Speaker 1: 0:00

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 play the theme song. I'm not ready to start the pot.

Speaker 1: 0:30

Hi Pod, I am Dad. He's not just Hi Dad, he's my dad. James Gutman, folks, james Gutman, hi Pod, I'm Dad. You got it right, thank you. It is Friday. You have found me on any streaming service, right here on HiPod I'm Dad. Perhaps. Hipod I'm Dadcom Going since 2019.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Killing it, folks. I appreciate your support. I appreciate you guys taking the time to join me wherever you found me. Thank you, it is another week down. It is closing out January. We're almost in month two of 2025, which is nuts. But yeah, man, I appreciate you guys coming here and taking time out of your day.

Speaker 1: 1:14

You might hear in the distant background my son Lucas. My son Lucas is 13. He is nonverbal. He is a teenager, just like his sister, who is 16 and a teenager. She is neurotypical, but the two of them, as teenagers, both love. They love their rooms. I don't know why it's not. I mean, they're just rooms. But Lucas now has started to go into that room and he closes the door. He'll have me close the gate, which I've to this day. Let me explain something to you guys because it's something I've written about a little bit in the blog, but it's hard to explain to people about his gate because it sounds like I don't know if you guys saw Mommy Dearest, the famous movie Mommy Dearest, where she chains the boy to the bed.

Speaker 1: 1:56

I always imagine that when I tell people that my son has a gate on the door of his room. And what you have to understand is when Lucas was little, he would run out of his room. He escaped like Alcatraz, and he'd go through the house looking for food, looking for anything he can grab, and he'd wake up in the morning and there would be, like you know, just cool whip handprints on things. He would wake you up. He would run through the house screaming. So he put a gate on his room and it's a gate that he put on for toddlers and with Lucas it just didn't come off his room. But even as he got older and was more trustworthy, I still kept it on his room. And in the very beginning.

Speaker 1: 2:31

When I first started writing this blog around 2017, there were a few blogs about taking the gate off of his door and trying to teach him independence. And I'm going to show him and well, back when I was still trying to figure it out exactly what should be done and what shouldn't be done, because to me, mentally, as his dad, it bothered me that I put a gate on his room. He was getting older. I looked at it like I'm locking him away, I'm locking him in. Couldn't be further from the truth. My son sees that gate has security, so now when he goes into his room, he wants to be in there. He has me close the gate, and I got to tell you I think it's adorable because he is gigantic now, so he could easily close that gate on his own, but he doesn't really do it. I don't know if he thinks he's not allowed to or if he thinks it's a really heavy gate, but he has me close it. And then he goes and he hangs out in his room and what I'll do is before about shaving his mustache, which I do. He's got this little peach fuzz mustache I have to shave. Every time I see him, it blows me away. You know pictures of him standing next to me. He just looks like. He looks like a dude, a little dude. So that's my guy. So you hear him in the background.

Speaker 1: 3:48

I write about Lucas every Monday, every Wednesday, on highblogomdadcom. I've been doing it since 2017. Since February of 2017, we are coming up on the eight-year God help me anniversary of High Blog on Dad, and I love going back and I love the fact that I've had this period of time to cover in terms of watching my son's growth, because it was pivotal and I talked about it last week. I'll talk about it this week too. It's the kind of thing where I look at the issues that I faced then, many of which are long gone, and now, today, I talk about how far we've come, and when I talk about the old days and how I used to think, typically I remember some of those early times, you know. But still, when I write about Lucas, even with all of these years gone by and even with autism appreciation and different ways that I've learned to accept him, I'm still learning things every day as a dad about you know what's important and what works in terms of our relationship, and I look at autism as something that you know.

Speaker 1: 4:55

My son has autism and it was a struggle for us to figure out initially how autism was going to fit into our family, because people just say they just drop it in your lap, here's autism. Well, what does this mean? What's he going to do? How's he going to? They don't know. No one ever knew. Well, anything can happen. But I hug him, he hugs me. You know this two-year-old that you say has autism. He likes to be hugged and kissed. Some people with autism like to hug and kiss. Okay, he doesn't line anything up, he's not neat. Well, some people with autism.

Speaker 1: 5:25

So it starts to feel like none of the things they're telling you really fit into what you know autism to be. And you have to realize how it fits into your family. What does it mean? What does it mean for my son? What does it mean for us? And it's the kind of thing that, as years go by, doesn't really fade. You're constantly trying to figure out what autism means to your life and what it means to you specifically, and one of those things that I covered on, at least on Monday this week, I wrote Am I doing enough for my nonverbal son? The question that never leaves me and this is important because I think a lot of people they read these blogs, they listen to this podcast. They hear about the life that we have together and they see how happy we are and how I hate to use the word enlightened because I'm almost using it in a sarcastic way.

Speaker 1: 6:09

But I look at my son's quote, unquote disability very differently than I think most people would, and I don't know. It's just the way I look at life. I guess I always try to find, you know well, what's positive about it and I'm not going to lie to you. Initially that's how this went right. When Lucas was little, I was like, all right, well, he has autism. It can't just be like, oh, because I love this kid, he's great, he's sweet and he's nice. He's a handful right, he's like a tough, tough kid to corral, but he's great. There's got to be positives to it and I looked into it and I worked on it and through the years I don't convince myself of it. I'm not trying to find a silver lining. My son is one of the sweetest, kindest, just lovable guys to have. I love Lucas. If I'm ever having a rough time, like right now, right, if I paused this podcast that I'm recording and I went inside and I grabbed him and I hugged him. He'd let me hug him, he would smile, he would laugh, I would tickle him. I can do that anytime I want, and he's 13 years old.

Speaker 1: 7:08

My daughter is 16 and we take car rides sometimes and we don't talk at all. Oh, that's a lie. We do talk, I talk and I go. Are you mad at me? What's wrong with you? What is wrong? I'm not? What is wrong with you? Are you all right? Are you mad? They did I do something. Did I did I do something to you? That that's our conversations in the car with lucas. No man, we talked the whole time. Just drive around. Hey, lucas, look outside. And it's funny that I bring that up because that's actually what I wrote about on Wednesday. I wrote a blog called Making Sure.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Lucas Knows. He's a Main Character in Our Family and I talk about how, being the dad to a nonverbal boy, it's easy for him to get lost in the background, which all goes back to the same thing of am I doing enough for my nonverbal child? Lucas will just sit in the back and play on his iPad and quietly be by himself, if you let him, and he will stay that way forever. He doesn't do that with me. He doesn't do that with me because I don't do that with him All the time. With Lucas, I'm talking to him. We're driving in the car, I'm telling him about my day, I'm telling him stories. I'm looking out the window, I'm babbling. Are you going to have fun today, buddy? Are you going to school? What are you going to do at school? Let's go to school, lucas.

Speaker 1: 8:17

And that's pretty much just the whole stream of consciousness this kid gets from me. Sometimes he's listening, sometimes he's not, sometimes he's there, sometimes he's not, he doesn't. And I'm not even saying that in terms of autism. I'm talking to him and he knows that when he's with me he's kind of the star of my show. We can be sitting on the couch, I'll be playing a video game, he'll be on his iPad and I'll just stop, I'll pause my thing, I'll turn him and I go. Excuse me, I love you, hey. I love you. Look at me. I love you, hey. Who does daddy love? Who does your father? Who does dad love who? And he'll tap his chest and he knows.

Speaker 1: 9:01

He knows that like if he's in my vicinity, I'm never going to fully just ignore him. We're never going to be in a car ride and not say a word. We're never going to be next to each other on the couch and go more than a few minutes without me acknowledging him, tapping him, grabbing him, giving him a noogie, giving him a hug, tickling him, doing something to show him that he's a main character in my life. And because of that, lucas does the same thing with me. He does. We sit on the couch. He'll jump up and he'll start jumping and clapping over his show and come over to me and tap me on the head and I look up at him and he'll smile or he'll laugh.

Speaker 1: 9:39

The other day he was doing this thing where he was like he's jumping up and down and I'm sitting on the couch and he would just run over and he takes his. He likes to do this. It's one of his favorite things to do to me. He takes his hand, he puts it under my chin and he lifts, do it incessantly, like he'll keep coming back and then thank you. But I love, all right, I love you. I look, can I please just what? All right, I love you too. I love you. Hey, thank you. Thank you, that was a wet one. Thank you, I appreciate it, I love it, man, and I made that happen. I made that happen and I created that relationship with this boy because I did then and do now always take that leap of faith of saying look, I might be annoying, I might've been taught by you.

Speaker 1: 10:19

Know, in some ways my daughter, my daughter and I you know my daughter's neurotypical, I'm neurotypical and I know that if I was a 16 year old and I had an adult always be like hey there, pal, what are you doing? I'd be like get away. So I know that kids aren't open to just constant streams of like who does your dad love? Hey there, who's a funny face? You know nobody's.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Some people get annoyed by it. Lucas doesn't get annoyed by it, so I do it. I'm not saying he never gets annoyed. Sometimes he gets annoyed. And I'm not saying I never get annoyed. Sometimes I get annoyed, like when he comes over to give me a hug and his sleeve is sopping wet because he's been chewing on it. I don't know that. Or like I've had times where, like he goes to give me a kiss and I'll turn my head next thing. I know I have his open lips just like over my face. I'm like dude, can you just please? You're slobbering on me. I thank you. I love you very much, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I wouldn't have him stop. I wouldn't not let him do it.

Speaker 1: 11:13

And it's because I took that leap of faith, it's because I decided myself I don't care what autism means to our family. I don't care if autism supposedly makes him closed off. I don't care if people say that autism makes him not loving, and not always. This is what I want to have in my relationship with my son and I'm going to make it happen. And that's what we did. And here we are, at 13. And because of the fact that I decided a long time ago I was going to build this bond with this kid, that's what we've done.

Speaker 1: 11:45

And I got news for you, man. If I started years ago trying to build that bond with him and it still didn't work, if he would ignore me, if he never looked at me, if he didn't want to be a part of it, I'd probably still be doing it. Because why the hell not? Who would want to just sit around with their own child? I just ignore him all the time, even if he wants me to ignore him to hell with you. I'm the dad. I'll tell you when we ignore each other, pal. So we don't. We don't ignore each other, and I honest to God think that it was the pushing and it was the determination on my part to make sure that I didn't lose him in the shuffle that allowed us to have the relationship that we have, and for that I'm so grateful and I'm so happy, and it's one of the reasons why I write this blog, it's one of the reasons why I do this podcast and it's one of the reasons why I was very proud of the two that were written this week.

Speaker 1: 12:32

So, if you get a chance, go to highblogomdadcom this past week making sure Lucas knows he's the main character in our family. That was one. And am I doing enough for my nonverbal son? The question that never wrote about this week uh, meant a lot to me. You guys mean a lot to me and I appreciate it. Thank you, um. I always end this by telling you guys, big things are on the way, because big things are on the way, but you'll find out. It's 2025. We're we're on the road to uh, to the big time, so I'm very excited. Thank you guys, so much for your support. Thank you for checking me out like, subscribe, bookmark. Follow me on social media. Hi, james gutman. Hi, james gutman, at, you'll find me. That does it for me Until next time, james Gutman, saying be well, bye-bye, I'm back, I'll see you next time.