Low Demand Parenting
by Amanda Diekman
Latest episode
What Burnout Is Really Like
What Burnout Is Really Like
About this podcast
The Low Demand Parenting Podcast is your space to let go of the pressure and embrace a more joyful, authentic approach to parenting. Hosted by Amanda Diekman—author, autistic adult, and mom of three—this podcast isn’t about perfection or expert advice. It’s about learning together how to drop the demands that weigh us down and find the ease we crave in our families. Whether you’re navigating neurodivergence, challenging behaviors, or simply the highs and lows of life, this show offers honest conversations, practical insights, and a whole lot of compassion. Let's thrive, even when it feels like life is on level 12 hard.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 51 episodes
- What Burnout Is Really Like · 28 min · Season 2What happens when your kid is suddenly or persistently exhausted, raging, avoiding school, crying, or withdrawn? What do you call it when your child is struggling day after day?…
- Part 2: Deep-diving PDA · 39 min · Season 2In Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Katherine Olson, we deep dive into PDA and why so many of the strategies we're told to use can backfire for PDA kids. We talk about…
- Part 1: Deep-diving PDA · 23 min · Season 2In this first part of a deep dive into PDA from a professional's lens, I’m talking with Dr. Katherine Olson, a clinical psychologist with extensive training in autism, early…
- The radical freedom of trusting our kids · 30 min · Season 2Listen in as I talk with somatic coach and artist Jo Kelly about what happens when we practice truly trusting our children (and ourselves) for the long haul. Jo shares her…
- Parenting a gamer · 31 min · Season 2DISCOVER THE LOW DEMAND COURSE This powerful 8-week course hones your parenting intuition, builds your self-trust, supports collaborative work with your kid, and yields massive…
- How does unschooling work? · 29 min · Season 2Esther Jones is a long-time unschooling parent who joins me to talk about how kids learn, how we can support learning, and what it looks like to truly trust our kids in their own…
- Healing parenting burnout · 27 min · Season 2What if the reason compassion feels so hard isn't because you're failing—but because your nervous system is protecting you? In this conversation, Melissa Corkum and I explore the…
- Maternal ambivalence: when you love your kids and sometimes hate parenting · 27 min · Season 2In this episode, I talk with psychotherapist and researcher Dr. Margot Lowy about maternal ambivalence—the reality that parenting often holds both joy and grief, love and…
- Helping sensory-sensitive kids thrive · 27 min · Season 2When we think about demands, we often think about the obvious ones: brush your teeth, sit at the table, get dressed, go to school. But what about the demands we can't see? In…
- Becoming a self-healer · 29 min · Season 2In this deeply personal conversation, I sit down with Carolina Ramirez to explore what happens when parenting stops being a journey of “fixing” our children and becomes an…
- Teens in distress · 28 min · Season 2In this episode, I’m talking with author and therapist Katie May about something so many parents are facing—and so few feel equipped to handle: what to do when your teen is…
- Mailbag: Back to Basics with Low Demand · 23 min · Season 2In this episode, I’m answering a listener question I hear all the time: What does low demand actually look like? I walk through the foundations of low demand parenting by…
- Meeting our own needs · 29 min · Season 2What if the hardest part of low demand parenting isn’t your child’s needs — but what their needs bring up in you? In this solo episode, we will explore the deep inner work…
- Throw Out the Manual: Rewriting Fatherhood for a PDA Kid · 25 min · Season 2In this episode, I sit down with my friend and neighbor Jeff Parrott to talk about parenting a PDA, pressure-sensitive child while letting go of the “typical” parenting manual…
- Low Demand - But Make It Structured · 27 min · Season 2In this episode, I sit down with writer and disabled parent Jessica Slice about what it looks like to practice low demand parenting… and also not. Jessica shares how parenting…
- Listening Deeply To Our Kids · 29 min · Season 2In this solo episode, I get to dive into one of the most radical, healing, and countercultural practices in Low Demand Parenting: listening deeply to our kids. As the third step…
- Parenting at the Intersections · 25 min · Season 2What happens when parenting meets the deep work of liberation? In this episode, I talk with Jaya Ramesh and Priya Saaral, authors of Parenting at the Intersections, about raising…
- Low Demand in a Blended Family · 28 min · Season 2In this raw, tender conversation, Chris and Jasmine open up about navigating a “big blended family crisis,” discovering PDA, and rebuilding connection in a stepfamily with three…
- What to do when low demand is killing you · 25 min · Season 2In this solo episode, I reframe “low-demand” beyond crisis triage and into a proactive, sustainable practice. I explain why dropping demands only in the moment can leave parents…
- Single parenting with low demands · 29 min · Season 2Parent coach, clinical psychologist, neuropsychologist, and single mom Dr. Gila shares hard-won, compassionate guidance for solo parents of high-needs kids: naming the grief and…
