Been looking for some handles for months. Flipping over a lot of internet-based rocks/data. I want to be a better parent. I needed the first steps used for identifying behavior I was seeing increasingly [and trying really hard not to take personally].
Then I found the thing has a name or names: Demand Avoidance; or Persistent Drive for Autonomy and the Venn diagram here [for the situation I am facing] is a circle: 100% overlap.
… and behold, the handles appear, once the nameless thing is named:
etc.
TIL that I needed to know this about 20 years ago.
Next best time: now, I guess.
Inshallah, I get have to have a conversation not as a parent, but as a human, talking to another human.
I may have to wait a while.
By finding your tribe, you’ll find that you’re not alone and that these people think and react in the same way that you do, plus these are people who you don’t have to mask in front of. Having the freedom to be yourself is like having the best stretch in the comfiest bed.
The sense of belonging is one that every human in this scary world yearns for so find those that you belong with. They’re out there, I guarantee it.
Knowing the issue is halfway to dealing with it.
I also agree with their tentative estimation that PDA is often found amongst autists but also among others with other neurodiversities, rather than being a definitive trait only in autism.
Honestly, I don’t use a lot of dextroamphetamine in my practice. This part:
Methylphenidate (Ritalin) did not show a similar increase in psychosis risk.
was reassuring to me, since that’s my go-to ADHD med. Also, I gotta say, their definition of 40mg Adderall being “high dose” is concerning, considering that I see this and higher given by psychiatrists pretty commonly. Also worth noting that this is an adult study, and generalizing to peds is always dicey. But I have definitely taken note.
I jumped on that article originally for personal reasons which the article doesn’t cover. I thought “speed psychosis” was pretty well known, esp in hardcore users.
I was prescribed ritalin upon diagnosis as hyperkinetic in 2nd grade, and took it 2x/day on school days until around the middle of 8th grade. (I was also prescribed 50mg benadryl so I could sleep after being on speed 8hrs/day most of the week.) I began growing out of the worst of the symptoms in 8th grade, and was given dexadrine until near the end of 9th.
I’ve had V mild to obvious hand tremors since early high school. It’s never debilitating, but it’s sometimes enough to freak out my friends. After occasional use of cocaine for a few months in my early 20s, V mild to obvious (not continuous) head tremors joined the party.
I have yet to encounter much information re: the long term effects of having taken ADHD meds as children, but always assumed it can do bad shit to the nervous system.
Hence my overarching philosophy of having my kids on as little medication as I can get away with. Which not infrequently conflicts with parents who seem to want their kids to be passive blobs. But that is another story…
Commas, and plenty of them, what’s all that other punctuation for anyway, I mean, just keep lengthening that sentence til your head’s empty, or near enough empty, it’s just going to fill up again anyway …
