I'm Amanda.

Hourly Rate: $225/session

Availability: Currently full, not taking new clients

Amanda, the founder of Low Demand Amanda, brings her deep expertise and compassionate approach to every session. While she is not currently taking new clients, her methods, philosophy, and practical tools permeate all aspects of our coaching services.

I'm Keema.

Hourly Rate: $140/session, or 3-month packages

Availability: Accepting New Clients!

Keema Waterfield is a dynamic addition to our team, offering her extensive experience as a parent, author, musician, and coach. Keema specializes in creating supportive, low-demand environments for families navigating the complexities of neurodivergence, including anxiety, disability, autism, and Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). Her approach is deeply informed by her own journey as a neurodivergent parent of neurodiverse children, making her uniquely attuned to the nuances of these experiences.

MEET KEEMA.

Hi, I’m Keema.

I’m an author, musician, and sometimes stand-up comic making a mid-life pivot in support of my two incredible neurodiverse kids who are 8 and 5. Now I’m dropping demands left and right, and bringing my creative skills to parent coaching, where I specialize in supporting families with a PDA child or teen seeking clarity on low demand parenting as they pursue safety and ease in their household.

I’m neurodivergent by way of early childhood trauma, and I’ve always instinctively been a child-led parent. I believe every kid is a good kid worthy of safety, security, and belonging. That behind every behavior, there is a cause. Still, I struggled to find the root “why” beneath my youngest child’s arousal patterns. His nicknames as a toddler were The Screaming Goat and Destructobot, because of the path of high-volume destruction he left behind him as he tore through the house every waking minute that he wasn’t held or nursed.

I knew in my bones that my son’s behavior wasn’t a “toddler thing.” Not a phase, not a failure to understand the word “no” or follow rules, not caused by pandemic isolation or failed attachment, and not gendered (I heard all of that, and more). Still, three separate preschools said he couldn’t be autistic when I asked for an evaluation. “Look at his eye contact,” they said. “His incredible language skills, how deftly he manages himself on the playground when things are going his way!” 

Eventually, I found a neurodiversity-affirming therapist who saw what I saw: a delightfully impish, wildly self-determined, highly sensory seeking child who’s escalating panic attacks after only 8 hours a week of Special Education preschool were impacting his basic needs. Especially sleeping, eating, and toileting. They recognized that he was still growing into his autistic traits, and that no amount of body doubling or gentle transitioning was enough to get my son through even two hours of preschool play without needing to come home and decompress by trying to break everything in sight. Toys, instruments, sister’s art projects, often just my arm.

In seven words that therapist saved all our lives: Autism with a Pathological Demand Avoidance profile. 

What a life-changing thing it is to finally have language for our challenges after years of searching. 

Despite our luck with that therapist and those seven words, my son went into autistic burnout two months later, at the end of his first full year of extremely part-time preschool. I couldn’t get the world on board fast enough to support him and the rest of my family, and I went into caregiver burnout right along with him. It was both easy to see that school wasn’t a fit, and hard to accept that school might never be a fit, and that I needed to drop my career and creative pursuits to keep him home for good. We’ve since healed from burnout together and found our way into a new groove that allows us to flex and grow while continuing to steer ourselves toward that safe, secure belonging.

I’m committed to helping other families find safety, security, and belonging, and to help you get your world on board to support you and your family much faster than I did. We can work together to better understand your child’s unique expression of PDA, collect data around your PDAer’s threshold of tolerance, walk through burnout and recovery for your child and you, identify your household’s stickiest demands and get creative about dropping them, craft declarative language scripts specific to your household, support siblings and partners, brainstorm cooperative and parallel play opportunities for engagement (yes, I can even give you a primer on Minecraft, Roblox and YouTuber speak if this is a challenging area for you), or create a practical bridge to invite family and caregivers into your PDAer’s world. This is also a safe space to grieve, connect, weigh your cost/benefit decisions, and wonder aloud. I welcome all neurotypes, genders, cultures and partners.