Understanding and Using Declarative Language with PDA Children

A Practical Guide for Parents, Educators & Allied Health Professionals

Declarative language is one of the most popular tools recommended to people raising, educating, and supporting PDA children. It can be genuinely useful. It can also quietly slip into being one more way to get a child to do something, and PDA individuals feel that difference long before the adults around them do.

This guide goes deeper than scripts. It begins with the internal experience of PDA, the nervous system, equity, and felt safety, then works outward to the words themselves, because once we understand what is happening beneath the behaviour, the language tends to follow on its own.

Written by Kristy Forbes: autistic, PDA and ADHD adult, parent of four PDA children across 28 years, educator and neurodiversity trainer; this ebook combines lived experience with professional knowledge built across early childhood, primary and secondary education.

Inside this guide, you'll explore across 11 chapters:

• Why words land as demands for PDA individuals, even gentle, kindly worded ones, and why tone of voice is never the deciding factor
• How PDA is about equity-seeking rather than control-seeking, and why that distinction changes everything about the way we respond
• What actually counts as a demand (far more than instructions: choices, praise, your own wants, even interoceptive cues like hunger or needing the loo)
• What happens in the brain when a PDA individual feels threatened, and why expecting planning, flexibility, or impulse control in that moment asks for a part of the brain that has gone offline
• Why common declarative statements like "the bathroom is open if you feel like using it" and "I wonder what you might like to eat" can backfire, and the subtext a PDA child detects underneath them
• What declarative language actually looks like in real life: modelling self-care, narrating your own experience, and letting your body communicate what your words would turn into demands
• Why "how do I get my child to..." is the question worth pausing on, and what to ask instead
• How relational safety is the foundation everything else rests on, how to build it over time, and what that looks like when the adult has not always felt safe themselves
• How to repair after things go wrong, because they will, and why repair matters far more than getting the words perfect

Also included throughout the guide:

• QR codes linking to short video clips of Kristy explaining key concepts, including PDA and equity-seeking
• Pause & Reflect prompts in every chapter for deeper personal processing
• Practical reframes you can use immediately (e.g. instead of "I wonder what you'd like to eat," modelling your own need out loud: "I'm starving. Ooh, ham and cheese toasties. Yes," and then making them)
• Real-life examples and case studies drawn from lived experience
• A summary of 10 core principles to carry with you
• Links to further learning, including related masterclass recordings and the inTune with PDA program

This is not a script book. That's deliberate. PDA individuals are experts at detecting rehearsed language, and anything that feels scripted will feel unsafe. This guide offers a framework for understanding instead, so the language you reach for can come from genuine connection rather than strategy.

"Our role is not to move toward compliance, but to explore ways to make activities accessible through transitions." — Kristy Forbes