Hi Pod, it's James Guttman, the writer behind HiblogIm Dad.com. I am the host of HiPod I'm Dad. Thank you for checking us out right here. 2026 is chugging along, and it has been for me one of the best years ever. I gotta tell you, I feel uh physically healthy, I feel mentally healthy, I've really been in a good place. And I think one of the things, kind of a theme with the blog, and one of the things that I say a lot about autism positivity is that having a boy like mine and recognizing who he is and the beauty behind his autism is the kind of thing that involves a healthy dose of reality, right? I don't make anything up when it comes to my son. I don't pretend, I don't put on airs. Uh Lucas is 14, he is nonverbal, he has what many call severe autism. And I don't pretend, right? And I know people come up to me sometimes, oh, he understands everything. And I will be like, no, he doesn't understand everything. And he doesn't need to understand everything. If Lucas was a verbal 14-year-old without autism, he wouldn't understand everything. I think it's it's one of those things that I stray away from calling him a superhero or calling him some sort of otherworldly being. He is my boy, he is my son, he is a part of me. Uh, he happens to have what many call profound autism, however you want to put it, he has autism. He doesn't speak, he doesn't speak with words. Doesn't make him less than, it doesn't make him more than. He is himself. And the things that I talk about when I talk about autism appreciation are real things. I don't make up skills, I don't pretend he can levitate. Lucas is a sweet boy. He expresses himself through emotion and feeling and actions. And I love every minute I have with this kid. For the most, I mean, and this is what we're gonna get to in a second. Again, there's a reality. Lucas is not only 14, but as I said, he has severe autism. And one of the reasons why this blog has gained traction over the last, at this point, nine years, it's insane, is because many people are familiar with the hardships that come with raising a child who has pronounced needs, right? And I learned things. I've talked to people, I've been on podcasts, and they tell me that we don't say special needs or additional needs. And I'm like, okay, whatever semantics you want to use, I really don't care. Like you guys might notice, I don't say autistic. Um, that's only a personal preference. For me, it's like when I describe my son, to say he is autistic is to make that his entire like label, so to speak. Whereas when I say a boy with autism, he's a boy first. My son with autism, he's my son first. That's for me. Being called, I don't care what you say, as long as it's not offensive, as long as it's not coming from a place of uh trying to demean him or say something bad about him, I'm totally cool with it. But one of the reasons why talking about the positivity of his personality strikes people as unique and different is because the difficulties that come with raising a boy like him are very much on display. And I forget sometimes what people outside my home know to be reality, right? To them, they see us at a shop right or you know, a target. And Lucas is upset, he's difficult, he doesn't want to walk down an aisle, and I have to stand there and kind of rub his back and coax him into it, and they see that and they go, that must be hard for that dad. And yeah, I mean, I guess. But in many ways, it's a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of the things that need to be done when you have a child who, to be honest with you, lacks many life skills. And I say that, right? I say lacks life skills. And you can piece it together. But even as you're piecing it together, I've started to learn that most people really aren't piecing it together. Do you know who can piece that together? Other parents in a situation like mine. Other parents to children with severe or pronounced autism can read between the lines and hear the words I'm not saying when I say them. My son is 14 years old. He's going to be 15 this year. There is a level of privacy and there is a level of respect that I owe him by doing this podcast and by doing the blog that I take very seriously. Since the first day I started doing this, I made myself a deal. Certain things I will not talk about on here. I might use code words, I might talk around them, I might try to explain them in ways, but there are pronounced difficulties that I do have to deal with when it comes to my son. His mom does too. We split custody. Um, he's there half the week. We have reunion Wednesdays. If you guys see on social media, I sometimes post pictures on Wednesdays, reunion Wednesday. And it's one of the happiest days of my week. But it also begins, you know, the most work that I have to do for the week. Getting him up in the morning is not simply like, get up, buddy, let's go to school. It's not like that, man. I have to help him get ready. I have to help him bathe. We have to do different things to get him set. And I always hesitate to describe it because I feel like it's a very difficult way to talk about it without seeming like I'm demeaning him. You know, I don't want to be one of these people who gives him a mental age. And I've wrote a blog about that once. I don't like to say, you know, he's really like mentally four and three years. Like, I don't do that. He's 14 and he has autism. There's no mentally this age, it doesn't work like that. Because in many ways, he is 14. He does 14-year-old things. He goes into his room, he closes the door, he doesn't want to be bothered. 14-year-old things. I get it. But there are things that he has done consistently since he was a toddler, since he was an infant that will continue. Um, when I try to explain it sometimes, I try to find ways that I can relate this to people who don't understand it, where they will understand it. Lucas watches the same TV shows that he watched as a baby. I have watched the same Sesame Street episodes for 15 years. In fact, get this one on, uh almost 20, because I was watching it with his sister before he was born, and she's almost three years older than him. So I have been Rafi concert after Rafi concert. I've seen it repeatedly, and he watches them, he loves them. It's his thing. We've read the same bedtime stories. I read him Frog and Friends the other day. And I've read that book since he was like three years old, and he loves it. We sing the same songs, he plays with many of the same toys. Lucas likes what Lucas likes. And a lot of his likes are things that he discovered at a young age, and he has stayed with that. And I love that about him. But there are also many life skills that he has never picked up that he continues to need help with, just like he did at that age. The code word I've always used, and I say code word, code phrase, whatever, don't correct me, is tying his shoes. I always say that. He'll need help tying his shoes. And again, people who have a boy like Lucas know what I'm talking about. I don't know if everybody does. And I'm finding out that many people don't, because you'll say it to them and they'll be surprised by it. So this past week I had a very difficult morning. I've written about this before, um, maybe not as um strongly as I wrote about it in the last blog. And to me, it was important to be as unfiltered as possible when it came to how I felt. And I want to explain to you why. When your child is missing milestones, a two, three, four, five, it gets scary, right? Especially when they hit five years old. I've always talked about five years old being really the point where I was just like, oh my God. Up until then, I was playing games, and one day, and dear God, hey God, please, next year. But once he hit five, it's an acceptance to an extent. Okay, now we have to deal with this. But still, he's five. Eighteen is a long way away. We have 13 years. I'm gonna go over this with him every single day. I'm gonna teach him every single thing I can. And we have worked every day of his entire life to show him words and to show him how to communicate and to help him understand things. I have tried positive reinforcement. I have tried, you know, waving a finger in his face. No, no, no. I have tried redirection, you name it, I've tried it. And for some things, it's worked. You know, some things he can do, some things it's been great. Um, he knows certain skills I didn't think he would know. There's certain ways of expressing himself. I was looking at videos. I've been looking at videos and trying to post them on my social media. And I went back and I saw a video of me trying to teach him how to kiss on the cheek. I'm like, Lucas, give me a kiss. And he wasn't able to do it, and now he does it constantly. So things like that. All right, cool, I could do that. But there are definitely things that he still doesn't get. And one of the things that can sometimes really pull you down is that when Lucas falls a little bit down a chute, he doesn't go down one step, right? Like if you're teaching someone something and there's like five steps and they're inching away, inching their way, and they slip, it's usually like close to where they were, but a little bit further down. With Lucas, it'll just be completely like, oh, now he doesn't get it at all. And as I said before, at five, eighteen is thirteen years away. At fifteen, eighteen is three years away. And you start to come to a realization I might never be able to teach my son these things. And I had a morning that was incredibly difficult emotionally for me. Because not only was I trying to correct him and fix this and dealing with the work that came with it, but he didn't get it. And he's tapping me and laughing and clapping. And I'm sitting there dying inside, thinking, what am I doing? What have I been doing this whole time? He still doesn't get it. He still doesn't understand what I'm doing. And we're in the car and he's tapping me and laughing and not getting it, not getting you know how difficult this had been. And it feels so incredibly alone. To the point where people will come to you and you'll you'll say, Are you okay? And you go, Yeah, I just had a rough morning with Lucas. And they'll say, What happened? And I had people do that, and I didn't want to tell them because I knew they wouldn't understand. And I knew that the support that they gave me would never be able to fully grasp how it was affecting me. In times like this, it's important to have people in your life who have similar situations. I have a good friend, her son is very similar to Lucas. I texted her and I explained a lot of things that I knew if I had explained to someone else would have shocked them. And to her, it was just like, oh. And it's so weird because there's a comfort in that. In saying the unspeakable to another person and having them just be like, oh yeah. And then they have a story, and you're like, okay, and you breathe out. And that's what I needed to do. I needed to breathe. I needed to get it out, I needed to have a place to say it. But you forget. Because you forget, as I do. I go through life, and I have people in my life and people around me that don't have children like Lucas, don't have a situation like this. And maybe if you're listening to this, don't be offended if you don't, and you're a family member, perhaps, or something like that, and you're not a parent. Um, but those people around me, I think to myself, well, everyone gets it, everyone gets it. And then when an extreme mourning happens, you realize how few do. And that feeling can really sting. And it stung me. So I was really grateful to have someone that I could turn to and explain it. But beyond that, there is that guilt and that worry and that fear that I have failed my son. And that is a feeling that starts to, you know, dissipates after you start thinking, it's we all beat ourselves up, right? We beat ourselves up about everything in life, and I didn't do good enough, and I didn't do this, and I didn't do that. So it goes away. But oh my God, in that moment, it is the world crashes down on you because I got news for you. My kids come first before anything. Anything, right? To know that I am working as hard as I can every single day to make them both better people is what keeps me going. It keeps me working, it keeps me from not quitting a job, like for no reason. Somebody sends you an email like this is wrong, with exclamation points, not being like, why don't you cram it with walnuts, ugly? I don't do that. You want to? Oh my god, do you want to? But you don't. And you don't do it because you have to take care of your kids. So when you have a morning where you see that a lot of the things that you've been trying to teach your child 14 years not only don't take, but he doesn't even understand when he's done something wrong or when he hasn't um fulfilled this thing that you have daily told him to do, it will just spins your head around. And it would be easy, right? Like you guys are listening to this right now, and you're going, it sounds a lot like autism positivity. It is, and I'll tell you why it's autism positivity. If I was one of those parents and I've met them and I knew them and I know them that complain nonstop about my child is so rough for me and all the terrible things about having a child like Lucas, this wouldn't hurt as bad because it would be like, of course. Of course, he doesn't get it. Of course, one day he might end up in a situation where I can't care for him anymore. Of course. When that happens, it'll be like a mini vacation. It'll be tough, but like I'll visit. But 99% of the time I forget about it. I go through the motions and I do these things for him, focusing so much on the beauty of who he is that I forget about some of the challenges that still exist. And some of the things that as he gets bigger and I get older are gonna be tougher for me to do. And then I think who's gonna do it? Where is he gonna go? What's he gonna do? Who's he gonna be? How did I end up in a place that I tried desperately to avoid? It's not my fault, great, whatever. To paraphrase Billy Joel, will that be your consolation when he's gone? It feels so painful to think about. And here I am, it's the morning, I've had one cup of coffee, I'm tired because he's been up since four, you know, and you just don't know how to hold it together. I don't have these mornings on a regular basis. I don't even have them on an occasional basis. I have them on such a sporadic basis, but when they hit, they hit and they come out of nowhere. So I will say this: like I said before, if you're one of those people listening to this and you don't have a child like mine in your life, in your house, I should say. If you have a friend who has a child like Lucas, if you have a family member, if you're a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a babysitter, whatever, um, don't be offended when they don't come to you, but also recognize that there are challenges that people face that go beyond what you think they are. They don't talk about it. A lot of us don't. We'll talk to each other about it. But it's important. And that's why each day when I get up and I see my son, and I love him, and he comes to me and he claps and we smile and we take pictures and we have fun. It's all so real. And it's all legitimate because he is a wonderful, happy, loving boy. And it's that love and it's that care that makes me want to do everything for him. And the pain comes when I think to myself, there might come a time where I can't. And will anybody love him the way I do and be able to do it? And that's the fear, and that's the reality. And that's why I wrote that this week. And there was no bow to tie it up. I didn't have anything sweet at the end to tell you. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I have life plans and people, people want to respond and they they comment, like, you have to put money aside. I get all that. We all do stuff and we all plan for it, but even as you're planning for it, it still doesn't take away the sting that comes with the reality of it. And it's because I love this kid. I love him so much. And if anybody in the world deserves everything, it's him. He asks nothing directly of anyone. He doesn't ask anything of me. I do these things for him because I know he needs me. And that's it. That's the whole point. And that's what makes me want to do everything for him. So I appreciate you allowing me to vent to you last week. Uh, if you want to check it out, it's on the high blog page. It's when Loving My Son with Autism Isn't Enough was the name of it. Um, it was one of the only blogs. It doesn't have a picture of him in it. I didn't feel it was appropriate. But I love this kid, man. And if you have a kid like mine, you do too, and you get it, and I see you. And that does it for me. This is James Gutman.

Thank you.