I used to think that being helpful meant being loud. Like if I could just explain things clearly enough, then maybe I could turn this frustration into understanding. I could help everybody, change the world. But I wasn't helping. What I was really doing was I was trying to rescue myself from the discomfort of not being misunderstood. That was my big issue forever. I feared not being understood. It plays a part in everything I do. It plays a part in my writing. It plays a part in my interactions with people. And it played a part in my parenting. It was something that I had always put on myself because in my head, like all of us, I believe that my ideas and my intent is pure and real and good. And I can help others see the right way to do things. Who wouldn't want to do things in a better way? Who wouldn't want to be a better person? Who wouldn't want to learn and change and evolve and find the light at the end of the tunnel and the rainbow or whatnot, whatever you want to attribute your uh your little slogans to? I had the answers. It made sense to me. But what I didn't realize was that I was trying to solve my way out of my own discomfort. I didn't feel right with what was happening, and my idea was to change others to make that better. Even if I felt it was a positive, it was about me. It had always been about me. Fixing was about me. It wasn't about them. It was about how I felt in that room. I couldn't get it. I couldn't understand it. So many people, and I've I've talked about, you know, whether it's past relationships or friendships or family or people close to me. I was coming from a good place. And I knew how to make it better. And then I met Lucas. Lucas is my son. Today he is 14 years old. He has never said his first word. He has what many call severe autism, profound autism, whatever label you want to put on it. He is one of my favorite people in the entire world. But when he was little, when he was a toddler, a preschooler, I was terrified. Truth be told, hands of God, cards on the table, again, any slogan you want to grab. I needed to fix what I perceived to be wrong with my son. Every minute that I wasn't fixing him was a minute that I was wasting. Every moment that he played with a toy wrong, every stimming noise that he made, every word he didn't say was a strike against me. It was something that I blame myself for, something I beat myself up over, things that kept me up at night, and things that tormented me during the day. I couldn't grasp the idea of allowing my son to live a life where he wasn't the best, in my opinion, that he could be. I learned over time that he was being the best he could be. But at that time, I had no idea. I didn't know who he was. Think back, when we have toddlers, when we have young children, we don't know who that person is. We just know what we think is the best for them. This is how we learn, this is what we do. I've talked so much about that first time that I sat with him and I went into his world and I played with the toys the way he was playing with them. But there were so many times where I didn't. A lot of times I would sit down and try to correct what he was doing. I posted a video recently on my personal social media. Publicly available. You can see it. It wasn't mean, it wasn't, I wasn't yelling at him, I wasn't mad at him, but I was trying to redirect him constantly. Say dad da, say dad, dad, that's not what you say. Say dad da. And he was making the same stimming noises then that he makes now that we laugh about and I tickle him over. But at the time I didn't get it. And I would try to correct him, right? So for this story, this beautiful story about sitting down next to him and playing with this toy telephone car the way he was and seeing the look on his face when he realized that I was, you know, bonding with him. There are so many stories before that where I didn't do that. Times where I went over to him and I went to correct him with that very same toy, Lucas. What are you doing? That's not how we play. Hello, ring ring. That's how you use your phone. What are you doing? And I realized that I wasn't responding to him. He wasn't listening. He wasn't watching. I was rescuing myself from that worry, from that concern, from that belief that as a dad, I had to fix everything. And what I learned was that he didn't need better instructions. He needed me to notice when he had already left the moment. He wasn't listening, he wasn't taking it in, he wasn't learning, he wasn't he wasn't a part of this lesson anymore. So here I was preaching to no one about something that didn't affect anyone but me. I thought I was teaching him how to play, but I was really teaching was that I wasn't even listening. I didn't listen to him, I didn't pay attention to him, I didn't understand him. And I was trying to make him do the same for me. How fair is that? How does that make sense? In the end, trust didn't come from clarity with Lucas. It came from staying. It came from watching. It came from observing him and understanding him and making the attempt instead of showing him the right way to do things, for me to learn the Lucas way of doing things. I said earlier I wanted him to be the best he could be. But there was no way for me to know what the best he could be was if I didn't know who he was. And if every single time he did something differently than I believed he should, and I went over and I tried to show him, this is what we do, buddy. What are you doing? Look at me, what are you doing? I was losing that bond. I was losing that grip. I was losing his attention and I was losing his trust. In the end, the whole breakthrough wasn't words and it wasn't communication. It was connection. It was that story that I told you the first time I sat down with him and I played toys the way he wanted to play them, and he appreciated it. That was the day that he and I kind of became a team. He believed in me and he knew that I believed in him, or at the very least, that I understood him. And I was the one person who wasn't going to try to make him change and make him be different. The second I stopped trying to be right, he started feeling safe with me. I recognized that. And at a time when we had no bond, we had no true, like full understanding of one another, that was a moment that connected us and has kept us connected since. We've built on it and built on it. I've seen that same look in adults, right? The one that I saw in Lucas. I said before, this is something I've been through a million times. It's a mistake that I've made a million times. And as I sit here sanctimoniously telling you the stories and what I did with Lucas, I got it, but trust me, we make these mistakes every day. I've made them recently, you've made them recently. We all make them. Not seeing fully who we're talking to, not understanding what they're thinking. And the same look that Lucas had is the same look I've seen on others, and it's the look of someone who realizes you're talking, but you're not talking with them. You're just talking out loud. You're trying to fix a situation you don't feel good about simply because you don't feel good about it. And once you recognize that moment, you can't unsee it. It changes everything. It makes you realize that you're not only wasting time, wasting breath, wasting energy, but you're wasting opportunity. Opportunity to either know somebody or move on from something or reward yourself. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is let it go. You'll spend your whole life trying to make someone else perfect when their definition of perfection isn't even yours. The best version of my son that he can be is the version that he is today. And the version that he is today looks nothing like what I expected it to look like when he was two years old. If I could go back in time and talk to myself back in 2013 or 14 and say, hey, I'm you from the future, everything's great. I'd say, oh, does Lucas talk? No. Does he do this? Does he do that? No, no. I would be so sad. And the reason why is because I didn't know who he was then. And my idea of who he should be and how I could fix him was very different than what I really needed to do. Today is perfect because I have a bond with my son, unlike any relationship I have with anyone. I love this kid to the moon and back, just like his sister. He doesn't have to talk, he doesn't have to make me cards in school, he doesn't have to win the little league, he doesn't have to do anything but be himself. I know that now, and honest to God, I knew it deep down then. All I had to do was put things down, let it go, and remember who I was talking to. This was my boy. He was being himself, he was happy, he was content. I was the one who needed to sit back and allow him to be. Staying is harder than fixing, but it's the only place that trust ever forms. I'm James Guttman. I write at HiBlogImDad.com and I host HiPod I'm Dad. And this was just something I needed to learn out loud.