The film Elf is not playing in our house. My son perceives it as a psychological horror story about a man who tells the truth but is never believed. He loves Misfits and watches the entire series again - knowing Misfits gives him autonomy and comfort while watching the game. He leaves the room or moves forward at any other kind of screen conflict. I've tried to explain that there are no stories without conflict. It hasn't changed anything.
My son is autistic and has ADHD - sometimes referred to as AutHD. We've always called him "over-exaggerated". He's often the loudest person in the room, but hates too much noise. He's incredibly social and desperately wants to be part of the fun, but fun is stressful for him. I've never seen anyone like him represented on screen.
Then we watched Doctor Who. It was a gamble - my son was eight and he liked science. We entered the David Tennant era - we started with the episode Invasion of Christmas, where the Doctor doesn't wake up until a third of the way through the episode. Suddenly, there he was, mouth agape, with a big boyish grin, as Tennant described the terrible alien with a gun as "the big man". My son smiled at the screen. When Tennant's Doctor finally appears properly, he can barely stop talking or moving. He fights with a sword, then jokes, then forgives - and then kills the villain with a SatSuma. All while repeating certain phrases to himself. My son recognized. He looked at me, wide-eyed.
"He's like me!" he said.
"You mean funny? Yes, you're very funny, dear."
"No," he insisted. "He's over-exaggerated. Like me."
Watching Tennant's Doctor was like watching my son's adult version: infectious joy, righteous anger, switching from one emotion to another so quickly. There was a hardness - exaggeration. I don't think David Tennant intentionally played the Doctor AutHD, or that Russell T Davies wrote him that way. But as we watched these episodes together, that's what we saw. That's what we saw. And my son saw himself.
He found comfort in its structure. Every episode would have a new problem, and the Doctor would use his over-exaggerated brain to solve it. It helped him understand that stories need conflict and then resolution. That real life has conflict and resolution too. It helped me find parallels between what was happening in the episodes and what was happening in his life. "The Doctor really likes spending time with people, even though they're a bit stressful for him, right? Do you think that's a bit like you and your friends sometimes?" I'd say.
One Friday afternoon, my son exploded over something I can't remember now. It was a week at school, pouring out of him in a scream, kicking, flailing limbs. After the remorse, I said something I'd said many times before: "Your feelings and emotions are too big for such a small person."
But then I had a sudden realization, all the Doctor we'd been watching. I grabbed his hands. "You're like a TARDIS. You're just much bigger on the inside than on the outside, my love."
He nodded back. "I'm like a TARDIS."
It all changed - how I thought about his emotional regulation.
My son is now 10 and he's been both Tennant and Matt Smith's Doctors for the last two Halloweens. We still use the TARDIS metaphor, often when he refuses to go to bed. "Buddy, the TARDIS needs recharging," I'd say. It usually doesn't work, but sometimes it does. Even during explosions, it helps change the conversation - it shows we're always trying to understand him, even when we just can't.
