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 pot, I'm dad. Welcome back to another edition of the podcast. Happy friday, it's friday. Happy june, it is june. Uh, thank you for joining us here on hypod. I'm dadcom. On any of the streaming services. I appreciate it, thank you. Maybe you found me through high blog I'm dadcom.

James Guttman: 0:47

Every Monday, every Wednesday, new blogs writing about parenting, writing about my children, writing about my son who is nonverbal. He has autism. He's 14 years old and I write about something called autism appreciation, if you haven't heard about it. That's the whole point of everything that I write about, and that's the whole point of everything that I write about and that's the whole point of the book coming out, all these different things happening and, yeah, in as of today, in less than two weeks, high World I'm Dad how Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance, to Appreciation is going to be available everywhere, globally, worldwide, taking over the world in every form that there is. I guess, for a book, you can get it as a regular book that you hold in your hand paper book, digital book, you can get it as an audio book where I do the full narration. I went to the studio, I stood there, I read it out loud in one of the most surreal kind of days of my life, or two days of my life just going out there and reading it and telling my stories and I don't know I got to do my voices. It was fun, it was interesting to get to share that and I'm so excited for the opportunity to tell you guys some of these stories and some of the things that are in there and explain my journey and how I came to really just see my son differently. And in many ways you know I talk about that, but I also see the world differently and that's something that's occurred over the course of you know, the last at this point, like 13 years, as you guys know right.

James Guttman: 2:13

So my story is unique. My son had just gotten diagnosed. My son was facing delays. He was less than two years old. I had his older sister who was just about three years older than him. So one of the things with him was when he started missing milestones. I knew what those milestones were supposed to be because I just saw them. And my daughter, I mean, she was, like you know, a speed demon, like she blew past these milestones.

James Guttman: 2:41

And the funny thing is, when you have a kid who's hitting all these developmental moments ahead of time, you know you take the credit for it. People turn to you and they go is she talking? You're like yeah. They're like whoa, good job, dad. And you're like thank you, I did that. Like you feel it, you feel proud. So then when you have a kid who doesn't do that, that becomes something that you take 100% on yourself.

James Guttman: 3:07

How could I sit there three years earlier and let everybody congratulate me for my daughter's progress and then not feel as though I'm to blame for my son's lack of progress and the frustration that comes with this? And I want people to understand this, because this is what was really crazy. People would then come to me as if I had done something wrong to not teach him correctly, or if I raised him wrong, or there was some sort of environmental issue that I wasn't catching, and it's like dude, I did everything. The exact same way with his older sister, who at this point now, she's on 99 average in school. She's on honor roll, she's neurotypical. I used joke that lucas was non-verbal and she was like non-stop verbal ha ha ha. She loved that joke. But really, like my daughter, to all these people who in this world, some people are judgmental of people like my son not really judgmental, but they they have an opinion that's based on you know nothing firsthand, based off of movies, based off of stories, based on observations from across a target, of someone with special needs who's having a meltdown, and they think, oof, what a rough life. I hate that. But those people who see it that way are the same people who would see my daughter and be like, wow, what a great job, that's the kind of kid you want. But I raised them the same way.

James Guttman: 4:23

Like when it came to Lucas, in many ways I probably even spoke to him more, because Lucas is the perfect sounding board. I just talked to him and he lets me do it and I can talk to him about anything. I can curse to Lucas all the time, like if I talk to him and tell him something, I curse and if he says it right I've said this before too I'll say, like you know, pick a curse, a random curse, and I'll say it out loud and I'll turn to him. I go, can you say that, buddy? I'll repeat the curse. I'm like we're going to have a party. You know, you say damn it, we're going to have a party. But I used to joke with him when he was little. There was always humor involved in how I saw him because he was.

James Guttman: 4:59

He's just so fun and and happy right. There's nothing about my son that feels like suffering on his part at all. He loves his life. These pictures that I share. I'm sitting here right now when I do these podcasts I open up highblogomdadcom right in front of me and I look at it and I have all the pictures in front of me and the headlines. And the picture that I used on Wednesday was adorable and it's a picture that just happened.

James Guttman: 5:23

The blog is called why I still feel the urge to do more for my nonverbal son, right, and the picture was in the backseat of my car and he's looking in the back and he's smiling. And I went to go take a picture of him and he kind of hunched up his shoulders, tilted his head like he does, and his smiles are so natural, like when you see them. None of them are fake. I wrote a blog again years, like maybe a year or two ago, called my nonverbal son can't fake a smile because he can't. He doesn't fake it. It's always if he smiles he wants to smile. I can't go Lucas smile, he won't smile. He'll stare at me. You have to tickle him, you have to get him in a good mood and his smiles are like you feel them through the image, like if you were to look at this picture. Go to highblogondadcom. This isn't a trick. Go and look at why I still feel the urge to do more for my nonverbal son and look at him smiling. That's real, that's 100% real. And sometimes I don't even know what the cause is. You know like there's sometimes you tickle him or he's watching something he likes and he smiles. Sometimes he's just in this mood where he's so happy and it's just like he's just happy to be there, he's happy to be alive, he's happy to be near me, makes me feel special, makes me feel important, changes my life.

James Guttman: 6:37

So when I had my surgery, when I came out of this heart surgery in 2012, it changed who I was. I was a different person. I wanted to be happy and I wanted to really take inventory of my life and figure out what's beneficial and what's not, what's good for me and what's not. Lucas and Olivia were overwhelmingly good for me, right, my daughter, even when my daughter can be kind of a pain, and she does. Man, there's some mornings where I'm like why are you being so surly to me? Like you know what I mean. Like you got like a sneer. I'll be like stop sneering. It's like well, I don't deserve you to sneer at me, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but she's my daughter is like one of the top people I know. She's hardworking, a lot of my personal values she has. She sees the world that I do. She sees the world, especially with Lucas. The same exact way, you know.

James Guttman: 7:31

She's told me before, like people have asked her like when did you accept that your brother had autism? And the question to her is like ridiculous. She's like he has autism, he's fine. I've had people say to her like well, what's going to happen one day if something happens to your parents and you have to take care of him? How are you going to feel? People say this to her and she's like she goes. I don't know. Just do it, because that's what I do. I do the exact same thing. Like look, we could talk about it, we could lament, like about how hard it is and, oh my God, what are we going to do? But it doesn't matter. We love this kid, he's in our family, he's a part of our family, not out of responsibility, not out of anything else, but because he brings us joy.

James Guttman: 8:13

I'll be downstairs in my house, right, I have, we have three floors and I, and the basement on the bottom is where the Xbox is and the couch and all the video games and stuff. So I'll go down there. And it's so far removed from the top floor where the bedrooms are that I have to use the monitor and no one can hear anything, right? So you have to really listen to hear banging, hear people moving around. So he'll be upstairs in his room and I'll have his camera. He has a camera in his room so I can watch him and there's been times where you know he's been up there. She goes up there, I look at the camera and she's just in his room, just sitting in bed with him watching TV, you know, or she's on her phone, but just sitting near him and whenever she does that, it's like I'm like she gets it. Love this kid and she gets it. She's unbelievable. Olivia is top of the list, right?

James Guttman: 8:56

Lucas, same thing, and that was something that, unfortunately, I had to kind of learn after my heart surgery. And when I say learn, I don't mean like over time, like I had to learn, no, but I mean like I didn't. Before my surgery and before everything that happened, I spent all day worrying about him what am I not doing? And I wrote about that. Actually, this week, one of the blogs that I wrote was called again, as I just said, why I still feel the urge to do more for my nonverbal son, and it was based on that feeling back then. When your kid doesn't talk any moment, that you're not teaching him to talk, you think you're failing. I'm not doing what's right, I'm not helping him. So that was a lot to deal with.

James Guttman: 9:36

But when I came out of the surgery, I realized I wanted a world where I understood him. Why is he playing with that toy the way he does, rather than stopping him from playing with the toy the way he wants to? I'm talking like I would always go over. No, lucas, that's not how we play with that. Look, we pick up the phone, hello, hello. He didn't want to do that, he wanted to do it his own way. But watching him do it his own way, whether it's like rolling it under a couch, whether it's watching it in a mirror, and things like that used to worry me. Oh, what am I doing? I'm failing him. But after my surgery I thought about what I needed in my life. I realized I need my kids. I didn't care if he spoke, I didn't care if, you know, whatever he did, I just wanted my kids.

James Guttman: 10:19

I don't love my daughter because she can talk. I love my daughter because I love my daughter. She's a great person. As I said before, we share so many of the same values and those are the reasons I love my son. My son doesn't talk, right, but my son shares my values. I wrote a blog about that as well. Some of these I wrote a blog about.

James Guttman: 10:40

But it's true, like Lucas, lucas loves life in a way that I envy and try to follow. I mean again, autism appreciation. If you were to go back through the years of this blog, it didn't start off with autism appreciation. That wasn't even a term. It was like for me it wasn't a term that I thought of until years later, as time went on, but I had always kind of talked about it early on in the sense of alluding to it, I would say that more people should be like Lucas. I wish the world could be like Lucas.

James Guttman: 11:11

I would talk about how I envy him, which I do. I envy the fact that he doesn't worry about anything. I envy the fact that he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him. Like, if he's excited about something and we are somewhere in public and he's happy, he will jump, he will clap and he will cheer for whatever it is. If it's his video on his iPad, if it's just something that came about, he doesn't care who's watching. People can look at him and they can laugh at him and he won't care. He'll jump and he'll laugh. I'll care, I'll beat you up, but that's what I'm saying. Like he is everything's tuned out. He's exactly what. Like we say, we want our kids to be like. I want a kid who's kind. I want a kid who doesn't bully. I want a kid who's accepting and loving of everyone. And I got that.

James Guttman: 11:59

Your kid doesn't talk, all right, it's kind of overrated. We communicate in our own way, we use gestures and his communication device. Is it easy? No, is it something we had to learn over the years? Yes, but at the end of the day, it's not only doable, but you can do it and you can excel. You can have a wonderful relationship with a person like that as long as you care and they care and you put the work in to know who they are. And if you love your kid, you're going to put the work in. Who wouldn't put the work in?

James Guttman: 12:30

So, yeah, lucas and Olivia, they were these things in my life that were positive and there were negatives in my life and there were things that had to change and things changed and things evolved. And in many ways, people hear that about having heart surgery and they think, oh, he must've come out of the hospital and immediately changed so much. And don't get me wrong, I came out of the hospital, I changed my diet, I changed my exercise routine, I changed different things like that. But the understanding of positivity, finding the happiness in my life and eliminating things that weren't happy, that was a slow burn for a while and, to be honest with you, it's still happening today.

James Guttman: 13:04

There are still things that you know I've had in my life, you know, even recently, where I'm just like this is not right, this doesn't bring me joy, this doesn't make me happy, this isn't healthy for me, this isn't healthy for my family and we have to make changes to it. And the older I get and the more I see that my decisions benefit me and benefit my children and benefit just my life in general, the more secure I am in what those decisions are moving forward. So if something else comes up and I'm like this isn't right, there would have been a time where I would have had to ask what do you think? Do you think this is right? What's happening? Do you? Let me ask you, let me tell you a story. This happened and that I don't do that In my head. I just go, oh, this is messed up, I'm not doing this anymore and I'm secure enough to go with it and that's, that's been a life I'm Dad.

James Guttman: 13:51

This book that I wrote and then I got a chance to reread out loud so that I could tell you guys about it, really tells that story. I talk about the understanding of who my son was learning about his as they call it disability, and talk about the doubt that I had and the worry and the concerns and the things I went through and balancing two siblings, you know, a daughter who's neurotypical and a son who's, you know, neurodivergent and trying to make sure that I give him everything I can, while not losing the sight of the fact that I owe my daughter my parenthood as well. And I have, and I'm so proud. I got to tell you. I'm not sitting here and telling you that like, oh, you know, olivia and I never have any issues. We agree all the time. She's 17. If you think that's true, you're nuts. You know, especially as a dad, like there's definitely been times where I'm like what did you say? But the one thing I know for sure is that he's not a part of that with her.

James Guttman: 14:55

I've gone out of my way to make sure that their relationship is their relationship right, that she loves him and she cares for him, but she doesn't feel like he's this person that she has to have as an item on her chores. You know she helps him because she wants to help him, but I also make him do it too. Like if she's sitting at the table and she's eating something and she wants to drink and I'm in the kitchen and he's with me, I'll give him the cup or whatever and I go go give that to Olivia. And I got to tell you it takes a lot of just like. Sometimes I point no, go there to Olivia, cause I'm just kind of like, oh, is this for me? No, no, it's not for you. Give her the cup, but I have him to it and she smiles, she says thank you to him. I don't know, man, it's a really in the words of George Bailey you know, really is a wonderful life. So yeah, merry Christmas, movie house on that.

James Guttman: 15:44

But that's what I'm doing every day and this book is about that journey and it's about I talk about the surgery in it. I talk about just stories, talk about music together. Oh, my God, you got to read that part and some stories in there. There's stories in there. I think there are definitely stories that I've never told before, and there's some stories in there that I've alluded to in the blog and I tell more thoroughly. I was just proud of this. This was my life's work and to bring it back to how I got started on all this, but coming out of that surgery and seeing my son differently, coinciding perfectly with no longer wanting to write about what I was writing about and wanting to write about something that I felt made a difference to the world. I mean, it all just came together at the same exact time.

James Guttman: 16:28

And if you don't look at that and think that there's sometimes forces and I'm not talking you don't have to be religious, whatever spiritual there are definitely, I think, in life, moments that are given to people for a reason. I've had friends pass away and I've learned from those deaths. I've talked. You know they hurt and they're painful and things like that happen. But every single person I've lost I've lost more people than I probably should have at my age. I've taken something from them and I've grown from it. Every failed relationship, when people go, I come out of those things as a different person At the end, better for it, happier for it. I know who I am. Jobs and just disappointments Every single thing is a learning experience.

James Guttman: 17:18

As Muhammad Ali said, man, a man who is the same at 20 that he is at 50, has wasted 30 years of his life and I have not done that. People I run into, people now that I knew, you know, 30 years ago, that are like well, you weren't like this then. I know, I know it wasn't like this then. I'm happy. Now I've gotten rid of a lot of fear and a lot of worry, and Lucas is a big part of that, you know, I think if you would ask me when I was younger what I would have feared, I think having a child with severe autism who's nonverbal, would have been a fear, obviously.

James Guttman: 17:53

I think a lot of people are afraid of that. I talk to them nowadays and you hear people talk about it, especially when they hear about my son. I don't know how you do it, oh my God, it seems really dire. But then when you experience it and you see that not only is it not like the worst thing in the world, but you've given this unique relationship with this beautiful soul who sometimes requires a lot more. Don't get me wrong, man. His kid requires a lot more work. I don't downplay the work that goes into raising a child like him, and any parent that you know has a child like my son does go through worry and stress and things that they have to do.

James Guttman: 18:29

But as a human being I don't know anyone else like him and if it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't. I have him living in my house. He's somebody that I'm supposed to take care of. He's not like a friend or an acquaintance. He's here all the time and I can tell you firsthand he is fantastic and I'm lucky to have him, to have his sister, and I don't know, man, I don't know if I would have seen that without the heart surgery. I think I probably would have, but I don't know. So if this heart surgery helped me to see that, then guess what? There's a positive to almost dying of a heart attack. There is positives to everything, as long as you take the lesson from it, and that's what I've tried to do and that's what this book is. This book is about the lessons I've learned.

James Guttman: 19:10

This book is stories that hopefully you can read and if you have somebody in your life who's dealing with this, they can either get inspiration from it or they can relate to certain parts of it. But this book is for everybody, and that's one of the things that I wanted to say from the beginning, because in the title of the book it's High World, I'm Dad, but then it's how Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance, to Appreciation, and there definitely is parts about me being a man and me dealing with being like the primary contact for my son's. You know, special education and things like that. What I dealt with was some of the weird reactions from people, but also, this book is for everybody.

James Guttman: 19:45

This is the kind of book where, if you have a child, like my son, you're going to want to read the book. If you have a child that is at the beginning stages of perhaps maybe being like my son, you're going to want to read this book. If you have a grandchild, if you have, you know, a family member that you want to know a little bit better about, like what you can talk to your family about, this is the book. If you have somebody who's struggling to accept that this is in their life, this is the book to read, because I don't tell you what to do. I don't guide you like step one, do this step? No, it's, it's.

James Guttman: 20:20

Look, this is me. I have a situation that most people would think is dire. I have a child with severe autism. I take care of him in so many ways that, like you know, a lot of the things that we do are things that people stopped doing for their kids years ago, and I do it every day and I still come out of it overwhelmingly happy and proud to have him. So you give it to somebody who's struggling with that and they can see okay, look, this guy might be a little bit of a nut. Maybe I am, I don't know. But if he can do it, there's a possibility I can do it.

James Guttman: 20:50

I want this book to help people and I want you to share it with people who will listen or read it Again Spotify, audible, all the different places you find books it's going to be there. It's on Amazon right now. You could probably get you know digital Kindle books. Whatever it is, man, share it, tell people and let me know right. Go to either. You know you can follow me on social media. I'm everywhere. I'm on TikTok, I'm on Facebook. We're on. We're not on Twitter. I'm not on Twitter anymore. We're on all Instagram, everywhere I am. Hi, james Gutman. H-i James Gutman. Let me know what you think, leave a comment, drop me a line. Go to highblogomdadcom. There's a contact form on there. You can send me a message right through there.

James Guttman: 21:29

I read everything I try to respond to, but even negative things. I respond to it If you have a question or you don't agree with something I've written. I've had people come at me. I had one woman and I love this. When I wrote the Huffington Post article, I had a woman who wrote to me well, what about a sibling? What's his sister going to do, like I said before about Olivia, like what's going to happen when she has to take care of him, and it would seem very pointed, like she was dealing with something. So I wrote back to her and I was like listen, I get what you're saying. I told her, I explained to her what I do and I feel that way, and she wrote back. She was like what a kind and even tempered response to what, I have to admit, was a pretty pointed and somewhat rude message. And then she wrote me a nice rest of the email and that brightened my day. And it brightened my day because one of the things and we'll get to the end here but one of the things that I love the best about being able to do this and why I like being able to respond to people, is I know the mental state that some people are in when dealing with this, because I remember when Lucas was little and he was getting diagnosed, I remember we were putting him into a special needs nursery school.

James Guttman: 22:36

It was an autism friendly nursery school and I remember the haze I was in just all day. Call of Duty I would just play Call of Duty. I don't even like Call of Duty. I would play it because the game went in 10 minutes spurts, so I'd play for 10 minutes, then I would have two minutes to kind of like live my life and like whatever, get a soda, and then I go back to playing the game again every 10 minutes and I was like I didn't have to think of anything. But because of that I was living in this like constant state of like fuzzy haze and I know how I dealt with people. I know the things that would set me off out of nowhere and things that I gotta tell you may have led to the heart attack that, had I not had, I would have just died at 40 because my arteries were clogged. So even that had a silver.

James Guttman: 23:27

Everything has a silver lining. Every single thing that we go through if you learn from it and you look at how it really brings you to where you need to be, is positive. And I've told people this. I say it about my own life and you can say it about your own life too. We get past everything right. You may have been through crazy things in your life. Things feel like insurmountable how I'm going to get past it, but you know what? You're sitting here now and you're listening to a podcast. So obviously you've gotten to a place where you're somewhat over many, many things that you never thought you would get over.

James Guttman: 23:56

I am too, and for that, like just knowing. That is why I don't really stress about a lot. What's the point? I spent my whole life stressing about things that never happened and then a heart attack and a quintuple bypass that weren't even on my radar almost killed me. So what is the point? That's where I'm coming from.

James Guttman: 24:15

So, please, if you read this book, where I'm coming from. So please, if you read this book and you like it and you love it, tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell everybody. You tell the world, johnny, and then you come back and you go drop me a message, let me know. I'd love to hear your stories. I love I don't know. I just love knowing that that my boy can can really do a lot of good for people. I'm looking at him right now. He's smiling at me in this picture and it's fantastic.

James Guttman: 24:38

Go to highblogomdadcom, look at the picture, read the articles, come here every single Friday, hipodomdadcom and any streaming service, listen to the podcast. And June 19th, high World I'm Dad. How fathers can journey from autism awareness to to Appreciation, will be available everywhere Pre-order, pre-save it on Spotify, you know, get it everywhere Audio written, whatever it is. Thank you guys for really just making my life complete. Thank you for accepting my son and thank you for just all you've done reading this blog and just kind of making our lives really complete. It means a lot to me. That does it for me. I'll see you next Friday. Until then, this is James Gutman saying be well, bye-bye, thank you, I'm out.