Session Overview
Creating a PDA-Friendly School Practical Strategies for Every Staff Member
Many children experience everyday demands as genuinely threatening, leading to avoidance behaviours that are often mistaken for defiance. In this practical session, we explore what PDA actually means, why conventional approaches often backfire, and what you can do differently starting tomorrow. Whether you’re a teacher, TA, or support staff, you’ll leave with strategies you can use immediately to reduce anxiety and increase engagement.
Learning outcomes:
- Recognise avoidance as a sign of demand overload rather than defiance
- Communicate using language that reduces pressure rather than escalates it
- Adapt how you present tasks and transitions to lower the demand load
- Respond to early signs of overwhelm with strategies that actually help
Resources
Here are some further resources that complement the session:
- Language Swaps for Reducing Demands in the Classroom provides dozens of phrase alternatives organised by activity type: starting tasks, during lessons, transitions, managing behaviour, and deadlines. Keep it visible in your classroom or staff room as a quick reference when you catch yourself about to use a triggering phrase.
- Quick Scripts: Defusing Arguments gives you ready-made phrases for when things escalate. Organised into four stages (slow it down, lower the demand, step back, come back), it’s designed to give you something better to reach for than the first thing that comes to mind.
- Demand Decoder is a worksheet for working with individual children. It helps you analyse specific demands that trigger anxiety, identify what makes them feel hard (feeling controlled, time pressure, too many steps, being watched), and brainstorm lower-demand alternatives together.
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For more information about my speaking and training work, check out my speaking page or email me – [email protected]
