Why I Don't Want To "Cure" My Non-Verbal Son's Autism

What does it really mean to love your child unconditionally? In this raw, heartfelt episode, James Gutman tackles the controversial topic of "curing" autism, sharing why he celebrates rather than seeks to change his 14-year-old non-verbal son Lucas.

After his recent HuffPost article went viral, James found himself at the center of an intense debate. Many readers assumed his son must be "high-functioning" simply because he writes positively about him. The reality? Lucas faces significant daily challenges, yet James still wouldn't change who his son fundamentally is. "My son is just a pure person who is so in touch with his feelings and emotions," he explains. "When he's sad, he cries. When he's happy, he screams for joy."

The podcast explores the dangerous assumption that parents of children with more significant support needs should want different kids. James pushes back against this narrative, highlighting the beautiful qualities often overlooked in discussions about autism – authenticity, emotional honesty, and lack of cruelty or deception. He shares his journey from making desperate bargains with God when Lucas was young to reaching a place of genuine appreciation for who his son is. 

Preorder James Guttman’s new book – “Hi World, I’m Dad: How Fathers Can Journey to Autism Awareness, Acceptance, and Appreciation”

Follow Us On Facebook and Follow James Guttman on Instagram.

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

Episode Transcript

James Guttman (00:00):
I want apple juice.
Lucas wants apple juice.
I know I heard him say that.
Can I have apple juice?
Yeah, you can have apple juice.
Can I have soda?
Yes, you can have soda.
Can I press that button?
No, you can't press that button.
Why?
Because that's going to playthe theme song.
I'm not ready to start the pot.

(00:30):
Hi Pod, I am Dad.
He's not just Hi Dad, he's mydad.
James Guttman, folks, jamesGuttman Hi Pod, I'm Dad.
Welcome back to the podcast.
It is another friday, it is theend of april, it is 2025.
Thank you for taking the timeto check it out.

(00:52):
Whether you found me onhypodomdadcom or any streaming
service, it means a lot.
Come back, tell your friends,tell your enemies, tell anybody
who will listen to you to checkout the podcast.
Uh, hiblogomdad.
com as well.
The blog monday, wednesday,every week, constantly.
I appreciate all the support.
It has been a big week Forthose of you guys keeping score.

(01:13):
Hi World, I'm Dad.
How Fathers Can Journey fromAutism Awareness to Acceptance,
to Appreciation.
That is now just about twomonths away from coming out in
stores everywhere.
It is available for pre-orderon Amazon.
It just hit the other daynumber one for fatherhood books,
for pre-sales, upcoming sales.
I'm not really sure how thatworks, but it was pre-orders.

(01:35):
It was number one in fatherhood.
It meant a lot to me.
I'm very excited.
Thank you so much for all ofyou who checked it out, for all
of you who have pre-ordered it.
It's really cool, man.
I did a lot of stuff with thebook this past week things that
I'm not sure I can talk aboutjust yet, but I will, and I got
to tell you.
I got a chance to go back overit and read through it again and
I love it.
I just I really I'm so proud ofthe able to contribute a lot

(02:06):
more stuff to them going forward, so I'm excited.
There'll be more things that Ihave to write about in terms of
Lucas hopefully appearing onthere soon, so you can check
that out as well.
But if you got a chance tocheck it out, I wrote something
this past week that kind of goesa little bit against how I've
been doing this blog for a while.
I usually never talk aboutanything political right, and in

(02:27):
many ways I feel like I stillhaven't, because this post that
I wrote talked about the idea ofcuring autism, right, which
should not be political.
I am a dad.
I love my son.
I have spent the last eightyears writing about autism
acceptance and autismappreciation.

(02:48):
In fact, for those of you whohave been a part of this blog
since 2017, you've kind of grownwith me, because in the
beginning, my son was like sevenyears old, six years old, crazy
.
I wrote about him running.
I wrote about all these littlethings that he doesn't do
anymore because he's grown up,some of the things he still does
, but I've always written aboutLucas and one of the things that

(03:10):
actually happened from writingthis blog which, by the way, the
reason why it was political, itwas called.
Unlike RFK Jr, I Don't Want aCure for my Son's Autism, and
this post was primarily aboutnot wanting a cure.
That's it.
I think I mentioned it,incidentally, in terms of who
said it and how it was said, Idon't think this is political.
I think this is something thatI should be allowed to talk

(03:31):
about, something that wasactually brought upon me.
To be honest with you guys.
I'm going to be really we talkabout in the vein of honesty and
trying to, you know, puteverything on the table with you
, as I always try to do in thesepodcasts and on the blogs, and
trying to put everything on thetable with you, as I always try
to do in these podcasts and onthe blogs.
This came to me not from theHuffington Post, but from the

(03:52):
world.
Rfk Jr went out there and he'stalking about looking for a cure
for the epidemic, as he said,of autism, and in it he listed
things about people with autismand he talked about how some of
these people will never paytaxes and will never care for
themselves and just really justa laundry list of things that
relate to people withlow-functioning autism.

(04:12):
And a lot of the responses frompeople were like how dare he
say that?
I'm not like that.
I have autism, but I can dothis and I can do that.
And I'm thinking who cares?
My son can't.
A lot of what he was saying wasabout my son.
So what's the point?
He's not a viable member ofsociety.
He's something that should becured.

(04:32):
He's something that shouldn'tbe around.
It rubbed me the wrong way, butstill not talking about it, I'm
not dealing with it, I'm notdoing whatever.
But I will tell you this.
Once that happened and once, allof a sudden, autism started to
become this political hot buttontopic, I started getting the
trolls on the site.
Now, whether there is bots onFacebook which I mean there's

(04:53):
totally bots on Facebook or justterrible people in the world,
which there's totally terriblepeople in the world on Facebook,
it doesn't matter.
All I know is that this was nowan issue that I wanted to
respond to, so I'm going torespond to it.
Let me tell you this Sinceputting this post up on
Huffington Post and then followup the next day let me get to
this in a second.
Before I jump around I got toget a little more organized once

(05:15):
in a while.
Here's one of the things thatmade me realize that I've been
doing this blog correctly for along time.
Most people who read what Iwrote on the Huffington Post
assumed that Lucas was highfunctioning.
Yeah, and I had people write tome go, have you ever had to do
with worrying if your kid isgoing to run into traffic or

(05:37):
what's going to happen whenyou're dead because your kid
can't bathe himself and can't doall these things?
I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah,everything you're saying the
checklist of low functioningthings that people were shouting
at me as a gotcha like oh well,you don't know what autism is.
Some people with autism, youknow they can't even tie their
own shoes.
Yeah, you know they can't eventie their own shoes.
Yeah, I know that's my, that'sour deal, that's what we have,

(06:02):
like everything.
They said that checklist appliesto my son, but because I write
about him in a positive way,because I say I don't want to
cure, because I say that he'sone of the best people I know,
many people can't even fathomthat there's challenges involved
.
They think that I'm notunderstanding autism, all these
worst case scenarios that you'reshouting back at me.
We live them and I still don'twant to cure my son and I still

(06:25):
love my son and I still writebooks about autism appreciation
and how proud I am of my boy andhow I envy the way he is and
sees the world.
That's what I don't get right.
The whole world is applaudedfor loving their kids
unconditionally, for puttingtheir kids above everyone else,
but because my son has autismand is nonverbal, I'm supposed

(06:46):
to want a different kid.
I'm a bad parent for notwanting to quote cure his autism
, which I don't think can becured.
That's stuff you say when yourkid is two or three years old.
You want them to wake up oneday and talk.
My son is 14.
If he takes a pill tomorrow,he's never just going to be like
hello, father, let's do ourtaxes.
It's not happening.
I want him to learn things.
I want him to have programs andservices the very things that

(07:10):
these people are cutting asthey're selling you the magic
beans of an autism cure thatdoesn't exist.
Now, look, I'm going to behonest with you Again, not
political.
I'm really big on just doing myown thing, right, like I don't
care what you do.
I hear from people all the time.
They go on the comment sectionof some of these things.

(07:31):
I heard about it from theHuffington Post article.
People came on there.
You know I'm sorry, but I woulddo anything to cure my
granddaughter.
Okay, I don't know yourgranddaughter, cool, do it.
Like what am I going to tellyou?
I wouldn't cure my son.
At no point In the thing that Iwrote did I say that everyone
should not want to cure.
I'm saying I don't, you're notme, I'm not you.
I don't know your kid, I don'tknow your family.

(07:53):
Do you man?
I'm not.
That's the point.
I'm just here to point out aside of autism that for some
reason gets lost in the laundrylist of things they tell us
makes autism so hard.
Does your kid do this?
Does your kid do this?
Does your kid do that?
Well, you seem to know all thebad stuff.
Do you know all the good stuff?

(08:14):
He has no ego.
He's sweet.
He hugs you when he wants to.
He doesn't deceive, he doesn'tmock or he's not cruel.
He's not a bully.
My son is just a pure personwho is so in touch with his
feelings and his emotions.
When he's sad, he cries.

(08:36):
When he's happy, he screams forjoy.
When he's tired, he lays on theground.
That is one of the most in tunewith who they are people I've
ever known in my life, andthat's my son, and that's why
I'm proud of him and that's whyI don't want to cure him, and
that's it.
I don't think there's a cure forwhat my son has.
When he was little man I'mgonna be honest with you when he
was two, three and I've writtenabout this I did I made deals
with God every birthday.

(08:56):
God, please, just let him talkby four.
If he talks at four, it'll beokay, please.
And every birthday he'd be likeoh my God, oh my God.
It was harder and harder, untilone day he got to an age where
I realized, look, if he suddenlystarted catching up right now,
it's still.
We're still years behind.
It's going to take a lot ofwork.
There's no hit a button andwe're done.

(09:17):
What kind of nonsense I mean,and it upsets me.
It upsets me because I feel,like a lot of other parents who
have kids around the same agesas my boy get that, that there's
no such thing as a cure forsomeone who's lived their entire
life a certain way.
If he woke up tomorrow withsomebody else, he's not Lucas
anymore.

(09:37):
Now, if we discover somethingtomorrow that helps him learn
and a program and he gets words,and that's all natural and will
happen on its own.
But I don't trust.
I mean, come on and everythingelse about it.
Dude, you've never heard metalk.
I don't talk too much about likevaccines and stuff here on the
podcast and on the blog, butlike if you don't like vaccines

(09:58):
and you're worried aboutvaccines, go for it, study them,
come back with proof and thinkI am not.
I don't work for vaccinecompanies, I don't care, like
whatever, but don't use my kidas a boogeyman to get there.
If you already know what theculprit is, why are you doing a
task for us Apparently, you know, right.
So why don't you handle thatand leave my kid out of it?

(10:20):
I don't know, it just bothersme.
It really does.
And it's the whole reason why,from the beginning, I've been
trying to tell the world,because I've always kind of been
put off by the arrogance thatwe have to think we can say
who's a quality person, who arewe to say what it's like behind
the doors of someone else's home?

(10:40):
I can't do that right.
So all the people who've comeonto the blog and go I have a
kid with autism and I don'tagree with you.
That's cool.
I don't know.
I don't know what your life is,but you don't know mine.
And that's why I'm here to tellyou the positives and the best
points of my son, and I will doit every single week as long as
I can.
This has been my whole goal fromthe beginning that I can share

(11:05):
this with people, because I feellike no one's talking about
this, no one's sharing autismpositive stories, no one's
sharing autism appreciation.
It is just 24, seven negatives,things that make it so hard.
Cures, epidemics.
I don't know, they're people.
My son is a person and if youknew him.
You would know what I'm saying,you would get it, you would

(11:26):
understand, and that's why I'mtrying to do here.
I'm just trying to get theworld to understand and
hopefully you do.
Some people never will.
Some people never will.
I totally get that.
But at the end of the day, Iknow there's two sides of the
story and I can want my son tolearn how to speak and to have
life skills without having towish he was a different human

(11:46):
being.
I'm not doing that, sorry, it'snot happening.
So thank you.
Thank you for checking it out.
Thank you for checking out thepost this week on HuffPost.
I heard from them and didamazing.
It was just amazing in terms ofbeing clicked on through
Apple's news widget and thingslike that.
I got some pretty insanenumbers.
Let me say like over a millionpeople heard about autism
appreciation this week and thatmeans the world to me.

(12:06):
So thank you.
So every single Friday, guyscome back here.
Check out highpodImdad.
com.
Hi blog I'm dad.
Monday, wednesday, I do newblogs autism appreciation,
autism positivity.
Follow me on social media @HiJames Guttman, h-i James Guttman
and, of course, hi World I'mDad.
Check out the book, pre-orderit.
Thank you for all your support.
I really appreciate it.

(12:27):
I got some big news about thebook too.
I'm going to find out when Ican tell you Hopefully next week
, and I'll let you guys knowabout it.
I teased it on social mediaAgain, , HiJ ames Guttman.
Hi, James Guttman, come checkit out and I'll tell you about
it as soon as I can.
And that does it for me.