Читать книгу Me and My PDA - Tamar Levi - Страница 10

It is the parents of young people with PDA, with their immense tenacity and determination to help their children, who fight most for recognition among education, mental health and social care services. They do all this whilst also forming worldwide societies and online forums to share useful information and to support each other.

The authors of this book have pooled skills from a

range of professions: we come from mental health and

edu­cation backgrounds, with expertise

in communicating complicated

ideas in simple language and

pictures. Listening to young

people with these difficulties

and their parents inspired us to

write this book. Parents and other

professionals told us that our earlier

publication, My Autism Book: A Child’s Guide

to their Autism Spectrum Disorder, was useful

for the more ‘classic’ presentation of

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but

didn’t capture PDA characteristics. Parents wanted a book written for children and young people with the difficulties associated with PDA, a book that their child could own, to be used as a platform to explore their very unique set of challenges and difficulties within ASD and the concrete ways to manage their difficulties that work for them. We also listened to young people asking questions about the differences that they had noted when comparing themselves to others their age and felt that they didn’t ‘fit in with their peers’. Answering these questions in a way that makes sense to the young person can indeed be difficult. Our book wants to support the process of gradually creating self-awareness in the young person as it gently invites them to address these complicated but key questions in a clear and sensitive manner. It also aims to develop, in collaboration with your child, a repertoire of tailor-made problem-solving strategies and to provide a shared language that can be used by you and your child to communicate about PDA.