Demand avoidance

Some young people find everyday demands unusually difficult to manage.

A demand may be explicit — “Start your maths” — or implicit: getting dressed, leaving the house, responding to a question, joining an activity, making a choice, doing something at a particular time, or even beginning an activity the young person actually wants to do.

The response may include delay, negotiation, distraction, withdrawal, refusal, leaving, shutdown or significant distress.

Demand avoidance tells us that something about the demand, situation or experience is difficult. It does not, by itself, tell us why.

For some young people, demands create anxiety or uncertainty. For others they may increase a sense of lost autonomy, expose executive-function difficulties, create sensory or communication load, activate fear of failure, or occur within a history of repeated coercion or relational conflict.

There is no reliable population prevalence for demand avoidance as a presentation.

A young person might:

• ignore or delay responding;
• repeatedly ask why something has to happen;
• negotiate extensively;
• attempt to change the timing, order or conditions;
• use distraction or humour;
• change the subject;
• role-play or become absorbed in another identity or activity;
• withdraw or become silent;
• leave;
• freeze;
• become increasingly distressed as pressure increases;
• appear controlling about how, when or where something happens;
• manage something when self-initiated but struggle when another person requests it;
• find even enjoyable or personally chosen activities difficult once they become expected;
• agree to something and subsequently appear unable to begin it.

Capacity may vary substantially from one day, person or environment to another.

Don’t assume

Do not assume that:

• avoidance means laziness;
• the young person does not understand;
• the young person needs firmer boundaries;
• greater pressure will build resilience;
• every avoided demand is optional;
• every adult preference is a necessary demand;
• apparently controlling behaviour necessarily reflects a wish to control other people.

Sometimes what looks like a struggle for control is a struggle to retain enough control to remain regulated.

A useful sequence is:

Understand → reduce pressure → create agency → collaborate → build capacity

Helpful approaches may include:

• collaborative problem-solving;
• meaningful choices;
• flexible routes to the same goal;
• indirect or invitational language where helpful;
• advance information;
• increased processing time;
• reducing repeated demands;
• visual or externalised planning;
• negotiating timing;
• connecting tasks to purpose;
• reducing sensory, communication or executive load;
• building trust;
• identifying and reducing unnecessary demands;
• supporting initiation rather than interpreting failure to begin as refusal.

The purpose is not to remove every expectation indefinitely. It is to create conditions in which the young person can gradually develop greater capacity to engage.