An Exploration of PDA Masking
This is the transcription of an animated video I made for the Positive PDA Virtual Summit 2020 on the subject of PDA masking. Masking means hiding your true feelings; often seeking to appear calm and happy. A form of masking is social mimicry, which means copying what you think are the right behaviours to fit in and get along with people. Before I get stuck in, I should point out that while many PDAers, including myself and Milly, do mask, some PDAers say they do not mask at all. So not all PDAers mask. Awareness that many PDA children mask, for example in school, has lately been growing. This awareness, to my mind, is of very high importance because, if educators, diagnosticians and other health practitioners are not aware of masking, and how extensive it can be, they will be bound to assume that the child has no real issues. I had direct experience of this when my daughter Milly was assessed for ADHD last year. The local child development centre had updated her autism diagnosis ...