Speaker 1: 0:14

hi pod, I am dad. He's not just hi dad, he's my dad, james gutman. Folks, james gutman, it's 2025 and welcome to hi pod, I'm dad. Thank you so much for joining me once again on a friday, the first friday of the new year, the futuristic year. It is 2025, which, if you were born around the time I was born, which was a while ago, you know that this is like the distant future. This is when I was a kid, right, and they would write stories about the future. It was about the year 2000,. You know, in the year 2000, and something would happen. If they said 2025, that was like the ridiculously distant future. That was like we had android puppies and I don't know. Everything's crazy. And I know we're in 2025.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Now we think to ourselves like well, it's not really the future, it isn't whatever. I'm shocked and I got to tell you I was thinking about it this morning. I'm on social media, I'm going through it, I'm reading things that people are posting and I saw a post that really stuck with me because I realized how much the world has changed and we're not even thinking about it. It was a picture of the Mona Lisa that suddenly came to life and she looked around and she ran off into a field and it looked completely real because it was AI generated. And I thought to myself how are we we're just cool with this now Like this is just something that just happens. There would have been a time that any video that we saw or something crazy happened. We would think to ourselves that it was 100% real. There's no way to fake. I mean it look, it all looks 100% real and that's where we live. So we are in the future. So thank you so much for being here with me in the future and I will tell you this about 2025. And one of the things that I've talked about having written my blog. And one of the things that I've talked about having written my blog, done the podcast and things like that how grateful I really am with how the world has advanced. And I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1: 2:22

When my son was born in 2011, I was concerned greatly about finding out that he was on the autism spectrum. I grew up in the 1980s, the 1990s, a time where I don't know people were I don't want to say mean or cruel, because I think we often talk about the old days and we vilify it in a way and in some ways it is vilified. I mean, you compare when we were kids then to now. I mean, when I was a kid, kids could bully you and you go to the teacher and the teacher goes you know, hey, don't be a tattletale, learn to defend yourself. That was what we used to tell kids when they were little. You know, you would have a kid three years older than you, three, you know, three feet taller than you, picking on you and they would tell you to learn how to throw a punch. I was like I know how we dealt with it. Nowadays it's, you know, you drop a napkin. We call the police, that kind of stuff. So I know that there's definitely extremes. We go one extreme, we go to the other.

Speaker 1: 3:12

But when it comes to how we treat each other and when it comes to especially, how we deal with, I don't want to say, the most vulnerable among us, but in my mind my son is vulnerable. My son is nonverbal. He is a sweet boy. Now look, I've talked on this blog before about autism and how it affects different people and how it affects my son. My son is a sweet, kind boy who really honestly doesn't have any mean-spirited nature to him. Don't get me wrong. My son is gigantic. He's about slightly shorter than me, weighs more than me and knows when he wants to get his way and I've seen him do it If he wants something or he doesn't want to go somewhere. If I'm trying to take him somewhere and he doesn't want to go there, he will plant himself right there, he'll dig his feet in and he will not move and I will have to move him. And I've done this before too, where you know, to get him up the stairs I poke him in the sides and I don't do it. There's no violence. It's not like I slap him upside the head. I'm behind him, I'm kind of like poking him in the lower back and he's giggling a little bit, but he's also annoyed by it and he's moving to like move up the stairs, bring him with me, get him in the car, bring him here, bring him there. But he's getting bigger.

Speaker 1: 4:26

I was actually just talking to my girlfriend, lauren, about this last week. She has, you know, her son Christian. I love that kid. He's minimally verbal. Same kind of situation, both big kids. And I was telling her that you know I had to get him to go somewhere and he was doing the thing that he does, where he digs his feet down and he won't move, and instead of doing the poking trick, instead of grabbing his hand and trying to pull him over, I just stopped and I was like, go now. And I spoke to him sternly and uh, in a way that he knew I was serious, and he went and he did it.

Speaker 1: 4:59

Now don't get me wrong, it took slightly longer than it would have if I wouldn't have, just you know, taken him by the hand and kind of like you know speed, walked him upstairs. But he's getting older and he's getting to that point where I need him to see that. You know, you're not going to be maneuvered everywhere Sometimes. You just have to know what's right is right. Do what dad says and we do it, that kind of stuff. So that's just an aside. But what I'm saying is my son is sweet, he's kind, he doesn't fight, he doesn't battle anybody, and I send him out into this world every day. Right now he's off at school and I'm not there. I send him places where I'm not there.

Speaker 1: 5:36

When Lucas was two, that used to terrify me. When Lucas was little, even up until a few years ago, I hated having him out of my sight, because nobody knew how to deal with Lucas, according to me. In my head, I'm like nobody can get what this kid needs. Keep in mind as well. I barely knew, especially then, what this kid needs, you know. So if somebody was to take him, I wouldn't. How would they take care of him? What would he need? What would he do? I worried about. I worried about his communication, things like that. Now his communication has gotten better. Lucas can tell you what he wants. Does he do it all the time? I don't know. I don't know how he interacts with different people when I don't have him here. I don't know what goes on. I hear stories, whether it's from school or from my daughter, where he's off. I've joined custody. He's with his mom part of the week. I don't know what goes on there. We just deal with him differently. So he's a different person when he's outside of my view, and that's okay and I've learned to kind of let go a little bit. Some people never understand that.

Speaker 1: 6:34

I once went out. I'll never forget this one man. I'm literally out with a mom, a group of people, but one of the moms, she had a child similar to Lucas and I'm watching him and I'm worried about him. And he's getting into like. He's running off at the park near like the trees and stuff, and I'm worried he's gonna hurt himself and he's running, you know, between swings as kids are swinging, and I'm running after him trying to get him and she just turns to me and she's like she's like you're like a helicopter, dad. Huh, I don't know what you mean by that. You hover around him. I'm like, yeah, because he's going to die if I don't hover around him. I have to do that.

Speaker 1: 7:10

So it was needed, obviously at that point. But as he's gotten older, I've learned to teach him how to do things. I've learned to trust him more, have a child similar to Lucas, maybe a little bit younger, and you're wondering if you're ever going to be in a position where you can do that, where you can just let them go. You will, and I'll tell you why you will, because I was convinced I wasn't and now I do right. So maybe I'll send Lucas out into the world and not worry so much about it. But one of the things about sending him out into the world without that worry and without that concern is that I know that the world is more accepting of people like Lucas.

Speaker 1: 7:50

It's part of the reason that I write this blog, part of what I do with High Blog on Dad, and the podcast as well, is because my goal is for people to see the beauty in a person like him and I got to tell you people have you know I write these posts twice a week. If you go to highblogonddadcom with the exception of Christmas week where things are kind of off Monday, wednesday, new blogs, podcasts every Friday here highpodomdadcom, wherever streaming services are offered all that good stuff. So I write these things so that people can understand my boy and the beauty that comes with having a boy like him and the way he sees the world and the unique view that he offers and just the kind person that he is. So I write that. But in even the absence of that, the world has understood autism a lot better since Lucas was born.

Speaker 1: 8:42

I don't talk about it too often, but Autism Speaks. I know it is a lightning rod for some people, but years ago I wrote posts for Autism Speaks' website and people didn't like it. I had some people didn't like it. A lot of people did. Don't get me wrong. The majority of people were happy with it, not that they didn't like the post, but they didn't like the fact that I wrote for Autism Speaks, because Autism Speaks has this reputation and you know, I know they've in the past. When they first came out, they said some things and people didn't understand things. They used to look at autism. I don't know if they necessarily did that, I don't want to say it like this, but people by and large in the olden days used to think that autism was something to be avoided, something to be fixed, and I don't want my son fixed.

Speaker 1: 9:21

I don't want want to fix his autism. It's crazy, right? I want my son to be able to navigate the world better. I want my son to have the tools that he needs to navigate the world. Now, if that doesn't include verbal speech, if that doesn't include things like that, I want him to have a device. I want him to have gestures. I want people to understand him, but, above everything else, I want him to just be a part of society. I don't want my son to be something that people pity. I don't want him to be someone that people don't include. I don't want him to just be seen as just taking up space. I want people to understand who he is and Autism Speaks and different places like that that have talked about autism awareness and kind of brought up the public perception of what autism is and let people know that it exists has been so important for that.

Speaker 1: 10:11

You know, one of the big things and I've talked about it and we kind of pulled back on it a little bit, but I always like to talk about it is the idea of what autism awareness, autism acceptance and autism appreciation are. And for me, a big part of what I do is autism appreciation. Right, I read about it in the blog. My upcoming book is about autism appreciation, about discovering that. But all three of those things are very important.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Autism awareness is the first step and I get when people say it's not enough and people will lecture you. It's not about awareness, it's about acceptance. It's like well, no, I get that you think acceptance is more important and you're right it is. But awareness is important too, because they can't accept what they don't even know is there. Acceptance is just having people you know accept. This is who he is. I don't want you just to accept my son, I want you to appreciate why his personality is so special and so unique and it really is man, like I got to tell you, this kid is just having him in my life and just knowing that.

Speaker 1: 11:08

You know, when it comes to Lucas, we're kind of on a different page than the rest of the world. Right, everything the world could be falling down around you, but if you have a boy like my son in your life, playing his iPads and sitting next to you and watching his shows and giving you hugs, for no reason it changes everything. He and I don't deal with nonsense. He's not upset about things on television, he doesn't get scared of shows and you know there's different things that we don't have to navigate.

Speaker 1: 11:38

When it comes to Lucas, conversations I'll never have to have with him. I'll never have to talk to him about like death or loss in a way. I mean, obviously you mentioned I don't ignore him. I keep him abreast of every single thing in our lives, like if something's happening, we talk about it, we'll drive. Hey, buddy, tomorrow's Christmas Santa's coming. You know Santa, right Red suit, he's going to bring you a present and we just talk and I just talk at him and some of it gets through, some of it might not. It doesn't matter. But don't have to deal with that with him. He doesn't get bullied, and if he does, he's not going to tell me about it because he kind of doesn't even notice that it's happening. It's been nice, it's been a beautiful thing to be able to experience the world with a kid like him.

Speaker 1: 12:20

But autism awareness itself is the thing that has stopped people from looking. Does that make any sense? Right, like autism acceptance would allow him to work places and have people kind of give him leeway if he needed extra care for certain things he has to do. But awareness is the thing that doesn't have people kind of like staring from across the room anymore.

Speaker 1: 12:43

If Lucas yells out, provided he's not like overdoing it, and that's a big thing to you, man, if my son gets excited and we're standing in line at Adventureland and everyone's screaming and he screams, well, he gets to scream, man. Everyone's yelling, he yells, we yell. If we're at like a crazy concert and everyone's freaking out, he's allowed to freak out and clap and yell. If we're in a quiet place, you know he gets a call out or two. Before I take him outside I go hey, buddy, gotta be quiet, gotta relax, and he does. That's important.

Speaker 1: 13:11

So what I'm saying is there's never really a situation where he's causing a huge disturbance. So if Lucas makes one or two noises, people don't really look over anymore, whereas that was my biggest fear when he was tiny. How am I going to go out with this kid? People are going to look at him and then I'm going to kill those people and I don't want to kill people. I have a baby. I can't leave these babies at home because I killed people for glaring at my babies. So nobody does that and I credit a lot of that to the whole autism awareness movement.

Speaker 1: 13:44

So if people are looking for positives, there it is. It allows the world to know who he is and it's made me kind of happy with that. So I've been glad. I've been glad that the world has accepted my son. They're aware of who he is and hopefully I'm helping them to appreciate the person that he is. And for all that it's been a wonderful thing.

Speaker 1: 14:03

And that kind of goes back real quick to the blog post that I wrote last week. I wrote it on Monday, didn't do one on Wednesday. Wednesday was New Year's and if you listened to the podcast last week, I told you I was going to write about opening presents. I might still do that at some point. But I still work on it and we still do, and that's an important thing for a parent like me. You can embrace and you can love and you can be so happy with who your child is. But that doesn't mean that you don't always try to make them improve, make them reach that next level, encourage them to do whatever they can in life.

Speaker 1: 14:48

I want my son people. You want your son to talk. Yeah, I want my son to talk in life. I want my son people. You want your son to talk. Yeah, I want my son to talk. I want him to fly a plane. I want him to be the president of the United States. I want my son and my daughter to do every single thing. And I'll give you a quick example.

Speaker 1: 14:59

My daughter just recently took her SATs because I'm an old man now, you know. So I have this daughter who takes SATs and she got an incredible grade, incredible score on the SATs. I'm not going to say the score, but it was. It was like shockingly, like high. I was like she's my daughter has been, and I don't talk about her all that much in here. I know she doesn't like to be talked about on social media, but sometimes it's important.

Speaker 1: 15:29

My daughter blows me away with how she handles academics, with how she handles her responsibilities. There's nobody like her, and I've told her that too. I've been blown away Days where she buckles down and does her homework at a time where I'm just like you're doing it. Now she gets her work done, all her stuff. So she came to me with her SAT grade, told me what it was, and she's also really big on always saying stuff like that's not good, right, it's bad, it's I got a bad grade. So I always try to give her, as I told her, the positives, like no, I'm like that's really really good, I'm like, if you want to, you know, work on it more, you can, you know whatever. And it's funny.

Speaker 1: 16:02

And as I'm saying it, I'm thinking to myself like this kid got this like killer grade and my instinct as her dad is just to be like that is perfect, you did perfect, leave it alone. But I don't want to do that because I want her to reach whatever potential she wants to reach. I want her to be happy with the things that happen in her life, but if she feels that she wants to do more, she feels that she wants to go forward, as long as it's not causing her any problems, any stress levels freaking her out. I will always encourage her to be better than she is now if she wants to, if she's not content with something. Like you know, I wanted to be better at this. You're never perfect at anything. We all continue and move on. Same thing with her brother.

Speaker 1: 16:43

You know, if Lucas can communicate with the world, that's great, but if I can get him to say a word or two as well, that's even better. Once he says a word or two, if I can get him to say five or six him to say a word or two as well, that's even better. Once he says a word or two, if I can get him to say five or six, that's better. 10, 12. We keep going and we keep moving forward.

Speaker 1: 16:56

It's what I do in my own life, it's what I try to do with my kids, it's what I encourage. It makes them better people and makes me happy and yeah, so I'm happy. So that's what I do. I still work on him with his language. I've talked about trying to teach him how to say hi. I go. Lucas say ah, like that. Now you guys can hear what it is when I talk about what he does in terms of his verbal language. That's where we're at right. We've been at this level for years and I only say that because I feel like I've dropped it a few times and there's definitely been times where I didn't feel like he was ready to do it.

Speaker 1: 17:29

I go, lucas, say hi, and he goes like that right, and it's the cutest thing, I'll go. You say I tap his lips. I go, you say hi, hi, and it's like this cool, like hi, like a very slick Rico Suave way of doing it. And what my son does, and I don't know why he does it he grabs his collar and he pulls his head back like a crooner. And I compare it to and even if you never saw the play or you don't know the music A Streetcar Named Desire, the famous scene where you know he grabs his Costello, you know like his Brando just yelling.

Speaker 1: 18:10

That's what Lucas looks like. He looks like this uh, this love torn um, you know man from the fifties grabbing his wife beater. He grabs his collar, puts his head back and he goes like that. But he doesn't say the I at the end, he goes ah. But what I do is, if he makes any sound at all. When I ask him to try, I cheer and I freak out. I'm like, yeah, lucas, good job, good job. And we keep doing it. And how long are we going to do this? Forever? I'll do this as long as we need to do it. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 18:40

And the thing that got me and the whole point of the blog and the whole point of me telling you this now is because I remember when I told school about it, I called the school. We were doing one of his meetings and I was like you know, I'm trying to teach him how to say hi. And when he does it, you know he puts his head back. I'm explaining to them how it goes, trying to figure out like, what is the holdup of this thing, what's causing it to be like this? And everyone got kind of quiet and they're like well, you know, his device is probably going to be his main form of communication. You know his, his device is probably going to be his main form of communication. You know he's, he's, you know that's how he communicates with us.

Speaker 1: 19:18

And I'm like, why are they telling me this? And then I realized like, oh, they think I'm one of those dads who's like convinced that I'm going to teach him how to say hi, and then he's going to become like you know this master orator, going out there and like delivering speeches and those kinds of things. And I'm not man. I get the difference between hopefulness and delusion. I'm not teaching him words to replace the way he communicates. I'm teaching him words because I want him to know everything. I wanna teach him everything I can and that's our big thing, man. That's the thing for 2025, for resolution, but that'd be something I would give as advice to anybody out there that listens to this. Never stop trying to teach your kids everything. Language, well, everything. Well, my kid doesn't really. He doesn't walk straight, so I teach him everything. Teach your kid everything. Teach him trigonometry. Teach him whatever you know. Teach them. You would be amazed at the things I've told my daughter and I'll tell you a quick story before we close out, because they'll give you an idea of how strongly I take this.

Speaker 1: 20:18

I'll never forget we were driving one time. She was little. God must have been like you know, nine years old, maybe 10 years old. She's in the backseat and we're talking about clowns, right, and she goes. I don't really like clowns. I think they're kind of creepy. I'm just driving. I was like you know what that's a thing. Right, I'm not even looking back, I'm just driving, looking forward as I'm driving, and I'm like my creepy clowns are a thing. I'm like there was a clown. His name was John Wayne Gacy. Right, he's like a murderer and this guy would go to parties dressed as a clown and entertain the kids and then it turns out we go home and like kill people and bury them, you know, under his house. I'm like it was pretty crazy and like really kind of creepy, scary clown, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:01

And there's like silence and I'm like are you all right? Should I not have said that? And she goes uh, yeah, why would you tell me that I'm gonna have nightmares now? Why would you say that I was like I don't know. I want to teach you everything, everything. I think I'm going to have nightmares now. Why would you say that I was like I don't know, I want to teach you everything, everything, I think I want you to know. And that's the kind of stuff we've done. So I've done that with her, I do that with him. I encourage you to do that with your kids. They can never know too much, so the more my son knows, the better he is and and the more he'll be able to contribute to society and hopefully one day the entire world can appreciate his autism. And it wouldn't require me to write anything about it. They just know him, they see him and they get it themselves. He's a great kid. Both my kids are wonderful. I'm very happy. This is gonna be a good year. It's gonna be the best year ever.

Speaker 1: 21:47

I appreciate you guys joining me every Friday here on the podcast. I appreciate you coming to the blog Monday, wednesday, highblogondadcom. I appreciate you following me on social media. Hi, james Gutman. H-i. James Gutman. I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, tiktok. Even I have like 30 people following TikTok. It's not really a huge thing, but still follow me on TikTok please. If you're on TikTok, please follow me on TikTok, because I'm not really I don't know what to do on TikTok. As I said before, I'm an old man, my daughter takes the SATs, so it is what it is. That does it for me, guys, until next time, james Gottman saying be well, bye, pot, I'm done, thank you, I'll see you next time.