What happened to oppositional defiant disorder?

Diller practices behavioral/developmental pediatrics and family therapy and is on the clinical faculty of the University of California, San Francisco.

“Can you check my child for PDA?” the mother asked me on the telephone about two years ago. Though I had been a behavioral/developmental pediatrician for more than four decades, the only PDA acronym I could recall came from my days as a general pediatrician: patent ductus arteriosus (a persistence of embryonic circulation around the heart).

“Gee, I’m not sure,” I said. “What does PDA stand for?”

“Pathological demand avoidance,” she explained. “My son won’t do anything I ask.”