In my work I have been developing a greater understanding of the unique experiences of such people, and how these concerns can be misinterpreted as being ADHD, or just being an a*hole. With autistic speakers and those with autistics in their lives, it gives you a much more accurate understanding and glimpse into an autistic’s experience of the world. In short Thompson is not critiquing an accurate representation of monotropism theory; see Woods (2018b) for a more modern overview of it that explains DAP in its entirety. The result: a kid who sees themselves as a “bad” kid, and parents who see themselves as “bad” parents.

c. Strong, involuntary emotional threat responses in the context of perceived demands (can be implicit and ever-present, such as attending school and work; or explicit such as a direct request or direction or suggestion) on the person’s autonomy, which may be expressed as; anger, aggression, rage, anxiety, fear, desperation, and at its extreme, meltdown (panic). I sincerely apologise to anyone who in my pda discovery days I led to Harry Thompson PDA extraordinaire, their book or page and any harm that came from that.With that being said, I want to give a realistic viewpoint of parenting a PDAer when you are PDA yourself; without rose tinted glasses and without focusing just on the negatives. It is also the grace I give myself when I wake up with night sweats in the wee hours and must change my pajamas, soaked in the subconscious memories that persist from the early months after Cooper’s birth. I'm still going to read his book and consume his materials because he has excellent insight on many things, but much like the neurotypicals do, he has a blind spot when it comes to himself, and conflates his personal flaws as part of group pathology.

In the meantime, though, I must navigate the liminal space of a mother who communicates frequently with those who do not have even the tip of a toenail in the Autistic world about the implicit needs and workings of a child who primarily lives there, because it is who he is as a human . Pinpoint provide help and information to parents and carers of children and young people aged 0-25 with additional needs and disabilities in Cambridgeshire. Many times, the next demand comes before the PDA-er has a chance to calm down from the last one: get ready for school, open your books, go to lunch, please sit still in class. I am just explaining the benefits of going to a conference, any conference, that has speakers that are speaking from either the front line or from a first person perspective.

As such not much can be taken from Thompson’s personal account due to the uncertain nature of what DAP and cannot be generalised to the wider DAPer population. Thompson says in his YouTube video, “Anxiety Presents in Multiple Ways,” that many class clowns like he used to be as a middle-schooler often resort to hiding behind a flamboyant persona as a coping mechanism for anxiety. When you have two people with the PDA need for control, one of three things will happen; one will have to relinquish control (which would cause them a great deal of anxiety), one will have a meltdown (due to the level of anxiety and stress caused by fighting for control), or you will end up in a battle of wills that could last for hours.