At Peace Parents Podcast

In this episode I talk about how I understand my autistic brain, my internalized pathological demand avoidance, and why it took me six years of working in this space before I felt certain enough to say this publicly. I also walk through my life, from childhood to the present, with renewed understanding, in the hope of sharing insights that can help you.
This episode is for parents of high-achieving young adults who burn out, for women exploring whether they might be autistic or pathologically demand avoidant, and for anyone who just wants to know more about the person behind this work (me!).

Key Takeaways
Why Casey Resisted Identifying Publicly for Seven Years | 00:06:29 Casey names three reasons she held back. First, she genuinely was not sure, because her experience did not feel like the veil-lifting moment many autistic adults describe, and she had other diagnoses that made the picture muddy. Second, her early experiences engaging with the autistic and PDA online community involved sustained harassment and cancellation attempts, which made that space feel unsafe rather than affirming. Third, her resistance to being labeled by others mirrored exactly what she teaches about pathologically demand avoidant children who reject diagnoses: it is a survival drive for autonomy, and that include identity.

What Her Internalized Profile Looked Like in Childhood and School | 00:18:25 Casey describes herself as an extraordinarily compliant and academically gifted child whose two special interests were academics and people. She explains that school functioned as a natural accommodation: it was predictable, she was consistently above her peers, and cause and effect was clear. At home, her parents' divorce introduced chaos, and her nervous system defaulted to freeze, fawn, and shutdown rather than fight or flight. She started writing in journals for hours as a way of processing social interactions and exerting control over her environment, which she now sees as the same mechanism as a child spending hours on a screen.

Burnout at 26 and the Panic Disorder Years | 00:27:55 Casey describes her first panic attack during a graduate economics exam at Columbia, followed by a full dissociative episode in the law library weeks later. She lost 20 pounds, could not eat or sleep, and could only function when physically close to safe nervous systems. She was prescribed medication, but she refused to take it for fear of addiction. She frames this period as a burnout triggered by the first situation in her life where she was not the best at something, in an environment where the rules of the game were no longer ones she could win.

Postpartum Burnout and What Cooper's Birth Revealed | 00:38:40 Casey describes going off her medication during pregnancy, an emergency C-section after 48 hours of labor where she felt she lost control of her body, and the 18 months of suicidal ideation and intensive outpatient psychiatric care that followed. She was diagnosed with postpartum OCD, anxiety, and depression. She now understands this as a profound loss of bodily autonomy compounding a nervous system that was already primed for that response.

Acceptance as the Shift That Therapy Alone Could Not Produce | 00:42:15 Casey describes reaching a point after years of EMDR, somatic experiencing, safe and sound protocol, havening, and meditation where she recognized that some of what she was experiencing was not going to be "fixed" by more therapy. It was brain wiring. She shares how she now applies to herself the same accommodation framework she teaches parents, including using the 4S's of regulation, attending hot yoga for sensory regulation, and protecting her close relationships as her primary nervous system resource. The intrusive self-critical thoughts, she explains, are her version of self-equalizing: a nervous system response to perceived loss of control that she is learning to accept.

Relevant Resources
What Is PDA — Foundation for understanding the internalized pathological demand avoidance profile Casey describes in this episode.
Burnout — Free class with context for the burnout patterns Casey traces across her own life.
Finding Meaning — Free class relevant for parents and adults exploring acceptance and long-term perspective.

I speak with Stephanie Harrigan, a certified speech language pathologist with nearly fifteen years of experience working with the neurodiverse population, to talk about selective mutism, feeding therapy and more.
Stephanie brings a regulation-first, child-led approach to all of her work, and this conversation is full of concrete examples from her practice, including what feeding therapy actually looks like when it follows the child's lead, how she has worked with selectively mute children, and what she has seen happen to communication when behavioral pressure is removed.
We also talk about how to advocate effectively with a school team and what research Stephanie uses when making the case for a non-behavioral approach.
Stephanie can be reached at Inclusive Minds Educational Consulting via [email protected].
She also shared some links to research and resources:
https://scerts.com/
https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_laurent_compliance_is_not_the_goal_letting_go_of_control_and_rethinking_support_for_autistic_individuals
https://tiltparenting.com/2025/01/21/episode-424-creating-neurodiversity-affirming-schools-with-amanda-morin-emily-kircher-morris/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9601143/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4515208/
https://aane.org/autism-info-faqs/library/restoring-the-autistic-nervous-system-a-gentle-path-to-regulation/
Key Takeaways

Regulation Before Skills, Always | 00:07:00 Stephanie describes how her approach across all of her work, whether feeding, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) speech therapy, or selective mutism, starts with regulation. She references her time at the Center for Discovery, where the entire program was built on the belief that sensory and emotional regulation is the foundation. Without it, she says, everything else crumbles. She uses the analogy of a house: regulation is the foundation, and speech and communication goals sit on top of it.

What Child-Led Feeding Therapy Looks Like | 00:18:32 Stephanie gives two concrete examples from her feeding therapy work. One student only ate hot dogs at age sixteen. Rather than introducing new foods directly, she used the student's interest in small figurines to interact playfully with food. Another student loved baking but would not eat what they made, so they baked together and delivered food across campus. Stephanie explains that child-led feeding therapy means finding the child's special interest and embedding it into the work, with no timeline for progress and no pressure toward any specific outcome.

Selective Mutism and the Role of Safety | 00:24:28 Stephanie describes working with a kindergarten student who was described by staff as someone who never spoke. In her first session with him, he spoke immediately. She attributes this to the felt safety she worked to establish before anything else. She describes how she uses a total communication approach, honors every form of communication including grunting and hissing, and matches the child's energy rather than bringing high excitement.

AAC Is Not a Last Resort | 00:30:29 Stephanie explains what AAC is and pushes back on the common concern that using a device will prevent a child from learning to speak. She draws a parallel to what Casey describes with PDA children more broadly: the issue is often not that the child lacks the ability, but that at times stress and sensory dysregulation are blocking access to that ability. She describes seeing communication expand when sensory needs were addressed first, and frames AAC as one tool in a total communication approach rather than a replacement for speech.

How to Work With a School Team as a PDA Parent | 00:48:57 Stephanie's advice for parents trying to collaborate with a school team is to not be afraid to advocate. She says she has never viewed a parent as challenging, and that strong advocacy is not only a parent's right but something she personally appreciates. She suggests sharing resources from a place of curiosity rather than confrontation, asking for the team's expertise, and framing questions as "I found this and I'm curious what you think" rather than leading with disagreement.

Relevant Resources

What Is PDA — Foundation for understanding the nervous system lens Stephanie and Casey share
School, Screens and Siblings — A free class relevant for families navigating school-based challenges discussed in this episode
Understanding PDA — A free class for deeper context on regulation and autonomy

This is the fourth episode in my series on PDA and restrictive eating, and this one is for therapists.
If you are an occupational therapist, a speech language pathologist, or another type of therapist working with a child who isn't responding to gentle, play-based, sensory-based, or exposure-based feeding approaches the way you'd expect, this episode designed to help you.
I share the full arc of my older son Cooper's journey with extremely restrictive eating, from the time he was four and a half years old and eating primarily three processed foods, through five years of occupational therapy, to where he is today. I walk through how we adapted the SOS feeding protocol over time to incorporate autonomy, equality, lower demands, play, and connection to special interests. I also share five specific strategies you can bring into your sessions.
Key Takeaways
The Sensory Lens Is Not Enough | 00:02:04 I share how Cooper's restrictive eating was initially understood through a sensory lens, and how, for about a year and a half, that framing guided his therapy. But the sensory lens alone was not sufficient to explain the patterns I was seeing or to help him expand his eating. What I came to understand was that his survival drive for autonomy was also a major factor, and that the two had to be held together rather than treated separately.
What Was and Was Not Working | 00:11:56 I walk through what was working in the early stages of occupational therapy, specifically the therapist's focus on establishing relationship and rapport before moving to skill acquisition, and the role that dopamine, novelty, and sensory-intense experiences played in Cooper's initial engagement. I also describe what was not working: visual schedules and laminated choice boards, pressure to describe sensory experiences verbally, and structured home-based feeding protocols. For a PDA child, I explain, even chosen structure can become an internal demand.
Autonomy and Equality as Accommodations | 00:16:37 I describe two specific accommodations that became central to how we approached feeding therapy over five years: autonomy and equality. Autonomy meant shifting away from scheduled, structured feeding time and toward strewing, declarative language, and following Cooper's lead. Equality meant deliberately allowing him to win, be above the therapist and me in games, direct the session, and have the last word. I explain how these accommodations address the root cause of nervous system activation rather than managing the surface behavior.
Lowering Demands in the Session | 00:29:35 I describe what it looked like to lower demands in the occupational therapy session itself, meaning doing things for Cooper that he was cognitively or physically capable of doing himself, so that his available capacity could go toward tolerating and engaging with food. I give specific examples and I address the common concern that this approach enables children rather than building independence, and explain why the logic is different for PDA.
Special Interests as a Turning Point | 00:37:06 I describe the turning point in Cooper's feeding therapy, which came when eating became connected to his special interest in football. I explain how this connection made it possible to revisit things he had previously rejected, including the laminated food charts, but this time entirely on his terms. I also offer five specific strategies for therapists at the end of the episode.
Relevant Resources
Free Therapist Masterclass — Free class for OTs and therapists on PDA.
What Is PDA? — Overview of PDA as a nervous system disability.
Paradigm Shift Program —Our signature live coaching program where we walk families as they implement accommodations and move forward.

If you've heard me talk about autonomy, equality, and lowering demands before and thought, "But what does that actually look like at the dinner table?" — this episode is for you.
This is the third episode in my series on eating and PDA, and it's the most practical one yet. I'm walking you through six concrete accommodations you can experiment with if your PDA child or teen struggles with restrictive eating: autonomy, equality, lowering demands, sensory accommodations, strewing, and novelty and dopamine. Throughout the episode, I share anonymized client anecdotes and real examples from my own life as a mother of two PDA sons — including how our family navigated mealtimes during the hardest years and what things look like now.
This episode is meant to be an experiment you can try out and observe, not a prescription. I hope it it's helpful for you.
Key Takeaways
Why Restrictive Eating Happens | 00:00:00 Before getting into the practical tips, I revisit the causal logic for why eating is so often impacted in PDA children and teens. Control around eating tends to be the outcome of cumulative nervous system stress, and is often an attempt to reset autonomy and equality when a child can't find it in other areas of their life.
Autonomy Around What, Where, When, How, and If | 00:03:43 I break down autonomy into five buckets — what, where, when, how, and if a child eats — and explain how each one shows up in practice. This includes examples from my own home, like allowing my son to eat in front of a screen for years, delivering food on demand, offering a buffet of options, and giving treats before or with meals without attaching conditions.
Equality and Why It Matters at the Table | 00:22:41 I walk through what I mean by equality as a nervous system accommodation around food — not as a philosophical concept, but as something you can observe and act on. I share the story of how our family friend houseguests helped re-establish family dinners, and how my son Cooper started joining us at the table by running a drawing game where he was the judge and ranked all of us — an equality accommodation I sustained for about a year.
Lowering Demands and the Sensory Intersection | 00:27:56 I explain what lowering demands actually means in the context of eating: doing things for your child they could technically do themselves, in service of helping them access food. I share examples like packing a 16-year-old's lunch, delivering pizza reheated to the exact right temperature, cutting crusts off bread, and wiping out Tupperware to eliminate even a molecule of moisture.
Strewing, Novelty, and Dopamine | 00:35:51 I cover strewing — leaving food out without expectation — and why it works differently from direct offerings. I also share how we used novelty and dopamine in my son's feeding therapy, including a "game show" approach to sampling every variety of apple, and cutting apples into stars or making apple pasta with a Zoodler. I end with my hypothesis about why PDA individuals tend to seek dopamine, and what that means for how we can think about introducing foods.
Relevant Resources
What Is PDA — Background on PDA as a nervous system disability
Understanding PDA — Deeper dive into PDA frameworks and accommodations
Paradigm Shift Program — Our signature live coaching program where we walk with families as they implement accommodations and move their family forward.

In this episode — Part 2 of our series on eating and PDA — I walk through the 10 misconceptions about eating that I personally had to unlearn in order to help my son. These are beliefs that are completely reasonable for most children and even most neurodivergent children, but do not apply to pathologically demand avoidant kids and teens. I cover why "kids will eat when they're hungry" isn't empirically true for PDAers, why behavioral approaches (even gentle ones) can backfire, why restricting sugar may not be the strategy you think it is, and why looking at eating in isolation misses the bigger picture of cumulative nervous system stress.
I also share what the research does and doesn't tell us, where the methodology gaps are when it comes to neurodivergence, and what has actually changed in our home over the years. If the approaches you've been trying aren't working — or are making things worse — this episode is for you.
Key Takeaways
PDA Kids Won't Just "Eat When Hungry" | 00:05:52 I explain how PDA is defined by a survival drive for autonomy and equality that consistently overrides other survival instincts — including hunger. Even when a child is physiologically hungry, the internalized demand of needing to eat, combined with cumulative nervous system stress, can make eating impossible.
Behavioral Methods Activate the Nervous System | 00:09:20 I walk through why behavioral approaches to feeding — including gentle ones like sticker charts, food rewards, or even subtly positive facial expressions — can backfire with PDA children. Because PDA is rooted in threat perception tied to autonomy, any method where a parent or therapist is the "decider" can trigger a nervous system response that makes eating harder, not easier.
Restrictive Eating Is a Symptom, Not the Problem | 00:14:33 I describe how restrictive eating is often a tipping point — a symptom of cumulative nervous system stress that has built up over weeks, months, and sometimes years. Rather than focusing only on what happens at the moment of eating, I explain why it's important to look at the full picture of a child's daily life and accommodate across the board.
Sensory Strategies Alone Won't Transform Eating | 00:26:15 I share how sensory-based feeding approaches, even fun and play-based ones, can still backfire if there isn't enough autonomy built in. I use an example from my own son's feeding therapy to illustrate how the lack of autonomy around engaging in a sensory protocol was causing him to avoid even the activities he enjoyed.
Sugar, Bento Boxes, and Family Meals Reconsidered | 00:31:09 I go through several misconceptions I personally had to unlearn — including the idea that sugar is the main enemy, that colorful bento box meals represent good parenting, and that home-cooked family meals at regular times naturally lead to healthy eating. I share how I came to think about these differently for PDA children, including what actually changed in my own home over time.
Relevant Resources
What is PDA - a foundational overview of PDA as a nervous system disability.
Free Burnout Masterclass - understand the burnout that can make restrictive eating so challenging for PDA kids.
Paradigm Shift Program® - our signature live program where we support parents to help their PDA children and teens through and out of burnout so their whole family can thrive.
Citations
Love Me, Feed Me - book by Katja Rowell.
Schaefer, Michael, et al. "Experiencing sweet taste is associated with an increase in prosocial behavior." Scientific Reports 13.1 (2023): 1954.
Hammons, Amber J., and Barbara H. Fiese. "Is frequency of shared family meals related to the nutritional health of children and adolescents?" Pediatrics 127.6 (2011): e1565-e1574.