You might see him at the doctor’s, or in the queue at the shop.
He stands out. His clothes have no labels or brands — just his favourite characters and games across the front. He might be moving joyfully, spinning in a slow circle, shaking his hands, humming to himself.
If you speak to him, he’ll go still and silent. He’ll look to me. He might move in closer.
If he’s distressed, the movement grows — spinning, pacing — or he disappears: under the furniture, or curled on the floor inside an oversized hoodie, hiding from the world.
You might assume he can’t understand what you’re saying. That he moves through this world with too much difference to count, or to contribute.
You would be very, very wrong.
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Online, he comes alive.
He has a tight group of friends — lovely human beings, every one of them, who include anyone willing to be respectful and kind. And in this group, my child is a leader.
He teaches new players what to do. His friends ring most nights to ask if he’s coming online. They work together to solve the hardest levels, then make videos showing others how it’s done.
And when someone crosses a line — is unfair, or unkind — they handle it with a grace I am in awe of. Social skills I wish I had half as well.
He can tell you, clearly and kindly, exactly why what you did wasn’t okay. He’ll ask you to put it right, or not to do it again. And if you won’t — if you can’t manage that — he can let you know, with a remarkable mix of assertiveness and warmth, that you’ll be leaving the group, and why.
These are children with shared values. A group I am proud to know. And prouder still to call one of them my son.
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I was reminded of all this recently in the smallest moment.
He was on a call, and his friend was briefly introduced to me in passing — the way these things happen, a voice through a doorway. “Oh — say hi to my mum.” I called out hello as I crossed the room.
His friend called back hello. And then, completely unprompted, he added:
“I just want to tell you how smart he is. He’s so clever.”
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I think about this a lot.
If his whole life were lived in the places that struggle to see him — waiting rooms, classrooms, groups where his difference arrives before he does — his sense of himself might look very different. He might have learned to see himself the way he is so often read. As less. As lacking. As someone the world has to make allowances for.
But he gets to create his own world. He gets to choose his friends, his challenges, the ground he stands on.
And so he doesn’t see himself as the boy you’d walk past in the queue.
He sees himself as the leader. The teacher. The clever, creative, funny, kind person his friends already know him to be.
That confidence follows him everywhere. When he decided to teach himself physics, far beyond his years, it never once occurred to him that he couldn’t — even though reading is hard for him, even though no school exam would ever capture what his mind can do.
He has never needed his intelligence to be measurable to know that it’s real.
I’m grateful for that every single day. Because in a world that could so easily have pulled him down, he found the place that let him stand at his full height.
And from there, it turns out, he can reach almost anything