe in this relationship. I'm getting hurt like this. And you're right. And we're right at the heart of it. Your work in this relationship is to dig deep into why these words hurt you. Why this is your final frontier. What in your story has made this kind of name calling so excruciatingly painful and unsafe?
When we heal in those really raw, really deep, very intimate pieces of our own story, Then we gain the power to show up for our children, no matter what they throw at us. Whether it's modeling for them or just doing it for ourselves, we move through this last huge piece of our own pain that we've carried with us all this way into adulthood.
This moment with our child is inviting us to look at it, to heal it and to walk on as a whole person. In so many ways, these things circle back around to Greece, grieving the people who have called you names in the past, the part of you that has longed your entire life to feel safe in a relationship where no one would ever cut you down.
To be truly safe in your most intimate relationships, you want that and you deserve that. You will achieve that in your relationship to yourself. You ultimately are the one. You can love yourself the way you need to be loved. You can heal the parts of you that need to be healed so you can show up for your child.
And in the meantime, this is an imperfect journey. So you show up partially healed and partially broken. And so does she. We walk with each other through the hard stuff. And we try and we stumble and we learn how to say I love you anyway. 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. 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.
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In this deeply engaging episode of The Low Demand Parenting Podcast, Amanda Diekman sits down with Morénike Giwa Onaiwu—an activist, advocate, and thought leader in neurodiversity and intersectionality. Together, they unpack how intersectionality informs low demand parenting, highlighting the overlap of privilege and marginalization in parenting and life.
From understanding how societal norms rooted in white supremacy affect neurodivergent families to exploring the complexities of unmasking for marginalized communities, this conversation challenges us to reflect on how our identities shape the demands we place on ourselves and our children. Morénike shares practical insights on navigating cultural expectations, systemic biases, and building stronger, more inclusive connections across neurotypes.
This episode is a must-listen for parents seeking to align their parenting practices with authenticity, humility, and the realities of diverse lived experiences.
Additional Resources:
Dr. Onaiwu's books, including "Sincerely, Your Autistic Child"Dr. Onaiwu’s work as Director, Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN)Dr. Onaiwu's Google Scholar page"What To Say Next" book that Dr. Onaiwu mentions in the episodeLow Demand Parenting book: a love letter to exhausted, overwhelmed parents everywhere. Get the first chapter free! Why is everything with my kid so hard?: Take the quiz to find your first step forward!Low Demand Parenting Blog: a treasure trove of low demand wisdomFollow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more!
InstagramFacebookPinterestThe 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.
Welcome.
Thank you so much, Amanda.
I am so grateful that you are here to share your wisdom. Because for some people, maybe this is their first time asking about what is intersectionality.
So let's move in first with a kind of a 101. What is this idea and why are you so passionate about it?
The term was coined in the 90s by a professor named Kimberlé Crenshaw, and she's still an active professor today. She's really involved in black feminism and legal studies .
We all have multiple identities. Every single person, every one of us. None of us are just one thing. We have a nationality. We have a gender. We have an age group, socioeconomic status. We have a faith belief or non belief. We have ethnicity. We have all of these things. So all of us have all of these things that make us who we are. We all have privileges and marginalizations as well. Everyone does.
It's a concept that's fluid. It's not the same. For example, I have a great deal more privilege than my cousins who are in West Africa. By virtue of being raised here in the United States, I have opportunities that they don't have. It's something that I didn't ask for. It's not my fault, but I do have it and I have to recognize and acknowledge it.
But then there's also areas of my life where I have challenges. And so there is not a single human being who is all marginalizations. We're all privileges, we're all a mix of both, and in different circumstances, sometimes one thing that's a privilege somewhere can be a marginalization elsewhere. And that should, we should all acknowledge that, but intersectionality is looking at the interplay of the marginalizations of these identities.
So all of our different identities, privileged and marginalized, overlap one another, you don't stop being a mom just because you're a woman, just because you're a whatever, and so all these things tied together. Sometimes they work in sync with one another. Sometimes they clash.
And so intersectionality, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw was using a couple of court cases. One was de Graff in a raid versus General Motors. And then there was another one against the science lab in which it was found that there was a group of women who had sued for discrimination where they worked.
And the case was not found in their favor. It said you all are saying you're being discriminated against because you're Black, but there's Black people who work here. You're saying you're discriminated against because you're women, but there's women who work here. But what they weren't looking at was the fact that every Black person who worked there had to be able to lift a certain, it was like basically warehouse work, had to be able to lift a certain amount of weight.
And so most of these women who were, five, one, and, didn't have the physical capacity to work in those warehouses. And then there were women who were hired in the place, but all of the women were white or white presenting because they were in jobs such as receptionist and client facing.
Positions that at this time, in the discriminatory, society that was occurring at that time, which was a lot more overt, these women weren't able to get such jobs. Just because, it didn't look at the fact that we're working, but putting these things together makes things more complicated.
And so intersectionality is simply the intersection of the different aspects of your identity, particularly those that are marginalized, how they overlap and impact your life. And the. Illustration, she gives us about a four way intersection of vehicles. If you have cars coming from this way.
If there's no stop sign, yield sign or stoplight unless someone does something, they would collide and you don't know which ones want to collide with what. First, they're all going to collide together. You don't know which one's going to hit harder, but they're all going to have an impact.
And so it's a concept that means a lot to me. It really applies to us all. And especially if you're doing this kind of parenting, I'm pretty sure that in many ways it applies to your life.
Yes, absolutely. Let's dive into the low demand aspect of this. Low demand parenting is all about dropping demands and reducing expectations to create relationships of safety and connection.
But the things that we expect of our Children are very Contextual and intersectional. I found this in coaching parents around the world, that the things that they say are "have to's," like "good parents do this", or "this is what we do" is very different.
So how do we begin to think about these norms, these demands that we are constructing from a more intersectional perspective?
It's really hard because there's a lot of things that, are subconscious for us, and it really takes a lot of effort and intentionality to understand those things.
There's a lot of things that we think we've unpacked and unloaded, but there's a lot we need to examine about ourselves, and determine --have we really backed it up as much as we think we have?
Have we really removed everything?
If we're saying that, "okay I'm not going to insist upon a bedtime, for my child," but after a certain time they can't do this, or this, you are insisting on a bedtime. Or if you're saying "I don't care , what time they brush their teeth, they just need to brush their teeth." Do they? Will they die? Are the teeth going to fall if they don't brush one day? Or maybe just use the toothbrush or just use the mouthwash?
Some of it is inspecting that and is that really true? Or is that just something that somebody told me once and I've held on to all this time? And while we're talking about the neuro norms I particularly love some of the writing and sharing you've done about the ways that those norms themselves have been shaped by white supremacy and the ways that this is going unchallenged, even in the neurodivergent community.
Yes, and these are conversations that I have a lot because I know they're not pleasant but there are things that we need to think about and address because we all want to do better if this was hopeless if there was no chance there'd be no reason to bring it up.
, when something is what you've been surrounded with, it becomes like your normalcy and it's hard for it not to be, and so neurodivergent people, like you mentioned, neurodiversity is, overall, it's a sense of culture within a culture. But we still are bringing with it what we've been raised with or what we've been around and what we understand. And one example of that is for example,
it's a little better now, but a lot of the checklists they used to have online about, determining whether or not someone was neurodivergent or autistic, had a lot of the things that they shared were Western norms and often white norms. They were things that may not be true to one's experience if you're a person of color, and so are not seen, you are missed.
Other things, people need to think about things culturally, one example 📍 is language. Person first language originated from, developmental disabilities community and simultaneously from the HIV community, both of these communities of which can have a large number of individuals of color.
And so it's seen as empowering. It isn't seen as a negative thing or wanting to separate themselves. So when people say stuff like identity first language is is better and person first language is perpetuating stigma. I'm thinking "maybe it is to you because maybe culturally to you it's seen as separation, but maybe that's not how it's perceived by other groups. You're, projecting."
It might be better to say this is my preference, but this one is acceptable as well. A lot of the things that people say are non negotiables are things that aren't intersectional.
And I find that actually, interestingly enough, regardless of race, people who are adopting ways of parenting, that's more connected and inclusive. There's, low demand parenting unschooling, a variety of these different things tend to have a worldview that seems to me more like the people of global majority.
For example, there's 📍 an intergenerational component. And so things such as co sleeping or , doing things in a non traditional way because it works for the family are things that are welcomed whereas you see in a lot of advocacy, it's the lone wolf, it's me parents have no voice here.
These people have no voice. And for us, it's more intertwined. A lot of what drives us is our families and ourselves. We definitely want our voice projected, but we want these people alongside us. We don't want them not with us. We may not even want them behind us.
We might want them near us. And so I think that there's just things like this nuances that people share a lot of things that people talk about, unmasking or some of these things are very unsafe for people of color who are neurodivergent to do or very difficult to do. It, it's just really, it's complicated.
So I think that we really have to step outside of our own experiences and think --some things that are right for us are helpful for us are not for others. I remember having to change the way that I think because I always used to be very frustrated when people would talk about autism being You know, prison where your body's in, you're locked in, but your mind is intact.
And I used to be very upset about that and thought that was very ableist. And I was like, that is not true. It's not a prison. It's just how you all perceive it. But then I started realizing that there were some of our colleagues, for example, some of my minimally speaking colleagues have said that is how it feels to me because I actually, have difficulty with controlling my body.
It's not just about stimming and this, any other, it does feel that way. And so I started. Okay. I can't really say that. They may, accept themselves who they are in neurology, but this is still an element of their experience. And so for me to deny it or say, that's not the case is to erase their lives and their role in their community.
Gosh. Yes. I love what you're bringing here, which is, it's like a real humility. Can we speak about our own experience and back off on so much projecting of " this is how it is for everyone."?
That is such a white supremacist move of " I'm going to take my experience and then blanket it onto the world."
Absolutely.
It's, there's this willingness to be teachable and to be wrong and that you're offering up that I think is so important. And you brought up this particular aspect of balancing of unmasking as a concept that that I think many people are saying this is the way forward is for autistic people to come out into the world and mask.
And yet there is. Because of intersectionality and the identities yes, maybe that's true from a white experience, but from a number of other identities and intersections. That's not safe. So I'm thinking about the ways that my kids, like one of my kids will yell at me in public or hit me or hit his siblings and that would be perceived as very dangerous.
And perhaps people even, intervening, in dramatic ways that I can drop the demand that he behave a certain way because of my identity, because of my cultural privilege and that for other kids, even if it's not aggressive behavior, even just Stemming or yelling that those behaviors might be also perceived as aggressive.
So how Absolutely. Do you, you can either speak to this, like how do you balance this in your own life, or how do you help others who are thinking about the reality of their intersectional identity and dropping demands like unmasking?
I think that I like welcome people to really dwell in that gray zone because of the fact that.
We do want to promote authenticity but we also want to understand the practical reality that people have. And the example you just gave me, it was a great one if your child's dysregulated and they're, bashing on and hitting, it's not because he hates you, it's not because he's violent, he's having a difficult time, he's thrashing, he's trying to regulate himself, and you understand what that means, and later on, he'll have an opportunity to calm down, he'll talk through it. But like you mentioned, Happening at home is one thing.
If it happens in public people might stare, but it's less likely that they're going to, it won't be perceived in the same way that it would with another family. I know it's different for everyone, and some children can't camouflage or mask anyway, not even if they wanted to, they are not ever going to be successful.
Some adults as well. But I explained to my children Okay, this is how people are going to think of thing A or thing B, even if that's not you mean of thing A or thing B. And I know sometimes it's hard to be to think about those things in the moment in difficult times. So these are things I've told them about in during times that.
They aren't, having a challenging day. When they are able to process and internalize new information. I explained to them, they'll ask me certain questions why I do certain things and I'll explain. so for example that I We'll explain that I might, let certain situations go just because it's, it's simpler and easier, as opposed to, what would be true to me, which would be, to my ethics might be to address the thing.
It might not be the time. There might be a better way to do those things, a safer way to do those things. So I explained to them, for example, that When I had the talk, which I hate, but with my older children, I explained to them, if you were in a situation with an authority figure and they're asking you a lot of questions, rapid fire questions.
I know at home, we don't have to do our contact and all that. I know you're at school. You don't have to do it, but please do it with these people. And they're looking at me. I'm like, I know it sounds ridiculous. But because of the fact that people perceive when you look away as if you have something to hide, or you're shifting, or whatever, even though I know that's something I told you not to do, try to do it.
For, even though this is something that is not good for you, because it's a lesser of two evils in this situation. I'll tell them to try to find a way to stim internally, try not to rock. And again, I know this is not healthy or normal to the suppression, but try to use your internal stims, things that song lyrics around your head or whatever, because you can move less.
Try to move very slowly and deliberately, do not engage in echo, which even though we encourage it because it's processing, it's how we understand things and retention, they'll think you're being mocked. So basically I'm teaching you how to be fake momentarily to survive. And I'm teaching you that if someone does something to you that's, that's wrong, you let it happen and we'll worry about it later, whereas usually I would say, no, this is unfair, this is wrong, or whatever, in a situation where you have more power. In a school setting or with your siblings, you can be like "no, that isn't fair because this and the other," you cannot say that in this instance, you need to just, make it through the situation and move on.
I think that's hard for people to understand, and I think it's also hard for some people to understand why. Okay such and such setting this school or this type of therapy or program is harmful. Why would that person have their child in that thing? And so I think that they need to think about what are the alternatives if they don't?
What happens to this person in a culture where people call child protective services for a child playing in the park alone, if you weren't using the "gold standard of medical care," or if you weren't giving your child what is considered a, " a legitimate education" in their eyes , what risks are are you placing yourself and your child in?
So I think that sometimes we just have to understand that people don't have the circumstances that we have sometimes.
We might have a lot of challenges, but we might still have privileges that they don't, that allow us to, openly say things or do things a certain way without realizing the costs. For myself, I used to mask, , at work years ago. And when I started to unmask it was very freeing, but I think I realized also it was the time that put a target on my back.
Um, It felt free. Internally, but it also, made me unsafe. So I was safe in terms of being my real self and I was unsafe in terms of now my job stability was threatened and ultimately, that accumulated over time.
And I can speak to it from a white perspective something that I think about often is my ability to drop a demand like Send it, my kids don't go to school, but like sending them to school in the same clothes several days in a row because they can't change clothes.
But I can do that. I have the privilege to do that.
They call CPS so fast. You know what I mean? Like your kid's hair. So that's, and that's the challenges. There is a a colleague of mine named Natasha supernova mama, who has two, who is autistic and has two autistic little girls.
And so her girls, their hair is locked, which is a twist, because the idea of constantly washing, combing, brushing, the sensory part of that is, is like horrendous for her little girls. But yet, if you, if your child's hair is considered unkempt, or their clothes are not like this, it can be very problematic.
People will say that you're neglecting your child, that they're harmed, that they're, if your child's self harming, if they're a person who scratches themselves you're going to be the one that's Look at something is wrong, so if your child wants to eat the same thing every day, you're going to be looked at as not giving them adequate nutrition, like all of these things are criminalized.
You're just under additional scrutiny that other people have. So you may not care that your kids barefoot or in the same clothes. You may be fine with it, but you might have to force them to change because you know that the domino effect is going to be, a catastrophe for you and your family.
Yeah, exactly. And I also think as a white parent of white children who are neurodivergent and developing friendships with other neurodivergent kids, that's something that's really important for me is to teach them, Hey, something that you are doing, if it was done in a black body is going to be perceived as dangerous.
And so you need to be looking out for your friends, you need to stepping into those environments and providing your privilege can be somebody else's safety.
Yes.
And they aren't going to see that. Like your kids are like, that sounds crazy. My kids are like, that sounds crazy.
Yeah, exactly.
And I'm like, yeah, but it's true.
And this is your job because of the body you were born into and you need to wield it for good. And not for evil because just standing by or, perpetuating is not an option for you.
That is so important. And I think that's what a lot of people miss about these conversations.
Like they get caught up in like frustration or guilt. I'm thinking it's not about guilt. It's about life places in situations where sometimes there are responsibilities upon our shoulders that are difficult to bear, whether it's having to act a way that's not authentic for you or having to get out of your comfort zone and help someone or use its privilege to switch and manipulate a situation, not because you want to, but because of situation that you're around.
An example of mine is I lived in Southern California for a number of years. one of my best friends, we learned, we used to make these drives to Arizona. We learned very quickly. that although I was a better driver, my friend needed to drive because I got stopped so many times. It was just when we, when my friend drove, we didn't get stopped.
So it was like his, burden as my white male friend was, this sucks. I don't like being on the road, but I'm going to go ahead and drive. It's going to be better. We're not going to be stopped. It's not going to have this drama. And he wasn't resenting me for it.
It was something that he recognized that he could offer that he could contribute. So it's an additional task, but , like you mentioned we're a community. So we all have to be there for each other. This person is bearing, the brunt of it in one way and you were bearing in another.
Yeah. That's a way to confront these realities, not from a place of blindness of just unmask, just do it. Mm-Hmm. like That is not helpful, but facing together that we all desire a life where we can be our full selves, and yet we're operating in a system where that is not equally safe.
And so then we need to enter into that in lockstep,
Yes, not resistant, not hiding, I tell people privilege can be a superpower or it can be a weapon. How are you going to use it? Some people are given the privilege of being on a certain platform, and they use that space to share others experiences.
If you have the privilege, like for example, myself, of being a person who can speak to communicate, although I'm a part time AAC user there are a lot of concepts that I can share that might not be my direct experience or something that is the highest priority for me, but it very much is for another part of our community.
But because they have not been brought to the table, that doesn't mean that voice has to be absent. They should be at the table. But if they're not, I'm gonna share their spot. They're going to be in spirit at the table as best as I can as an ally to share that perspective.
And I think that's what we need to learn to do. We need to lean into those things, not hide from them.
All right. I have one more question for you. And I just wanted to say before it's over, like I'm loving this conversation. Thank you for showing up today. This has been amazing. So I want to ask you about intersection when it comes to crossing neurotype.
So if we have a neuro typical parent, raising a neurodivergent child or a neurotypical partner with a neurodivergent one and. That's another place where the culture and expectations might clash and there's also power and privilege at work in those dynamics.
My parents have English as their second language, they almost always like when someone asks a question, pause, it's just a quick little pause, but they pause a moment before they just answer.
I think we need to do that if there's these differences. We need to have an understanding to take an additional look at things because a lot of it is going to be learning.
For example, we have phonics and then we have sight words. Some of those words make no sense. You just have to memorize them. There's nothing logical about that word whatsoever. E I G H T, but that's eight. Okay. And so with A T E, sometimes you just have to accept that the thing makes no sense, but this is what it means.
This is the symbol for this or for that. That's what we have to understand about a lot of our communication. It shouldn't be only the neurodivergent person learning the ways of neurotypicality and stretching and changing.
It should be the other way around as well. We should all be coming together. For example I have a relative who feels ignored if you don't communicate with them. I can go years without talking to someone and still consider them one of my closest friends, and as soon as we connect, it's like we never stopped talking, but this person, I've put in my calendar. I now text them every couple of weeks. It's something I can do that's out of my comfort zone to help them, even though I think it's ridiculous.
To me, I don't care, but I'm doing it for you. So similarly, certain things that people might have to do, with their spouse or with their children that you don't get. You have no idea why this light is so bothersome to this person. You flip the light on in the kitchen, the person's shielding their eyes.
To you, it looks fine. To them, it's a bright fluorescent flashlight in their face. You might not get it, but you know what it means to them.
There is a book by a couple Sarah and Larry Nannery, it's called What to Say Next. And Sarah Nannery is an autistic mom married to a neurotypical husband. Basically he translates the world for her.
She'll be at work, there'll be a situation and then she'll send it to him. "What does this mean?" And he's " oh, they're not really meaning this. They mean this." He helps her with decoding and we can do that with one another too. Your child came into the room, you could explain to the neighbor that your child came in and didn't say hi.
It's not because they're rude, but they don't say hi when they come into the room. They have a routine. They go straight for, I don't know, the refrigerator or whatever. They acknowledge you, but not with small talk. It's not rudeness. It means this.
My son likes to share food and some of this food I don't like. And I would try to say "no, it's fine. It's fine." And so I've learned that if I can just take a little small bite, whether I like it, I don't have to pretend like I like it. That's a love language for him. He's going to insist. He just needs to see someone else take part in the eating as well.
I'd so much rather just say, "Oh, that's great. I'm glad you like it. Oh, it's yummy. Know. I don't want to try it. "And, and I can't expect him to honor my no, I can tell him to do that. But I can also yield, so like I can have boundaries, but sometimes those boundaries can be flexible.
I think we should be like a cytoskeleton as opposed to a cell wall. Sturdy and with our boundaries intact, but flexible to let things in and out as we need to as situations arrive.
I love that metaphor. I'm going to tell my husband that he's a scientist.
I'm thinking of this morning. I never do this, but I messed up and I kissed the Top of my son's head. Cause I was just right there and it just happened and he screamed and grabbed it and it would be so easy to dismiss that. " Come on, I just kissed you," but for him, it is physically painful for me to cross that boundary.
And I know not to do it. And I messed up and I apologize big time because that was a transgression and I did it anyway, and that's a way of honoring, like for him, his experience is that this. That this kiss was incredibly terrible. And it doesn't help me at all to say I just kissed the top of your head.
So realize, okay, we're both neurodivergent, but this is a sensory difference that he has that isn't mine. It isn't natural to me. So maybe I just got into autopilot mode and kissed, but I owned up.
I was accountable. I was like, Whoa, sorry, hon, that I shouldn't have done that. And I realized that, I think that our kids see that authenticity in us. And I think it helps them. I'll say something and my children will come back and be like, mom, you were wrong about this.
And the other, I'd be like, Oh, wow. You're right. I was sorry. Like I think that it builds trust.
I can tell that you are an incredible parent and yeah, it's, it must be a real gift to be your child because of the kind of nurture and love that you're offering. And also thank you for bringing all of us into your wisdom. It's been such a gift to talk to you today.
Thank you.
Thank you. Parents, I just want to say, if you're thinking you screwed up, you didn't do this right, you didn't do that that probably means that you're on the right track to becoming the parent you want to be. Just the other day I was running behind on something and I was like, oh, I, everybody's upset at me. My husband's No one's upset at you.
He went to the kids. Are you upset at mommy? I said, mom, and so in my mind, because I was upset at myself, I mentioned that. And so I was just thinking, okay, wow, like we can be so self critical even when we're telling ourselves to be gentle with our child. We need to be gentle with ourselves sometimes too.
We need to be a low demand parent ourselves sometimes too.
Absolutely. I fully second that. Letting things go for ourselves is so important in this life. Thank you.
Thank you.
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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”
Additional Resources:
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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.
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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.
Time Stamps: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)
Additional Resources:Low Demand Parenting book: a love letter to exhausted, overwhelmed parents everywhere. Get the first chapter free! Why is everything with my kid so hard?: Take the quiz to find your first step forward!Low Demand Parenting Blog: a treasure trove of low demand wisdomFollow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more!
InstagramFacebookPinterestThe 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.
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.
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In this episode, Amanda speaks with Dr. Megan Anna Neff, psychologist and co-host of the Neurodivergent Conversations podcast, to discuss how understanding the nervous system changes everything about parenting. They explore how stress responses affect both parents and children, the power of co-regulation, and why meltdowns are more than just big emotions. Dr. Neff shares insights on the autonomic nervous system, practical strategies for supporting neurodivergent kids, and the science of repair after ruptures. Tune in for a conversation on finding compassion and resilience, even in the most challenging parenting moments. 12 Days of Low Demand Holidays:
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!
Links:Meet Dr. Megan Anna NeffExplore Neurodivergent Insights pageCheck out Megan Anna's wonderful book "Self-Care for Autistic People"Listen to Divergent Conversations podcast with Dr. Neff and Patrick Casale
Time Stamps: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
Additional Resources:As we move into the end of 2024, you're going to LOVE the Low Demand Holidays course -- your step-by-step holiday survival guide. With your high-needs kids, with burnout hovering, and too much on your plate -- Is celebration and joy even possible? It absolutely can be when you drop demands and focus on what truly matters.Low Demand Parenting book: a love letter to exhausted, overwhelmed parents everywhere. Get the first chapter free! Why is everything with my kid so hard?: Take the quiz to find your first step forward!Low Demand Parenting Blog: a treasure trove of low demand wisdomFollow us on social for updates on the podcast, blog, and more!
InstagramFacebookPinterest
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.
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!
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What it's about:
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.
12 Days of Low Demand Holidays: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!
Links:Ross Greene's The Explosive ChildCollaborative and Proactive Solutions approach00:00 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
Ready to Start Dropping Demands?If you’re ready to dive deeper into low demand parenting, I’ve got some great FREE resources to help you get started!
Quiz: Why is Everything So Hard? – This quick, insightful quiz will help you understand why parenting might feel so overwhelming right now and give you personalized steps to lighten the load. Take the quiz here.Free Chapter: Low Demand Parenting – Curious about my book, Low Demand Parenting? Download the first chapter for free and start your journey toward more ease and joy. Get the free chapter here. Transcript: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.
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What it's about:
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
Ready to Start Dropping Demands?If you’re ready to dive deeper into low demand parenting, I’ve got some great FREE resources to help you get started!
Quiz: Why is Everything So Hard? – This quick, insightful quiz will help you understand why parenting might feel so overwhelming right now and give you personalized steps to lighten the load. Take the quiz here.Free Chapter: Low Demand Parenting – Curious about my book, Low Demand Parenting? Download the first chapter for free and start your journey toward more ease and joy. Get the free chapter here. Transcript: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.
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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
