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Monday 9:30am - 3:30am Tuesday 9am - 4am Thursday 9:30am - 5am

Brilliant Little Gems - PDA Education & Consulting, Bendigo (2026)

Neuroaffirming resources designed for school, the clinic and home | Workshops | Masterclasses

📚Author of 'A Story About My Brain'. She brings lived experience as a neurodivergent person and parent, alongside years of professional work in mental health, education, and private practice. Her vision is for every neurodivergent person to feel deeply valued—to live in a world where their needs are hono

ured, their strengths celebrated, and their challenges truly understood. Because when that happens, we all benefit from their brilliance.

21/06/2026

I've been asked this quite a bit, and I understand why. I've attended my fair share of meetings that haven't felt productive. Sometimes they'd even feel disheartening or frustrating to those of us sitting around the table.

I've sat at those tables wearing a few different hats over the years. For a long time as a Social Worker within the Department of Education, and then, in more recent years, with a different hat on: there as an 'external professional', supporting families as a parent coach and social worker. (These days the hat is different again, but more on that in Part 3.)

It's been a little over 3 years since I began offering parent coaching, supporting parents in navigating all that's involved in raising neurodivergent gems. Very quickly, it became apparent that most of the parents coming to talk with me were raising children with a little-known neurotype: Pathological Demand Avoidance, or the often-preferred Persistent Drive for Autonomy.

My role was to walk alongside parents as they deepened their own understanding and adjusted both their parenting and their lifestyles to accommodate PDA.

Most were deep diving, learning all they could. And then came the challenge of communicating it all with school, and whether school could make the adjustments needed.

I found myself attending school meetings with well-being, disability inclusion, teachers and leadership, alongside parents and fellow allied health colleagues. Usually we'd have thirty minutes together to discuss, what felt like a radical shift in understanding and practice. Rarely did we get anywhere near the conversation we needed to have for this to happen.

I'd leave wishing for something that could help. The reality is that school meetings are often structured to move through an Individual Education Plan, sometimes that process is a barrier to a bigger conversation that might need to occur. The other reality is that our Education system was never designed with neurodivergent children in mind, so there's also a bigger challenge at play for all of us — trying to make adjustments within a structure that is at odds with allowing the shift to genuinely be effective. Con'td in comments

18/06/2026

Something I've noticed, in my own parenting and in years of working with families: we adults can be so quick to reassure.

It comes from a good place, and I have done it plenty of times myself.

Unfortunately, this can mean a child hasn't felt seen or heard or the opportunity to really process their internal experience.

We don't need to change every interaction to make a difference, just some.

This understanding is what sits at the heart of the PDA-Informed Emotion Coaching guide; responding to children in a way that slows things down and offers the experience of 'I see you; I hear you'.

If you're interested, you'll find a link to purchase The PDA-Informed Emotion Coaching digital resource (at the launch price of $8.99) in my bio 💎

16/06/2026

It’s here 🌈 The PDA- Informed Emotion Coaching guide is now ready to download!

If you followed along with the 3 part story I shared last week, this is the resource that created the shift.

It offers a way of responding when a young person says or shows us that something feels hard. It helps them feel truly seen and understood, whilst giving us a clearer understanding into what’s going on for them underneath.

Through this process, we’re also building their self-awareness, understanding, emotional literacy and emotional regulation skills.

I’ve kept it to two pages on purpose. The flow of the process, what validation can sound like word for word, two example scripts from real moments, and the curiosity phrases that help the whole thing ‘work’.

Something you can read in a spare ten minutes and use that same day.

It’s designed especially with teachers and education support staff in mind, though if you’re a parent or work alongside PDA gems in another role, I think you’ll find it handy too!

You’ll find The PDA-Informed Emotion Coaching digital resource ($8.99 launch price) here 👉🏻 https://tinyurl.com/27m4fzpm 💎

15/06/2026

Why do so many of our neurodivergent children struggle across so many different spaces?

It's a question I come back to often, in conversations with parents, with school teams, and in my own experience as a parent.

I think the answer has a lot to do with what our nervous systems are doing all the time, underneath everything else. And what it means for all of us when we share a space with children who are exquisitely tuned in to everything around them.

What are your thoughts?

12/06/2026

Part 2: The missing piece.

The part of this story I think is really important, is that the teacher was doing so much right. Warm, encouraging, checking in regularly, genuinely trying. And still, this precious gem didn’t feel heard at school.

The clue, when we found it together, was small. The reassurances (“you’ll be ok”, “you’ve done this before”) were coming from a place of real care. I’ve said those exact words myself, more times than I could count. But for a child working hard to hold it together, a quick reassurance can land as: this conversation is over now.

So the bids for help got smaller, and the big feelings built along with distress from the perception that ‘I spoke up - and no one cared’, came home instead.

Nobody was doing it wrong. What was missing was a way of communicating that let the student feel truly heard and understood, and gave the teacher a window into needs that had been hidden all along.

So we brought in my PDA-Informed Emotion Coaching resource; an adaptation of an approach we used to teach teachers years ago when I was working within the Dep of Ed.

This 2 page PDA-Informed Emotion Coaching’ PDF offers explanations of each part of the simple process, two example scripts of what it can sound like in real moments and other phrases that make the whole thing ‘work’.

Things shifted, more on that in Part 3 - tomorrow.
�The PDA-Informed Emotion Coaching Resource is now ready to purchase for $8.99! 🌟

🔗 Take a look 👀 https://tinyurl.com/3he52s6x

11/06/2026

This was a tricky one, the teacher was genuinely working SO hard & showing so much care. Yet at home, meltdowns were occurring every night & this little gem was experiencing school related distress.

Have you seen this kind of situation before? Any ideas on what shifted things in the situation I’ve shared??

Part 2 coming tomorrow

Interested in the resource that I shared with the teacher? 💎

🔗 Take a look 👀 https://tinyurl.com/3he52s6x

Address

Bendigo, VIC

Opening Hours

Monday	9:30am - 3:30am
Tuesday	9am - 4am
Thursday	9:30am - 5am

Telephone

+61492890182

Website

http://www.brilliantlittlegems.com.au/

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