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August 1, 2025 13 mins

Every parent has their share of parenting challenges, but when your child has severe, non-verbal autism, even something as ordinary as a haircut can become a years-long emotional battle.

In this week’s episode of Hi Pod! I’m Dad, James Guttman shares the raw and personal story of how a supposedly “autism-friendly” salon failed his son Lucas and how that painful moment led him down a years-long journey of cutting his son’s hair himself.

From heartbreaking meltdowns to trying every trick in the book (and on Amazon), James reflects on what it truly means to parent through difficulty and how progress often looks nothing like what we expect. The solution? Not special clippers or a miracle strategy, but growth, both his son’s and his own.

This episode is a powerful reminder that yesterday’s impossible struggles can become tomorrow’s triumphs.


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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hi Pod, I am Dad.
He's not just Hi Dad, he's mydad, james Gutman.
Folks, it's James Gutman, it'sjames government.
It's high pod, I'm dad.
Welcome back.
It's been like a week, twoweeks, since I last talked to
you here on high pod.
Uh, every friday on spotify,anywhere, you find me.

(00:34):
Yada, yada, yada, highpod, I'mdadcom.
Thank you for taking the timeto check me out.
I am back.
We are on youtube.
Maybe you're watching thisright now.
In which case, how are you?
We're doing a lot more videocontent, trying to put more I
don't know actual moving imagesof me and Lucas, because I don't

(00:58):
know.
It's the new millennium, folks,you gotta get with the times.
So what I did this past week?
If you guys got a chance tocheck me out, you could follow
me, by the way, digitally, don'tfollow me on the street, but if
you want to follow me online, Iam on Instagram.
I'm on all the different socialmedia places as HiJamesGuttman,

(01:19):
h-i James Guttman, and one ofthose places is TikTok, which is
way below my age range.
I get it.
I'm not dancing on TikTok.
I promise you.
I'm not dancing on TikTok.
I promise you.
I'm not eating crazy food,mukbang and playing video games.
I am making videos, puttingthem up there, telling you guys
about our lives together, andone of the things it was a
suggestion from someone thispast week that I should put a

(01:40):
video up of me cutting Lucas'shair and I never thought about
it.
I don't know why I never reallythought about it.
I think in my head there's justbeen something that's been
happening with him for forever.
At this point it feels like Forthose of you guys who don't know
, my son, obviously, if you know, is nonverbal.

(02:00):
He has autism.
He has severe autism.
It affects him in many wayslife skills, things like that
and one of the big disadvantagesto having a child with severe
autism who is nonverbal, is thatthere are things that you can't
explain to your kid, that theyhave to do and it will break
your heart.

(02:20):
It broke my heart to get hishair cut.
It used to break my heart to doanything.
Bring him to the doctor, gethim shot.
He used to have an issue withgetting weighed at the doctor.
You can give him a shot.
He was cool, he didn't care, hewas like whatever dance around,
but getting on the scale it waslike throwing him into a
swimming pool.
He would freak out and I wouldfeel terrible and I couldn't be

(02:42):
like buddy, this is what bigboys you can't do.
That the first time he evertook a school bus.
That was terrible.
He was little man, he was likepreschool and we put him on a
school bus and they told us itwas good, he should do it, it's
good for him and to this dayhe's good with it, so I'm
grateful.
I don't know if I'd make thesame choice now looking back.

(03:02):
I don't know.
I probably would because ithelped him.
But either way, I couldn't sithim down and I couldn't tell him
why we were doing this.
And one of those things was thehaircut.
And I've told this story before.
We go to this autism-friendly ifyou're on YouTube, you see me
doing the little finger bunniesautism-friendly hair place in

(03:24):
kind of a swanky Long Islandtown I'm not going to name the
town, I probably named it atsome point or another and we go
to this hair salon that'ssupposed to be autism-friendly.
I knew right from the beginningI was like there's nothing
particularly autism-friendlyabout this place.
It was fire engines instead ofchairs.
They were very cramped.
There wasn't a lot of room.

(03:45):
It was weird.
So we go in there and we'rekind of making our way around.
Thankfully there was no oneelse in this autism-friendly
hair salon, it was just me andhim.
And I knew that up until now,my wife at the time had been
having issues getting him to sitfor his haircut.
It's one of the things that shewas doing.

(04:10):
So I said I'll do it, I'llbring him.
So we go to this place and weend up at one of the fire
engines and he gets in and I sitback and I'm like, all right,
let's see this lady cut his hair, let's see what autism friendly
is.
And I lean back and I watch herand she goes to cut his hair
and he puts his hand up and sheputs her hands down and she goes
, huh, and she looks visiblyfrustrated and I'm like, all

(04:31):
right, now the magic happens.
Now she's going to bring outwhatever magical thing she does
as a hairstylist and cut hishair and make him understand.
And she tried again.
He put his hand up and she wentand before long I realized
there was no plan.
Autism friendly meant, I guess,that they don't throw things at

(04:52):
us when we walk in.
I don't know what autismfriendly means to these people,
but it definitely didn't meanthey knew how to ease the
concerns of a boy with autism.
So I came over to help and itended up being me holding him by
the arms, like squeezing hisarms, while this lady is like
cutting his hair and he'sscreaming bloody murder on there
with this stranger likeattacking my kid, and he doesn't

(05:15):
understand that.
I can't explain to him and Ihate myself for it.
And as this is happening, Ilook up and she's looking over
my shoulder at the receptionistand she goes.
Now, if you're watching this onYouTube, you saw the face I
made.
It was the exacerbated exhalebug eyes, annoyed, look.

(05:39):
And at that moment I was likeI'm never bringing my kid here
again.
This is not happening.
I can't, because I'm going tokill this lady and he's going to
freak out.
I'm going to scar him for life.
So I decided I'm going to cuthis hair and, oh my God, I tried
everything to make it easy forhim.
I was like it's got to be thesound of the buzzer.

(06:00):
I bought a quiet buzzer.
He hated it.
I bought these scissors thatwere attached to.
It was the stupidest thing ever, man.
They were like it was likebuzzer and how.
The buzzers have like littleclips for the end on them, you
know.
So it had a clip from a buzzeron a pair of scissors.
Made no sense, didn't work,hated it 70 bucks.

(06:21):
At the end of the day I endedup just cutting his hair and
just using a buzzer to do it andit was bloody murder.
Every single time, just me andhim I would go in there.
I'm little known fact, I'mdouble jointed in my legs.
So I do kind of this pretzelsit.
My daughter does it too.
We have races to see who canthrow their legs up the quickest
into this yoga pose.
I don't know why I'm tellingyou this.

(06:42):
It actually is important to it.
I think Lucas does it too,because I'll see him just
sitting there with his legs, allyou know, spaghettied out.
And so I sat on the floor and Itook my legs in the pretzel pose
and I wrapped them around hisarms so he couldn't move and he
was kind of like a little mummyand I just shave his head like
and it was like two on the sides, three on the top, you know it

(07:02):
was.
It was short, but it wasn'tcompletely buzzed.
So I'm out there and I'mcutting his hair and every
single time it was terrible, itwas the worst possible thing.
I used to say it took a pieceof my soul.
Every time I did it, I wantedto just jump out a window.
It was so bad and I decided Iwasn't going to do it anymore.

(07:24):
I said I'm not doing thisanymore.
I'm not.
Someone else got to do it and,as you guys know, I wrote a blog
about getting divorced.
So I think you know thatsometimes you have those moments
where you're like I'm not doingthis, I'm the only one doing it
.
So you get upset.
I just thought I'm not going todo it anymore.
And what ended up happening ishe ended up looking like one of
the monkeys.
You know the monkeys from the1960s, the you know, hey, hey,

(07:47):
we're the monkeys.
That was him.
And if you're on YouTube rightnow, you see a picture of him
right there.
That YouTube right now.
You see a picture of him rightthere.
That's what he looked like.
So if you're not on YouTube, goto HiBlogI'mDad on YouTube and
you can check it out.
That was what he looked likeand I just let it be that way.
And every time I saw this kid'sface, it was a reminder that I

(08:08):
need to cut his hair.
It was like having this hangingchore over my head constantly
reminding me hey, you're a baddad.
Your kid looks like a hippie,and not even a cute hippie.
I know people are going to belike what kid has long hair?
Your kid has long hair, but youhave your kid's long hair on
purpose.
My kid's long hair was justlike what would he look like if
he was on Survivor.
And that's exactly whathappened this big puff of hair
on his head.

(08:28):
And eventually I had to cut itand it was the worst haircut
ever.
And I noticed something in thathaircut that I hadn't noticed
before.
I noticed that the thing hereally didn't like was when it
would pull on his hair right,when the buzzer would go over
and yank his hair out.
And now I realized that becauseat its longest, I was seeing

(08:48):
him cry the loudest and I saidthis is terrible, I can't do
this anymore.
But I did, and this time I didit sooner because I didn't do a
full job and I kept doing hishair, not waiting as long
between each one.
And then one day it all workedout.
One day, the big secret.
And people always say to mewhat was your secret?
How did you solve the problemof your son getting his haircut?

(09:12):
Well, I walked into the roomand he just let me.
I didn't do anything.
I did nothing.
One day I went into thebathroom, I loaded up the buzzer
.
I would always warn him.
I do it.
Now, if I'm going to cut hishair that day beforehand, I go,
hey, lucas, I take my hand tohis head and I go, and he goes.
He rubs his head and he looksat me and he goes.

(09:36):
He rubs his head and he looksat me.
He's got those little eyes thathe gives me and so he knows.
He knows it's coming.
So I load up the buzzer, I turnit on.
He's standing at the sink withhis iPad.
Like you may have seen onTikTok, when we posted the video
of me cutting his hair and hejust let me do it, there was no
fighting, there was no nothing.
And that's when I realized that.
A couple of things.

(09:56):
First, there wasn't really atrick.
He had to reach a maturitylevel where he was like oh, this
is nonsense, I can do this.
He does it at the doctor.
He goes on the scale.
Now, I didn't teach him aboutthe scale, I didn't buy him a
toy scale.
He just gets on the scale.
He's like, oh, this is stupid,this doesn't eat me, I'll be all
right.

(10:16):
And he gets on it and he did it.
But also, if the issue is thatit was pulling on his hair, the
trick was to actually cut hishair more often, as opposed to
waiting, which I had been doingthe whole time because I hated
cutting his hair.
So I would wait a month, amonth and a half.
He would get, like you know,this big 1960s puff on his head
and then it would hurt.
So by doing it every two weeks,doing this thing that he hated

(10:40):
more often, it got him more usedto it and his hair also wasn't
as long to pull on.
So that's what happened.
That's how I cut his hair.
But if you see it now on TikTokwe posted that video.
It looks like I don't know man,it looks like we've been doing
it forever and it feels like wehave been.
So I've been kind of happyabout that and that's the whole
point.
Dude, like my son doesn't haveany words, like verbal words.

(11:06):
My son has many missing lifeskills, like major life skills
that are going to be an issuefor a long time, and those
things can be rough, but forthings like that, there's stuff
like cutting his hair and theseobstacles that we had years ago
that seemed just asinsurmountable as some of the
ones that we have now, and wegot past them and I remember

(11:28):
that and that's, I think, partof just appreciating not just
autism but appreciating kind ofmy role in his life and the
changes that we made.
So yeah, man, there's been alot of tough roads ahead.
There's been a lot of toughroads that we've crossed, and
for that I'm grateful and Ithank you guys for letting me
tell you about it.
I thank you for checking it out, watching it, whether it's on

(11:52):
Instagram, I post on Instagramtoo.
Is hi James Gutman, or TikTok,hi James Gutman.
On Facebook, or on YouTube, orwherever we are.
Hi blog, I'm dadcom, where weare, or highblogomdadcom, where
I write about it all, or, if youwant to hold it in your hand,
high World Omdad.
My book how Fathers Can Journeyto Autism, awareness, to
Acceptance, to Appreciation.
It is available as an audiobook as well.
You can listen to it.
You don't have to read it.
Maybe you don't like reading.

(12:12):
I'm not judging you.
You don't have to.
I don't read that much either.
So if you don't want to read,you can listen to it.
I narrate it.
It's a lot of fun.
All this is a lot of fun.
Guys, thank you so much forallowing me to speak to you.
Thank you for checking me outonce again on another edition of
Hi Pod I'm Dad.
I'll be back next Friday withmore on YouTube and on all the
streaming services, and I'll beback Monday, wednesday, with new

(12:33):
blogs on HiBlog.
I'm Dadcom.
Until then, this is JamesGutman saying be well, bye Pop,
I'm out.
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