February 20, 2026 • 16 mins
This week, I talk about a word that comes up far too often when you’re raising a child like my son Lucas: “fix.”
For many people, it sounds logical. If a child is nonverbal or has autism, they must need to be corrected, changed, or fixed. But as Lucas has grown, I’ve learned something very different. My son isn’t broken. He never was.
In this episode, I share how my perspective changed over time, from trying to correct the way Lucas played and communicated to realizing that teaching and fixing are not the same thing. I talk about the moments that helped me understand his world, why I would never want to change who he is, and how acceptance, trust, and patience shaped the bond we share today.
It’s an honest conversation about parenting, expectations, and what it really means to love your child unconditionally.
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 TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Also, be sure to read the blog that started it all - Hi Blog! I'm Dad.
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Episode Transcript
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James Guttman (00:01):
I'm Dad.
Folks, James Guttman, the hostof HiPod I'm Dad, the dad behind
Hiblog I'm Dad.com.
And thank you for joining mehere on another Friday.
Appreciate it.
I got Lucas running around inthe background.
My son, you might hear him, youknow, hooting and hollering, as
he often does.
I wrote in the book, HighWorld, I'm Dad, it came out last
(00:22):
year.
I wrote about the fact thatnonverbal doesn't mean silent,
right?
I told a story about the cableguy asking me if I had birds
based on Lucas in thebackground.
So Lucas is in the background,he is in a good mood, he is
screeching, he is hollering, andit is wonderful.
And this is the type of thingthat if I could go back in time,
and I've talked about the timemachine, I talked about it last
(00:43):
week, and find myself when Lucaswas younger, I would have an
issue with.
This is what happens, is how itgoes.
You have to fix that.
You have to fix it.
Fix is a word that comes up alot when you have a boy like
mine.
People think that someone likehim needs to be fixed,
corrected, changed.
And if you laugh at that, ifyou think it's the kind of thing
(01:06):
that's like, of course not.
Like if you have someone inyour life, maybe that has
autism, someone in your lifethat is non-verbal like Lucas,
you know how ridiculous thatsounds, but you would be
surprised at how many peopledon't.
People, many of which havesomeone like Lucas in their
lives and can't figure it out,can't understand it.
Fixing sounds like the rightword.
I knew this when I wrote myarticle for the Huffington Post.
(01:28):
I had talked about not wantinga cure for my son with autism,
which I don't.
Um, and I made a very realcase.
If you read it, it's not somefeel goodery.
It's the kind of thing that ifyou go past the headline and you
read what I said, I talkedabout how I wouldn't want to
cure for autism because autismis a huge part of who he is.
(01:48):
I don't think it's possible tocure autism.
I think that uh it's acatch-all for a lot of different
people.
I think there is definitely uhaspects that are universal
throughout everyone on thespectrum, but at the end of the
day, it is such a differentthing for different people.
You can't just cure it.
That said, let's say there wassomething to cure about Lucas at
14 years old, 15 years old.
To take that away from himwould be to take away a big part
(02:10):
of his personality.
I don't want to cure that.
Uh, just like if your kid wasfixated, I always say, on
baseball or, you know, some sortof sports, or your kid is
fixated on anime, whatever itis.
You don't get it, you don'tunderstand it.
Would you want to change whoyour kid is?
No.
That's who they are.
You want them to be themselves.
Unfortunate, right?
My son uh isn't aware of a lotof the limitations that come
(02:33):
with being nonverbal.
He doesn't live that life, helives his life to the fullest.
So I wrote that.
I wrote that for the HuffingtonPost.
Now, of course, HuffingtonPost, it's not like a blog.
People who are checking it out,there's a lot of political
opinions, there's a lot ofpeople on both sides, some
people who are not even on thepolitical side of the Huffington
Post.
If they see a headline onHuffington Post, they hear, you
(02:55):
know, Robert Kennedy Jr.,whatever, they react and people
reacted.
Um, and 99% of the feedback wasfantastic.
But I did hear from, you know,literally three people.
That's it, three people.
Uh, but it's enough to reallystick with you that were telling
me it was dangerous.
How could you think that?
People like you, uh, you're theones that it's the whole idea
(03:16):
of there was something wrongwith me for not wanting to
change my son.
And it offended me.
And I don't get offendedeasily.
It offended me becauseeverybody in the world gets to
love their kid unconditionally,but for some reason, as the
father to a boy who isnon-verbal with autism, I'm
(03:37):
supposed to want to change him,to get a new kid, to fix him.
And I don't want to do that.
I don't want to change him.
I don't want to cure him.
I'm doing air quotes, but youcan't see me.
I don't want to fix him.
I want to know who he is.
And on Monday I wrote aboutthat.
I said, My child doesn't needfixing, he needs to be accepted.
And I think if you start toreally look at what the word fix
(04:01):
implies, you'll see where I'mcoming from.
Right?
My son isn't broken.
My son when he wants to dosomething, he does it.
And I I went into it in this inthis blog.
The idea that there are timeswhere I show him how to do
something, and he'll pick it upright away because he wants to
(04:22):
learn how to do it.
Lucas, this is how you washyour hands.
Watch.
Water on, soap.
To this day, he does it.
He doesn't do it great.
He might be rushed, he might bein a hurry, but he picked it up
very easily and very early.
He watched, he did it, hewanted to do it.
I sat with him countless timesbefore getting to that
(04:42):
acceptance point and tried tocorrect the way he played with
toys.
Right?
Now, the big story for us, thebig connecting moment that I had
with Lucas was the first time Isat next to him with this toy
phone and I watched how he waspulling it in and out from under
a chair and looking in themirror, and I did the same
thing.
And he was so taken aback bythe fact that someone was doing
it his way that he and I justinstantly bonded at that age.
(05:05):
He was like two, and he justbecame my buddy from that point
on.
He knew that I wasn't gonnajudge him, however, he viewed
it, he knew that I was somebodywho saw what he was doing and
accepted it.
And it really built ourrelationship.
But before that, I can't tellyou how many times that Lucas,
we don't do it like this.
It's a phone.
Hello, look, ring ring, hello,I'm on the phone.
(05:27):
And he would sit there and hewould watch me and I would hand
it back to him.
And do you know how many timeshe did it back to me the same
way I did it?
Zero, zero times.
He would watch me take it in,wait his turn, take it back, and
roll it in and out from underthe couch.
That's not fixing something.
That's not something that'sbroken.
That's the way he sees theworld.
(05:47):
Someone once said, and I stuckon to this because I think it's
one of the greatest ways to lookat it.
Autism is just a differentoperating system.
It's like I'm a I'm a WindowsPC and he's a Mac.
Same stuff, same world, sameideas, same wants, same desires,
same emotions.
Just a different way ofexpressing it, a different way
(06:08):
of seeing it.
Lucas sees the world in waysthat I can't even begin to
understand, just like I see theworld in ways he can't even
begin to understand.
I look at it like when he sitsthere and he watches a glare in
a window that I didn't notice,and he's fixated on it, and he's
(06:31):
walking back and forth, andhe's looking at it from
different directions, and he'smaking noises to hear the echo,
to hear how it sounds different.
All these things that Lucasdoes are things that I don't
notice uh about the world aroundme.
But he does.
And he's been like that sincehe was born.
He's almost 15 years old.
(06:53):
Right?
This is who my son is.
He's grown into this, he'sbecome this person.
That's not something that needsto be fixed.
That's not something that'sbroken.
That's simply his personality.
And that to me, I think, is oneof the biggest disconnects that
we have, not only as people whoknow people with autism, but
(07:13):
sometimes parents, autismparents, who can't understand
that this is just your kid,right?
My son requires a lot of work.
And there are a lot of missingpieces of his development that
I'm gonna be honest with you, Ithink about.
And as he gets older, you thinkabout it more and more and
more.
I've talked about it on here.
When you're three years old,your kid is three years old, 18
(07:35):
is 15 years away.
When your kid is 15, 18 isthree years away.
It's a different thoughtprocess you go to.
There's a different sense ofworry that comes with it.
And that's what I have with himsometimes.
Totally admit that.
Do I want him to get some ofthese life skills?
Absolutely.
So what do I do?
I teach them.
Can he understand them?
(07:56):
Maybe not.
Uh, will we try forever untilhe does?
Yeah, we will.
Like I use tying his shoes askind of a catch-all.
I always say that.
Tying his shoes, um, but itimplies so many life skills that
he has to work on, right?
So I try to teach Lucas how totie his shoes.
And maybe there's a part of himthat can't understand it,
doesn't understand the tying,can't get his fingers around it,
(08:18):
doesn't, doesn't understandwhen his shoes need to be tied,
doesn't understand all thesebasic parts of it.
So I work with him to teach himhow to do it.
It's important, it's a part oflife.
It's a part of going out andbeing self-sufficient and being
able to get up in the morningand do things.
Not knowing how to tie yourshoes is a skill that needs to
be taught.
(08:38):
Playing with a toy a certainway, liking to read books a
certain way, enjoying certainvideos a certain way, that's not
something that needs to becorrected in order to live.
That's his whole reason forliving.
That's what makes him happy.
That's what makes him a person,that's what makes him complete.
It would be like taking awayyour son's football.
(08:59):
You know?
This isn't we can't, we gottafix this.
Enough with the football.
It's your kid, man.
I love my son.
And his life is hard, you know?
A lot of times, and I'm talkingabout parents today, and I'm
gonna keep going on this becauseI've and it's come up a few
times in the last uh week ortwo.
A lot of times parents, thekids with special needs of any
(09:20):
kind tend to focus a lot ontheir own struggle.
And dude, trust me, there's astruggle, right?
It's hard, it's not easy.
I don't harp on it, I try notto write too much about it.
Um, because it's not reallythat dominant in my mind, but
I've had days and I've hadmoments and I've had things that
require so much work that I'mjust like, oh my God, this is
(09:44):
really hard.
A lot of things that I shouldbe done with by this age, I'm
not, and I'm still working andI'm still helping him, I'm still
figuring it out.
But I'm not the one that shouldbe focused on here.
Lucas is.
Lucas is the one that in mymind, I don't know, I always say
(10:05):
I could never imagine knowingthat my needs might not be met
because the person I'm withmight not understand what they
are, right?
And that's why, that's whyLucas is different with
different people.
With me, he's fantastic.
Rarely melts down.
Um, I mean I'll tell you never,never melts down with me.
Uh, at most, he might like layon the floor and not want to get
(10:27):
up if he doesn't want to goout.
We show up somewhere uh in mycar and he'll lean back and make
me kind of almost like goad himout of the car so that he can
go to school or something likethat.
But there's no meltdowns,there's no classic ideas of like
what is happening.
And I think the reason why is Inever allowed a meltdown to go
by without trying to figure outwhat was happening.
(10:48):
I always try to figure out whatwas happening, and because of
that, I was able to learn toanticipate when they were
coming.
I I learned to be able tosoothe him through it.
And I figured out that if hehad to trust me above all else,
so if he wants to eat, I don'tshoe him away and have him
wonder, is this guy gonna feedme?
(11:09):
He knows.
And if I have to shoe him awaybecause I'm making dinner or
it's not time yet, I go throughthe explanation.
And it took a while.
The very first time I told himthat food had to cook, it was
hell.
I had to show him the food, Ihad to bring him over, look in
the oven, he would come backevery minute.
Then pretty soon it just becamea matter of pantomiming.
(11:30):
Lucas, food, cooking, hand up,go over rainbow motions later,
after I'm enunciating words, andhe got it.
Now I don't need to do that atall.
Now I'm just like, buddy, justgo.
I'm gonna cook, I promise.
Five minutes.
Maybe I'll give him the thefive fingers, five minutes, and
he'll leave and come back.
And no, my dad's preparing myfood.
(11:50):
I trust my dad.
My dad has always tried tounderstand me, my dad has always
been there for me.
Kids like my son don't want tohave meltdowns, they don't want
to respond the ways that theydo.
They want to know that theperson they're with gets it,
understands where they're comingfrom.
(12:11):
All kids are like Lucas.
No.
Meet one kid with autism, youmet one kid with autism, meet
one kid, you met one kid, it'sthe same thing.
Like they're all differentpeople, they're individuals,
everybody's an individual.
But I'm telling you, with myson, there's nothing about him
that necessarily needs to bechanged.
(12:33):
There are things that need tobe taught, there's things that I
need to hopefully help himreach as he gets older.
But in terms of who he is, theperson that he is, and the way
he treats the world, that's whohe is.
And the negative, the mostnegative aspects of his
personality in many cases aredue to him being concerned that
(12:54):
he's not going to be heard.
So as his dad, and it took awhile, you know, 15 years, I
have to show him that he's beingheard.
He's a main character in ourfamily.
The things that he wants andthe things that he needs are on
the same level as the thingsthat my daughter wants and
needs, the same things that Iwant and need.
He's not dismissed just becausehe can't speak.
(13:15):
If Lucas is agitated, I don'tgo, go up to your room.
I don't do that.
What's the matter, buddy?
Sit with him, rub his back.
If he gets worked up, take adeep breath.
If I watch him getting too uhpulled into his iPad, which will
happen, he'll get so into it,and it's it's such a subtle
difference where the claps thathe usually does when he's happy
also exist when he getsfrustrated.
(13:37):
And I see this look on hisface.
He goes, And he's clapping, andhis teeth are gritted.
And I go, hey, come sit, sit,sit, shh, rub his back.
I take his iPad, I always takehis iPad away for a minute, I
make him count down, and I giveit back to him, take a deep
breath, calm down.
I would do this if he wasneurotypical and he came home
from school worked up over somekid that that fought with him on
(13:57):
the playground.
I'd be like, hey, sit down,buddy, relax, relax.
Essentially, I use the sametechniques that I would if he
was verbal and he didn't haveautism.
Because he may be nonverbal, hemay have autism, but he's also
a you know a 15-year-old, I mean15 ex mother, a 15-year-old
boy.
And it's my job to make surethat he knows that his dad has
(14:19):
his back, that his dad's therefor him, and his dad doesn't
want to change him.
His dad wants to understandhim.
The more I understand him, thebetter it is for our
relationship and for his place,not only in our family, but
really in the community.
It's been uh, yeah, it's been along road.
It's been a great road, andit's brought us to exactly where
we are now.
(14:39):
So I try to tell everybodythis.
I think a lot of times peoplecan't fathom it.
You don't want to change him?
I don't want to change him.
I love him.
And he's not missing anything.
I think sometimes might maybeit'd be harder if he was a
little more um higherfunctioning, as they say.
Like if Lucas couldn't go tothe prom and wanted to, I would
feel bad.
If Lucas wanted to playfootball and couldn't, I'd feel
(15:02):
bad.
Lucas doesn't care.
Things like that, things fromour world, these things that are
important to me, as crazy as itis in my head to imagine, he
doesn't care at all.
He doesn't care about prom.
He doesn't care about uh, youknow, again, football, baseball,
any of those things, they don'treally affect him.
He'll do it to appease me.
But I don't know, man.
I've always been one of thesepeople.
(15:23):
I don't need to live through mykids.
I've done everything I want todo.
I'm happy, I'm proud.
My kids just need to be thebest that they want to be.
As long as Lucas tries, as longas he approaches the world uh
in a way where he doesn't hurtother people, you know, even
accidentally, I'll never be oneof these, oh, he doesn't
understand.
No, you don't hurt people,Lucas.
It's a big deal.
And we'll harp on that and I'llteach him that.
(15:44):
And he's learned that.
Really, man.
Lucas doesn't, he's not abully, he's not violent.
He's a sweet kid, and everybodysays it.
He hugs and he'll give you akiss and he'll show you his
iPad.
And I'm so proud of him, andI'm proud of what we've done
because I know as a parent howeasy it is to go in the wrong
direction with that.
(16:04):
And we're fortunate we didn't.
And I know someone's gonna turnaround, they're gonna be like,
well, well, that's just becauseyour kid is good.
Maybe great.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Maybe it is.
I'm not taking all the credit,I'm not telling you I did it on
my own.
Uh it might be his personalitytoo.
I don't know, maybe, maybe not.
Um, all I know is I'm proud ofthe work that he and I have done
together, uh, but I'm moreproud of the work that he's done
(16:25):
on his own.
And somebody who has that typeof pleasant personality,
somebody who has that type ofdetermination to better himself.
How could you fix that?
It's ridiculous.
You can't.
I will never change him.
I don't need to fix him, and Ilove him.
And that does it for me, guys.
Until next week, this is JamesGuttman.
Bye pod.
(16:46):
I'm dad.
I'm Dad.
Folks, James Guttman, the hostof HiPod I'm Dad, the dad behind
Hiblog I'm Dad.com.
And thank you for joining mehere on another Friday.
Appreciate it.
I got Lucas running around inthe background.
My son, you might hear him, youknow, hooting and hollering, as
he often does.
I wrote in the book, HighWorld, I'm Dad, it came out last
(00:22):
year.
I wrote about the fact thatnonverbal doesn't mean silent,
right?
I told a story about the cableguy asking me if I had birds
based on Lucas in thebackground.
So Lucas is in the background,he is in a good mood, he is
screeching, he is hollering, andit is wonderful.
And this is the type of thingthat if I could go back in time,
and I've talked about the timemachine, I talked about it last
(00:43):
week, and find myself when Lucaswas younger, I would have an
issue with.
This is what happens, is how itgoes.
You have to fix that.
You have to fix it.
Fix is a word that comes up alot when you have a boy like
mine.
People think that someone likehim needs to be fixed,
corrected, changed.
And if you laugh at that, ifyou think it's the kind of thing
(01:06):
that's like, of course not.
Like if you have someone inyour life, maybe that has
autism, someone in your lifethat is non-verbal like Lucas,
you know how ridiculous thatsounds, but you would be
surprised at how many peopledon't.
People, many of which havesomeone like Lucas in their
lives and can't figure it out,can't understand it.
Fixing sounds like the rightword.
I knew this when I wrote myarticle for the Huffington Post.
(01:28):
I had talked about not wantinga cure for my son with autism,
which I don't.
Um, and I made a very realcase.
If you read it, it's not somefeel goodery.
It's the kind of thing that ifyou go past the headline and you
read what I said, I talkedabout how I wouldn't want to
cure for autism because autismis a huge part of who he is.
(01:48):
I don't think it's possible tocure autism.
I think that uh it's acatch-all for a lot of different
people.
I think there is definitely uhaspects that are universal
throughout everyone on thespectrum, but at the end of the
day, it is such a differentthing for different people.
You can't just cure it.
That said, let's say there wassomething to cure about Lucas at
14 years old, 15 years old.
To take that away from himwould be to take away a big part
(02:10):
of his personality.
I don't want to cure that.
Uh, just like if your kid wasfixated, I always say, on
baseball or, you know, some sortof sports, or your kid is
fixated on anime, whatever itis.
You don't get it, you don'tunderstand it.
Would you want to change whoyour kid is?
No.
That's who they are.
You want them to be themselves.
Unfortunate, right?
My son uh isn't aware of a lotof the limitations that come
(02:33):
with being nonverbal.
He doesn't live that life, helives his life to the fullest.
So I wrote that.
I wrote that for the HuffingtonPost.
Now, of course, HuffingtonPost, it's not like a blog.
People who are checking it out,there's a lot of political
opinions, there's a lot ofpeople on both sides, some
people who are not even on thepolitical side of the Huffington
Post.
If they see a headline onHuffington Post, they hear, you
(02:55):
know, Robert Kennedy Jr.,whatever, they react and people
reacted.
Um, and 99% of the feedback wasfantastic.
But I did hear from, you know,literally three people.
That's it, three people.
Uh, but it's enough to reallystick with you that were telling
me it was dangerous.
How could you think that?
People like you, uh, you're theones that it's the whole idea
(03:16):
of there was something wrongwith me for not wanting to
change my son.
And it offended me.
And I don't get offendedeasily.
It offended me becauseeverybody in the world gets to
love their kid unconditionally,but for some reason, as the
father to a boy who isnon-verbal with autism, I'm
(03:37):
supposed to want to change him,to get a new kid, to fix him.
And I don't want to do that.
I don't want to change him.
I don't want to cure him.
I'm doing air quotes, but youcan't see me.
I don't want to fix him.
I want to know who he is.
And on Monday I wrote aboutthat.
I said, My child doesn't needfixing, he needs to be accepted.
And I think if you start toreally look at what the word fix
(04:01):
implies, you'll see where I'mcoming from.
Right?
My son isn't broken.
My son when he wants to dosomething, he does it.
And I I went into it in this inthis blog.
The idea that there are timeswhere I show him how to do
something, and he'll pick it upright away because he wants to
(04:22):
learn how to do it.
Lucas, this is how you washyour hands.
Watch.
Water on, soap.
To this day, he does it.
He doesn't do it great.
He might be rushed, he might bein a hurry, but he picked it up
very easily and very early.
He watched, he did it, hewanted to do it.
I sat with him countless timesbefore getting to that
(04:42):
acceptance point and tried tocorrect the way he played with
toys.
Right?
Now, the big story for us, thebig connecting moment that I had
with Lucas was the first time Isat next to him with this toy
phone and I watched how he waspulling it in and out from under
a chair and looking in themirror, and I did the same
thing.
And he was so taken aback bythe fact that someone was doing
it his way that he and I justinstantly bonded at that age.
(05:05):
He was like two, and he justbecame my buddy from that point
on.
He knew that I wasn't gonnajudge him, however, he viewed
it, he knew that I was somebodywho saw what he was doing and
accepted it.
And it really built ourrelationship.
But before that, I can't tellyou how many times that Lucas,
we don't do it like this.
It's a phone.
Hello, look, ring ring, hello,I'm on the phone.
(05:27):
And he would sit there and hewould watch me and I would hand
it back to him.
And do you know how many timeshe did it back to me the same
way I did it?
Zero, zero times.
He would watch me take it in,wait his turn, take it back, and
roll it in and out from underthe couch.
That's not fixing something.
That's not something that'sbroken.
That's the way he sees theworld.
(05:47):
Someone once said, and I stuckon to this because I think it's
one of the greatest ways to lookat it.
Autism is just a differentoperating system.
It's like I'm a I'm a WindowsPC and he's a Mac.
Same stuff, same world, sameideas, same wants, same desires,
same emotions.
Just a different way ofexpressing it, a different way
(06:08):
of seeing it.
Lucas sees the world in waysthat I can't even begin to
understand, just like I see theworld in ways he can't even
begin to understand.
I look at it like when he sitsthere and he watches a glare in
a window that I didn't notice,and he's fixated on it, and he's
(06:31):
walking back and forth, andhe's looking at it from
different directions, and he'smaking noises to hear the echo,
to hear how it sounds different.
All these things that Lucasdoes are things that I don't
notice uh about the world aroundme.
But he does.
And he's been like that sincehe was born.
He's almost 15 years old.
(06:53):
Right?
This is who my son is.
He's grown into this, he'sbecome this person.
That's not something that needsto be fixed.
That's not something that'sbroken.
That's simply his personality.
And that to me, I think, is oneof the biggest disconnects that
we have, not only as people whoknow people with autism, but
(07:13):
sometimes parents, autismparents, who can't understand
that this is just your kid,right?
My son requires a lot of work.
And there are a lot of missingpieces of his development that
I'm gonna be honest with you, Ithink about.
And as he gets older, you thinkabout it more and more and
more.
I've talked about it on here.
When you're three years old,your kid is three years old, 18
(07:35):
is 15 years away.
When your kid is 15, 18 isthree years away.
It's a different thoughtprocess you go to.
There's a different sense ofworry that comes with it.
And that's what I have with himsometimes.
Totally admit that.
Do I want him to get some ofthese life skills?
Absolutely.
So what do I do?
I teach them.
Can he understand them?
(07:56):
Maybe not.
Uh, will we try forever untilhe does?
Yeah, we will.
Like I use tying his shoes askind of a catch-all.
I always say that.
Tying his shoes, um, but itimplies so many life skills that
he has to work on, right?
So I try to teach Lucas how totie his shoes.
And maybe there's a part of himthat can't understand it,
doesn't understand the tying,can't get his fingers around it,
(08:18):
doesn't, doesn't understandwhen his shoes need to be tied,
doesn't understand all thesebasic parts of it.
So I work with him to teach himhow to do it.
It's important, it's a part oflife.
It's a part of going out andbeing self-sufficient and being
able to get up in the morningand do things.
Not knowing how to tie yourshoes is a skill that needs to
be taught.
(08:38):
Playing with a toy a certainway, liking to read books a
certain way, enjoying certainvideos a certain way, that's not
something that needs to becorrected in order to live.
That's his whole reason forliving.
That's what makes him happy.
That's what makes him a person,that's what makes him complete.
It would be like taking awayyour son's football.
(08:59):
You know?
This isn't we can't, we gottafix this.
Enough with the football.
It's your kid, man.
I love my son.
And his life is hard, you know?
A lot of times, and I'm talkingabout parents today, and I'm
gonna keep going on this becauseI've and it's come up a few
times in the last uh week ortwo.
A lot of times parents, thekids with special needs of any
(09:20):
kind tend to focus a lot ontheir own struggle.
And dude, trust me, there's astruggle, right?
It's hard, it's not easy.
I don't harp on it, I try notto write too much about it.
Um, because it's not reallythat dominant in my mind, but
I've had days and I've hadmoments and I've had things that
require so much work that I'mjust like, oh my God, this is
(09:44):
really hard.
A lot of things that I shouldbe done with by this age, I'm
not, and I'm still working andI'm still helping him, I'm still
figuring it out.
But I'm not the one that shouldbe focused on here.
Lucas is.
Lucas is the one that in mymind, I don't know, I always say
(10:05):
I could never imagine knowingthat my needs might not be met
because the person I'm withmight not understand what they
are, right?
And that's why, that's whyLucas is different with
different people.
With me, he's fantastic.
Rarely melts down.
Um, I mean I'll tell you never,never melts down with me.
Uh, at most, he might like layon the floor and not want to get
(10:27):
up if he doesn't want to goout.
We show up somewhere uh in mycar and he'll lean back and make
me kind of almost like goad himout of the car so that he can
go to school or something likethat.
But there's no meltdowns,there's no classic ideas of like
what is happening.
And I think the reason why is Inever allowed a meltdown to go
by without trying to figure outwhat was happening.
(10:48):
I always try to figure out whatwas happening, and because of
that, I was able to learn toanticipate when they were
coming.
I I learned to be able tosoothe him through it.
And I figured out that if hehad to trust me above all else,
so if he wants to eat, I don'tshoe him away and have him
wonder, is this guy gonna feedme?
(11:09):
He knows.
And if I have to shoe him awaybecause I'm making dinner or
it's not time yet, I go throughthe explanation.
And it took a while.
The very first time I told himthat food had to cook, it was
hell.
I had to show him the food, Ihad to bring him over, look in
the oven, he would come backevery minute.
Then pretty soon it just becamea matter of pantomiming.
(11:30):
Lucas, food, cooking, hand up,go over rainbow motions later,
after I'm enunciating words, andhe got it.
Now I don't need to do that atall.
Now I'm just like, buddy, justgo.
I'm gonna cook, I promise.
Five minutes.
Maybe I'll give him the thefive fingers, five minutes, and
he'll leave and come back.
And no, my dad's preparing myfood.
(11:50):
I trust my dad.
My dad has always tried tounderstand me, my dad has always
been there for me.
Kids like my son don't want tohave meltdowns, they don't want
to respond the ways that theydo.
They want to know that theperson they're with gets it,
understands where they're comingfrom.
(12:11):
All kids are like Lucas.
No.
Meet one kid with autism, youmet one kid with autism, meet
one kid, you met one kid, it'sthe same thing.
Like they're all differentpeople, they're individuals,
everybody's an individual.
But I'm telling you, with myson, there's nothing about him
that necessarily needs to bechanged.
(12:33):
There are things that need tobe taught, there's things that I
need to hopefully help himreach as he gets older.
But in terms of who he is, theperson that he is, and the way
he treats the world, that's whohe is.
And the negative, the mostnegative aspects of his
personality in many cases aredue to him being concerned that
(12:54):
he's not going to be heard.
So as his dad, and it took awhile, you know, 15 years, I
have to show him that he's beingheard.
He's a main character in ourfamily.
The things that he wants andthe things that he needs are on
the same level as the thingsthat my daughter wants and
needs, the same things that Iwant and need.
He's not dismissed just becausehe can't speak.
(13:15):
If Lucas is agitated, I don'tgo, go up to your room.
I don't do that.
What's the matter, buddy?
Sit with him, rub his back.
If he gets worked up, take adeep breath.
If I watch him getting too uhpulled into his iPad, which will
happen, he'll get so into it,and it's it's such a subtle
difference where the claps thathe usually does when he's happy
also exist when he getsfrustrated.
(13:37):
And I see this look on hisface.
He goes, And he's clapping, andhis teeth are gritted.
And I go, hey, come sit, sit,sit, shh, rub his back.
I take his iPad, I always takehis iPad away for a minute, I
make him count down, and I giveit back to him, take a deep
breath, calm down.
I would do this if he wasneurotypical and he came home
from school worked up over somekid that that fought with him on
(13:57):
the playground.
I'd be like, hey, sit down,buddy, relax, relax.
Essentially, I use the sametechniques that I would if he
was verbal and he didn't haveautism.
Because he may be nonverbal, hemay have autism, but he's also
a you know a 15-year-old, I mean15 ex mother, a 15-year-old
boy.
And it's my job to make surethat he knows that his dad has
(14:19):
his back, that his dad's therefor him, and his dad doesn't
want to change him.
His dad wants to understandhim.
The more I understand him, thebetter it is for our
relationship and for his place,not only in our family, but
really in the community.
It's been uh, yeah, it's been along road.
It's been a great road, andit's brought us to exactly where
we are now.
(14:39):
So I try to tell everybodythis.
I think a lot of times peoplecan't fathom it.
You don't want to change him?
I don't want to change him.
I love him.
And he's not missing anything.
I think sometimes might maybeit'd be harder if he was a
little more um higherfunctioning, as they say.
Like if Lucas couldn't go tothe prom and wanted to, I would
feel bad.
If Lucas wanted to playfootball and couldn't, I'd feel
(15:02):
bad.
Lucas doesn't care.
Things like that, things fromour world, these things that are
important to me, as crazy as itis in my head to imagine, he
doesn't care at all.
He doesn't care about prom.
He doesn't care about uh, youknow, again, football, baseball,
any of those things, they don'treally affect him.
He'll do it to appease me.
But I don't know, man.
I've always been one of thesepeople.
(15:23):
I don't need to live through mykids.
I've done everything I want todo.
I'm happy, I'm proud.
My kids just need to be thebest that they want to be.
As long as Lucas tries, as longas he approaches the world uh
in a way where he doesn't hurtother people, you know, even
accidentally, I'll never be oneof these, oh, he doesn't
understand.
No, you don't hurt people,Lucas.
It's a big deal.
And we'll harp on that and I'llteach him that.
(15:44):
And he's learned that.
Really, man.
Lucas doesn't, he's not abully, he's not violent.
He's a sweet kid, and everybodysays it.
He hugs and he'll give you akiss and he'll show you his
iPad.
And I'm so proud of him, andI'm proud of what we've done
because I know as a parent howeasy it is to go in the wrong
direction with that.
(16:04):
And we're fortunate we didn't.
And I know someone's gonna turnaround, they're gonna be like,
well, well, that's just becauseyour kid is good.
Maybe great.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Maybe it is.
I'm not taking all the credit,I'm not telling you I did it on
my own.
Uh it might be his personalitytoo.
I don't know, maybe, maybe not.
Um, all I know is I'm proud ofthe work that he and I have done
together, uh, but I'm moreproud of the work that he's done
(16:25):
on his own.
And somebody who has that typeof pleasant personality,
somebody who has that type ofdetermination to better himself.
How could you fix that?
It's ridiculous.
You can't.
I will never change him.
I don't need to fix him, and Ilove him.
And that does it for me, guys.
Until next week, this is JamesGuttman.
Bye pod.
(16:46):
I'm dad.
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