Every time my kid asks to go somewhere, there’s a calculation I do before I answer.

How much noise will there be. How many people. How long is the drive. What’s parking going to be like. Will there be somewhere to sit when I hit the wall. What’s the exit strategy if I need one. How wrecked will I be tonight, and tomorrow, and will I be able to function on Monday.

He doesn’t see the calculation. He just sees me sitting on the edge of the bed, not dressed yet, while he’s been ready since 7am. Shoes on. Bag packed. Vibrating with excitement about the zoo. He has a favourite animal (quokka, which they don’t even have at Melbourne Zoo, but that’s a separate conversation).

“Dad, are we going?”

Yeah, mate. We’re going.

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I want to try to articulate the tension here, because I haven’t seen anyone do it properly.

I want my kids to have a big, full, textured life. I want them to go places and see things and have the kind of childhood memories that you carry around forever. The beach in summer. The museum on a rainy day. The time we drove to the Dandenongs and walked through the forest and found a lyrebird. I want that for them so badly it aches.

And also, every single one of those experiences costs me something that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t felt it.

It’s not laziness. I need to say that clearly because I spent thirty years thinking it was laziness. It’s that my brain processes sensory input differently, and a busy zoo on a Saturday in Melbourne is, for me, a full-body experience. The crowds. The noise. The decisions (where do we go next, when do we eat, which way is the toilet). The constant vigilance of watching a small person near water features. By 2pm I’m not tired in a normal way. I’m somewhere past tired, in that flat grey space where everything is too much and nothing is interesting and I just want to sit in the car alone with the engine off for twenty minutes.

But my kid is having the time of his life. He’s pointing at things. He’s asking questions I don’t know the answers to. He’s doing the thing where he pulls your hand because he wants you to see something RIGHT NOW. And that’s beautiful. That’s exactly what I wanted for him.

Both of those things are true at the same time. The beauty and the cost. They don’t cancel each other out.

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I’ve tried to explain this to people and the response is usually something like “yeah, everyone gets tired at the zoo.” And they’re right, everyone does. But there’s a difference between “I could use a coffee” tired and “I can feel every seam on my clothing and the sound of that child screaming three enclosures away is making my jaw clench” tired. I don’t always know how to bridge that gap in conversation so I usually just nod and say “yeah, totally.”

What makes it harder is the guilt. Because on the days when the cost feels too high and I say “maybe not today,” I see the disappointment. He doesn’t make a big deal of it. He’s a good kid. He just goes “okay” in that small voice and finds something to do at home. And I sit there knowing he’s fine, he’s fine, he really is, but also feeling like I’ve failed at the one job that matters.

The guilt hits differently when you have ADHD. Because you know the reason you’re saying no isn’t because you’re busy or it’s impractical. It’s because your own brain is the bottleneck. You’re the reason your kid isn’t at the zoo right now.

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I’ve landed on a few things that help, or at least reduce the guilt.

I’ve learned that smaller experiences count. We don’t have to do the zoo. The park down the road, the one with the creek, that’s an experience too. He loves it there. Fewer people, less noise, and I can sit on the bench and watch him throw rocks into the water without feeling like my nervous system is being sandpapered.

I’ve learned to plan for the crash. If Saturday is a big outing, Sunday is nothing. I protect that space now instead of feeling guilty about it. The kids watch a movie, I lie on the couch, everyone recovers. It’s not glamorous but it’s sustainable.

And I’ve learned (slowly, and not perfectly) that he doesn’t need me to be ON the whole time. He needs me to be there. Present. Even if present means sitting on the bench at the zoo while he runs ahead. I’m still there. I still showed up. He’ll remember I was there.

Sometimes, on good days, the cost is worth it and it doesn’t even feel like a cost. Last month we went to the beach, just the two of us, on a Tuesday morning when no one else was there. The water was cold and the sand was empty and he built something he called a “castle hotel for crabs.” I sat next to him and helped dig a moat and my brain was still for once.

That’s the version I hold onto.

The Saturday zoo trip, the big noisy wonderful overwhelming version, that’s for him. The quiet Tuesday beach, that’s for both of us. I’m learning that both count.