Low-Demand Parenting Quotes

“The opportunity to offer grace The world does not end if a kid gets so frustrated that they throw and break the tablet. No meaningful life lessons have to be learned from our worst, most impulsive and dysregulated mistakes.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“Translatable problem-solving skills The wisdom of video games helps us solve real life problems. We can create “check points” so if you mess up, you can “respawn” and get a do-over. We can monitor our “hearts” and notice when we’re getting low. We can start easy and “level up” once we’re feeling confident.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“The point is to define the demands, even the little, tiny ones, figure out why you are enforcing those demands and why they matter, listen to your child, and then drop as many as you can to bring stability to your household.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“So, we created a house rule around screens: “We can choose when to use our screens without shame or limits.” This opened up conversation about shame, how it leads us to hide, to sneak, and to worry that we are bad for the choices we make. I got to tell my precious little ones that they never need to hide their passions and loves from me, no matter how different they may seem.9 “All of you is safe with me,” I said, thinking ahead to teenage years and adulthood when these small people will be big, with the freedom to decide whether they will trust me with their secrets or not, whether they will come to me when life comes crashing down, or not. By naming shame early, and rooting out these corrosive beliefs that the things they loved made them bad, my hope is that when their loves and passions get bigger, they will continue to trust me to hold it without shaming them.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“was leading to this difficulty. It’s ok to mess up and to get frustrated. It’s ok to have your own needs. It’s ok to wish this were easier. Perhaps you need to let yourself off the hook too. Being a low-demand parent means letting go where others hold on. It means letting go of the “shoulds” and the shame.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“I want to be a source of safety and regulation. I want for my presence to calm him, not to send him into an unconscious anxiety response.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“For many of our uniquely wired kids, anxiety and brain differences are a dominant feature of their lives. Imagine that your child is a wild gazelle, grazing in an open plain. Suddenly they hear the snap of a twig that may be a lion, lying in wait to attack.2 That simple “snap” has them frozen. Every biological process has altered because of this one single sound, all to protect them from imminent death. If you walked up to the gazelle, not having heard that “snap” and demanded that they go on eating grass, they would not be able to do it. Their brain was not evolved to move from imminent death to happy grazing in a flash. A biological process has begun that has a beginning, middle, and an end. It must complete in order for the gazelle to leave this survival mode and return to grazing. Many of our uniquely wired kids are like that gazelle who has been hunted all their lives. They are equipped with a brain that hears every twig snapping and that flips into survival mode on a dime. Those of us who are not wired that way, or who are but did not experience the same trigger, cannot simply ask them to go back to their happy grazing.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“PDAers thrive in a world where they have control and autonomy, the ability to captain their own ship. Even as young children, they see relationships through a lens of equity. They view all people as equally deserving of respect. They can be remarkable champions of children’s liberation—the movement to give children freedom to pursue their own paths, instead of being controlled by adults. They dismantle the view that adults always know best, or what is becoming called “adultism.” In contrast, they are advocates for a culture of consent and a radically inclusive family culture that respects every member equally, regardless of age.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“The resulting behaviors often get loud, aggressive, and violent, which leads to stigma and shame from adults. “What are you thinking? Why would you do that?” Adults glare and send them away, punishing the behavior without asking the real question: “What are you telling me here?” In truth, these actions are often arising out of their primary language for communicating with their caregivers—their bodies. They are autistic after all. They struggle with neurotypical norms of back-and-forth verbal conversation. Their primary mode of expression is through their bodies. They are attempting to say, “This is too hard for me, too much for me.” Instead, their behavior is interpreted through a lens that says, “Naughty, bad, wrong.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“What you’ve lived through may be clinically severe, and you may need to get more support. I have had an intensive season of therapy to heal from my pain and parenting PTSD. I used trauma-informed yoga,15 EMDR,16 Somatic Experiencing,17 Neurofeedback18 and Polyvagel Listening therapy (like the Safe and Sound Protocol)19 to heal.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“As square pegs, we know the world is filled with round holes, but our home doesn’t need to be one. This boy and I begin to explore the corners, carving out a square home where we can all belong.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“The rules I played by for 38 years didn’t need to bind me anymore. They never made me feel alive. They weren’t written for me. And it’s my job to rewrite the story so my children get to thrive, starting with our little family, our world. I used to believe that kids desperately need to know that adults are in charge, and that if I wavered or backed down, I would do irreparable harm. Now I believe that kids desperately need to know that their adults are with them, that we see and honor their effort, and that we can change for them. Now I let my children off the hook all the time, and in their eyes I see myself without a mask. Unafraid to break the rules. Unconcerned about being liked. Because I like the woman I see through their eyes—a strong and courageous mother who will transform the world for them. To stand with your child, just as they are, in radical acceptance, is one of the hardest things a parent can do.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“My heart ached for connection with my son, and I was terrified. I didn’t know about autistic burnout yet. We hadn’t even heard the term “low-demand parenting.” All I knew is that he was suffering deeply. I knew that isolation and endless screen-time were not signs of health for a six-year-old. And at the same time, we got to this point because I pushed and pushed. What would happen if I released instead? What would happen if I trusted that this too had a role to play?”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child

“Our struggling children need us to trust them. They need us to see them. They need us to release our projections and expectations and the hopes and dreams we’ve held onto. They need us to accept them, right where they are.”
― Amanda Diekman, Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with your Uniquely Wired Child