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Beyond the ‘Coke Bottle’ Effect: Understanding Autism and PDA in the Classroom and at Home
For many parents of neurodivergent children, the school gates represent an invisible boundary. On one side, a child might appear calm, compliant, and for all intents and purposes ‘fine’. School staff and peers see a child who is doing okay throughout the day. If they are not thriving, this is often missed because they appear fine, well behaved and often slip under the radar. On the other side of the gate however, the pressure of a day spent ‘masking’ or hiding just how much they are struggling in order to cope with the demands of the school day, is a building pressure. A pressure that can often, like a shaken coke bottle, lead to an explosive release at home.
In a recent episode of the Nip in the Bud podcast, I meet with Christine Walsh who shares her journey navigating this phenomenon with her two neurodivergent sons. Her story offers an interesting and often illuminating roadmap for both parents and educators on how to move past surface appearance, supposition and oftentimes judgement, toward true acknowledgement of need and support. Here we discuss Christine and her family’s experience.
