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The Rabbit Hole
How it started:
I am homeschooling my 7 year old daughter, A, this year. I do not want to homeschool her forever - I have concerns about her socialiszation. But her behavior at school last year in the first grade grew to be atrocious and counter to learning anything.
She was sent to the office almost every day for running away from her teacher and hiding in the art cabinets or alternatively chasing and grabbing at her teacher (if the teacher took something from her.) There weren't any clear triggering events, but a oftentimes it would be that there was an assignment shift, the teacher would tell her to put away the old work and focus on the lesson or some new work, and then it would set my daughter off. We had her evaluated with a neuropsychologist and have a formal diagnosis of ADHD, for which the accommodations are to give her less work or more time to do some work. This didn't really help.
Close to the end of the year, the principle, vice principle, teacher, school psychologist, and like five other people had a meeting with us where they discussed A's behavior. My husband and I were seriously worried they were going to expel her or at the very least hold her back a year. (She had been suspended twice from school already.) Instead, after going down the litany of behaviors that was causing disruption to her learning, they just looked at my husband and I and asked us what they should do. It was a shocking moment to me - these were the experts! Had they never seen a kid like ours before? If they had told us, "You need to do x at home, get her evaluated for this other behavioral disorder" etc, we'd have done it! We're demonstrably involved middle class parents who can afford to take her to therapy every other week and see whatever doctors are needed.
I'm focusing on A's behavior at school largely because that was what caused us to pull her out of school. Her behavior at home has also been laughably bad. I've had moments where I considered she might just be what was once called an Imbecile. For example, a little while ago we went for a family walk. She ran into the side of a car backing out of its driveway. She was running ahead of us against our wishes, as normal, and we saw the car backing out so we yelled at her to stop. So of course she ran faster and... Bonk! No injuries fortunately. Stupidest car crash ever.
The thing I need to get across is that A is the sweetest child ever when she's not upset. She is upset at her own behavior and is often praying and wishing she wasn't such a "Bad Kid." She asks to do more chores, she looks out for her younger siblings, she minds her Ps and Qs. But once or twice a day, she will get into a "stuck" mode where she will keep trying to do the same insane thing over and over again and needs to be carried to her closet (full of stuffed animals, we don't even bother putting clothes in there, it's a safe soft place.)
Anyways, we pulled her out of school and I've been hanging around Homeschooling forums. I perk up whenever I see a topic around ADHD, because that at least is one diagnosis she officially has. A couple weeks ago, I saw someone mention that their kid has something called "PDA" and that they have to accommodate that in their homeschooling methods. For the first time in my life, I saw someone else describe a child who acts like A.
What is PDA?
First a disclaimer. PDA seems to be recognized as an expression of Autism in the UK, but it doesn't seem to be recognized anywhere else. I do not wish to make a stand one way or another on if it exists. All I know, is that my kid acts the same as the other kids who are said to have it (and she doesn't really act like any other kid otherwise.)
PDA stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance. The theory is that, when someone with this disorder has a demand placed on them (explicit or implicit) they perceive it as a threat and over time it actually activates their fight/flight/freeze response. This actually explains my daughter's behavior so well it's entirely shocking to me. I've seen her shaking in fear as she struggles to put shoes on her feet for five minutes because I told her, "hurry up, we're going to be late." I already suspected anxiety was involved, but she doesn't act like someone with generalized anxiety. This is the first thing that really makes sense.
What did I do?
First, I looked up supplements to calm a kid down. If most of her misbehavior is caused by improperly triggering her fear response, lets turn the dial down on that. I found L-Theanine and thought it looked interesting. Lots of people who take it say they don't notice anything - it's not a relaxant or a downer. But other people who take it say it makes them more resilient to downward spirals, which is what I'm looking for. It's pretty safe - you can take grams of it without ill effect. Doesn't build up in the system either.
It immediately changed her behavior. When the supplement arrived she was in the middle of a bit of mania, talking about selling crafts nonstop all day and making enough money to buy a diamond (we read A Little Princess recently.) I wasn't able to get her to do anything - eat, practice math or reading, go outside, anything else. She was staying up well past her bedtime. I gave her about 50mg in her water and in thirty minutes she was happy (different from mania, trust me), cuddly, and soon, sleepy.
Since then, I've been giving her some in her water at bedtime and she's only had one of her "stuck" episodes once. On days where I have an outing planned, I give her some in the morning as well and.. it's incredible. Makes me want to cry. We have good days. I can take her places without her running into the road. I can tell her it's time to go back and she doesn't fall to pieces. She acts polite and conscientious and everything that I know her to be. It has been years since I could take her anywhere without having to accept that it will involve a tantrum or two.
The only downside is, when I give her a morning dose, she often reports a headache a few hours later (as it's wearing off?). No big deal, she has had headaches before. I give her ibuprofen and she is fine.
But it doesn't sit right with me
As magical as this all is, it's not like it's in her genes. A Western European did not evolve the need for an extract from an Asian plant in order to avoid running off the nearest cliff.
And the headache bothers me. What if I'm depleting something in her body to give her these good days now, but it will come back to bite us later?
So I kept looking. Most PDA parents talk about changing their entire lifestyle to "accommodate" their PDA kid - just never demand anything from them and set up their lives so that no one else ever demands anything from them. I think this is ridiculous. It's basically consigning the kid to being institutionalized later on. No one can grow into an adult this way. But when A is overloaded with demands, she's not learning either.
I kept looking for keywords surrounding diet and supplements. Finally, I saw someone state, "We resolved pda entirely with a nutrient based approach" and brought up William Walsh. Walsh is a quack without a background in medicine who has diagnosed many ill-behaved children with "Pyroluria" and cured them with large doses of Zinc and vitamin B6. And like, it does actually seem to cure them in the course of a few weeks. Walsh has his own reasons for why he thinks these supplements cure "Pyroluria" and they all seem to be medically wrong. But if it works, it works?
Enter the MTHFR
Googling Walsh's name around, I stumbled upon a Reddit community of people troubleshooting their Vitamin B problems with genetic tests and high doses of supplements. They all have a genetic mutation that makes their bodies less able to process the folate in food into the active form, L-5-MTHF. If they have more folate in their system than they can process, they have a build up of homocystine that causes lots of other bodily functions to gum up. They also aren't making enough L-5-MTHF, which prevents other bodily functions from doing what they should.
There seems to be a correlation between MTHFR mutations and ADHD, Autism, and other disorders.
There are other genetic mutations that can cause issues with B vitamins and the Reddit community is constantly over/undershooting and making themselves over-methylated and under-methylated and it seems very messy. They don't just supplement L-5-MTHF, they also need to reduce folate (which is in most cereals and breads in the United States), supplement B2, B6, B12, zinc, and magnesium, pay attention to if they're supplementing the methylated vs unmethylated versions of these vitamins, and try to keep things in balance.
Those who achieve this balance claim they have found a nirvana free of skin issues, pains, and mental issues that have followed them from childhood. Those who mess up end up with copper deficiency and bouts of schizophrenia.
I have found a Psychiatrist in my state with an actual MD who claims to treat "Nutrient Imbalances, Including Methylation Imbalances" as well as "Abnormalities in Stress Hormone Pathways and Other Hormone Related Root Causes." She is not in my insurance network so it would all be out of pocket but a consultation with her would be within my budget. But I only found her after three layers of quack-searching. This is the medical equivalent of vibe-coding and I realize that.
Is this worth pursuing? Has anyone else fallen down the MTHFR rabbithole?
idk, when I was super little and I would start acting up in public my dad would physically pick me up, carry me to the car, and say "we are never taking you anywhere ever again if you're gonna act like a brat". And I would usually shut up pretty fast after that. For in-house infractions they'd hide my toys or something until I calmed down. Seemed to work well enough. It's possible I was a more "mild" case though, because by the time I was in first grade I had already become a relatively docile teacher's pet.
Basically I'd throw out all the psychiatry shit and say "sink or swim kid, up to you". That's how people did it for, you know, all of human history up until the last ~50 years or so. You think they had L-Theanine 1,000 years ago? No they said pick up a fuckin' shovel kid or we're all gonna starve this winter.
I think we could all be diagnosed with a little PDA, yeah? I got PDA for days. I'm still a lazy piece of shit as an adult who doesn't like to do anything. The only thing that makes me actually acquiesce to the "demand" is a hard deadline (with consequences) and a swift kick in the ass. It never goes away, you just gotta learn to deal with it. People like me appreciate the kicks in the ass, trust me!
I have four kids. All my other kids so far are perfectly normal and well-behaved. We are not permissive parents. We are not an "everything goes" family.
I physically pick up my daughter and carry her to the car. We leave when she starts freaking out and she misses out on a lot of stuff. We left the fourth of July party early and she missed fireworks. She misses a lot. We don't go places usually because I just have to pick her up and leave. Leave the library before we check out books. Leave the grocery store with a shopping cart half full. Leave the park. Leave leave leave. That has been my life. Babysitters have quit. I can't go anywhere with her and I can't go anywhere without her and I can't go anywhere.
And she's getting heavier and heavier. And when I pick her up she fights with everything she has. She is STRONG, crazy strong, frightened animal strong, and it's getting more and more difficult. If I don't figure this out soon, I will NO LONGER be able to carry her safely to her closet to calm down. And then if she's attacking her siblings, I have to attack her? If I can't carry her safely, it's just getting rougher and rougher to her.
And yes, I take away her toys. Yes, she is consigned to her closet often. We are stricter than most people we know. Our kids know they need to say please and thank you or they aren't getting fed. You really have the wrong idea if you think we just don't try to change her behavior at all through normal parenting means.
We even tried spanking for a few months when she was four. She kept doing this one behavior where she would get water out of the bathroom sink, fill containers, and then leave them places. The water would spill and make a mess and we were worried about rot. So we had a rule - when we saw her do this, she would be spanked immediately. The consequence would be immediate, and it was only for this one specific behavior. Well... nothing changed. Nothing at all. Except we felt like jerks, because it really seemed like, if she could stop herself, she would have. She didn't like getting spanked.
The word "Pathological" means that it prevents you from living normal life. I think our experience with her qualifies.
That's why it's so weird that I can actually go places with her taking L-Theanine.
She ran straight into a moving car. This isn't something a normal seven year old does. She is going to die if I just treat her like my other three kids.
Are you sure that when someone demands too much of you, you have an adrenaline rush? Start attacking people? Run away like a lion's after you? Freeze like a gun is pointed at your heart? Several times a day? That is what PDA is supposedly. And my kid acts like it.
And the fact that I can give her a supplement that completely changes her behavior, so she becomes perfectly behaved, when if I give the same supplement to another kid it doesn't change anything at all... doesn't that hint at something?
My apologies, I didn't know how much you had already tried! The whole "therapists and soft safe closets" thing made you sound like the permissive type, but if you're not, then fair enough.
The design space of possible minds is very large. I suppose there are some people who would just die without drugs; and perhaps they did, for most of history. That's a bit sad though.
Do what you have to do to live a normal (and physically safe) life obviously. Although I do think you should listen to your intuition that "it doesn't sit right with you". At the very least, don't let anyone talk you into thinking that it should sit right with you. You can at least have that much.
Honestly, therapist is a last resort for us, we fear it as much as drugs. But it was what the Neuropsychologist prescribed for her when she was diagnosed with ADHD, and we are really at a loss. We are giving it six months just so we can say we tried it and see what else the Neuropsychologist tells us to do.
Stuffy closet is also just the only way to keep her and her siblings safe when she's like this. She will thrash and yell in there for 10+ minutes until she calms down.
Sorry if I was snippy, it's a hazard about talking about parenting on the Internet. But yeah, I get the feeling that kids like her were part of the 50% childhood mortality rate a thousand years ago.
If you’re willing to experiment with your 7yo girl’s mind before handing them over to the therapist’s tender mercies, you can try something I wish someone had tried on me.
Philosophy as medicine.
Specifically ontology, the philosophy of categories of things that exist and how they interact. Here’s the top four that helped me:
The realization that led to Triessentialism changed my life. It formed the basis of an explicit Theory of Mind which suddenly made me able to understand others’ motives, at least at a surface level. I believe it would also inform good pedagogy to ensure a balance of Physical, Logical, and Emotional learning.
The Elements of Harmony (from My Little Pony 2010-2019) taught me how good and bad relationships work. Each is a relationship virtue that increases openness and trust if given freely, and in a way that isn’t unbalanced by one person providing all of an Element in the relationship:
Boundaries should be set and Elements of Harmony should be given in proportion to which of the three qualitative levels of friendship that relationship is:
The Fourth Step of the twelve steps is a way to resolve cognitive dissonance regarding the right and wrong things that happen to you, or her. The easy way is the PAINS method for resolving moral dissonance to avoid negative behaviors:
Let me know if you use any of this in homeschooling her.
I do talk with her about philosophical things, but her mind is pretty limited from being 7 years old. I emphasize quite a bit that she doesn't have to do something just because she wants to do something and she doesn't believe me yet.
She has watched My Little Pony and also a show called Philo and Sophie which is a lot more... explicit on the philosophical underpinnings of a happy life.
I've always been pretty self aware and consious of the good people are trying to seek when they do things. I spent hours as a young kid asking talking to my mom:
"Why did so and so do that?"
"Because she thought it made her look cool."
"Did it?"
"Maybe to someone she wanted to impress."
"Why does she want to look cool?"
"Because she thinks people like her more when she's cool?"
"Why do people want to be liked?"
And so on for ever. My 7 year old isn't that curious right now.
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