Understanding PDA: Strategies for your "demand-avoidant" child (Reissue)

·15 min·1 clip

Dr. Nanika Coor reveals a four-year surge in parents seeking help for children with extreme avoidance of everyday demands.

Dr. Nanika Kaur focuses on kids who are deeply resistant to routine and everyday demands. She unpacks the resistance from the child’s side, then lays out strategies that may help families connect better, work together, and find calmer ground. Anxiety sits at the center of the framework. The episode uses a bucket model to show how stress builds, how healthy coping strategies such as sleeping well, getting exercise, socializing, and going to therapy let some of it drain, and why no person's bucket ever stays completely empty. Capacity shifts over time. When incoming anxiety rises faster than the bucket can drain, the bucket overflows and a child may move into fight-flight-freeze, meltdown, or shutdown in response to even a tiny stressor. A child struggling with PDA is described as having only one tiny hole at the bottom of the bucket, which makes it harder to release stress and easier for new demands to stack up. Recent demands matter. The host ties bucket capacity to what has been happening over the last few days and weeks, how much anxiety is already in play, and how much autonomy the child has recently been allowed. Mornings can use it up. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, and eating breakfast may already fill the bucket so far that leaving the house for school becomes too much. Triggers are worth learning. The episode encourages parents to notice what sets their child off so they can adjust early instead of waiting until the bucket is already overflowing. Some demands can wait. When capacity is tight, it can make sense to save whatever bucket space remains for a task that truly has to happen or for an activity the child wants but may still resist. The framing stays practical. Rather than pushing harder, the episode keeps returning to observation, adjustment, and a calmer read on the child's resistance to routine and everyday demands. The tone stays steady. Dr. Nanika Kaur keeps explaining the problem in plain family language so the advice feels usable in real daily life.

As heard by us

A clear, practical look at demand-avoidant kids through the episode's bucket model.

Project Parenthood focuses on kids who are deeply resistant to routine and everyday demands, and Dr. Nanika Kaur keeps that resistance rooted in the child's point of view.

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Why you'd press play

When a simple request lands like a full-body no, this gives you steadier ground to stand on today.

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