James Guttman: 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.

James Guttman: 0:30

Hi Pod, I am Dad. He's not just Hi Dad, he's my dad. James Guttman, folks, james Guttman Hi Pod, I'm Dad. Welcome back to the podcast.

James Guttman: 0:46

It is another friday, it is the end of april, it is 2025. Thank you for taking the time to check it out. Whether you found me on hypodomdadcom or any streaming service, it means a lot. Come back, tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell anybody who will listen to you to check out 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 For those of you guys keeping score.

James Guttman: 1:13

Hi World, I'm Dad. How Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance, to Appreciation. That is now just about two months away from coming out in stores everywhere. It is available for pre-order on Amazon. It just hit the other day number one for fatherhood books, for pre-sales, upcoming sales. I'm not really sure how that works, but it was pre-orders. It was number one in fatherhood. It meant a lot to me. I'm very excited. Thank you so much for all of you who checked it out, for all of you who have pre-ordered it. It's really cool, man.

James Guttman: 1:45

I did a lot of stuff with the book this past week things that I'm not sure I can talk about just yet, but I will, and I got to tell you. I got a chance to go back over it and read through it again and I love it. I just I really I'm so proud of the able to contribute a lot more stuff to them going forward, so I'm excited. There'll be more things that I have to write about in terms of Lucas hopefully appearing on there soon, so you can check that out as well. But if you got a chance to check it out, I wrote something this past week that kind of goes a little bit against how I've been doing this blog for a while.

James Guttman: 2:22

I usually never talk about anything political right, and in many ways I feel like I still haven't, because this post that I wrote talked about the idea of curing autism, right, which should not be political. I am a dad. I love my son. I have spent the last eight years writing about autism acceptance and autism appreciation. In fact, for those of you who have been a part of this blog since 2017, you've kind of grown with me, because in the beginning, my son was like seven years old, six years old, crazy. I wrote about him running. I wrote about all these little things that he doesn't do anymore because he's grown up, some of the things he still does, but I've always written about Lucas and one of the things that actually happened from writing this blog which, by the way, the reason why it was political, it was called.

James Guttman: 3:14

Unlike RFK Jr, I Don't Want a Cure for my Son's Autism, and this post was primarily about not wanting a cure. That's it. I think I mentioned it, incidentally, in terms of who said it and how it was said, I don't think this is political. I think this is something that I should be allowed to talk about, something that was actually brought upon me. To be honest with you guys. I'm going to be really we talk about in the vein of honesty and trying to, you know, put everything on the table with you, as I always try to do in these podcasts and on the blogs, and trying to put everything on the table with you, as I always try to do in these podcasts and on the blogs. This came to me not from the Huffington Post, but from the world.

James Guttman: 3:53

Rfk Jr went out there and he's talking about looking for a cure for the epidemic, as he said, of autism, and in it he listed things about people with autism and he talked about how some of these people will never pay taxes and will never care for themselves and just really just a laundry list of things that relate to people with low-functioning autism. And a lot of the responses from people were like how dare he say that? I'm not like that. I have autism, but I can do this and I can do that. And I'm thinking who cares? My son can't. A lot of what he was saying was about my son. So what's the point? He's not a viable member of society. He's something that should be cured. He's something that shouldn't be around. It rubbed me the wrong way, but still not talking about it, I'm not dealing with it, I'm not doing whatever. But I will tell you this.

James Guttman: 4:40

Once that happened and once, all of a sudden, autism started to become this political hot button topic, I started getting the trolls on the site. Now, whether there is bots on Facebook which I mean there's totally bots on Facebook or just terrible people in the world, which there's totally terrible people in the world on Facebook, it doesn't matter. All I know is that this was now an issue that I wanted to respond to, so I'm going to respond to it. Let me tell you this Since putting this post up on Huffington Post and then follow up the next day let me get to this in a second. Before I jump around I got to get a little more organized once in a while. Here's one of the things that made me realize that I've been doing this blog correctly for a long time.

James Guttman: 5:24

Most people who read what I wrote on the Huffington Post assumed that Lucas was high functioning. Yeah, and I had people write to me go, have you ever had to do with worrying if your kid is going to run into traffic or what's going to happen when you're dead because your kid can't bathe himself and can't do all these things? I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, everything you're saying the checklist of low functioning things that people were shouting at me as a gotcha like oh well, you don't know what autism is. Some people with autism, you know they can't even tie their own shoes. Yeah, you know they can't even tie their own shoes. Yeah, I know that's my, that's our deal, that's what we have, like everything.

James Guttman: 6:02

They said that checklist applies to 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's one of the best people I know, many people can't even fathom that there's challenges involved. They think that I'm not understanding autism, all these worst case scenarios that you're shouting back at me. We live them and I still don't want to cure my son and I still love my son and I still write books about autism appreciation and how proud I am of my boy and how I envy the way he is and sees the world. That's what I don't get right. The whole world is applauded for loving their kids unconditionally, for putting their kids above everyone else, but because my son has autism and is nonverbal, I'm supposed to want a different kid. I'm a bad parent for not wanting to quote cure his autism, which I don't think can be cured.

James Guttman: 6:53

That's stuff you say when your kid is two or three years old. You want them to wake up one day 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 our taxes. It's not happening. I want him to learn things. I want him to have programs and services the very things that these people are cutting as they're selling you the magic beans of an autism cure that doesn't exist. Now, look, I'm going to be honest with you Again, not political. I'm really big on just doing my own thing, right, like I don't care what you do.

James Guttman: 7:27

I hear from people all the time. They go on the comment section of some of these things. I heard about it from the Huffington Post article. People came on there. You know I'm sorry, but I would do anything to cure my granddaughter. Okay, I don't know your granddaughter, cool, do it. Like what am I going to tell you? I wouldn't cure my son.

James Guttman: 7:43

At no point In the thing that I wrote did I say that everyone should not want to cure. I'm saying I don't, you're not me, I'm not you. I don't know your kid, I don't know your family. Do you man? I'm not. That's the point. I'm just here to point out a side of autism that for some reason gets lost in the laundry list 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 the bad stuff. Do you know all the good stuff? He has no ego. He's sweet. He hugs you when he wants to. He doesn't deceive, he doesn't mock or he's not cruel. He's not a bully. My son is just a pure person who is so in touch with his feelings and his emotions. When he's sad, he cries. When he's happy, he screams for joy. When he's tired, he lays on the ground. That is one of the most in tune with who they are people I've ever known in my life, and that's my son, and that's why I'm proud of him and that's why I don't want to cure him, and that's it.

James Guttman: 8:45

I don't think there's a cure for what my son has. When he was little man I'm gonna be honest with you when he was two, three and I've written about this I did I made deals with God every birthday. God, please, just let him talk by four. If he talks at four, it'll be okay, please. And every birthday he'd be like oh my God, oh my God. It was harder and harder, until one day he got to an age where I realized, look, if he suddenly started catching up right now, it's still. We're still years behind. It's going to take a lot of work. There's no hit a button and we're done.

James Guttman: 9:17

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 ages as my boy get that, that there's no such thing as a cure for someone who's lived their entire life a certain way. If he woke up tomorrow with somebody else, he's not Lucas anymore. Now, if we discover something tomorrow 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 everything else about it. Dude, you've never heard me talk.

James Guttman: 9:51

I don't talk too much about like vaccines and stuff here on the podcast and on the blog, but like if you don't like vaccines and you're worried about vaccines, go for it, study them, come back with proof and think I am not. I don't work for vaccine companies, I don't care, like whatever, but don't use my kid as a boogeyman to get there. If you already know what the culprit is, why are you doing a task for us Apparently, you know, right. So why don't you handle that and leave my kid out of it? I don't know, it just bothers me. It really does.

James Guttman: 10:25

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 that we have to think we can say who's a quality person, who are we to say what it's like behind the doors of someone else's home? I can't do that right. So all the people who've come onto the blog and go I have a kid with autism and I don't agree 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 tell you the positives and the best points of my son, and I will do it every single week as long as I can.

James Guttman: 11:00

This has been my whole goal from the beginning that I can share this with people, because I feel like no one's talking about this, no one's sharing autism positive 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 you knew him. You would know what I'm saying, you would get it, you would understand, and that's why I'm trying to do here. I'm just trying to get the world 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, I know there's two sides of the story and I can want my son to learn how to speak and to have life skills without having to wish he was a different human being. I'm not doing that, sorry, it's not happening. So thank you. Thank you for checking it out.

James Guttman: 11:50

Thank you for checking out the post this week on HuffPost. I heard from them and did amazing. It was just amazing in terms of being clicked on through Apple's news widget and things like that. I got some pretty insane numbers. Let me say like over a million people heard about autism appreciation this week and that means the world to me. So thank you. So every single Friday, guys come back here. Check out highpodImdad. com. Hi blog I'm dad. Monday, wednesday, I do new blogs autism appreciation, autism positivity. Follow me on social media @Hi James Guttman, h-i James Guttman and, of course, hi World I'm Dad. Check out the book, pre-order it. Thank you for all your support. I really appreciate it. I got some big news about the book too. I'm going to find out when I can tell you Hopefully next week, and I'll let you guys know about it. I teased it on social media Again, , HiJ ames Guttman. Hi, James Guttman, come check it out and I'll tell you about it as soon as I can. And that does it for me.