James Guttman: 0:14

Hi Pod, I am Dad. He's not just Hi Dad, he's my dad. James Gutman, just hi dad, he's my dad. James gutman folks, james gutman, hi pod, I'm dad. Welcome back to another edition of the podcast. Thank you for joining me on hypod, on dadcom, any streaming service, I appreciate it. Hit the bell, hit the subscribe, hit the hit the road jack. Either way, hit something. Thank you so much for for joining me. It's good to be here. I'm in good mood.

James Guttman: 0:44

Um, I've I've had a lot of stuff and I got to tell you Lucas is a big part of that. For those of you guys who are new, lucas is my son. He's nonverbal, just turned 14. He has autism and he is, honest to God, the most unique person I've ever known in my entire life. It's one of the reasons I write about him, one of the reasons I covered this blog. Talk about autism appreciation. Lucas is unlike anyone else and every day I learn something new, whether it's about him and his growth or just me as a person and understanding. He has a way of really showing you things about yourself.

James Guttman: 1:19

I've said since he was little that having Lucas taught me that you don't say hello to someone just to get a hello back. You don't do something for someone just to get a pat on the back or appreciation. And I used to say that when he was little, almost kind of like a I don't know, just reinforcing the good to myself. You know, hey, you're doing this for the good of it. He might not say thank you, he might not show appreciation, he might not seem to miss you and you're not around, all these things that I would tell myself. And now, as he's gotten older luckily for a lot of it, it's not true anymore I get to see appreciation. I've gotten to learn who he is and help him with his receptive language, help him to understand the world around him, help him to express gratitude and love. And it's really been amazing and it's been wonderful in that respect, raising a boy like him.

James Guttman: 2:09

You know, when your son's nonverbal, you can't really verify a lot of stuff. I can't be like you appreciate this, right? No, I couldn't do that, so it started out with little things. I would go up to him Lucas, say thank you, say, say thank you. And he would walk up to people. I swear to God, I would say Lucas, say thank you to this person. They would look at me because they know he didn't speak. He would look at me like what am I supposed to do? And I would just look at him. I go say thank you, say thank you no-transcript of little things in terms of his uh, language and his, you know, use of hands, and that I really haven't done by the book.

James Guttman: 3:03

So if you're one of those parents who don't feel bad, I know, as parents, I worried about that I said I don't, this kid doesn't know sign language. You know it's kind of like this I don't know this, this dialect. I come from. You know my family's half Italian. So one of the things when you're Italian that you learn very young is that a lot of the words that you say are not really the Italian words for it, it's from somewhere else or whatever, and they're like oh, it's just our Italian, it's how we do it. Well, it's the same thing with Lucas. He's got these little Italian hands where sometimes, you know, touching his mouth means like give me food. It also means like yes, I don't even know Half the time we're just kind of doing stuff, but we get it. You know, teaching your kid to communicate, it doesn't matter if you do everything by a book or whatever, but Lucas has learned to express thanks and gratitude and love and things like that and I've watched him grow in that respect, physically, right.

James Guttman: 3:53

I want to tell you guys right now you talk about Hi World I'm Dad, the book coming out in June, my new book. For those who don't know High World I'm Dad, how Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance to Appreciation Pre-order it today. But one of the things about the book that you guys have to know is I only wrote this book over the course of the last year, right, so it's not like an outdated book from 100 years ago. And in the book I talk about how we used to call him or at the time did call him the round mound of sound. That was my little. We'd always say it to Lucas. He would come over and he would just be making noise. He'd be like you're the round mound of sound and I'd tickle him and he'd laugh. It was this cute little term of endearment. And Lucas is not, I repeat, not the round mound of sound anymore. Lucas is a stretched out. Stretched Cunningham kind of. Blows my mind.

James Guttman: 4:41

So I found these two pictures. I found one from March 27th. Blows my mind. So I found these two pictures I found, one from March 27th 2021, and one from March 27th 2025. And it is a completely different human being, completely different. One is just this little blob of baby and the other one is this little man in my house. And what's crazy is that in my head I still I want to say I still see the little round baby version of Lucas. Right, but I do and I don't Like. I think in my head, I remember it, but it's not until I see it that it feels like it was 100 years ago. I'm like that's my kid and he's grown so much in that respect and with all of those things being true, it only serves that Lucas also grows in his understanding in terms of the things he can do, and that's what we've been working on.

James Guttman: 5:25

Lucas has been, you know, working on life skills, whether it's using a fork a lot better than he has, or taking bites of things in an appropriate way, things that he always could do. But it was just easier to cut up his piece of pieces. You know, you cut up the little slices into squares. He would pick them up. A little bit of a mess. You wipe off his hands, you move on. I started giving him forks. Now he's been using the fork to do it. I finally just gave him a regular slice. I showed him. I said pick it up, take a bite.

James Guttman: 5:54

And these are things that are really hard to explain to somebody because they go. You don't let your kid just pick up a piece of pizza and bite it. No, I don't do that because for the longest time he would, I swear to God, fit the entire thing into his mouth. It was insane. And when you have a kid who does that, when you have a kid who will take an entire slice of pizza and shove it into his face, you can't even stop them. And when I say can't stop him, I don't mean that I physically couldn't pull it out of his hand or anything. I mean you're in such shock, almost like watching like Ripley's Believe it or Not when they start to do this crazy trick. And you're just glued, I'm just staring at him like is he going to get it? And then, once it gets in, I'm like I might as well save his life now. So come here and you reach it in, you're grabbing it out, so you worry about that. Then at a certain point you start to realize you know what. This is easy. I'm going to cut up the chicken fingers. But then you see this picture of this boy who is like a little young man and maybe you can do it. And downstairs, even just now, I was giving him pizza and we were doing the thing with the fork, and then I'd pick up the pieces and he was just doing it. So take a bite. They were the smallest bites in the world, but he was doing it. Everything like that, a lot of things that I used to kind of let go Like.

James Guttman: 7:04

Lucas has a habit of speed washing his hands and I would always frustratedly come over and just do it for him. What he does is he presses the soap. Sometimes he doesn't even have his hand there to catch it, he just presses it. It lands on the sink. He turns on the water. He karate, chops the water with a slow, underhanded, like hi-yah right through the water and then just walks away. And I go dude, what are you doing? I go step by step, step by step. So today I had him do all of it, step by, like the real thing. I said no, no, no, put your hand back. And I corrected the things and again you're going to hear this and it sounds like I'm this lackadaisical, don't care kind of dad, but I think a lot of parents in my position you get into a routine, right. There's things that he's doing. There's things that I've taught him to do that he's been doing really well maturing and being patient and knowing how to get your attention in an appropriate way.

James Guttman: 7:54

There was a time where Lucas would come over and take you by the chin with one finger and turn your face towards him to get your attention, and it was completely inappropriate. Shouldn't do it. Adorable, I would laugh every time. So we kind of let it go for a while. So you teach him how to do that. I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about driving with him in the car and when he needs me to do something with his iPad, I'm not worried he's going to grab my hand while I'm driving.

James Guttman: 8:19

There was a time where I would have so things like that you work on, but because of that you let things go. You know you don't want to wash your hands completely by yourself. I'll come over, I'll help you out. You know you don't know how to do it. I got it. He knows man. It's a giant little man. He knows, and I think that's the thing and I think it's the same for for all kids.

James Guttman: 8:38

Dude, like my daughter. I talked about my daughter. My daughter is going to be 17 years old. It's crazy 17. That was my baby. Baby, that was my best friend, my little kid. And they grow up and they get bigger. There was a time where all of her friends were these little baby girls in school. She came home from school, I remember when she was in kindergarten and told me about them. I have this one friend. She's crazy. We call her Crazy Kimmy. Crazy Kimmy does crazy stuff. Crazy, crazy Kimmy does crazy stuff. Crazy Kimmy is like a lady now.

James Guttman: 9:06

I saw the kids the other day. I'm like, oh my God, they're people, they're like grownups and sometimes you're not ready for that transition. And the same thing, I think, with my son. I see it. I see it in Christian, my girlfriend Lauren. Her son, luke, is his best friend. I've watched them grow up together. So you kind of see it a little bit. But it's almost delayed because Lucas is still my baby. Lucas will come over and sit on my lap.

James Guttman: 9:29

Lucas weighs more than me. Straight up weighs more than me. Lucas wears, in some cases, clothes that are bigger than my clothes. I can't even give him hand-me-downs of some things because he's bigger than me. As he's gotten a little taller, it stretched out a little bit and we could share a little bit more.

James Guttman: 9:45

For a while it was really rough when he was that little round mound of sound. Nothing fit over him. We were like you know getting kayak covers. But yeah, man, they get, they get big. All kids get big and you have to recognize it. You have to know how to proceed with that.

James Guttman: 10:01

You know, if I never taught my daughter how to drive, if I was just like no, you're a baby, you don't drive, s course I can't do that because she would be like, no, I'm driving, I'm gonna be this age. Lucas can't do that. If I wanted to, I could keep him a baby forever and you can't do nothing. We just. We just lock the doors, seal the windows, I will feed him pirate booty and mac and cheese, you know, and that's it. We'll just be happy, I'll wash his hands forever, but I can't do it, man. I can't do it because I'm not going to be around forever. That's the truth. We're all going to go. I'm going to go. I almost went in 2012.

James Guttman: 10:37

Had a heart attack, had a quintuple bypass, thought I was going to die, and because of that I think about that. Not constantly, but I think about it. I'm aware of it. I'm aware that there's someone on this earth who needs me in every way. I mean, people need me and we need each other. But, honestly, like Lucas is somebody who needs me, and if I can't be there for him one day, I have to show him how to do as many things on his own as I can.

James Guttman: 11:04

And as he gets older, I have to remember he's getting older, I have to remember that he's a man. Things he doesn't do he has to learn how to do. He has to wash his hands. He has to be able to you know use utensils. He has to clear the table. He has to do real grown-up stuff wash dishes, do laundry all the things he has to eventually do.

James Guttman: 11:20

There's things he can't do as well. He can't lash out at somebody he can't like. You know, when he was five, if he swatted somebody, they go oh, it's okay, don't worry If he swats at somebody. Now, dude, this is the age that they worry you. When you're young they say watch it, one day he's going to be too big, he can't grab people's food, he can't hit people, I know, and that's where we're at now and that's something as a parent I have to work on, because I'm not always going to be there, and never in my life has that ever been more of a real statement than as it applies to Lucas. One day I won't be there, will he know what to do? I'm going to do everything I can now to hopefully make sure he's as prepared as possible for the day that I'm not here anymore, and I owe him that.

James Guttman: 12:06

Is it easy? No, it's not easy at all. I spent a lot of the blog and stuff talking about. Is it easy? No, it's not easy at all. I spent a lot of the blog and stuff talking about, like autism appreciation. Oh, it's so much. You know it's great and it is, and all the things that are great about it are great.

James Guttman: 12:15

But when it comes to really the concern about, like, what's going to happen to my kid one day, or what do I have to build now to make sure he doesn't suffer, then that's major and that's unique to a situation like this. So it's my job, it's my responsibility and I'll do everything I can to make sure he grows up, and I'll tell you this, though he's done a great job so far, and that's the thing that gives me solace. Again, I wrote about that in a blog a few weeks ago too. I'm concerned and I worry and I think about the future. What's he going to have? What can he do? What's it going to look like when he's 30? How's that going to work? But then I remember what I worried about him being like at 14, when he was three or four years old, and I see the progress that he's made in areas that we worked on, in areas on his own, his understanding, all that stuff, and it makes me feel better. So, yeah, we're in good shape. Hopefully you are too.

James Guttman: 13:08

If this is a pep talk, I don't know. Maybe you're going through it, maybe you're thinking too. All I can say is what I said before it's been a good week. He's been doing fantastic, he's on an upswing at school, everything's been really happy and it's been an honor man sharing it with you guys talking about it. Parts, too, is that the book is coming out now, during one of his real growth spurts, his rebirth, his physically changing emotion. Everything about him is just becoming a little man, and we're on a good spike.

James Guttman: 13:43

You go through these ebbs and flows, but there were times when we weren't. There were times I worried about him. We transitioned to his new school. He was going through transition issues for a while and during those days I remember not being like this, not being like yeah, it's great, but being able to come onto the blog and write about what we were going through. I wrote about him, you know, having meltdowns at pickup and not wanting to go home, things like that. I wrote about the tough stuff and because of that, you guys, the blog, this podcast, they all got me through it and that's why I'm so happy and lucky to be able to share our story now, during a time where I'm just so, I'm over the moon and I appreciate you guys being there to help me out through this.

James Guttman: 14:22

So, thank you. Please. Do me a favor, go pre-order the book man. Do me a favor, go pre-order the book man. It's on Amazon, it's on Barnes Noble, it's on I think it's on most places High World on Dad. It comes out. It's going to be in stores, online, everywhere, june 19th 619. I think at Rey Mysterio. Can't get away from it. Can't get away from wrestling. That's how that goes. Do me a favor. Every week I just said it I'll go to the high pot on dadcom every Friday. I'm back here with the podcast. And follow me on social media H I, james Gutman. Hi, james Gutman. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. Hi, blog I'm. Dad is on Facebook as well. We're everywhere, so please follow. Thank you Like. Subscribe, pre-order the book. Do all the good stuff and join me back here again next Friday. Until then, james Gubbins saying be well, bye pot, I'm done, I'll see you next time.