We were heading for the trenches. I couldn’t tell you what week of school we were on, but we had survived so far. And by “survived,” I mean my son had been attending. Does that count as doing well? According to the government, yes. But were we doing well? I was hanging on by a thread. Every day I clung to a mantra I’d stolen from a reel I once watched. “Stay f***ing hard”. This reel has become my life and here it is……
I was exhausted—so f**king exhausted. My body ached, and all of it came from propping my son up, accommodating him at every turn. And what state was he in? Since the start of term, we’d had more full-blown meltdowns than we’d had across the entire summer holidays. If that doesn’t say something, I don’t know what does. And slowly but surely things were slipping.
That night he came home on a high. Things went fine until teatime. For over a week, my son had barely eaten anything of substance. He was living off yogurts and custard. That’s when I know we’re slipping. With PDA children, the cumulative pressure of life eats away at their basic needs—showering, teeth brushing, eating, sleeping, drinking. All of it fades. And here we were again. His diet isn’t great at the best of times, but when we lose the “tea foods,” I know we’re back in the trenches. And over the last couple of weeks, tea food was slipping away and there is little I can do to stop it unless I don’t send him to school as it is now.
But I wasn’t giving up. My husband was away with work, and pasta is my go-to when it’s just me and my son. Pasta is also one of his few safe foods, so whenever I make it, I cook enough for every possible version: plain, with sauce, with or without cheese. I’ve learned to cover every eventuality. That night I made enough for me and three versions for him. It had been a long day. I was starving and looking forward to my tea when he suddenly said….
“Can I have pasta?”
Result. I put my tea aside and got him plain pasta in his favourite bowl.
“No, I want sauce and cheese on, please.”
No problem. I mixed in sauce, sprinkled cheese on top. But he must have heard the packet rustle because immediately he shouted from the living room…
“I wanted to put the cheese on! Take it off now.”
I immediately went on higher alert than I already was. I knew this wasn’t good. How do you take grated cheese off pasta? I picked off what I could, handed it back with the cheese packet. He added some himself, then burst into tears. And I knew—we were in a carrot situation. Carrot is my code word for when things go south. I’ll text family just one word—carrots—and they know. I came up with it because my son sometimes plays on my phone, and I never want him to stumble across anything about himself. Carrots worked. That night, when my husband texted to ask how my day had been, I just replied: “Carrots.” And he knew.
Meanwhile, my son was sobbing over pasta. And it was never about the pasta—it was the build-up, the anxiety, the overload, the burnout. He added cheese, then decided it was cold. I heated it. Then it was too hot. Cooled it. Then too cold again. Then he didn’t want sauce after all. I pulled out the plain pasta I’d wisely kept aside. He tipped it on the sofa and cried harder.
This is sabotage—deliberate, but not cruel. He knows he needs to eat, but he can’t. So he sabotages the food to give himself an out. And this cycle went on for forty-five minutes. Nothing was ever good enough. I knew it wouldn’t be, but I also knew he needed to go through it. It’s this—or complete destruction. At least this way it was only me going back and forth, not my house or anyone else being destroyed. Just my spirit.
My own tea sat stone cold on the side. The fork abandoned where I’d dropped it, cheese welded to the prongs. I’d given up even pretending I’d eat. Instead, I kept whispering to myself, stay f***ing hard. Every trip back to the kitchen I’d swallow the lump in my throat, force myself to breathe, and try again with a new bowl. Deep down I knew none of it would be good enough, but stopping was impossible. The only thing that helped this situation was time. And calm. So I remained calm and I gave him time.
Finally, after what felt like forever, (it was actually 60 minutes), the tension eased. During this pasta disaster my daughter had come in from college and was sitting in the kitchen with the guinea pig on her lap waiting for this to end. Out of nowhere from the living room, my son said…
“I’m going to the kitchen.”
It was over. I exhaled for what felt like the first time all night and followed him. The kitchen looked like the aftermath of a food fight—bowls everywhere, spoons scattered, pasta stuck to things I didn’t even remember touching. But he sat with my daughter and the guinea pig. He asked me to join. We all sat there for ten minutes, and I thought: Never again will I want pasta.
And then….
“I’ll have the pasta with sauce, Mam.”
And I knew then he was in the right state to eat it. I handed him the right bowl. He sat on the kitchen floor and ate it cold I might add. I smiled to myself, because if I didn’t, I’d cry and cry and cry. It’s soul-crushing to watch your child’s basic needs slip away—not eating as a one-off is one thing, but as a way of life, wow its difficult. But tonight, he ate. That was enough.
And maybe you’re thinking: If it were my child, I’d give him one bowl of pasta and tell him eat it or leave it. I get that. I’d have said the same five years ago. But now I know better.
I know my son can’t help this. He isn’t in control. I know who he is underneath—my lovely boy. And I know this didn’t happen in the summer. The only difference now is he has started a new year at school. That tells me everything.
You might judge me for how I handle this situation. You might even be one of the lucky ones who, when your child is upset, can scoop them into a cuddle, talk it through, and reassure them that everything will be okay. I don’t have that child. I have the one who needs me to bring them 15 bowls of pasta, to heat it up and then cool it down again. That—that is their cuddle. I am providing them with the safety they require, the safety your child might get from you with a cuddle. Different strategy but same outcome.
The interesting thing about this night is that afterwards, he came to me and voluntarily cuddled me. This is rare. In fact, he cuddled me over and over, almost as if he felt guilty. The days of me judging him for these events are gone. They happen, I hold no grudge. I firmly believe they are out of his control so I can’t punish him for them. So I always move on straight away. That doesn’t mean we don’t have boundaries—we do—but by removing the boundaries from him, he has created his own. It sounds counterintuitive, but it works for him. He knows right from wrong. But in these moments he loses his thinking brain. And tonight, for the first time, I saw shame flicker in him. And I don’t want that either. I don’t want him to feel shame. I want him to know that with the right accommodations, these meltdowns don’t have to happen at all. And right now at school I don’t believe we have the right accommodations. I’m not even sure they could ever offer the right accommodations…..
So for now, the pasta disasters will keep happening. And while it might look like bowls of pasta flying around my kitchen, what I really see is the weight my child carries from holding it together all day.
The pasta is just the symptom. School is the cause.
The Questions of My Child 
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