Positive Behaviour Support for Pathological Demand Avoidance
When a child or adolescent experiences overwhelming anxiety in response to everyday demands, their behaviour can quickly escalate into avoidance, distress, or shutdown. Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) is a profile within the autism spectrum characterised by an intense need to maintain autonomy, extreme sensitivity to perceived demands, and escalating anxiety when control feels threatened. These responses are not wilful or defiant-they are survival-based reactions driven by fear, uncertainty, and a need to feel safe. Without the right understanding and support, this can create daily challenges for families, educators, and support teams.
Positive Behaviour Support for Pathological Demand Avoidance is a clear, compassionate, and practical guide that helps you move beyond compliance-based approaches and into a truly neuroaffirming and trauma-informed way of supporting children and adolescents with PDA. Written for parents, teachers, support workers, allied-health professionals, and anyone supporting a young person with PDA, this book provides step-by-step tools to reduce anxiety, build trust, and increase cooperation through connection, flexibility, and shared problem-solving.
Grounded in the Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) framework, this book translates theory into practical, everyday strategies you can use across home, school, and community settings. You will learn how to recognise the early signs of overwhelm, adapt your language to reduce perceived demands, and use collaborative approaches that protect the child's autonomy while still helping them engage in necessary tasks and routines. Instead of focusing on changing the child, the book guides you to change the environment, the demands, and the support strategies-creating conditions where the young person feels understood, respected, and safe.
Inside, you will discover how to:
- Understand the core features of PDA and how anxiety, sensory processing, and autonomy needs shape behaviour
- Identify triggers, patterns, and maintaining factors using Functional Behaviour Assessment tailored to PDA profiles
- Reduce everyday demands through low-arousal, flexible, relationship-based approaches
- Use collaborative dialogue, humour, choices, and shared control to increase engagement
- Implement co-regulation and emotional safety strategies that strengthen trust and connection
- Create prevention plans that reduce anxiety triggers, increase predictability, and support smoother transitions
- Respond respectfully and safely to escalation, avoidance, shutdown, or withdrawal
- Build on strengths, interests, and autonomy to support learning, independence, and skill development
- Work effectively with families, educators, and multidisciplinary teams to ensure consistent and compassionate support
The book features ready-to-use templates, which will help you implement practical strategies immediately, while building long-term capacity across the child's support network. Each chapter blends evidence-informed practice with accessible guidance, making it easy for readers at all levels of experience to understand and apply.
Whether you are just beginning to learn about PDA or are seeking more advanced, tailored strategies, Positive Behaviour Support for Pathological Demand Avoidance offers the clarity, reassurance, and tools you need. This book empowers you to shift from power struggles and crisis responses to relational safety, collaboration, and genuine behaviour change-supporting the child or adolescent to thrive in ways that honour their autonomy, individuality, and strengths.
