February 13, 2026 • 10 mins
When Lucas was little, some of the things we worked on felt almost ridiculous.
They didn’t seem urgent. They didn’t feel important. And at the time, everything else felt like it was on fire. If it wasn't language, it wasn't a priority in my mind. Yet, we worked on them anyway.
Now he’s almost 15. He’s bigger than me. He’s growing into himself. And some of those early moments, the ones that didn’t seem to matter yet, suddenly do.
This episode isn’t about puberty, or milestones, or “getting it right.” It’s about what happens when you accept who your child is early, keep working anyway, and realize years later why it mattered.
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
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
James Guttman (00:01):
I'm dad.
Hello, hello.
It is James Guttman, the dadbehind HiPod I'm Dad, behind
Hiblogom Dad.com.
Thank you for coming back thisweek.
I talked earlier this weekabout a subject that was going
on right now, which a lot of theblogs come from.
Something will happen in mylife, something with Lucas, and
I'll suddenly think, oh, that'ssomething I should address.
(00:22):
And a lot of times I take timeafter I've written it, I think
back about it, I think aboutmore parts of it.
This past week I wrote aboutLucas kind of going through
puberty, but it wasn't entirelyabout that.
The idea was that when my son,he's nonverbal, severe autism,
so a lot of the things that hehas to know how to do are things
that I don't know, he might notknow how to do.
(00:44):
They might be harder to grasp,whether it's being able to
maneuver his hands and beingable to, you know, imitate
motion, or whether it's even theunderstanding of it.
And when Lucas was about six,seven, eight, right around that
age, very little, they wereteaching him at school how to
put on deodorant.
And it seemed ridiculous.
It seemed so silly.
It was this little, this littleboy, and it was like, we play
(01:05):
with it.
And I think at one time I thinkthey even said you don't have
to even take the cap off, justteach him the motion of it.
So he's just rub in his armpit.
It was funny.
And now he's 14, gonna be 15very soon, and it is just not
funny anymore.
Now it's a necessity.
He's a man, he's got stubble onhis face, he's got body order
(01:26):
at times.
Um, sometimes when he makes hislike happy, you know, noises
that he makes around the house,it sounds more like a man
making.
I'm like, where did this mancome from?
Because in my head, he's ababy, right?
And I can say that about bothmy kids.
And I've written about thisbefore five and three forever,
where in my head I see her atfive, I can see him at three.
That's around the ages theywere together.
(01:49):
But with Lucas, it's a littleharder because my daughter is
neurotypical.
She is graduating from highschool, she's, you know,
applying to all these colleges,she's getting into all these
colleges.
She's a genius, blows me away,this kid, what she's able to do.
So I'm able to see the growthfrom kid to young adult.
(02:10):
It's right in front of me.
The things that we do now, shedidn't do then.
She doesn't play Robloxanymore.
We don't watch Doro.
We don't watch Cookie SquirrelC on YouTube.
No more.
Oh God, no more la la loopsiesor LOL surprises.
My son, on the other hand,still does a lot of the things
that we did when he was atoddler.
And I say that to people, andit sounds like I'm saying a sad
(02:31):
thing, but it's kind of justwhat we're used to.
And I love it.
It's familiar.
He gets it, I get it.
The same books, Frog andFriends, or Moo, or, you know,
dogs or cats, these books, thesekind of board books where you
move the pages around and theeyes open and closed.
He loves all that stuff.
Same songs, Rafi, Wiggles.
We sing them together.
(02:52):
He lets me, he doesn't let me.
Same shows, Sesame Street,kids' favorite songs, Wiggles,
Color Crew.
Since he was a baby, because hedoesn't watch it.
And I'm learning this abouthim.
I study a lot about why my sondoes the things he does.
When I say study, I mean Iwatch him.
I'm just like, why is he doingthis?
A lot of the things that hewatches and he does, he likes
(03:13):
aspects of it, whether it's aparticular song or a sound.
Lucas gets very stimulated bydifferent things and he watches
them differently than I think alot of us watch TV shows.
So he's been cool with thisstuff for like a decade.
Still cool with all that stuff.
And when that happens, yousometimes lose sight of the fact
that he's not that age anymore.
Sure, he's getting bigger, butit's like any time your kid is
(03:36):
getting bigger, it's not untilyou see an old picture of them
that you're like, oh my God, Iremember he was like that.
Now he's like this.
My son's, he weighs more thanme.
He's still shorter than me,still shorter than me.
I can still take him.
But um, he's a man, he's alittle man.
And I think to myself, thankGod we taught him how to put on
(03:56):
this deodorant.
And some of the other thingsthat we've worked on too, have
all of them taken?
No, he works on a lot of stuff.
He's not, he'll never, he'llnever live on his own.
I get that.
I understand that.
But I want him to have as muchindependence as possible.
It's important.
And it's important for me ashis dad, and it's important for
him.
So I try to do whatever I can.
And if he doesn't understandany of it, at least we're
trying.
If he does understand it,great, we'll do it.
(04:18):
But I'm happy.
And one of the reasons why Ibring this up for a lot of
parents listening to this isbecause there was a time where,
sure, I let the deodorant thinggo.
But when he was younger thanthat, and Lucas was first being
diagnosed with autism, and itwas starting to come to light
that he might be nonverbal.
Our house was on fire, right?
(04:39):
Like it was the number onepriority.
Everybody that came to ourhouse, what do you want us to
work on with him?
Can he talk?
Can you make him talk?
It was all about language.
And they would ask us for otherthings.
Well, well, we're gonna work onthat, but what else do you want
to do?
You want to learn how to likeput away his plates and what?
Like it was like shocking to methat they would propose
anything but that.
What?
(05:00):
Put away his plates?
My house is on fire, and youwant me to do the dishes?
How is that a thing?
We need to fix this, and thatwas all we thought about.
But then all of a sudden yourealize there's a lot in life.
Language is great, speaking isgreat.
Would it make things easier forhim?
(05:21):
Absolutely, right?
He has a communication device,we've developed hand signals,
there's intuition, he can point,he can bring you to things.
He has receptive language whereyou can tell him to put on your
shirt and he knows, put on myshirt.
I know what that means.
He can't say it, but he canunderstand it.
That's all important.
And if we spent all that timelaser focused on just getting
(05:42):
words out of his mouth, littlethings like eating with a knife
and fork, or um, it doesn't giveus a knife, yeah, with a fork,
um, you know, putting on hisclothes, things like that would
have never happened because thefocus would have been this one
thing that I gotta be honestwith you, the amount of time
we've put in with him, the levelthat he's at when it comes to
speaking is probably his fullpotential.
(06:04):
Nobody tries harder than myson.
It blows my mind.
I watch him and I watch whensomething clicks, and I watch
when he tries to do something,and I watch when he can't do
something.
And as his dad, I see that.
And that don't get me wrong, westill work on it.
I've I develop new ideas allthe time to get this kid to say
hi.
That's my word.
If I can get him to go hi,we're great.
(06:26):
He waves, he does all that,that's great.
There have been times wherehe's almost said it.
He does that hard H like that,like he's breathing hot on you.
And we've worked on it, tryingto get that last hi, you know,
right out at the end.
And now, even now, like Istarted the new one where I go
right up to his ear, I go, hey,Lucas, hi.
(06:47):
And I do it where it's likereally hot on his ear, and he
thinks it's the funniest thing.
I go, now you do it.
And I'll try to imitate it,nothing comes out.
I might work on this with himforever.
This might be something we justalways do.
Am I expecting him to do it?
Honestly, no, I don't.
That's not why I'm doing it.
It sounds weird to say that,right?
One of the best things abouthaving a boy like mine, as he
(07:09):
taught me when he was younger,that there's certain things that
are out of my control, andthere's certain things that he
might not be able to do, andthat's fine.
You know, I've brought up thisidea before about going back in
time.
If I had a time machine and Icould go back to 2013 and answer
questions for myself.
(07:30):
What's Lucas like?
The answers that I gave wereall at the time what I thought
was the worst case scenario.
He doesn't speak.
He goes to a different school,the mainstream school.
He has all these deficits hereand there that he doesn't know
how to manage certain things inhis life.
It sounds terrible, but it'snot.
Is it work?
(07:50):
Yeah.
Does it make me worry abouthim?
Yeah.
Is he the kind of person thatthe more you love him, the more
difficult it is to make thesedecisions?
Yeah.
But is he worth it?
Absolutely.
I worry all the time I'll lethim down.
That's my main thing.
I want my son to be happy.
And I've tried to go out of myway to figure out the best ways
(08:14):
to do that.
It's not about making me happy.
I don't need him to doanything.
I've let go of that.
There's no reason for eitherone of my kids.
Like, my daughter is going togo to college and do all these
things.
But she decided, and I told herthis, I said, if you decide not
to go to college and to jointhe circus, I'm like, I might
try to be like, dude, do youreally want to do this?
I'm like, but if you reallybelieved in it and you really
(08:35):
loved it and you really wantedto do it, I'm like, I would be
the biggest fan of the circus.
I would buy circus merchandiseand go to your shows and throw
peanuts at the elephants.
That's what you're supposed todo as a parent.
That's it.
And my son is no different thanany other child.
As long as he tries his best,as long as he's a good person,
as long as he's kind and sweetand he's all those things, I'm
(08:57):
so lucky to have him.
And by realizing that, itallowed me to kind of look
ahead.
Because even now, I talk abouthim being an adult and living on
his own.
He's he's gonna be 15.
We still have years to go,right?
But I know that that time isgonna come, just like I knew the
puberty was gonna come when hewas seven.
The future comes, whetheryou're ready for it or not.
(09:17):
So why not be ready for it?
Why not work as hard as you canto do the best you can for the
people that you love?
And that requires a few things.
It requires putting ego asideand your own wants.
At the time, all I wanted waslanguage from him.
I might not want it as muchnow.
I really don't want it as muchnow because I don't know what it
(09:37):
would even look like in termsof his overall form of
communication.
I think he's he communicateswell.
I think at a certain point it'sgoing to be a matter of working
on the device and things likethat even more.
It'd be great.
We get some words out of him,say hi, I'd be cute.
But it's not needed.
We've built his life because weaccepted who he was when he was
(09:58):
young and we worked withinwhatever those limitations might
be while at the same timepushing those limitations to
their limit.
And I don't know, I'm so proudof him, and I'm happy with the
way we were able to do this.
So that was the idea.
That's why I wrote it.
Because I wanted people tounderstand if you have a kid,
your kid is younger, um, andyou're already facing certain
(10:20):
things where you're putting upto OT and speech and PT.
I know all that stuff.
And I know what that's like.
If you're going through that,it doesn't hurt to start early
on things that are going to beneeded down the line.
And that's what we did.
And because of that, there'scertain things that just he's
good at now.
And I'm I'm happy about that.
Now's the time.
He's the man.
Uh he's the man.
(10:41):
He is.
Guys, thank you uh forlistening.
I'll see you next Friday.
I'll be back on Monday with abrand new blog.
Till then, James Gutman.
Be well.
Bye bye.
I'm dad.
Hello, hello.
It is James Guttman, the dadbehind HiPod I'm Dad, behind
Hiblogom Dad.com.
Thank you for coming back thisweek.
I talked earlier this weekabout a subject that was going
on right now, which a lot of theblogs come from.
Something will happen in mylife, something with Lucas, and
I'll suddenly think, oh, that'ssomething I should address.
(00:22):
And a lot of times I take timeafter I've written it, I think
back about it, I think aboutmore parts of it.
This past week I wrote aboutLucas kind of going through
puberty, but it wasn't entirelyabout that.
The idea was that when my son,he's nonverbal, severe autism,
so a lot of the things that hehas to know how to do are things
that I don't know, he might notknow how to do.
(00:44):
They might be harder to grasp,whether it's being able to
maneuver his hands and beingable to, you know, imitate
motion, or whether it's even theunderstanding of it.
And when Lucas was about six,seven, eight, right around that
age, very little, they wereteaching him at school how to
put on deodorant.
And it seemed ridiculous.
It seemed so silly.
It was this little, this littleboy, and it was like, we play
(01:05):
with it.
And I think at one time I thinkthey even said you don't have
to even take the cap off, justteach him the motion of it.
So he's just rub in his armpit.
It was funny.
And now he's 14, gonna be 15very soon, and it is just not
funny anymore.
Now it's a necessity.
He's a man, he's got stubble onhis face, he's got body order
(01:26):
at times.
Um, sometimes when he makes hislike happy, you know, noises
that he makes around the house,it sounds more like a man
making.
I'm like, where did this mancome from?
Because in my head, he's ababy, right?
And I can say that about bothmy kids.
And I've written about thisbefore five and three forever,
where in my head I see her atfive, I can see him at three.
That's around the ages theywere together.
(01:49):
But with Lucas, it's a littleharder because my daughter is
neurotypical.
She is graduating from highschool, she's, you know,
applying to all these colleges,she's getting into all these
colleges.
She's a genius, blows me away,this kid, what she's able to do.
So I'm able to see the growthfrom kid to young adult.
(02:10):
It's right in front of me.
The things that we do now, shedidn't do then.
She doesn't play Robloxanymore.
We don't watch Doro.
We don't watch Cookie SquirrelC on YouTube.
No more.
Oh God, no more la la loopsiesor LOL surprises.
My son, on the other hand,still does a lot of the things
that we did when he was atoddler.
And I say that to people, andit sounds like I'm saying a sad
(02:31):
thing, but it's kind of justwhat we're used to.
And I love it.
It's familiar.
He gets it, I get it.
The same books, Frog andFriends, or Moo, or, you know,
dogs or cats, these books, thesekind of board books where you
move the pages around and theeyes open and closed.
He loves all that stuff.
Same songs, Rafi, Wiggles.
We sing them together.
(02:52):
He lets me, he doesn't let me.
Same shows, Sesame Street,kids' favorite songs, Wiggles,
Color Crew.
Since he was a baby, because hedoesn't watch it.
And I'm learning this abouthim.
I study a lot about why my sondoes the things he does.
When I say study, I mean Iwatch him.
I'm just like, why is he doingthis?
A lot of the things that hewatches and he does, he likes
(03:13):
aspects of it, whether it's aparticular song or a sound.
Lucas gets very stimulated bydifferent things and he watches
them differently than I think alot of us watch TV shows.
So he's been cool with thisstuff for like a decade.
Still cool with all that stuff.
And when that happens, yousometimes lose sight of the fact
that he's not that age anymore.
Sure, he's getting bigger, butit's like any time your kid is
(03:36):
getting bigger, it's not untilyou see an old picture of them
that you're like, oh my God, Iremember he was like that.
Now he's like this.
My son's, he weighs more thanme.
He's still shorter than me,still shorter than me.
I can still take him.
But um, he's a man, he's alittle man.
And I think to myself, thankGod we taught him how to put on
(03:56):
this deodorant.
And some of the other thingsthat we've worked on too, have
all of them taken?
No, he works on a lot of stuff.
He's not, he'll never, he'llnever live on his own.
I get that.
I understand that.
But I want him to have as muchindependence as possible.
It's important.
And it's important for me ashis dad, and it's important for
him.
So I try to do whatever I can.
And if he doesn't understandany of it, at least we're
trying.
If he does understand it,great, we'll do it.
(04:18):
But I'm happy.
And one of the reasons why Ibring this up for a lot of
parents listening to this isbecause there was a time where,
sure, I let the deodorant thinggo.
But when he was younger thanthat, and Lucas was first being
diagnosed with autism, and itwas starting to come to light
that he might be nonverbal.
Our house was on fire, right?
(04:39):
Like it was the number onepriority.
Everybody that came to ourhouse, what do you want us to
work on with him?
Can he talk?
Can you make him talk?
It was all about language.
And they would ask us for otherthings.
Well, well, we're gonna work onthat, but what else do you want
to do?
You want to learn how to likeput away his plates and what?
Like it was like shocking to methat they would propose
anything but that.
What?
(05:00):
Put away his plates?
My house is on fire, and youwant me to do the dishes?
How is that a thing?
We need to fix this, and thatwas all we thought about.
But then all of a sudden yourealize there's a lot in life.
Language is great, speaking isgreat.
Would it make things easier forhim?
(05:21):
Absolutely, right?
He has a communication device,we've developed hand signals,
there's intuition, he can point,he can bring you to things.
He has receptive language whereyou can tell him to put on your
shirt and he knows, put on myshirt.
I know what that means.
He can't say it, but he canunderstand it.
That's all important.
And if we spent all that timelaser focused on just getting
(05:42):
words out of his mouth, littlethings like eating with a knife
and fork, or um, it doesn't giveus a knife, yeah, with a fork,
um, you know, putting on hisclothes, things like that would
have never happened because thefocus would have been this one
thing that I gotta be honestwith you, the amount of time
we've put in with him, the levelthat he's at when it comes to
speaking is probably his fullpotential.
(06:04):
Nobody tries harder than myson.
It blows my mind.
I watch him and I watch whensomething clicks, and I watch
when he tries to do something,and I watch when he can't do
something.
And as his dad, I see that.
And that don't get me wrong, westill work on it.
I've I develop new ideas allthe time to get this kid to say
hi.
That's my word.
If I can get him to go hi,we're great.
(06:26):
He waves, he does all that,that's great.
There have been times wherehe's almost said it.
He does that hard H like that,like he's breathing hot on you.
And we've worked on it, tryingto get that last hi, you know,
right out at the end.
And now, even now, like Istarted the new one where I go
right up to his ear, I go, hey,Lucas, hi.
(06:47):
And I do it where it's likereally hot on his ear, and he
thinks it's the funniest thing.
I go, now you do it.
And I'll try to imitate it,nothing comes out.
I might work on this with himforever.
This might be something we justalways do.
Am I expecting him to do it?
Honestly, no, I don't.
That's not why I'm doing it.
It sounds weird to say that,right?
One of the best things abouthaving a boy like mine, as he
(07:09):
taught me when he was younger,that there's certain things that
are out of my control, andthere's certain things that he
might not be able to do, andthat's fine.
You know, I've brought up thisidea before about going back in
time.
If I had a time machine and Icould go back to 2013 and answer
questions for myself.
(07:30):
What's Lucas like?
The answers that I gave wereall at the time what I thought
was the worst case scenario.
He doesn't speak.
He goes to a different school,the mainstream school.
He has all these deficits hereand there that he doesn't know
how to manage certain things inhis life.
It sounds terrible, but it'snot.
Is it work?
(07:50):
Yeah.
Does it make me worry abouthim?
Yeah.
Is he the kind of person thatthe more you love him, the more
difficult it is to make thesedecisions?
Yeah.
But is he worth it?
Absolutely.
I worry all the time I'll lethim down.
That's my main thing.
I want my son to be happy.
And I've tried to go out of myway to figure out the best ways
(08:14):
to do that.
It's not about making me happy.
I don't need him to doanything.
I've let go of that.
There's no reason for eitherone of my kids.
Like, my daughter is going togo to college and do all these
things.
But she decided, and I told herthis, I said, if you decide not
to go to college and to jointhe circus, I'm like, I might
try to be like, dude, do youreally want to do this?
I'm like, but if you reallybelieved in it and you really
(08:35):
loved it and you really wantedto do it, I'm like, I would be
the biggest fan of the circus.
I would buy circus merchandiseand go to your shows and throw
peanuts at the elephants.
That's what you're supposed todo as a parent.
That's it.
And my son is no different thanany other child.
As long as he tries his best,as long as he's a good person,
as long as he's kind and sweetand he's all those things, I'm
(08:57):
so lucky to have him.
And by realizing that, itallowed me to kind of look
ahead.
Because even now, I talk abouthim being an adult and living on
his own.
He's he's gonna be 15.
We still have years to go,right?
But I know that that time isgonna come, just like I knew the
puberty was gonna come when hewas seven.
The future comes, whetheryou're ready for it or not.
(09:17):
So why not be ready for it?
Why not work as hard as you canto do the best you can for the
people that you love?
And that requires a few things.
It requires putting ego asideand your own wants.
At the time, all I wanted waslanguage from him.
I might not want it as muchnow.
I really don't want it as muchnow because I don't know what it
(09:37):
would even look like in termsof his overall form of
communication.
I think he's he communicateswell.
I think at a certain point it'sgoing to be a matter of working
on the device and things likethat even more.
It'd be great.
We get some words out of him,say hi, I'd be cute.
But it's not needed.
We've built his life because weaccepted who he was when he was
(09:58):
young and we worked withinwhatever those limitations might
be while at the same timepushing those limitations to
their limit.
And I don't know, I'm so proudof him, and I'm happy with the
way we were able to do this.
So that was the idea.
That's why I wrote it.
Because I wanted people tounderstand if you have a kid,
your kid is younger, um, andyou're already facing certain
(10:20):
things where you're putting upto OT and speech and PT.
I know all that stuff.
And I know what that's like.
If you're going through that,it doesn't hurt to start early
on things that are going to beneeded down the line.
And that's what we did.
And because of that, there'scertain things that just he's
good at now.
And I'm I'm happy about that.
Now's the time.
He's the man.
Uh he's the man.
(10:41):
He is.
Guys, thank you uh forlistening.
I'll see you next Friday.
I'll be back on Monday with abrand new blog.
Till then, James Gutman.
Be well.
Bye bye.
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