"My son has always hated certain stores. He'd walk in, and within minutes he'd be covering his eyes, getting agitated, having what looked like tantrums but were actually meltdowns. For years I thought he was just being difficult about shopping — refusing to cooperate, making excuses not to run errands with me. Then I started paying attention to what these places had in common. Big box stores. His school. The doctor's office waiting room. The library. It wasn't the crowds, though those don't help. It wasn't the noise. It was the lights. Those long fluorescent tubes in the ceiling, the flat industrial fixtures, the buzzing glow that's everywhere in institutional spaces. He can feel something in those lights that I can't even perceive. He says they 'buzz' even when I can't hear anything. He says they 'flicker' even when they look perfectly steady to me. He says the light feels 'sharp' and 'wrong' in a way he can't fully explain but clearly experiences. Under fluorescent lights, he can't focus. He can't think clearly. He gets headaches within 20–30 minutes. He becomes irritable, then agitated, then explosive. His classroom has them — rows and rows of fluorescent tubes. The cafeteria has them. The gym has them. The hallways have them. He spends his entire school day under lights that are actively distressing him, draining his coping resources, and creating a constant low-level sensory assault — and then everyone wonders why he has behaviour problems by afternoon. At home, with our warm incandescent bulbs and lamps instead of overheads, he's a completely different child. Calm, focused, pleasant. It's not his behaviour — it's his environment."