Put Your Armour Down, Mama (Most People Are Actually Rooting For You)

Let me paint you a picture.

It's a Saturday morning. We're in Morrisons. Elias is doing his Thing — the hum. The beautiful, resonant, full-body hum that he produces when he's happy, which sounds somewhere between a didgeridoo warming up and a small engine failing. He is ecstatic. He is also, periodically, smacking himself cheerfully on the side of the head, because apparently that's where the good sensory feedback lives, and honestly, fair enough. And I, his devoted, exhausted, deeply caffeinated mother, am doing my Thing.

Scanning. Always scanning.

I am basically a human perimeter defence system at this point. Eyes flicking left, right, ahead. Clocking every raised eyebrow, every micro-expression, every person who glances our way for a millisecond longer than feels comfortable. My jaw is set. My shoulders are up somewhere near my ears. I have the energy of someone who has already rehearsed seventeen different responses to seventeen different comments that haven't happened yet and probably won't.

I am ready. I am vigilant. I am a lioness, and Elias is my cub.

Suddenly, the man by the milk catches my eye. He looks at Elias. He looks at the joyful, rhythmic head-slapping. He looks back at me. And he smiles.

Not a pitying smile. Not a "bless you, you poor thing" smile. Just a smile. Like he's seen a small boy enjoying himself enormously and found it delightful. Which, to be fair, it is. Elias is excellent at enjoying himself.

And I, warrior mother, defender of my child, ready for anything, am completely, utterly thrown. I probably blinked at him like a startled owl. I may have done an awkward half-nod. I definitely moved away faster than necessary, because kindness I wasn't braced for is somehow harder to receive than the hostility I'd already mentally pre-fought.

This is the absurdity of it, isn't it? We prepare so hard for the worst that we sometimes can't even receive the best.

When you have a child with additional needs, you develop what I like to think of as Protective Parent Syndrome. A condition characterised by a permanent low-level threat assessment, a hair-trigger for perceived judgement, and an absolutely exhausting internal monologue that runs on a loop every time you leave the house.

That woman looked over. Why did she look over? Is she going to say something? What will I say if she says something? But what if she's not even thinking what I think she's thinking? What if she's just wondering if we have the same coat?

(Spoiler: she was wondering about the coat).

The mental load of it is staggering. We are simultaneously trying to support our children, read the room, manage sensory environments, anticipate needs, and fight an imaginary army of disapproving strangers who, more often than not, simply do not exist. We are exhausted by a war that mostly isn't happening.

And the thing is, and I want to say this gently because I know how hard-won this realisation is, most people are fine. Actually fine. Not performing fine. Not biting their tongue fine. Just fine.

They see Elias humming with the frequency of a tuning fork and they think: oh, happy kid. They see him doing his little percussive head thing and they think: children are wonderfully weird, aren't they. They see the two of us navigating the world on our own particular terms and they think, (if they think anything at all): good for them.

Some of them, the ones who know, give you The Nod. Fellow parents of kids with additional needs, you know the one. It says: I see you. I've been in that Morrisons. I've scanned those faces. You're doing brilliantly. It contains multitudes. It has kept me going on days when very little else has.

And some of them are just genuinely happy to see a little boy living his best life. Because children experiencing pure joy are, objectively, one of the nicest things in the world to witness, even when that joy is expressed via unconventional sound effects.

So here's what I'm working on. Notice I said working on, not cracked, because let's be honest.

1. Notice the armour going on. The moment the shoulders creep up and the jaw sets and the scanning starts, notice it. You don't have to immediately put it all down, but just noticing creates a tiny bit of space between you and the threat response. You are not in danger. You are in a soft play café with slightly sticky tables.

2. Let good things land. When someone smiles, let the smile actually arrive. Don't immediately explain it away or brace against it. Someone was kind. You can receive that. You're allowed.

3. Remind yourself what you're actually protecting. You want to protect your child from judgement and unkindness. Completely valid. But you're also, inadvertently, protecting yourself from experiencing the good stuff: the solidarity, the sweetness, the strangers who genuinely just think your kid is great. Don't armour yourself against that too.

4. Save the energy. Because here's the uncomfortable truth: the armour is heavy. Carrying it everywhere means you arrive at every outing already half-depleted, which makes the actual hard moments, the ones that occasionally, really do happen, harder to navigate with grace. Pick your battles. Don't pre-fight the ones that exist only in your head.

5. Live in his moment, not yours. Elias is not worried about the man in the milk aisle. Elias is humming. Elias is radiant. While I am running threat assessments, he is simply being alive in the most committed, whole-hearted way possible. Sometimes the most useful thing I can do is put down the perimeter defence and just be there with him, in the hum, in the joy, in the Morrison on a Saturday morning.

That's where the good stuff is.

The world is not always kind. I know that. There will be days, and there have been days, when someone does say something, when the look is what you feared it was, when you need every bit of that fierce protective love to show up and handle it.

But it happens less than we expect. And in the meantime, we are spending an enormous amount of our finite, precious energy guarding against shadows.

Elias is happy. Elias is loud about being happy, in the best possible way. And somewhere in the milk aisle, a stranger thought that was worth smiling at.

I'm trying to let that be enough.

I'm trying to put the armour down, just a little, and smile back.