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, that's me, james Gutman. What's up, guys? Guys, welcome back to another edition of high pod. I'm dad.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Thank you for tuning in every friday on spotify and all all that other good stuff. Anyway, you found me. Thank you like subscribe. That's what they say. So that's what I say. So I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:00

It's great doing this podcast for you guys each and every week, in all the archives on hypodomdadcom and, as you know by now, hypodomdadcom the offshoot of highblogomdadcom every Monday, every Wednesday, writing about raising my kids, writing about autism appreciation, the idea that my son's personality because of autism makes him special, not despite autism. I don't know. I talk about that. Every time I talk about this I feel like I'm reintroducing it again, but every time I say it out loud it always gets me a little bit, because it's kind of true. A lot of the things that we came up with, the tolerance and the things that taught us to accept people with autism, always involve the idea of you know, they're just like us, they can do our things. Look, this kid played football and he has autism. Look, this kid can do math, which then helps me, which makes his autism great. But you know what? My son doesn't do math. My son doesn't play football. My son is himself. My son doesn't play football. My son is himself and his personality I mean his personality is the selling point, and that's one thing that I have to make abundantly clear.

Speaker 1: 2:16

When it comes to Lucas, I don't judge whether his autism is accepted or beloved in our house based on whether or not it can do things that benefit me or things that I like to do in my world. There's things that Lucas likes to do in his world that I don't get, or I didn't get, I should say, for the longest time stimming things and, uh, the videos that he's into and a lot of the songs and the mannerisms that he does, the clapping, the screaming, the jumping. It feels foreign until it becomes a part of your life. And now he and I man, I get him. When he turns around, he claps and he laughs at my face about something he's looking at on his iPad. I laugh with him, I grab him. I know when he's susceptible to kind of like a nudge, like a ha-ha nudge is going make him laugh. I know it, I feel it. I understand my son. All of those behaviors are amazing to watch, watch them play out, because and this is where I guess you could say it benefits me watching my boy interact with the world makes me wanna be a happier person. It makes me wanna find the joy in my life that he finds in his. It's a really beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: 3:25

So, yeah, I write about that on High Blog. I'm Dad, which, by the way, eight years eight years, like today of doing highblogimdadcom, which is absolutely mind blowing almost 10 years of this I spent and I've talked about this on here before too you know the vast majority of my writing career writing about pro wrestling, and I remember when I used to run World Wrestling Insanity, my first book about it, my second book and I remember celebrating the five-year anniversary, the 10-year anniversary, the 15-year anniversary of that website, and just telling myself well, this is what you do, this is what you write about. This is the stuff that you share with people and I love doing it. I've said it before, I'll say it again I never really felt all that important and a lot of big things happen. You know, I was in the newspapers out here at one point and it's my go-to party story. I was in a leaked memo from the White House when Donald Trump was vetting Linda McMahon during his first administration. They leaked a memo that had red flags that the administration had cited for all the potential cabinet members and there it was World Wrestling Insanity twice with the red flags for Linda McMahon.

Speaker 1: 4:37

So yeah, that family didn't like me. I didn't like the family very much. So I guess it all kind of balanced out anyway. But stuff like that, like people hear that they go, oh my God. But it didn't feel important. It didn't feel like I was really kind of sharing something that was doing some good in the world. You know, obviously I liked writing. I always loved writing. It's fun for me. I like watching wrestling. I still watch wrestling to this day. I liked meeting the people in in the business. But when I had Lucas and I personally went on my journey of learning what autism meant for me and my family and how to interact with it. That felt like the thing that I wanted to share with everybody, and for the last eight years you've allowed me to do that and for that I'm so grateful, Thank you. Of course, the star of the show are my kids or actually, now it should be Lucas. Now it originally was both of them, originally was both of them.

Speaker 1: 5:25

My daughter is neurotypical. She's 16 years old, so I try not to not to invade kind of her privacy too much. I know how that is. I I know at one point they had done a project at school she had she was little and she was like she said we Googled ourselves at school. The teacher had us all Google ourselves. She's like there's so many pictures of me, I'm sorry and she doesn't. She was kind of weird with that. So I I try to pull it back a little bit. But make no mistake, I love my, my daughter, same kind of ways I love Lucas, just love both my kids.

Speaker 1: 5:53

And what makes it amazing is the fact that you know, having one neurotypical girl and having a nonverbal boy with autism, severe autism, however people term it they're very different people while at the same time they both kind of have the same fun-loving approach to life. My daughter and I share the same kind of humor, so I'm eternally grateful to be a dad. Also. Despite their differences, I have very similar stories and feelings and things that have happened with both of my kids, and I thought about that this week, right? So I wrote two blogs this week about Lucas. The first one was about the moment I knew he missed me when I'm not around. I really liked writing that one. Hopefully you guys get a chance to read it. It's a big deal, because about two years ago I wrote a blog that said I didn't know if he missed me, and now I do. So things like that always make me kind of happy to be able to share.

Speaker 1: 6:37

But the second one is a tough one, and it's one that, 10 years later, it still lives in me to this day, and it was about one of my regrets of raising Lucas, a mistake that I felt I had made at one point that I beat myself up for. I have them with both kids, right, but out of the two of them I would say that there's one for each, and with Lucas it's kind of people hear that the story. But the story was that Lucas was this, and I'm telling you the other one too, because the other one's kind of dumb. But I think they both kind of share the idea that they're really not major, major things that didn't affect anybody, to the point where I don't think either one of them really registered what it was. But to me as a dad, like those things that you kind of run through your head. So we're going to find out. Today I'm going to share these with you and we're going to find out if I'm weird as a dad and I beat myself up over stupid stuff, or if you guys have similar things. If you do, let me know. So first let me tell you about the one with my son, because it's the one I wrote about on Wednesday and it was called.

Speaker 1: 7:41

A Therapist Told Me to Take Away my Son's quote Autism Toys, and I Wish I had. Now I put autism toys in quotes because at the time that's what I thought them to be. Nowadays I know like that's ridiculous. Why would you think that we had brought in a speech therapist? Right, he's one of the first therapists that we had when he was very little. He was just about two years old, just shy of two years old and we had speech.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Come in, we had special education, we had physical education, and this woman came to my home and she was, in so many ways, just not a great addition to anything we had going on. And I don't just mean like professionally, I mean she gossiped and it was very awkward and uncomfortable and, yeah, she didn't last too long. But one of the things that she told us right off the bat she goes here's what you have to do Any toy that he uses for stimming, get rid of it. Get rid of it Lights. And I remember at the time being so desperate for somebody to give me an instruction list of what I needed to do to help my son, because I worried about him every day. How is this kid going to be, how is he going to grow? What can I do to get him on track? And here is the first person who came along and said yeah, you can, what you need to do is this.

Speaker 1: 8:58

So we did, and I got rid of, you know, little light up toys, and the one that always stuck with me it was this big activity box that he had just gotten. Oh, my God, even telling the story now, guys, it's been years and I tell myself this story. He wasn't even two and I don't even think he noticed or cared, but I, I, oh my God, I beat myself up over this and we gave it away. We donated it to his preschool and I think back now and, trust me, he didn't wake up in the morning and cry where are my toys. He didn't really react like that. He played with something else, you know, but I hate myself for it. I took away his toys and I, you know, as I said before, we donated it to his school and at one point, maybe a year later, the school was like he has this one thing here that he loves. It's this big activity box that he turns dials. I'm like, yeah, yeah, we gave you that activity box.

Speaker 1: 9:50

So that was a tough one and as a dad, I still beat myself up over it. It didn't cure anything. You can't cure him. I don't want to cure him. I hate that somebody had even implied that I needed to cure him and I'm sorry that I that I did that. But yeah, I would never do that now. But just know. But just know that a decade later, I'm still beating myself up for it.

Speaker 1: 10:09

It pops in my head every once in a while and I remember he gave away his toys. I'm like, oh, I remember it. Now, look, you're probably thinking that's stupid. Right, like he's, he didn't notice it. He got his toys, you know, you show him how much you appreciate him. You I've re-bought everything you know 10 times over. But if you think that is dumb, I'm going to tell you the one about my daughter that I beat myself up over. This is the dumbest one. I know for a fact that this one is stupid and when you hear it you're gonna be like what? I don't know, I can't, it's my brain, I don't understand it.

Speaker 1: 10:44

So when my daughter was little it was before I think my son was even born we were at oh, maybe not, no, maybe we were at like an amusement park, right. And again, I don't even know what amusement park it was. It could have been knott's berry farm, I don't know, I have no idea. All I remember was there was a pony ride kind of area we can ride ponies and I brought her over to ride on the pony and when we went to get on the thing we had a ticket right. We went to get on the pony.

Speaker 1: 11:10

This guy had little hats hanging over behind, like where the saddles were, and I thought these were like community hats that kids just wore for the, you know, for the ride or whatever. And she went to go take one. I was like no, no, no, no, no, don't put that on your head, because I was freaked out. Man. I was always worried that like she was going to put like something in her mouth, get hepatitis, whatever. I don't know. I didn't know how that worked. All I knew was I was a first-time dad. My little princess girl with her curls is going to go on a pony and here she is trying to put a lice hat on her head. I'm like no, no, no. And the guy came over and the guy looked over at me. He's like no, no, no, we can't. Oh, no, those hats aren't for us, those hats aren't for us. I'm like all right, and she on the pony, just go on the pony. And we went on the pony, went around on the pony. That was it right.

Speaker 1: 12:02

We're leaving the park later on and I see kids leaving the pony area with the hats on and I'm like you know people that were using the little area. The kids were coming off of the ponies wearing these hats. So I turned to my wife at the time and said how are those kids taking those hats? She's like oh no, you can buy them for like $2. They're like $2.

Speaker 1: 12:27

And I didn't know and I didn't let her put the hat on, I didn't let her ride the pony with the hat on. Hey, I told you, it's stupid. I told you. I said this is is gonna be a story about something I beat myself up over. That is so dumb that you're gonna be like that is really dumb. So, um, there you go. Now, keep in mind I'm not beating myself up. I'm like, oh my god, but like every once in a while, just be sitting around bored, just pops in your head. Remember you didn't let her have the hat. Oh, he gave away his toys. Oh, yeah, so it goes. So, yeah, I appreciate it. If you guys have anything similar to that, let me know. I would love to hear that. I'd love to not feel so alone when it comes to some of this crazy parenting stuff. But it is what it is.

Speaker 1: 13:14

I want to thank you guys for listening, for reading the blog. It means a lot to me. Also, this week I saw a copy of the cover of my upcoming book. I'll have all the information on that very soon now at this point. So yeah, I know I've been teasing it and I've been. You know I don't want to say that I really don't. I want to wait until we're ready to really kind of let the world know about it. But it's a big deal, and I want to wait until we're ready to really kind of let the world know about it. But it's a big deal and I'm very excited. The book is going to be out this year and I don't know, I can't wait to hear what you guys think about it.

Speaker 1: 13:45

I think if you like the blog, if you like this podcast, if you like our experiences in my family and how we interact with autism in our lives, how we've learned to appreciate it and kind of all the stories that come with it, I think you'll love this book. My son is I don't know man, just the center of our world, so it's just so amazing to be able to share it. Tell you guys stories. I've got stuff about my daughter in there as well, stories from the past. So thank you so much for taking the time this week. I will have more information as it comes along. Follow me on social media. Hi, james Gutman, me on social media. Hi, james gutman. Hi, james gutman, hello, uh, and on there, I'm on, you know, instagram, facebook, you name it. Uh, everything except for x and uh, and yeah, that does it for me until next time. This is james gutman saying be well, bye pot, I'm dad, thank you, I'll see you next time.