Hey guys. I'm so excited to share today's interview with you. I'm talking to Amanda Diekman, the author of Low-Demand Parenting.
My friend, Jacqui recently introduced me to Amanda's work because I've been super curious about PDA, Pathological Demand Avoidance. It’s a profile typically associated with high masking autistics…
However, I'm starting to encounter this profile coinciding with some ADHDers in my personal life, along with some coaching clients.
I am so excited that Amanda reached out and offered to share her wisdom around low demand parenting, which is such a supportive approach to this profile. If you are not familiar with Amanda and her work, you are in for a treat.
What is Low-Demand Parenting?
Amanda: I'll tell a quick story and then I'll define it.
When I went to the grocery store with my three kids (aged 4, 2, and 0) I had fully absorbed what I would consider dominant gentle parenting. It's kind of a mishmash of popular culture and what my parents and in-laws told me I was supposed to do. It’s a blend of their culture and modern parenting culture.
And so I would walk around the grocery store, flooded with all of the various shoulds and supposed to’s for this experience.
Everything from how are my kids sitting in the cart? Are they too loud? Are they bothering other people?
To fears like are they gonna run away and leave the store? Are they gonna have a meltdown? Is someone gonna poop their pants?
And I felt like if I let go of any of those things at any point, then I wasn't quite sure what would happen.
I think this is another piece of dominant parenting- there's this murky fear, but nobody's really sure what they're afraid of. And I was really sure that if I was not that sturdy, confident, reliable, consistent parent all the time, something bad would happen.
It's all going to get worse. It's going to snowball. I'm going to lose control.
Hw am I supposed to remember what's on my grocery list, buy those things, stay within a budget, make aligned choices, like: do we get organic of that thing or can we do conventional or whatever I'm trying to do?
It’s impossible to navigate being a perfect mom and following all these rules that we've internalized are the “right good way” to do it. And that’s completely ignoring the fact that, I didn't even know I was autistic then. So overhead lights totally scramble my brain, there's music playing, other people are having conversations, my kids are touching me, I'm typically baby wearing multiple children.
My sensory needs weren't being met, my brain was scrambled, but more importantly from a parenting perspective, I was terrified.
Low-Demand Parenting Definition
Low demand is an act of deep alignment with yourself and your kids- where we learn it is okay to let things go when they're too hard. To meet ourselves and our kids exactly where they’re at, right now and saying yes, I am here. I'm saying it to my kids, and I'm saying it to myself.
So if my kids are wiggling and trying to run all over the store, I might say, Okay. Sounds like we need to do this fast and I might make a game out of it. We might zoom and run down to the end of the aisle and back to the cart.
And, I'm gonna let go and think: who cares if other people think that I've got wild kids? This is where we're at. I am trying to get through this store. My singular goal is to purchase what's on my list and it is ok that I have zoomy children. They don't have to be anything that they are not.
I let go of other people's expectations.
I let go of my projections.
I let it all show.
So low demand parenting is really a parenting conversation and a series of steps where we can learn to let things go when they're too hard. It's not a comprehensive strategy that's going to answer every single question. But allows us to realize less is okay too, rather than pushing for new skills or advocating for getting your kid to do more, more, more.
Because all we're given is shoulds and supposed to’s and “don't let them see you” this and “don't be a permissive parent” that.
We get no training on how to let things go.
I always say I'm trying to raise my kids to be quitters because I want them to know how to quit. When something's not working for you, it's actually a healthy choice to release it.
As moms, how do we meet our child’s demands, when it feels like it increases our demands and is a threat response in our bodies?
Melissa: Have you experienced that? Because I'm highly sensitive, ADHD, dyslexic, and the demands can feel like a lot.
Amanda: It's a great question. There is a flip side fear, when we're dropping demands for our kids that it’s going to add more to our plate.
And I think it brings up this complex relationship between our inner child and our real life children. Where our inner child is resentful and angry with our real life children for getting what they never got.
Acknowledging Your Inner Child
It pulls us back in the moments, when we're getting heated and over overloaded and we can revert to those earlier wounded parts of ourselves that get us into fights.
Whether they're real life fights with our kids, or we're fighting in our head and we start saying things that were said to us when we were little, like:
You're lazy. Why don't you just get up and do it yourself?
Things come out of our mouth that we're like, I never thought I would say that to my kid.
I think it's that wounded child who's trying to figure out, well, did I matter? And why didn't anyone do this for me? It's so tricky and hard to reparent ourselves, while we're being tested, triggered and challenged.
And all those wounds that may have been dormant are brought up leaving us feeling like: okay, what do I do with all of this?
The pressure of worrying about everyone else's needs, but our own or the self judgment pops up.
Making us think:
I should be handling this better.
I should be more regulated.
I should be saying the right thing.
And that just creates the spiral.
Reparenting ourselves through Low Demand Parenting
Melissa: I love what you're saying because I talk a lot about reparenting ourselves as neurodivergent adults. I know the intention here is to support and reduce demands for the child, but as you're talking, my body literally feels relieved at these novel, radical concepts too. It feels like freedom to me as a mom.
Amanda: Yes- I was dying for somebody to teach me how to say no. For someone to teach me how to say this is too much.
Can you please turn the lights off?
Can everybody talk a little bit quieter?
Can we just go slower?
Can I have a break?
I was desperate for that and I never got it.
And now I am nurturing these three little radicals and can also apply it to myself.
The Magic of Low Demand Parenting
The magic of low demand is that it helps me get outside of that moment. To get creative and curious and set aside this idea that there is any one way it's supposed to go. That there's some best version of you and of your kid that we’re on a journey towards. Because none of that is true, right?
What matters is the relationship and this one chance I have to deeply love you and for you to trust me enough to blossom into whoever it is that you're intended to be.
For years, I believed and I wanted those things to be true, but I didn't have a manual for how to do it. And we can get into some of the how to's, but low demand parenting helps me realize there's no way to fail. There’s just trying and learning.
This illusion that we've got to be perfect and do it right a hundred percent of the time is just a lie.
How to get started with start Low Demand Parenting
I consider myself to be more of a fellow traveler than an expert. Part of what my Autistic brain is really good at is seeing the process, seeing the steps and narrating, here's how I work my way through that.
I think one of the real flaws of influencer culture and expert culture is that we take our hardest stuff and we're like: well, you've got this all figured out (not that you're doing this to me) but we all do this like, okay now be my guru and tell me what to do.
When the answer lies in you.
You will figure it out by living it. And you're going to make a ton of mistakes and you're probably never going to figure it out because that's what it means to be human. As soon as you get something figured out, the reality shifts. And the things that are obvious and easy and smooth for me may be different for you.
So I'll tell you the process that I use to work through low demand parenting with my kids.
Learn more from Amanda
Get the first chapter of her book: Low Demand Parenting here for free.
