From Worry to Wonder: When Life Forces You To See Differently

James reflects on his journey from worried father to advocate for autism appreciation, crediting his quintuple bypass surgery at 35 as a turning point in how he viewed his son Lucas's autism. Rather than focusing on what needed to be "fixed," James began appreciating Lucas's unique perspective and finding joy in moments others might misinterpret as sad.

• The podcast grew from James's frustration with not being able to share funny stories about Lucas without receiving sympathy
• James explains the difference between autism awareness, acceptance, and his preferred term: appreciation
• Shares the memorable "pretzel story" that triggered the blog
• Reflects on writing about Lucas from age 5 to 14 and watching him grow through the blog
• Talks about his upcoming book "Hi World I'm Dad: How Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance to Appreciation"
• Expresses gratitude for the supportive community that has made him feel less alone

It's Here! Get the book – “Hi World, I’m Dad: How Fathers Can Journey to Autism Awareness, Acceptance, and Appreciation” on audio, digital, or print.

Follow Us On Facebook and YouTube. Follow James Guttman on Instagram.

Also, be sure to read the blog that started it all - Hi Blog! I'm Dad.

Episode Transcript

James Guttman (00:14):
hi pod, I am dad.
He's not just hi dad, he's mydad.
James gutman folks, jamesgutman, hi pod, I'm dad.
I am here.
It is friday, it is mid-may.
I am being handed an ipad.
What happened here?
Oh, there you go.
Welcome back to the podcast.
I got lucas in the background.

(00:34):
Can you say hi double mouth tap.
That's the best you guys aregetting.
Um, yeah, this is.
This has been a day.
I've had a lot going on in termsof getting ready for the book
release, in terms of gettingready for the book release, in
terms of the podcast and theblog.
All these different things areworking out.
I appreciate you guys joiningme.
If you found me in anystreaming service, please like
and subscribe.
If you found me onhypodondadcom, bookmark it, tell

(00:55):
your friends, tell everybody,tell them all about it, every
single Trying to give you guysas honest of a commentary as I
can.
That's the whole idea of what Ido here.
That's the whole reason why Ido this podcast.
In the beginning For those ofyou guys who don't know my story
is somewhat usual in thebeginning, I was a father.

(01:18):
I saw delays in my son.
I was concerned about him.
It worried me and I was reallyon this path of just being this
worried, concerned dad.
Now I know, looking back, thathow I see Lucas today is kind of
probably how I was always goingto end up seeing Lucas.
But I kind of credit, in someways, the quintuple bypass when

(01:39):
I was 35.
It was a year after Lucas wasborn.
A little over a year.
He was showing his delays.
I saw them, we knew of them, Iwas prepared for them.
I remember specifically becauseHurricane Sandy was a month
before my surgery and I rememberI remember, you know, staying
behind in the evacuation zoneand say I'm going to fight the
hurricane.
I was not in a good mental stateand I don't know when I came

(02:04):
out of that surgery.
I came out with a new lease onlife.
I had been healthy, I had neverhad any health problems, never
had a surgery, and I had aquintuple bypass and I thought
about life.
I thought about all the thingsthat annoyed me and how they
seemed stupid when I thought Iwas going to die and I thought
about what I wanted, and Iwanted my kids.

(02:25):
I I don't know, I just wantedto feel good and I knew this
because I went online.
I remember I don't talk aboutthis a lot, but I went online
after I came out of the surgery.
I was in the hospital at onepoint at home, and I couldn't
even read news or that onlinediscourse.

(02:46):
There was something about itthat just bugged me People
genuinely obsessing over theirhatred of TV shows and
celebrities they never met andit just felt so.
And that's not me.
I'm not now.
I'm not, and it's funny becauseI feel like when I was younger

(03:06):
maybe I was I was a little bitmore sarcastic, a little bit
more like that's life, I don'tknow.
I I think there's a realisticway to look at the world.
Right, I'm street smart, youknow I.
I know how to carry myself onthe streets, I know what to look
out for.
I don't really I don't trust alot of people at face value, but

(03:26):
I want to, I'd like to, and Ithink that's the.
That's the difference.
There are some people who aredying to hate you.
They're just, you know, they'rejust dying to hate people.
Oh, I hate him.
Why, I don't know.
Why do you?
What's wrong?
Why do you hate him, somethinglike that?
So I came out of the surgery andI watched my son and all of a
sudden I was no longer reallyjust obsessing about like how do

(03:48):
I change him.
I'm obsessing like what is hedoing, what is that?
And I've told the story aboutthe car under the seat and
watching him play with his toysin ways that didn't jive with
how they were in the instructionmanual and how it used to
bother me.
And here I was, post-surgery,happily trying to figure him out
.
And over the last few yearsthat's just become what this

(04:12):
blog has been about.
I mean, autism appreciation isthe way I see my son.
I don years, that's just becomewhat this blog has been about.
I mean autism appreciation isthe way I see my son.
I don't.
It's funny because I don'treally think I remember when I
first thought of saying that asit was.
I think it was during the wholedebate, the autism acceptance
and autism awareness debate,which bothers me, and I've said
this before, I'll say it again.
They're both positives, right,they both support people with

(04:33):
autism.
And it always amazed me,especially early on in this blog
, how like aggressive peoplewould get about it.
They'd be like happy autismawareness month.
You mean autism acceptancemonth.
Okay, all right, sorry, and Iget mad and I'm thinking like,
but I'm not mad about anything,I don't.
It's not about acceptance.
I accept my son, I'm aware ofmy son.

(04:54):
I like my son.
I like the way he acts.
I think the stories I tellabout him I mean in many ways I
talk about autism appreciationbeing something that built up as
this blog went on.
But one of the main reasons Iremember early on, the very
beginning, of why I wanted towrite this blog was that it was
hard to tell people storiesabout Lucas without them being

(05:19):
sympathetic at times where theyshouldn't be.
There was a story I alwaysthought was so cute where he's
running through the house.
He's just a run around in likeI forget about this.
He's a run around in circlesthrough the house.
He would go through the kitchen, into the front room, down the
hallway, back to the dining room, up through the kitchen and it
was like a circle and mydaughter would chase him.

(05:39):
She'd be like Lucas catch me.
That was so sweet because itwas like he was doing it anyway,
so she would jump in there andthen he would play with her and
sometimes he would be doing itwith her and sometimes he'd just
be doing it and she'd be there.
But it was his thing.
He loved to do it.
So I'm sitting there in thekitchen and I'm eating hard
pretzels, the little ones on thebag, and I knew he hated these
pretzels because he's tried thembefore and he hated them.
So he's running by at fullspeed and he stops and he almost

(06:03):
skids right Like he's going sofast.
It was a cartoon.
There'd be a little smokecoming out and he stops and he
double taps his chest, whichmeans give me, I want it.
And I was like buddy, I'm likeyou don't, you don't want this
pretzel.
I'm eating the pretzel and hegoes double tap.
I'm like you don't want thispretzel, you don't like pretzels

(06:26):
.
Again, all right, buddy, hereand I hand it to him and he
takes it in his fingers and helightly puts it on his tongue.
He sticks his tongue out and helicks it and then he hands it
back to me and runs away fullspeed.
And it just made me laugh outloud.
It made me laugh out loud inthe moment.
It makes me laugh out loud tothink about it, maybe now I've
told the story so many times.
It's been so long, but it'sstill funny because I can see it
.
I remember what it was like.
You weren't there to see it.
It was funny.

(06:48):
And before the blog, and Icouldn't, because when I would
get to the part about like youknow how he first, how he taps
his chest, it's always like itwas just sadness to the fact
that he couldn't talk, that theyhad for him.
And don't get me wrong, man,early on, when my son was little
, I was sad, I was worried abouthim.
I wanted him to be okay, but itwasn't at a certain point Like

(07:10):
all right, he's not going totalk.
So what am I going to cry everytime I look at my kid for the
rest of my life?
Are we going to find thingsthat work for us?
And we did that and that's whatthe story was.
It was a cute, funny story.
But to tell people like, oh, hedidn't understand what pretzels

(07:32):
were, I'm like no, he made megive it to him and he didn't let
.
It's a whole and I didn't wantto keep doing that.
He's fun, he's great, he'ssweet, he's kind and every
positive thing I could possiblysay about him.
He is right, that's who Lucasis and that's why I write this
blog about autism appreciation.
But over the last, at thispoint, eight years.

(07:52):
Oh, I got that wrong.
I meant to say that Last week Italked about how Lucas was
seven.
When I began this blog, my kidswere little.
It was 2017.
He was seven.
You've seen seven years ofLucas.
You haven't seen seven years ofLucas.
Lucas was five Five when Istarted this blog right, because
it was February of 2017.
He turned six in 2017, but inMarch, so he was five years old.

(08:17):
So I've raised Lucas from fiveto 14 in front of everybody, in
front of all of us together onthis.
You guys have seen the thingsthat he's done.
You've seen his achievements.
You've seen his successes.
You've seen my failures.
You've seen the things thatworked and the things that
didn't.
You've heard my story andyou've watched it play out.
There's things that I wroteabout when he was little that I
don't even think about anymoreRunning Even now, telling the

(08:44):
story about him running aroundthe house in circles.
That's like 100,000 years ago,but for a while, that was our
life.
You know Lots of things I wroteabout him.
I have one of my favorite ones.
It's called no Eating theLaundry.
Like when Lucas was little, hewould chew on this blanket and
he loved it and he would like.
It was like a teething thing,and this went on for years.
He was still into it.
I don't know if he still doesit with his mom, but he doesn't
do it here.
But he would go into a laundrypass.

(09:06):
If it was sitting there andjust start chewing on a t-shirt.
I'd be like, oh my God, so manytimes, dude, between that and
drinking from cups of strangers,this kid should have had
hepatitis X, y and Z and he madeit through.
But that was an old story froma long time ago, things he

(09:27):
doesn't do anymore, and I'vewatched him grow and you've
watched him grow too, and I'vehad this opportunity to write
this blog and to do this podcastand share him with the world,
because it means everything tome.
Autism appreciation is I don'tknow.
It's not about anything.
It's not about money and it'snot about careers.
It's not about, it's just it'sabout.
Let me tell you about this kid.
I spent 15 years writing aboutpro wrestling.

(09:48):
I loved it.
It was fun, it was great, butit wasn't my thing.
It was something other peopledid on television that I then
wrote about.
A lot of the writing that I dois about things other people do,
whether it's a stock market orTV shows and things like that
that I've written about in thepast Las Vegas Lucas's.
This is our life, this is mylife, this is my first person

(10:10):
narrative and I'm so blessed toget to do it.
And honestly and it's all, Iguess I didn't mean to go back
here, but honestly it goes backto the book High World I'm Dad
how fathers can journey fromautism awareness to acceptance

(10:30):
to appreciation.
That comes out in a month, thatis.
I've never been more proud ofanything I've written and put
out there for people.
I'm so looking forward tosharing this with you guys and
telling you all the great thingsthat are going to be attached
to it and all the wonderfulthings coming ahead.
I've been blessed and I've beenreally grateful for this
opportunity.
I'm at a point in my life whereI don't know I'm happy and I'm
glad and I thank you guys forgiving me the opportunity to

(10:52):
talk to you, to share my sonwith you, and for doing this
blog, for allowing me to writeit and just the feedback.
Man, it's so overwhelminglypositive.
But even when, once in a while,I'll get something that's not
positive, I'm not talking abouttrolls.
I'm talking about people whohave issues, issues with their
own lives, of dealing withautism.
And I try to write back toeverybody Because, at the end of

(11:15):
the day, that's what this isabout.
This is about support andsharing what we have going on at
a time where sometimes peopledon't get what we're trying to
share.
You guys don't make the sad,sympathetic faces to me when I
tell you the stories you tell meabout your stories.
You tell me about, you know,your kids, your grandkids, your

(11:35):
friends' kids, whoever who doesthe same thing, and it makes me
feel less alone.
It makes me feel proud of whatI've gotten a chance to do and
I'm so thankful for that.
So, guys, I appreciate it.
Go to the blog highblogomdadcomMonday, wednesday.
I got new blogs every week.
I got highpodomdadcom all thestreaming services every single

(11:55):
Friday.
Follow me on social mediaH-I-HiJamesGuttman
HiJamesGuttman at Instagram.
I'm over on Facebook.
I'm not on Twitter, but c'estla vie, that does it for me.
Guys, thank you so much fortaking the time.
I'll be back.
That big announcement's on theway.
I told you Got about a week.
Hopefully by next week I'll beable to talk all about it.

(12:16):
Until then, be well, bye, pod,I'm Dad.
I'll see you next time.