A combination of autism and ADHD caused outbursts, confusion and stress that my son couldn’t understand – until he saw David Tennant behaving the same way
T
he film Elf is a no-go in our house. My son interprets it as the psychological horror story of a man who is telling the truth but is constantly disbelieved. He loves The Traitors and rewatches entire series of it – knowing who the traitors are gives him an autonomy and comfort watching the game. Any other kind of conflict on screen and he’ll leave the room or wind it forward. I tried to explain that there are no stories without conflict. It made no difference.
My son is autistic and has ADHD – what’s sometimes referred to as AuDHD. We’ve always called him “fizzy”. He’s often the noisiest person in a room but hates too much noise. He’s incredibly sociable and wants so desperately to be part of the fun but finds the fun stressful. I had never seen anyone like him represented on screen.
And then I put on Doctor Who. It was a punt – my son was eight and he liked science. We went in at the David Tennant era – beginning with the episode The Christmas Invasion, where the Doctor doesn’t wake up till a third of the way through the episode. Suddenly there, standing in his pyjamas with a big boyish grin, was Tennant, describing a frightening alien with a weapon as a “big fella”. My son grinned back at the screen. When Tennant’s Doctor arrives properly, he barely stops talking or moving. He’s sword-fighting, then joking, then forgiving – and then he kills the baddy with a satsuma. All while repeating certain phrases to himself. My son laughed in recognition (he often repeats phrases to himself). He turned to me, eyes wide.
