What’s on your mind?

Let me start by saying this was a very unusual Saturday for us.

We’re a big footballing family and are heavily involved with a local football club. Most Saturdays are spent there: the kids playing football with their friends or wandering around safely, the parents watching the match. It’s just what we do. Me and my son don’t always make it to this football, though. Some days he’s happy to go; other days he wants to stay at home, and as always, I follow his lead.

But this particular Saturday, the football was cancelled due to the weather and suddenly we were all at a loose end. The girls decided they wanted to go shopping, and my husband said he’d take them. I felt a bit deflated. It meant me and my son would be on our own, as I knew there was absolutely no chance he’d go shopping. I don’t think I’ve ever been shopping with him since he was a baby. He has very few clothes, and they’re all essentially the same item in different colours. We’ve found what works for him, and we stick with it.

So when the shopping trip was mentioned and my son suddenly shouted…

“Oooo, I’ll go shopping!”

You could have knocked me down with a feather. I was completely shocked—but I went with it.

We all got ready. The girls brought friends, so there were four girls, me, my son, and my husband. All seven of us in one car (don’t worry—it’s a seven-seater) heading to the shopping park. This does not happen. Ever. Usually we’re in separate cars, and usually… we’re not shopping. The shopping centre is about half an hour away. On the drive there, my son talked incessantly. About everything and nothing. I can’t remember most of it—because it was relentless—but I do remember him telling my daughter’s friend that her breath stank.

I paused, mentally debating how to handle that one.

We’re used to my son telling the absolute truth. If we look awful, he’ll tell us. If we smell, he’ll tell us. He’s just being honest—but I wasn’t sure how my daughter’s friend would take it. She laughed it off. So I said nothing. As he talked, I half-listened, responding when needed. He spoke about going to Turkey with his dad, about what he was going to buy with his money—and then, completely out of the blue, he asked:

“What’s on your mind, Mam?”

It was such a strange question for him to ask in that moment. My mind had been wandering—through holidays, work, life, why he was talking so much, and mostly… how this shopping trip was going to go. But instead of answering any of that, I said the first irrelevant thing I could think of:

“Apples.”

Then I asked him what was on his mind.

“Harvey Price.”
“There isn’t a Harvey Price in your class, is there?” I asked.
“Noooo. Harvey Price. Do you know Dwight Yorke the footballer? It’s his son.”

That moment completely caught me off guard. I have no idea how he knows about Harvey Price—although the footballer connection probably explains it. Even if it’s a tenuous link. The less said about this conversation the better. I’ve learned, over the years, to recover quickly from these moments, and by the time the conversation ended, we were parked up and ready to shop.

And the shopping trip? It was a success.

My son bought a T-shirt, a football, a fidget spinner, and some new tracksuit bottoms with his Christmas money. As we went around the shops, he kept saying, “This is good, going shopping with you.”

I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me—or himself. In every shop there was a clear turning point, a moment where it became too much for him, and each time we left. But overall, it was a really successful trip.

Still, my mind wandered.

This was such a typical day for so many families—shopping, spending Christmas money, buying new clothes. And yet, in seven years of my son’s life, I had never experienced this with him. Not once. Parenting a neurodivergent child means moments like this don’t always look the way you expect. I used to yearn for a “typical” day together. But now that I’d had one… it didn’t feel quite right.

This wasn’t him.
Was it?
That thought stayed with me.

And then, the next day, it hit me—like an epiphany.

My son hadn’t played football competitively in a team since the beginning of December. Yes, we’re a footballing family—but lately that had meant watching, not playing. Football had always been something led by his dad, while I tried to maintain balance in my son’s life. Yet his dad kept piling the football on him, training as much as possible, match after match after match. As he got older, he coped better. And just as things settled, more and more football was added.

Extra training. More teams. More pressure. Eventually, I learned to say no (how do you say no). I was clear: one football team, and one only. Anything more came at the expense of everything else. Saturday team? No. Two matches every Sunday? No. And then, in December, the one team he played for folded. And suddenly, he’d gone over four weeks without playing any competitive football at all. And that—that was what was missing.

And over the next week or so, after four weeks of not playing football, my son changed. I could see it. I could feel it. I was in it.

We went shopping. We visited grandparents easily. He wrote birthday cards without it feeling like a mountain to climb. He could access everyday life so much more easily. And at the same time, everything else shifted too. His sleep dropped off massively and has continued to do so — and if you read last week’s post about sleep, you’ll know how much we were struggling with that. As football reduced he became incredibly hyperactive. More than I’d ever seen him. Twitchy. Unable to sit still. Like a caged animal when he got in from school.

He ran constantly. Crashed his balance bike into the sofa on purpose and somersaulted off it. Again and again. He was noisy. Vocal. His feet tapped endlessly. And every night, once I finally got him to sleep, I collapsed into bed myself — exhausted, like a marathon runner who’d crossed the line and had nothing left. So when he asked me, “What’s on your mind, Mam?”, it wasn’t apples.

It was balance.

Or maybe it was apples — finding that juicy sweet spot. That place where there’s enough movement, enough challenge, enough pressure to regulate him… but not so much that it costs him everything else.

And I suppose what I’m really asking now is this: how do you know when you’ve found the balance — before adding just a little bit more tips it too far?