Levelling the Playing Field: Understanding Equalising Behaviours in PDA
- Natalie Froud
- Jul 24
- 8 min read
Don’t call me on the phone. There’s no point. I won’t be allowed to speak to you. My four miniature typhoons will find me. They could be on the other side of the house, sitting quietly, angelically playing Lego or watching a movie… but they’ll sense it, Mum is on the phone giving someone else attention. They will move in from all directions with the stealth of Navy SEALs seeking out rations of snacks and juice, suddenly needing to read a book or ask whether the tooth fairy exists. Over and over until the call is ended and I am defeated.
When parenting or working with a child who has a Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) profile, it can sometimes feel as though you're locked in a constant tug-of-war. You ask, they resist. You offer help, they push back. You take care of YOU and they break down. But if we look more closely, we begin to notice something else emerging between the lines of these daily interactions. A child insists on negotiating the terms of a simple request. They inject humour into moments of tension, create a game to change the atmosphere, or shift the conversation entirely. These behaviours are not random. They are what we call equalising behaviours, and they can be the key to truly understanding what’s happening beneath the surface.
Equalising behaviours are strategies used by children with PDA to ‘level the playing field’ when they feel disempowered, anxious, or emotionally overwhelmed. These actions, often misinterpreted as manipulation or defiance, are in fact creative ways of reclaiming a sense of agency in situations that feel unsafe or out of their control. As the 2024 Frontiers in Education scoping review on PDA reminds us, the core driver for children with this profile is not wilfulness, but an urgent need to manage anxiety by avoiding or reshaping demands that trigger dysregulation.
This blog will explore what equalising behaviours look like, why they arise, and how we can respond in a way that preserves our relationship with the child while reducing stress for everyone involved. While rooted in current research, including the 2024 review, this is also a personal reflection, because understanding PDA is not just an academic exercise. For many of us, it’s a lived experience, and really bloomin’ hard.
What Equalising Behaviours Actually Are
When my second son was younger we thought he loved food. He wanted to try EVERYTHING and had to have a bite out of every single thing we ate. We celebrated our excellent parenting and paraded our ‘great eater’ around like a trophy. We were not having a parenting breakthrough. This was not a celebratory moment. It turns out that this had, all along, been an equalising behaviour. This was a way that my son regained a feeling of equality when he noticed that someone else got something different to him. This has really kicked off now that he is almost four years old. If one of my other children asks for a snack, he MUST have the same snack, even if he hates it. He will take a bite out of it, slide off the chair and casually announce, ‘I’m not hungry anymore’. Now I don’t know about you but I didn’t grow up surrounded by an abundance of disposable food and money so this really triggers my internal need to ensure that we aren’t wasteful. He knows this. He does it anyway because it helps him feel in control and relaxed.
Equalising behaviours are the child’s way of saying, “I need to feel more in control of this moment.” These are not simply avoidance techniques. Rather, they are adaptive, strategic responses that allow the child to engage on their own terms. Commonly, this might involve changing the subject, suggesting an alternative approach, insisting on doing something in a particular way, using humour, turning the situation into a role play or insisting to have the same thing as someone else. You might see a child refuse to put on their coat until they’ve given you a riddle to solve, or agree to get in the car only if they can wear the Hulk mask.
To the outside world, these behaviours may seem nonsensical or disruptive. But when we step into the child’s shoes, we begin to see their purpose. Equalising behaviours offer a buffer between the child and the perceived threat of a demand. They also provide a route into connection, one that honours the child’s need to feel emotionally safe and in control. They can also be extremely triggering for the adults and difficult to spot, so that is why we should spend time on this.
The Frontiers in Education (2024) review refers to these types of behaviours as "social strategies", part of a repertoire that includes distraction, negotiation, and fantasy play. Rather than viewing these strategies as obstacles to compliance, the authors suggest we understand them as self-protective mechanisms that arise from intense anxiety. Importantly, the review underscores that PDA is not yet a formally recognised diagnosis in most systems, which means that misunderstandings about behaviours like these are still common. Yet what emerges clearly across the literature is a picture of children who are not trying to be difficult, but rather doing their best to cope with demands that feel overwhelming.
Why Children with PDA Use Equalising Behaviours
At the heart of PDA lies an extreme need for control, fuelled by heightened sensitivity to demands. These demands might be explicit, like being asked to brush teeth or complete a task, but they can also be internal or implied. Even something as simple as anticipating that someone might expect a behaviour can be enough to trigger avoidance or equalisation.
For a child with PDA, many demands are experienced as threats. Not in the physical sense, but in the way they activate the nervous system’s defence responses. The child’s ability to stay regulated, to think clearly, and to co-operate is compromised when they sense a loss of control. Equalising behaviours allow the child to reassert autonomy and bring their emotional state back to a safer baseline.
This is not manipulation. It is regulation. A child may refuse to complete a worksheet but happily do the same task if they are the one who sets the timer, chooses the pencil, or decides how the work is framed. The underlying task has not changed, but the terms of engagement have, and that shift can make the difference between overwhelm and calm.
It used to drive me to despair that each morning, when preparing breakfast for my children, my second son would announce loudly what he wanted. Why would that trigger me? Because I knew full well that he wouldn’t eat it. Not one bite. I would tell him no, I am not making you breakfast because you don’t eat it and I am NOT putting another bowl of cereal in the bin. This was then, of course, followed by around 30 minutes of crying, screaming, throwing things and general anarchy. Which would set me off on the wrong foot with him for the rest of the day. It took me longer than I am proud to admit to realise that this was a hidden equalising behaviour… he wanted to know he was equal to his brothers and that he had a choice.
I had my mini break-through moment, face palmed and then went over one morning before I started breakfast and I said, “You know, sometimes it takes our bodies a little while to realise that they are hungry in the morning. If your body isn’t feeling hungry right now, you can tell me that you’d like breakfast later, and I will make it when you are ready - especially for you.” He felt instantly special and told me that he wasn’t hungry yet, so we agreed I would wait to hear from him when he was ready. We haven’t had a problem since.
As a parent, once I began to recognise these behaviours as protective rather than oppositional, I found myself reacting differently. I stopped interpreting negotiation as cheekiness, or playfulness as avoidance. Instead, I began to see them as clues about what my child needed in that moment. And more often than not, what they needed was to feel like they had a choice.
How Equalising Behaviours Might Present
Although every child is different, there are some common ways equalising behaviours can present. A child might suddenly change the subject when a demand is introduced, introducing a joke or a story to shift the emotional tone. They may challenge your authority playfully, offering you a riddle or quiz before agreeing to do something. Others might pretend to be an animal, a character, or a teacher, flipping roles in order to reframe the interaction.
In some cases, the behaviour looks like perfectionism. A child may over-deliver on a task, making it elaborate or time-consuming in a way that delays having to meet the next demand. In other situations, they might make the task so complex that it becomes impossible to complete. This is often mistaken for sabotage, but it can be a way of creating space to breathe.
What unites these behaviours is that they give the child a sense of choice. And for a child with PDA, choice is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
In my eldest son’s recent Autism assessment meeting, the assessor asked him to join in with some activities. This was very interesting to watch as a PDA parent. She asked him to build a tower of 9 blocks… so he told her their colours instead. She asked him to match colour cards to the colours on the board… So he hissed like a snake and slid away. She asked him to look at a social storyboard and tell her what was happening… so he pressed the button on the invisible elevator and slowly disappeared under the table. She asked me what I thought was happening and I told her, “as soon as he detects a demand of any kind, he will use both avoidance and equalising behaviours to lessen the stress on his nervous system.’ He eventually did all of the things she asked, but it had to be on his terms.
Responding with Curiosity and Compassion
When we respond to equalising behaviours with empathy instead of correction, we help reduce the child’s anxiety and strengthen our connection with them. This is not about letting go of all structure or becoming permissive. Rather, it is about finding ways to co-create the interaction so the child feels empowered, not trapped.
For example, instead of insisting a child puts on their shoes immediately, you might say, “Would you like to race me to see who can get their shoes on first?” Or you could ask, “Should I do a silly dance while you do it, or would you like to give me a challenge first?” These offers are not bribes. They are bridges, ways of entering the child’s world and inviting them to join you from a place of felt safety.
The research points to the importance of autonomy-supportive environments for children with PDA. In practice, this means reducing unnecessary demands, building flexibility into routines, and allowing the child to contribute to decision-making in meaningful ways. The scoping review specifically highlights the need for emotionally attuned responses, noting that rigid behavioural frameworks are often unhelpful and can increase distress. Which is why so many of our wonderful PDA children are square pegs to the Education Systems round holes.
So, what now?
Equalising behaviours are often the first sign that a child is trying to cope with internal stress. They may not always be convenient or easy to understand, but they offer us a glimpse into the child’s nervous system and what it is trying to communicate. By tuning into these moments with curiosity instead of judgement, we show our children that we are not there to control them, but to work alongside them.
For families navigating PDA, this perspective can be transformative. It allows us to shift from reacting to behaviour to responding to need. It helps us build a relationship based on trust rather than compliance. And most of all, it teaches us that when a child asks for equality in the interaction, they are not being difficult. They are asking for safety, and they are showing us exactly how to give it.
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