Show Notes
What does a year of applying the PDA lens actually look like in a real family? Justin joined the Paradigm Shift Program in the summer of 2025 and is back a year later to share what shifted, what is still hard, and what he has learned along the way. Justin is a father of two, works in cybersecurity, and lives in Ohio. His 13-year-old PDA son spent years in a specialized school before school refusal led the family to unschooling. In this episode Justin shares how he tracks his son's indicators using an app he built himself, how he navigated the screen time question through the 4S Framework, and the creative accommodation strategies - including fart pills! - that have made daily life genuinely more workable. Key Takeaways
How Justin Found PDA and What the First Year of Applying It Looked Like | 00:01:35 Justin first encountered PDA through social media, and it was a video about equalizing after school that made things click. Before that, the best explanation he had for his son was that he was a very independent kid who could not take no for an answer. Years of consequences and putting a foot down made things worse, and his son eventually hit burnout. What changed for him after the Paradigm Shift Program was not one dramatic shift but a series of small parenting changes: putting shoes on for his son instead of asking, using declarative language, doing the fart pill game twice a day instead of twice-daily battles over medication.
Tracking Indicators With a Custom App: What the Data Showed | 00:17:09 Justin built his own app to track his son's indicators every day, including activation levels, swearing, connection signals like sitting on his lap or info dumping, and accommodations like safe nervous system presence. One pattern he identified through tracking was that loose teeth reliably raised his son's baseline activation, something he would not have connected without the data. He shares the tracking log with his son's therapist as a way of showing progress that is otherwise hard to describe. The trend line on panic attack and meltdown frequency, intensity, and duration over twelve months - all of which have improved - is the clearest evidence for him that the approach is working.
Screens, Safety, and the 4S Framework | 00:26:06 Working in cybersecurity made screens a particularly fraught topic. Justin researched parental monitoring tools and now uses one called Qustodio, which applies consistent limits across all devices and sends alerts for concerning language in Roblox chats. What shifted was not removing screen time but understanding it through the 4S Framework: his son's Roblox game development is simultaneously a screen, a special interest, and a social connection tool. Giving him more regulated access while monitoring content allowed the relationship with screens to become a genuine strength rather than a daily battleground.
The Fart Pills and the Scrub Daddy shower: Creativity After a Year of Practice | 00:14:52 Two examples illustrate what a year of accommodation practice can look like. His son's twice-daily medication had become a twice-daily fight until Justin gamified it: the pills became fart pills, his son plays a capybara hiding in a cave, and taking the pills makes the farts weapon-level. The battle dissolved. For showering, Justin told his son's Scrub Daddy sponge incorrectly that you put shampoo in dry hair and get in the shower with clothes on, then let his son correct and teach the right way. His son was in the shower within five minutes. Both strategies layer humor, equality, play, and novelty together, which Justin describes as exhausting but very effective improv.
Advice for Parents Who Are Where Justin Was a Year Ago | 00:38:12 Justin's advice is not to try to do everything at once. When he looked at the full picture of constraints, accommodations, and nuance, it felt impossible. What helped was making one small change, watching how it landed, and building from there. Putting shoes on for his son instea
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