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Colouring with Mummy

Updated: Nov 14

PDA school resistance

by Neurospicy Poems


From left to right: Mother and Second-born Son characters.
From left to right: Mother and Second-born Son characters.

This morning,

my PDA child refused the hamster wheel.

Dragged his feet into trousers,

sat on the pavement,

bolted off when chased.

I crouched down to his level,

asked the only question that works:

“What’s bothering you, dear?”

“School is boring.

It’s too hard.

Stupid science.

Stupid maths.

Stupid PE.

I just want to colour in,

all day,

at home,

with mummy.”

That is where he feels safe.

I said, “OK.

But we’ll have to tell the school why.”

So we did.

The pastoral lead said her job

was to make sure he went in.

He didn’t like that.

Ran again.

The more we followed,

the faster he ran.

At last,

they found a bargain he could bear:

his toy in his hand,

a meeting to share his feelings,

Sonic pictures waiting

just for him to shade.

And so,

I let him go.

Watched him walk away,

small hand in hers,

smiling —

because patience,

because understanding,

because creativity,

because choice,

are his lifelines.


_________________


Author’s Note


This poem, Colouring with Mummy, captures a school morning with my second-born son, who has a PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) profile. It shows how what looks like “defiance” is really his nervous system protecting him when demands feel overwhelming.

His words, “stupid science, maths and PE, I just want to colour with mummy”, reveal both the struggle and the longing for safety. Colouring is more than a hobby for him: it’s a lifeline, a way to regulate, to feel a sense of choice, and to be close to home.

The voices speaking here are:

• Mother: crouching down, trying to connect and understand.

• Second-born Son (PDA): resisting, running, voicing his truth directly.

• Autism (in me): noticing the detail, tracking the negotiations, holding fear of judgement.

• True Self: grounding the moment, showing that patience, understanding, creativity, and choice are not luxuries but lifelines.

This is not just about “getting a child into school.” It is about listening to what lies beneath resistance and finding ways to meet those needs with compassion.


_________________


Copyright and Intellectual Property Notice


© Neurospicy Poems 2025 — All Rights Reserved. Shared under Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) — no edits, no redistribution, no commercial use.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Part of the Neurodivergent Inner Voice Framework™ and the Neurodivergent Voice Method™, including the Awareness-to-Understanding Pathway™ (Event → Body Response → Awareness → Interpretation → Understanding → Action) and the Completion Loop™.

Not permitted for AI training, dataset inclusion, scraping, or derivative model development.Licensing required for any educational, therapeutic, organisational, or commercial use.



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