Hi pod, it's James Guttman. Guys, welcome back to another edition of the show. It's Friday. It's the Friday after Christmas. Which means that everything Christmas wise is outdated. Every time you see the tree, you think to yourself, I gotta take that thing down soon. And uh you're probably confused. What day is it? Why am I eating all these uh cookies and pieces of cheese? Well, it's the holidays, so enjoy yourself. Guys, thank you for taking the time to check this out. Whether you found me in any streaming service, you know the drill, iHeartRadio, Audible, Amazon Podcast. Is that a thing? Apple Podcasts, I meant to say. Wherever podcasts are casted, you'll find this podcast. So thank you. Uh HighpodomDad.com has all of our archives. You're fantastic. Yeah, man. How are you guys feeling? Did you have a good holiday? I wrote about the holidays with my son Lucas uh this past week. It was one of those topics that was there in my head. And if you had a chance to check it out, the feedback has been great, and I appreciate it from you guys. It's all about altering how we see things, right? It's all about seeing the truth in what we do. And one of the things that I've tried to do in my life is um reframe what I'm doing, right? So a lot of us, we look at the holidays and we think of what are our kids not doing? Lucas doesn't open presents, Lucas doesn't sit on Santa's lap, Lucas doesn't care about Elf on a shelf. And it's easy to turn around and be like, how sad. He's not doing any of the Christmas stuff. Meanwhile, all of that Christmas stuff are things that we create, things that people complain about, materialism and gifts and presents. It's about the spirit of the holidays. And there's nobody who represents the spirit of the holidays more than my son. Uh Lucas loves to be around us. He loves to have a good meal, he loves to just have fun with the family. And I've noticed it even on Christmas and on these holidays where he'll come downstairs, we'll be watching a Christmas movie, and he'll just lay on the couch, kind of hang out with us. He doesn't want to go anywhere. He knows it's a special day. So I try to make it a special day for him. Take one day where we don't, you know, criticize him all day. Like if there's food out and about, we're conscious of the fact that he's going to be tempted by it. I try to keep it out of his out of his eyesight so that he doesn't have to constantly be reprimanded. Like, stop it, Lucas. Don't do that. Don't get me wrong. He has to learn. But maybe, maybe one day we take a break from life lessons for this kid and just kind of let him be a kid and let him enjoy himself. So that's what I wrote about. If you got a chance to check it out, I appreciate it. Hiblog on Dad.com. It has all the blogs and all the things that I post about. Now, today I wanted to talk about something a little different. Um, I want to talk about a topic. I haven't talked about it before. It's important to know, it's important to explain, and I think there's a lot of parents in this situation right now that I was in and I kind of found my way out of. Now, here's the idea. For my son, right? Completely nonverbal. He uses a device, um, ProloQo, people have asked what the app is on his communication device. It's called Proloquo. It's a little owl. If you were to buy it on your own, it costs $300 because of course it would, how terrible. But we got it through the school, through the system, and he loves it. It's great. He can ask for pirate booty, he can ask for pizza, he can ask for sandwiches in quesadillas. That's pretty much what he uses it for. It's like his menu. It's like his digital menu. We've tried, we've given him the option, and he's he's learned through the years to ask for other things too. He can ask for the bathroom, he can ask for help, uh, all that through the device, but it's not always the easiest way to go. First of all, he hasn't carried around with him all the time. He doesn't. It's not, I don't want to say it's not realistic, but it's an expectation that as a parent, I can't do that, man. And I'm telling you straight up right now. And if you're listening to this and you have young kids and you have people coming to your house telling you the things that you need to do, I know what you're thinking. There are many times where you're told to do things that are great. They sound fantastic on paper, but you're not gonna do them. Like, oh, he should always have his device on him. It's like, lady, do you know how many things I carry around to get this kid out of the house? Do you know how hard it is to get him to wear a device around his neck just for a car ride? He's holding an iPad, we have drinks and pirate booty. So it's not always easy to have it on hand. Not to say we don't bring it. So we'll bring it, it'll be in a bag, but for the most part, it's not just readily accessible. And a lot of times with him, the things that he needs are like right now, right now. So if the iPad is out, if the device is out and he wants a food or if he wants something, eventually I'll be like, ah, Lucas, come here, just show me. And he puts his iPad down, he goes over to it, swipes through it, and takes a few minutes, but he we get to what we have to get to. So I get it. And through the years I've had that happen where they have suggested things to me that I'm like, he's not gonna do this, or it's not helpful. Case in point, social stories. Now, if you have a kid like mine, you know what a social story is, right? It's a comic, essentially. Like it's it's one um what's it called? One box, one box comic. Just pretty much a little guy, a little stick guy, and it shows him going about his business, right? So we have to go to the store. So now you show your kid a social story, and there's the little stick guy, and there he is washing up, and there he is getting in a car, and there he is at the store. And for a lot of kids, they see this. Oh, okay. I get up, I go, I go to the store. My kid does not care about social stories, like at all. And I've never really been able to figure it out because he is obsessive about videos and YouTube videos, but they have to be the videos and YouTube videos that he loves. He doesn't look at pictures on my phone. He will to appease me. Uh, even with social stories, we would show it to him, be like, Lucas, we have to go out. Look, this is what we're gonna do. And he'll just tap it. Like, all right. The closest I've come to seeing him use this type of idea behind what he has to do is if we're gonna go see somebody, right? Like if we're gonna go see his sister to pick her up, I will show him a picture of his sister. I go, we're gonna see Olivia. You want to go see Olivia? And then he knows what we're doing, where we're going. If we're going to the pool, I'll show him a picture of a swimming pool. I'm like, we're gonna go to the pool, you're gonna go to the pool, and then he gets it. So that he'll do. But just kind of like we do this and this and this, he doesn't care. He'll just go and do what he has to do. But that was one example of it. Now, with my son having no words, the first thing that people ask about, and the first thing that everyone suggests is what everyone says. Everyone told us ASL, American Sign Language, was the answer. The problem was Lucas couldn't point. He has problems with dexterity with his fingers, he has OT, he's not able to point, he's not able to do certain movements. And a lot of American sign language involves, you know, manipulating your digits and your fingers and pointing and just small differences. Like, oh, two fingers means this, four fingers means this. I can't get this kid to do one finger. And I've tried, I've held his finger even now. He's 14 years old. And there's some reason why he can't do it. So his finger, it always looks like um the snow white witch offering her the apple, you know, and she's like, come here, my dearie. And she's doing like a little like come hither finger. That's what his point looks like is this come hither kind of movement. And everyone said American Sign Language. And here I am thinking to myself, my kid can't speak and I can't teach him words. And now the alternative is to teach him movements and I can't teach him those movements. I'm screwed. And as a parent, especially in that time, I beat myself up about it. I know we all beat ourselves up about it. Because what are we supposed to do? All the alternatives, I can't do it. I mean, you talk about feeling like a failure. I get it. This was at a time period where I'm like, my kid, I'm failing my kid. My kid is not speaking. I've been waiting for him to talk. People are asking me, does he say words yet? And you're fielding that. So now you're like, all right, I'll teach him sign language, and then he can't do that. And you're like, we're done. So for a while it felt like we were doing something wrong. It felt like I was failing left and right. This system that they were suggesting to me as a young parent was something that everybody did. This is the system. This is how it works, this is what I need to do. But it became clear that I couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. And to force this would be akin to finding another huge Mount Everest to try to climb every single day that was not going to happen. So I went from being unable to teach him words and knowing that that was too big of a task to put all of our eggs in that basket for his communication. And now, oh yeah, I'll teach him sign language. But then it became clear that was like just a slightly smaller Mount Everest. This kid's getting OT. This kid can't bend his fingers. What am I supposed to do? So instead of forcing him to fit into the system, we just changed the system. We found what worked for him. And I'll tell you, with my son, that's when the communication really started. Lucas doesn't do American sign language. Lucas doesn't even do gestures the way you would expect. He does our gestures. Now I made sure, right, right from the beginning, to teach him things that they might not be out of a textbook. Not everybody might know exactly what he wants right away, but they have an idea of it. For example, no, no, no. That's our big thing. To this day, now we all do no no-no in our house the way Lucas does it. I try to teach Lucas early on, take one finger, and I would put my hand up, one finger, and just wag it back and forth. Just straight up, hold it up, wag it back and forth. Lucas can't do that. Lucas can't extend his finger, and if he could, he can't wag it at all, right? And I saw that. I noted it early on. To this day, it still exists. So what he does is he puts two fingers together, like a chef's kiss, and he waves his hand back and forth. Now, if you see it, it might not be immediately clear, but you figure it out. Like you go, Lucas, do you want something? And back and forth. Sometimes he doesn't even do the finger, sometimes just his hand back and forth, like nah, like that, which is fantastic because most people get that. That's a movement he can make, and that's a movement that we do. And it's a movement that's understood by most people. Now, again, it's not American Sign Language, it's not a deeper form of communication. No, no, no is maybe not, you know, the deepest phrasing to teach him, but it's something that he wouldn't be able to do any other way. He can't shake his head no. I mean, he can, but he doesn't. I don't know why. If you try to get him to nod, he kind of bounces up and down. There's a lot of issues that he has with isolating different parts of his body. Why? I don't know. I'm a dad, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not here to figure it out. Well, what's work on those? You know what? The only thing I have to work on is making sure that my son is understood. And that's what I taught him. So a lot of these things, whether it's the wagging back and forth with his fingers, and like I said before, we do it to this day. Like if Olivia needs something, but you need something, she'll do that across the room. Um, but it's also embracing the things that he can do. Just because he can't do certain things with his fingers, whatever, I'm aware of what his capabilities are, and because of that, I'm able to teach him the things that he can do. For example, more. If you have a nonverbal kid, you know more. More is two fists together. That's what it is. You look like uh like a pro wrestler in the 1980s, like Hulk Hogan must pose. That is that's how Lucas asked for more. He goes, You want more? And he does it. He does a little two fists together that he can do. He can ball up his fist, he can bang them together. Now, if he had to bang two fingers together, if he had to like swirl around, he can't do that stuff. I get it. But I'm aware of what that is. So the things that are possible, we do, and the things that aren't possible, we alter, we make it work for us. Um, there have been so many changes that we've made to how we handle Lucas' form of communication. And the reason why is because Lucas, like all of us, is an evolving person. He's growing, he's learning, he's changing. Does that mean he's gonna have words one day? I don't know, maybe. Hopefully. At this point, even if he developed words right now, do I ever think it'll be his main form of communication? Probably not. Do I feel like he's understood in our house? Absolutely. Absolutely. So my take to you is this because if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, okay, well, now I have to do this. You don't have to do anything. You have to make sure that your kid can be understood by you. And your kid knows that they're understood by you. That's it. That's all I needed to do with him. Because I'll tell you this in the very beginning, when the sign language thing came out and I felt like a failure and I couldn't do it, my concern was I am gonna screw this up. I'm gonna teach him all weird stuff. No one's gonna get it. I'm doing it wrong, you know, and that's it. And I think a lot of that early parenting is the fear of am I doing this wrong? Absolutely, are you doing it wrong? Because it's you're already in a place where you're wondering what happened, right? Like, I'm wondering, why is my kid not talking? Why is his first words not happened? Why are these people still asking me, why is this freaking kid over here telling me a knock-knock joke? And he's a you're younger than my kid. Well, I don't want to kick this four-year-old up here. You don't want to do that, right? You can't kick other people's kids. So you're getting all that frustration and you're dealing with it, and you're like, oh my God, oh my god, oh my God. That when you finally make the decision of I have to do something that works for us, the fear is I'm gonna mess that up because maybe I messed something up already. You haven't messed anything up. Your number one priority should always be your kid. And long term, look, don't get me wrong, long term, you have to find things that help your kid communicate with the world. Got it. Short term, your kid has to feel safe. Your kid has to feel like they're understood, and your kid has to feel like they can communicate their wants to you. And once you're able to do that, you could build on that and you can teach that and you make them teachable and you show them ways to do it. So I'll tell them at school, I'll explain to them. This is no, no, no, this is yes, this is how he asks for more. So they have an idea of it and they can see it and they can understand it. But if you teach your kid anything, you're not gonna mess them up. I'll give you an example of why, why I think I thought that, why it was silly. And again, if you're listening to this and you have a nonverbal child in your life, you know this fear I'm about to tell you about. And this is a blog post that I wrote years ago that has stuck with me. Every once in a while, I'll write something that, like years later, I still think about it. Because it's a big deal. It really is. And it was uh, for me, a turning point. And it's it's a blog post I don't even think people remember or really like register, but those are sometimes the most powerful ones for me personally. I wrote a blog post about him getting his device, and I wish I could remember the name of it, doing what's best for your child, I think is what it was called. This is like 2019, 2020. And I had explained that when he was first offered a communication device, my initial thought was no. Because just like this thing with the American Sign Language and doing our own gesture-based communication, here was my fear. My fear was if we give this kid a device, he's never gonna talk. He's just gonna always punch buttons on the device. Why would he want to talk? In hindsight, it sounds ridiculous. Because if a kid has the capabilities to talk and you give him a device, they're not gonna be like, oh, I'm never gonna talk. No, you give them a device because for whatever reason, at the time he wasn't doing it. Whether he wasn't able to or didn't want to, all that mattered was in that moment no one understood what he wanted. And he knew that no one understood what he wanted. He was locked away. He was the one who maybe had things he wanted to say or ask for. And that device was his key to getting it. And my initial thought was to say no out of that fear. But I gave in. And when I wrote this blog post years ago, the point of view that I gave on it was how sometimes you have to kind of give up as a parent and just be like, you know what? This is what's best for my kid. He needs to have this. And my fears and my worries and my concerns, for whatever they are. For me, the concern was that he was never going to talk because of it, but other people have concerns and never beat yourself up over what those concerns are, right? They might not be the same as mine, but they're your own. There's some people who are embarrassed by it. I mean, you hear that, it gives a visceral reaction. I don't love thinking about that, but I'm aware of it. We're all different people. Some people are embarrassed by the idea of it. And it takes a lot for them to get past that. And for that, you have to applaud them. You can't condemn someone for what their internal monologue tells them, but you can applaud them for getting past it, whatever it might be. So you have to get past that. And you give your kid the communication device, you allow them to speak, you allow them to have their own voice. And I will tell you this, and this was a separate blog post, again, something that stuck with me through the years. And this one I actually even remember the name of. It was called I Knew the Pizza Was His Favorite. And it was because for years, this kid, this is like, I mean, this is one of my favorite parts of writing these things because this was a major moment. For years, we just gave him food. You know, it was dinner time. Here's what you got chicken nuggets, here's what you got, raviology. Like whatever we had, just went to him, he ate it, he dealt with it. The second he had a device and he was able to ask for the foods that he wanted, we learned what he liked. He likes pizza. He would ask for pizza. And I remember the first time he asked for it, and then I gave it to him, and seeing it on his face that he got what he wanted. That was major. And I think, like, you know, we we I stay away from the the pity party parenting blogging stuff. I hate it, I don't like to do it, I don't record meltdowns. You guys know my whole deal with that. But I felt so sad in that moment for what could have been if he never had that device. This was a kid. And as we all know, we all have you know, if you have kids, we don't all have kids, but if we have kids, I have a neurotypical daughter three years older than him. Kids want what they want. Kids want certain candies, certain food, certain things, certain shows, certain toys. And they ask you all the time, kids can be annoying. You know, can we go to McDonald's? Can we go to McDonald's? Can we go to McDonald's? Lucas never did that. So for the first seven years of his life, however long it was, he just kind of got what he got. But in his head, there were things that he wanted. He's a kid, he wants pizza, wants french fries, he wants whatever. And for the first time, he was now able to ask for it. And seeing the joy on his face, seeing now how he knows to ask for what he wants. And there's ways to do it too. And as time goes on and you evolve, you know, we talk about these gestures and the device or whatnot. Like there's other ways we do it. He'll lead me by the hand, he pushes things away. He's able to tell me what he wants. And I will say this since the device and since the gestures and things like that, it's almost given him more confidence to be able to tell me what he wants in any way that he can, in a way where He knows that I understand it. I never laugh it off, move on, and that's that's so important. It's all about putting yourself in the shoes of someone else. And for my son with no words, it's not always easy. Because there's a lot of about this kid's world that is not my world, you know, and there's a lot about what he does and how he goes about things. To be able to project myself into him and see it through his eyes is not the easiest thing in the world. But it is so important because it guides what I do as his dad, it guides where we go in the future, and it guides how I help him interact. So you don't do anything wrong by teaching them in the way that they learn. The whole point is to give him communication, and whether those are official sign language things or whether it's just gestures that we get and other people will get, it's so important. And I'm so grateful that I did it that way. So if you're listening to this and you're going through it, don't sweat it. It's not as uh it's not as concrete. Like a lot of a lot of those things early on, man, when you have a kid on the spectrum, there's there's letters and abbreviations. Did you get the the CSE meeting for the ADL and the PPP? It's like, what are you talking about? And you feel overwhelmed and you feel like you have to follow things a certain way. You don't have to follow anything. You just have to make sure your kid is understood by, in the very least, you. And I guarantee this, right? I'm telling you, and I don't offer a lot of guarantees, and I don't do a lot of catch all nets and things like that. Especially if you have a kid who's acting out or who you feel like is melting down a lot or having tantrums. Have them fully know that they're being understood by you, and you will see a drop in that. I promise you. It happened to us. Like for a while. Lucas was never, you know, this big fussy kid, but he did have little meltdowns. He would get fussy. And it became clear to me once we started this communication with gestures and things like that, he's kind of stopped doing it. Once he realized that I got him, you know, even now he'll ask for a cookie. I'll be like, go downstairs, I'll give you a cookie soon. And I do all my pantomime and my hands, and after you get a cookie, do all the gestures that we do. I mean, again, my gestures are like after is like a rainbow motion. It's like it's all over the place. But he gets it. And he'll walk away and he'll whine a little bit and he'll leave. But there was a time where he would throw himself on the floor, run into me. Like, doesn't do any of that. Because he knows that I've got him. He knows that I'm listening, he knows that he's being understood, and he knows that the things that he wants are coming. It's all about patience. So good luck to you, man. If you guys are listening to this, that's what you do. If you are a parent and you are teaching your kid this, keep going. Whatever works for you works for you. If you're a grandparent, if you're a relative and you have someone in your life who has autism or somebody, do it too, man. You could totally do it. If you want them to do something with you, eat a cookie, like there's certain movements like putting your hand to your mouth, like it's just kind of understood. That's eating, things like that. So work on it. And you know what? Ask. Ask. If the parents are there, say, how can I show him that I want to give him this? How can I show him that this is good to eat? And they'll show you some of the things that they do. It's all about communicating. And it's all about opening that door instead of just sitting there and being like, Why can't he do it the way I do it? I don't know. Why can't you do it the way they do it? That's it. That's a good line to end on, right? It's good. Realize all right, good. So we're gonna end on that, guys. I appreciate you being here again. Follow me on social media, H-I-James Gutman. Hi. Hi, James Gutman. I'm on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. You name it threads. I'm on threads. I don't really use threads, but I'm on there. I'm a blue sky, I think. Yeah, if it's if it's some sort of worked social media thing, I'm on it. Uh so follow me everywhere. I appreciate it. I am uh I'm interactive. I love hearing from you guys. I love the feedback. Go to highblogomdad.com. And also if you're looking to book a speaker, I am now pushing it. 2026 is coming up. I got some things booked. I'm excited. I got the speaking page on there. A lot of these turn into talks that we can do live and I can talk to PCAs or groups or whatever. And I love, I don't know, I love being able to do that. I love being able to see the faces of the people I'm speaking to. So thank you. Uh tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell anybody who listen, and go to highblog I'm dad.com every Monday, every Wednesday, back here next Friday. Until then, this is James Gutman saying, be well. I'm daddy, I'm gonna go to the body.