This post is for all the mums out there…but more than anything, for the mums raising children with additional needs, especially the PDA mums. And especially the PDA mums locked in a burnout cycle.

This shit is hard. Really fucking hard. And if you’re living the PDA burnout cycle, you’ll know exactly what I mean

Mother’s Day in our house doesn’t look like the adverts. I’ve learned not to have expectations on these days, just to treat it as a normal day…whatever normal is. My son was scheduled to be with his dad, but because it was Mother’s Day he came to me instead. I went to watch him play football, and he came home with me afterwards.

And he was not his usual self. Not even his usual dysregulated self. He was much, much worse.

He never left my knee. He was clingy in a way that was different…not the usual kind, something deeper, more desperate. He kept cuddling me. He kept kissing me. He kept asking, over and over, “Do you love me?” And I kept answering. Of course I do. Of course I do. But my usual ways of co-regulating with him weren’t working, and I could feel it. I wasn’t just in that moment with him…I was already reading ahead, already bracing for what this meant for the week.

Bedtime took much longer than usual. He didn’t want me to leave. And I knew. I said to my husband that night: he’s not going to school tomorrow. I just know it.

I was right. It was his first absence this school year. Due to anxiety. We had hit the tipping point. He had been pushed too far.

What Digging Deep Really Looks Like

There wasn’t one thing I could point this absence to. It was everything. Every little demand, every event we’d made it to successfully, every single thing that had been asked of him over the last year. I had done my best to strip back the pressure as much as I could. I delivered him food. I took away every expectation. I cleared the path as far as I was able. It wasn’t enough. It never would be when you had another household also in control, who didn’t do this.

When your PDA child is dysregulated and feels threatened, digging deep doesn’t mean gritting your teeth and getting on with it. It means giving your child your complete and utter undivided attention for every single minute they are awake. It means being so fully present that he could direct my eyesight. Where I looked. What I focused on. Every part of me, on call, for him. This is very common in PDA children when they’re in that place…they need to know you are completely, unwaveringly there. And so I was. Because that’s what he needed. Because that’s what I do.

But to do that, I had to push everything else down. My own needs. My own frustrations. Anything my daughter or husband needed from me. Anything I needed from myself. All of it, set aside. I had to dig deep. Deeper than I usually did and I was fucking sick of digging.

And I realised then that I had spent the last year putting him back together, and then…ever so slowly…putting myself back together too. And just like that, with one day off school, I knew we were back to square one. My worst fears were confirmed the next day when he didn’t go again.

What Square One Really Costs You

I want to be honest about what square one means. Because last time nearly broke me. And I don’t say that lightly. It was without doubt the worst time of my life.

It means losing everything about who you are…even just the small things, the ones you didn’t realise were holding you together. They slip away quietly. You stop dyeing your hair because there isn’t time. Your morning routine shrinks to literally two minutes because every moment has to go to him first. You stop sleeping properly. You stop thinking clearly. You stop enjoying anything — not big things, just anything. You look terrible. You feel terrible. You don’t recognise yourself in the mirror. You look at old pictures of yourself from just a few years ago and think where has that person gone.

You become angry at the world. And you become jealous…and I’m not ashamed to say it. Jealous of people with easy lives. Jealous of children who just go to school. Jealous of parents who have minutes in their day that belong only to them. Jealous of freedom. Of lightness. Of not having to brace yourself every single morning for what the day might ask of you.

PDA burnout and school avoidance is like being in a black hole…dark, very dark, lonely, and climbing out of it is the hardest thing you will ever do. And we have done it once. I’m really not sure I can do it again but I am going to have to.

The PDA Burnout Cycle Explained

What I want people to understand…what I wish someone had explained to me at the very beginning…is that the PDA burnout cycle is real. And it is vicious in the truest sense of that word. It is also not just my experience…it is documented, researched, and recognised. The PDA Society has written about it in a way that might help if you ever need something to show a school or a professional who just doesn’t get it.

When a PDA child hits burnout, everything drops away. Sleep goes. Food becomes a battle. Hygiene, events, school…all of it falls off, one by one, like leaves in autumn. And you enter the black hole together, you and them, and you wait. You reduce everything. You remove every demand you possibly can. You create the safest, lowest-pressure environment you are capable of building. And slowly, so slowly, they begin to recover.

And that recovery looks like hope. It looks like your child going to a school disco. Attending a football match. Making it to a family event. Doing more, and then a little more. And every time they do more you feel it…that cautious, careful optimism that maybe this time will be different.

But here is what nobody tells you. Here is the thing that breaks your heart once you understand it.

Every single thing they do…every event attended, every school day completed, every social interaction navigated…has a cumulative effect on their nervous system. It builds and builds and builds, invisibly, underneath the surface. The PDA Society describes this well — distress accumulates from demands, sensory overload, and social expectations, with fear and overwhelm building underneath the surface long before you can see it.  

Your child doesn’t feel it coming. They are happily attending things, gladly saying yes, right up until the moment they simply can’t anymore. No warning. No gradual decline you can catch and soften. Just — can’t. This is the PDA burnout cycle in action.

And “can’t” doesn’t always look like a meltdown. Sometimes it looks like stomach aches. Feeling sick. Refusing school. And sometimes it looks like two words: I’m bored.

I wrote a whole poem about those two words because they deserve it. [A Poem – I’m Bored!!!] Because “I’m bored” from my son is not boredom. It is a distress signal. It means his nervous system is in chaos and he needs me.

Once you know that, you cannot unknow it. And I didn’t realise it at first. He used to say “I’m bored” over and over again until he got to the point of no return…nothing I said or did helped him because all I was doing was offering things to do. But that is not what he needed. He basically just needed me to acknowledge how he felt and this helps. I had no idea until I saw both these posts on Instagram and thought these describe my son perfectly:

One from At Peace Parents and the other from Autism Savvy

And no matter how much support you put in place. No matter how carefully you scaffold their days, how many demands you strip back, how present and attuned you are…when they are doing more, they will eventually burn out again. Not because you failed. Not because they failed. Because this is how PDA works. Recovery does not mean fixed. Doing better is not the same as being better.

And the cruellest part is that the doing better is what leads them back to the beginning.

It’s not your fault. It’s not theirs. You cannot prevent it. You can only try to soften it, and love them through it, and hold yourself together well enough to do it all again.

As much as I had started thinking of the education system as a cult, my son going to school was what I wanted — as long as it was okay for him. And I knew he knew himself better than any of us. If he could go, he would. He had been. And now he wasn’t. He knew he wasn’t capable of this at this point in time. And I knew I was in for the long haul. The very long haul and honestly I felt absolutely sick about it. The PDA burnout cycle doesn’t have a quick exit.

My husband asked if I’d enjoyed my Mother’s Day. I hadn’t. This is what some of our Mother’s Days look like. Not flowers and breakfast in bed. This. And we show up for it anyway…because what other choice is there? Because they are ours. Because we are theirs. And because somewhere out there, another mum is reading this at midnight feeling exactly the same way. You are not alone. I promise.

And if that’s you…if any of this sounds like your life, your child, your Mother’s Day…I want to hear from you. Tell me in the comments. Tell me I’m not alone either. Because that’s why I write this. Not to have the answers, but to find the people who are living the same questions.