Why Have You Bought Me Vitamins? Understanding PDA in Kids

My son takes vitamins—nothing fancy, just some strawberry-flavoured Mr. Men ones from Boots. I had accepted he wasn’t the best eater a long long time ago and taking that vitamin is probably the only bit of vitamins he actually gets…..and then I am not completely sure of the efficacy of the Mr. Men vitamins but its something I guess. And he liked taking them, and throughout the day he will constantly ask…..

“Have I had my vitamin today?”

One free day I had I went to boots and found the vitamins he takes and bought some and I ticked it off my mental list of things to stock up on for my son. I left them out on the kitchen worktop for him to see but didn’t put them where the old bottle was because the way in which things were presented to my son was important. For him, even the smallest unexpected surprise can throw everything into chaos, a hallmark of his PDA profile, which we’ve learned to navigate carefully over time. There were many times when he had been presented with a surprise gift and it went in the bin. I now know that is part of the PDA profile I believe him to have. When he is presented with something nice, the person who has done something nice immediately becomes higher than him in his hierarchy and his equilibrium is thrown off which invokes a flight or fight response in him and he tries to equalise the situation hence why he has binned the present. There was one occasion my daughter went to the shop to get some Halloween pyjamas and she came back with a pair for herself and a pair for my son that she had bought with her own money. She was so pleased with them and she gave them to him and he immediately screamed…

“Why have you bought me these? I didn’t want them. Put them in the bin.”

She looked at me for guidance and I told her to just leave them where they were. And so my son picked them up and put them in the bin. My daughter stormed off upstairs crying. She was heartbroken. The situation, although fairly insignificant was heartbreaking. Once they were in the bin my son sat next to me on the sofa and all was ok. I text my daughter……..

As you can see by the messages it was simply just a waiting game. Because as we sat there in the quiet I knew my son would eventually come round to the pyjamas. And he did. 20 minutes after they had gone in the bin he asked me to get them which I did…..thankfully they were clean (as the bin had just been emptied) and he immediately put them on and he wore them every day for weeks. And he loved them. And so I know presenting presents/surprises to him in a specific way helps. Not always but it certainly helps some time.

When I buy him anything new I tend to leave it on his bed for him to discover, I never talk about it unless he does and its just there for him to see to either love it, hate it or hate it then love it!!!! Its extremely difficult to manage, and understand but we certainly try.

So the vitamins were just left on the kitchen side (as I’m writing this I am thinking maybe I should have put them in his bedroom) but when my son came home he was completely dysregulated. And then as soon as he saw the vitamins he took immediate offence. He screamed….

“WHY HAVE YOU BOUGHT ME VITAMINS?”

Exactly like the Halloween pyjamas he said he didn’t ask me to buy them and so I shouldn’t have bought them. He asked me to take them back. In fact he said he wanted me to take them back there and then. Knowing how these events unfold I told him I would. I got my coat on and put the vitamins in my pocket and went out the house for a drive obviously pretending to take them back. When I got home, after about 15 minutes my son was in bed on his iPad and he had been fine while I was out (meltdown averted). I still had the vitamins in my pocket so I secretly hid them in the sideboard in the hall and never thought about them again. There they would stay for the time being. Until one day this week, a few weeks after the original purchase and I had picked my son up from school – he had done half a day and so was in a very good mood. We got home and I dropped him off at the door, let him in and went to park the car. I park the car at the top of our drive but the door is about 15 metres away from the door and my son is constantly saying his legs don’t work and requests to be dropped off at the door so that is what I do. When I got out the car he was stood at the house door with the vitamins in his hands, looked at me accusingly with his eyebrows raised and said…

“And what are these?”

For a second, I wasn’t sure who the parent was in that moment. The raised eyebrows and accusatory tone left me feeling like a child caught sneaking sweets! I also knew that the way in which I handled this situation would be a make or break situation. I couldn’t tell the truth so I immediately thought on my feet and said with absolute happiness…

ME: “Where did you find them? I was looking for them for ages?”
HIM (looking really pleased with himself): “I found them in the sideboard drawer.”
ME: “Thank you!!!! I bought them ages ago, put them somewhere and couldn’t find them so then had to go out and buy you some more – the ones I took back the other week.”
HIM: “Can you put them where my vitamins are please.”

And I put them where his empty bottle of vitamins had remained and I threw the old bottle out. And the next day he took one out of the new bottle of vitamins. And that is the story of the vitamins. It had taken longer than the pyjamas for these to be accepted, and it had taken a little white lie but eventually around three weeks later we got there. 3 weeks to accept a bottle of vitamins.

That night, as I relayed the story of the vitamins to my husband—laughing, because if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry—we both agreed that anyone who hasn’t witnessed these experiences would struggle to believe they play out the way they do. And that’s exactly why I’m writing about it. Every step with my son requires a delicate balance of strategy, empathy, and patience. These moments, as challenging as they are, remind me that understanding and love are at the heart of it all. Even if it takes three weeks to accept a bottle of vitamins, we’ll always get there in the end.