April 3, 2026 • 10 mins
I didn’t have answers when people asked why my nonverbal son was clapping, making sounds, or doing things they didn’t understand.
And that wasn’t because I was embarrassed.
It was because I genuinely didn’t know.
Over time, that changed. Not because someone explained it to me, but because I started paying attention. What looked random wasn’t random. What looked confusing actually had a purpose.
And once I understood that, something else clicked.
This isn’t just something my son does.
We all do it.
We just don’t do it out loud. We don’t do it in public. We don’t let ourselves.
This episode is about stimming, what it really is, and why the difference between my son and the rest of us might not be what you think.
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 (00:00):
Hipod I'm Dad.
Folks, it's James Guttman, thedad behind HiblogomDad.com, the
host of HiPodom Dad.com.
Thank you for finding me againhere in April.
It is autism, awareness,acceptance, appreciation, month,
however you want to term it.
One of those months wherepeople turn their attention to
(00:22):
people like my son.
My son is nonverbal.
He has profound autism, severeautism, however you want to
phrase it.
And I love the opportunity totell people about Lucas.
It's been one of the thingsthat since he was young, I've
kind of gravitated towards.
That I know a lot of timespeople wonder if I'm going to be
(00:43):
sensitive talking about Lucas.
Because some of the things thathe does are hard to cipher for
somebody who's not around us allthe time, somebody who doesn't
know him all the time.
They see his mannerisms, theysee uh the sounds he makes, the
things that he does, and theywonder, you know, what is going
on and how do I ask about thiswithout offending this family?
And it doesn't offend me.
In fact, it's never offendedme.
(01:04):
When he was really little, Ididn't want to talk about it.
If somebody asked me, I wouldget uncomfortable, I wasn't up
for it, and it wasn't because Iwas offended or embarrassed by
it, it was because I had noanswers for anybody.
They go, why does why is hedoing that?
Why is he clapping like that?
And there's nothing morepainful than having to say, I
(01:24):
don't know.
Especially when you have ababy, you have a toddler, you
have a preschooler, andeverybody else knows their kids.
Everybody else has storieslike, oh yeah, Billy loves the
Pokemon, and we bring out thePokeman, and he plays Pokemon,
whatever the hell Billy playswith.
But with me, I didn't know whyis my kid clapping to the point
of making an echo all the time?
(01:44):
Why is my kid making thesesounds?
Why is my kid moving around theway he is?
Why is my kid even playing withtoys the way he does?
And I couldn't give an answer Ididn't know.
And that bothered me.
And I think as a parent, itwould bother any of us, right?
And as he got older, as I gotto know Lucas and learn about
Lucas and watch him and see whyhe is doing the things that he
(02:07):
does, I learned a lot, not onlyabout him, but about me and
about just autism in general andhow misunderstood it often is
for a lot of us, right?
So Lucas stims.
And if you guys don't know whatstimming is, stimming is really
just a self-soothing mechanism,whether it's a sound or a
movement, or you know, maybeyou're sitting around like that,
(02:28):
or you're flicking pages of abook.
Whatever it happens to be,that's what stimming is.
And my son stims, he stims allthe time, and he does things
that most people wouldn'tunderstand.
And for the longest time, Ithought this was all just done
haphazardly.
I thought most of it was just,you know, sounds couldn't help
themselves.
They would pop out of his headand he would do them, and that
(02:49):
would be the end of it.
And I learned, again, fromobserving him, from watching
him, that a lot of them werebased on reasoning, right?
Like so he starts and stops hisYouTube videos.
I watch this all the time.
Sits there with his tablet,doesn't really watch the Sesame
Street episode, just start,stop, start, stop, start, stop.
And it took a while to figureit out and to watch him and
(03:10):
study and why is he doing it?
And why is he stopping at thisexact moment?
Where I started to realize thatthere were certain parts of the
video that he liked, whether itwas a transition from one scene
to another, whether it was theway one of the characters said
something, maybe it was a toneof voice or a note in a song.
There were things about it thathe liked, and he realized that
he could start and stop thevideo and re-watch that one clip
(03:32):
over and over and over again.
And once I realized that, itdidn't seem so bizarre anymore.
Because it did, when he waslittle, man, I used to freak
out.
I'd be like, I don't know thiskid at all.
I don't know why he's doingthis.
I don't get it.
I don't know why.
And then once you get it,right?
Even if you still don't fullyget it, because that was part of
what I wrote on Monday.
I wrote a blog called My SonDoesn't Hide His Stimming, The
(03:53):
Rest of Us Were Taught To.
I can't tell you why he likesthe transition.
I can't tell you why he likesthe sound or the note, but I can
tell you that the stimming thathe's doing is related to that.
So I know why, specifically forhim that he's doing it.
I also know why he likes theself-soothing aspect of it, is
(04:14):
because I do too, and so do you,and so does everybody listening
to this.
Autism and stimming differentthings is not exclusive to
autism.
The fact that he doesn't hideit, the fact that he's open
about it, the fact that we couldbe in a crowded restaurant, and
uh, you know, the spirit hitshis fingers and he has to clap
(04:37):
like that, he just does it.
I don't do it.
Even if I get the spirit in myfingers and I wanna, I don't do
it because I have a voice in myhead that goes, dude, don't
don't make a loud noise in themiddle of the restaurant.
People are gonna look at you,they're gonna think we're
they're gonna be like, what isthat guy doing?
They're not gonna get it.
People will get upset, maybeyou'll get into a fight.
All these things go throughyour head as a neurotypical
(05:00):
person.
But with Lucas, he doesn't.
And I know you're listening tothis, you're going, I've never
had the desire to clap.
That's so silly.
No, but you had the desire tomaybe sing a line of a song.
You ever have a song stuck inyour head and you don't know the
song?
You know, like one line in thesong.
I'm right now, man.
I just found a song on Spotifybut listening to Weary Eyes.
(05:21):
All I know is that the guygoes, We're and he just says it
over and over again within thesong.
And that's all I know of thesong.
So I'm just sitting therewalking around the supermarket
and in my head singing it.
And between me and you, if noone is in the aisle with me, in
a light, somewhat loud whisper,I'm walking around going, We're
(05:43):
how is that any different thanLucas clapping or making a sound
or hopping around?
There's something in me thatsays, do it.
It'll feel good to say it,it'll feel good to sing it.
You have it in your head, getit out, get it out of your head.
And we work every day to getthings out of our head.
The blog that I write, and thisis crazy, and I've told people
(06:05):
this, and it's the kind of thingthat took a few years to
realize the blog that I write inmany ways is my stim, in the
sense that there are storiesthat lived in my head that I
would think about all the time,especially when I first started
writing these blogs, right?
Like I, for example, the oneabout, you know, I'm sorry my
(06:26):
son drank your coffee.
That was one of the most redblogs.
And it's about Lucas stealingfood and taking it from people.
There was a story of Lucastaking a drink during an award
ceremony for my daughter'sbasketball awards.
And as everybody stood up, hewas like five years old, six
years old, he went over and hetook a woman's cup as they were
standing clapping and he starteddrinking out of her Starbucks.
(06:47):
And it was mortifying and itwas this crazy story, and it was
always in my head.
And then I wrote it down and Ishared it with all of you.
And what I noticed through theyears is that when I do that,
the story's still in my head,right?
I could still picture it, Istill remember it, I still might
tell somebody, but it's not onthe tip of my brain anymore.
(07:07):
It's not waiting to just be,you know, let go, let go, tell
everybody, tell everybody.
Once I got it out, it felt likeit was out.
And a lot of our stimming islike that.
That's how you get like a likean earworm out of your head.
If you have a song in yourhead, you sing it out loud, you
sing it to somebody, you say itin full, you have a movie scene
in your head, right?
Like if I have a movie scene, Ican't stop thinking about some
Al Pacino scene, oh, you know,and I'm like, I'm gonna watch,
(07:31):
you watch the scene, you go onYouTube and you watch it, and
you're done.
And it's out of your head.
That's what stimming is.
And when you put it like that,and when you think like that,
and you realize that I'm notmaking this up, man, I'm not
like creating some some false,you know, tie to what my son
does.
This is a direct link.
(07:51):
These things are very much thesame.
But once you realize that, itdoesn't seem as different
anymore.
It doesn't seem as strangeanymore.
It seems like something we alldo.
And what Lucas does, which ispart of my autism appreciation
for him, which is part of why Iwrite this blog and the things
that I try to talk about, thereis a sense of of honesty, a pure
(08:16):
sense of this is who I am, andmy son shows the world.
Lucas doesn't care if you thinkit's strange that he's stimming
these things.
Lucas doesn't care if you lookat him.
You can look at him all daylong, he'll clap in your face.
He doesn't, I care, I'll getannoyed.
Who are you looking at?
Him?
No.
Because Lucas is Lucas 100%cards on the table.
(08:39):
He does what he wants to do, heis who he wants to be.
And I couldn't be prouder ofhim because of it.
And that's why I appreciateautism.
And people get confusedsometimes.
I write about autismappreciation, and I got to deal
with people in their commentstalking about their specific
kid.
I don't appreciate autism, itaffects my kid that way.
Okay, man, I get it.
And maybe you don't.
I do.
(08:59):
And here are my reasons for whyI appreciate it.
I think um, you know, a boylike mine, there are certain
fundamental aspects of life thathe's not gonna participate in.
He's not gonna do the prom,he's not gonna do football.
And it's one of those thingstoo, people sometimes hear them
they go, oh, maybe, and like,no, probably not.
He doesn't like it.
You know, if he wanted to doit, and I was saying this like
(09:21):
he's not capable, but he wantsto.
No, no, he doesn't even care.
He doesn't want to do it.
Uh so those things you kind ofgive up and you put away.
But when it comes to what hewants to do and who he wants to
be, he does all that every day.
He doesn't want to be promking, he wants to clap when he's
excited, he doesn't want tocatch a football, he wants to
(09:42):
hop up and down and scream withexcitement when something happy
happens in his life.
And guess what?
That's exactly what he does.
And half of us listening tothis, if we had the kind of
uninhibited, um, untied feelingfrom social graces that my son
has, we'd do it too.
(10:03):
We all would.
We are.
That does it for me, guys.
I'm gonna be back on Mondaywith a brand new blog.
I'll be back.
Join me on social media, ma'am.
I got stuff that I post all thetime, whether it's quote boxes
or videos, is a video for thispodcast that goes up.
I am at Hi James Gutman.
That's on Instagram, it's onTikTok.
You can find us over onFacebook as well.
Uh, just tons of stuff outthere.
(10:25):
I appreciate all the support.
Until next week.
This is James Gutman saying, bewell.
Bye Pod.
I'm dead.
Hipod I'm Dad.
Folks, it's James Guttman, thedad behind HiblogomDad.com, the
host of HiPodom Dad.com.
Thank you for finding me againhere in April.
It is autism, awareness,acceptance, appreciation, month,
however you want to term it.
One of those months wherepeople turn their attention to
(00:22):
people like my son.
My son is nonverbal.
He has profound autism, severeautism, however you want to
phrase it.
And I love the opportunity totell people about Lucas.
It's been one of the thingsthat since he was young, I've
kind of gravitated towards.
That I know a lot of timespeople wonder if I'm going to be
(00:43):
sensitive talking about Lucas.
Because some of the things thathe does are hard to cipher for
somebody who's not around us allthe time, somebody who doesn't
know him all the time.
They see his mannerisms, theysee uh the sounds he makes, the
things that he does, and theywonder, you know, what is going
on and how do I ask about thiswithout offending this family?
And it doesn't offend me.
In fact, it's never offendedme.
(01:04):
When he was really little, Ididn't want to talk about it.
If somebody asked me, I wouldget uncomfortable, I wasn't up
for it, and it wasn't because Iwas offended or embarrassed by
it, it was because I had noanswers for anybody.
They go, why does why is hedoing that?
Why is he clapping like that?
And there's nothing morepainful than having to say, I
(01:24):
don't know.
Especially when you have ababy, you have a toddler, you
have a preschooler, andeverybody else knows their kids.
Everybody else has storieslike, oh yeah, Billy loves the
Pokemon, and we bring out thePokeman, and he plays Pokemon,
whatever the hell Billy playswith.
But with me, I didn't know whyis my kid clapping to the point
of making an echo all the time?
(01:44):
Why is my kid making thesesounds?
Why is my kid moving around theway he is?
Why is my kid even playing withtoys the way he does?
And I couldn't give an answer Ididn't know.
And that bothered me.
And I think as a parent, itwould bother any of us, right?
And as he got older, as I gotto know Lucas and learn about
Lucas and watch him and see whyhe is doing the things that he
(02:07):
does, I learned a lot, not onlyabout him, but about me and
about just autism in general andhow misunderstood it often is
for a lot of us, right?
So Lucas stims.
And if you guys don't know whatstimming is, stimming is really
just a self-soothing mechanism,whether it's a sound or a
movement, or you know, maybeyou're sitting around like that,
(02:28):
or you're flicking pages of abook.
Whatever it happens to be,that's what stimming is.
And my son stims, he stims allthe time, and he does things
that most people wouldn'tunderstand.
And for the longest time, Ithought this was all just done
haphazardly.
I thought most of it was just,you know, sounds couldn't help
themselves.
They would pop out of his headand he would do them, and that
(02:49):
would be the end of it.
And I learned, again, fromobserving him, from watching
him, that a lot of them werebased on reasoning, right?
Like so he starts and stops hisYouTube videos.
I watch this all the time.
Sits there with his tablet,doesn't really watch the Sesame
Street episode, just start,stop, start, stop, start, stop.
And it took a while to figureit out and to watch him and
(03:10):
study and why is he doing it?
And why is he stopping at thisexact moment?
Where I started to realize thatthere were certain parts of the
video that he liked, whether itwas a transition from one scene
to another, whether it was theway one of the characters said
something, maybe it was a toneof voice or a note in a song.
There were things about it thathe liked, and he realized that
he could start and stop thevideo and re-watch that one clip
(03:32):
over and over and over again.
And once I realized that, itdidn't seem so bizarre anymore.
Because it did, when he waslittle, man, I used to freak
out.
I'd be like, I don't know thiskid at all.
I don't know why he's doingthis.
I don't get it.
I don't know why.
And then once you get it,right?
Even if you still don't fullyget it, because that was part of
what I wrote on Monday.
I wrote a blog called My SonDoesn't Hide His Stimming, The
(03:53):
Rest of Us Were Taught To.
I can't tell you why he likesthe transition.
I can't tell you why he likesthe sound or the note, but I can
tell you that the stimming thathe's doing is related to that.
So I know why, specifically forhim that he's doing it.
I also know why he likes theself-soothing aspect of it, is
(04:14):
because I do too, and so do you,and so does everybody listening
to this.
Autism and stimming differentthings is not exclusive to
autism.
The fact that he doesn't hideit, the fact that he's open
about it, the fact that we couldbe in a crowded restaurant, and
uh, you know, the spirit hitshis fingers and he has to clap
(04:37):
like that, he just does it.
I don't do it.
Even if I get the spirit in myfingers and I wanna, I don't do
it because I have a voice in myhead that goes, dude, don't
don't make a loud noise in themiddle of the restaurant.
People are gonna look at you,they're gonna think we're
they're gonna be like, what isthat guy doing?
They're not gonna get it.
People will get upset, maybeyou'll get into a fight.
All these things go throughyour head as a neurotypical
(05:00):
person.
But with Lucas, he doesn't.
And I know you're listening tothis, you're going, I've never
had the desire to clap.
That's so silly.
No, but you had the desire tomaybe sing a line of a song.
You ever have a song stuck inyour head and you don't know the
song?
You know, like one line in thesong.
I'm right now, man.
I just found a song on Spotifybut listening to Weary Eyes.
(05:21):
All I know is that the guygoes, We're and he just says it
over and over again within thesong.
And that's all I know of thesong.
So I'm just sitting therewalking around the supermarket
and in my head singing it.
And between me and you, if noone is in the aisle with me, in
a light, somewhat loud whisper,I'm walking around going, We're
(05:43):
how is that any different thanLucas clapping or making a sound
or hopping around?
There's something in me thatsays, do it.
It'll feel good to say it,it'll feel good to sing it.
You have it in your head, getit out, get it out of your head.
And we work every day to getthings out of our head.
The blog that I write, and thisis crazy, and I've told people
(06:05):
this, and it's the kind of thingthat took a few years to
realize the blog that I write inmany ways is my stim, in the
sense that there are storiesthat lived in my head that I
would think about all the time,especially when I first started
writing these blogs, right?
Like I, for example, the oneabout, you know, I'm sorry my
(06:26):
son drank your coffee.
That was one of the most redblogs.
And it's about Lucas stealingfood and taking it from people.
There was a story of Lucastaking a drink during an award
ceremony for my daughter'sbasketball awards.
And as everybody stood up, hewas like five years old, six
years old, he went over and hetook a woman's cup as they were
standing clapping and he starteddrinking out of her Starbucks.
(06:47):
And it was mortifying and itwas this crazy story, and it was
always in my head.
And then I wrote it down and Ishared it with all of you.
And what I noticed through theyears is that when I do that,
the story's still in my head,right?
I could still picture it, Istill remember it, I still might
tell somebody, but it's not onthe tip of my brain anymore.
(07:07):
It's not waiting to just be,you know, let go, let go, tell
everybody, tell everybody.
Once I got it out, it felt likeit was out.
And a lot of our stimming islike that.
That's how you get like a likean earworm out of your head.
If you have a song in yourhead, you sing it out loud, you
sing it to somebody, you say itin full, you have a movie scene
in your head, right?
Like if I have a movie scene, Ican't stop thinking about some
Al Pacino scene, oh, you know,and I'm like, I'm gonna watch,
(07:31):
you watch the scene, you go onYouTube and you watch it, and
you're done.
And it's out of your head.
That's what stimming is.
And when you put it like that,and when you think like that,
and you realize that I'm notmaking this up, man, I'm not
like creating some some false,you know, tie to what my son
does.
This is a direct link.
(07:51):
These things are very much thesame.
But once you realize that, itdoesn't seem as different
anymore.
It doesn't seem as strangeanymore.
It seems like something we alldo.
And what Lucas does, which ispart of my autism appreciation
for him, which is part of why Iwrite this blog and the things
that I try to talk about, thereis a sense of of honesty, a pure
(08:16):
sense of this is who I am, andmy son shows the world.
Lucas doesn't care if you thinkit's strange that he's stimming
these things.
Lucas doesn't care if you lookat him.
You can look at him all daylong, he'll clap in your face.
He doesn't, I care, I'll getannoyed.
Who are you looking at?
Him?
No.
Because Lucas is Lucas 100%cards on the table.
(08:39):
He does what he wants to do, heis who he wants to be.
And I couldn't be prouder ofhim because of it.
And that's why I appreciateautism.
And people get confusedsometimes.
I write about autismappreciation, and I got to deal
with people in their commentstalking about their specific
kid.
I don't appreciate autism, itaffects my kid that way.
Okay, man, I get it.
And maybe you don't.
I do.
(08:59):
And here are my reasons for whyI appreciate it.
I think um, you know, a boylike mine, there are certain
fundamental aspects of life thathe's not gonna participate in.
He's not gonna do the prom,he's not gonna do football.
And it's one of those thingstoo, people sometimes hear them
they go, oh, maybe, and like,no, probably not.
He doesn't like it.
You know, if he wanted to doit, and I was saying this like
(09:21):
he's not capable, but he wantsto.
No, no, he doesn't even care.
He doesn't want to do it.
Uh so those things you kind ofgive up and you put away.
But when it comes to what hewants to do and who he wants to
be, he does all that every day.
He doesn't want to be promking, he wants to clap when he's
excited, he doesn't want tocatch a football, he wants to
(09:42):
hop up and down and scream withexcitement when something happy
happens in his life.
And guess what?
That's exactly what he does.
And half of us listening tothis, if we had the kind of
uninhibited, um, untied feelingfrom social graces that my son
has, we'd do it too.
(10:03):
We all would.
We are.
That does it for me, guys.
I'm gonna be back on Mondaywith a brand new blog.
I'll be back.
Join me on social media, ma'am.
I got stuff that I post all thetime, whether it's quote boxes
or videos, is a video for thispodcast that goes up.
I am at Hi James Gutman.
That's on Instagram, it's onTikTok.
You can find us over onFacebook as well.
Uh, just tons of stuff outthere.
(10:25):
I appreciate all the support.
Until next week.
This is James Gutman saying, bewell.
Bye Pod.
I'm dead.
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