Welcome And Where To Find Me

James Guttman 0:00

Hi Pod I'm Dad. Folks, it's James Guttman. It's High Pod I'm Dad. Welcome back to the podcast. It's another Friday. Uh, whether you found me on HiPodom Dad.com, Spotify, any streaming service, thank you. Uh, I'm also the dad behind HiblogomDad.com, which every Monday brand new blogs go up, and I wrote this week about a subject that is, well, it's creeping into my head because at this point I am officially, I don't know, old. My kids are, you know, my daughter is 17, going on 18, and my son is, as of this week, 15 years old. 15. That's five, five, five. It's a lot of time. And uh I've talked a lot about the difficulty sometimes of coming to grips with the fact that he's becoming a little man. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that, you know, Lucas is nonverbal. He has profound autism. And a lot of his loves, a lot of the things that he does, a lot of his comforts are things that have been around since he was a toddler, since he was tiny. In my head, he's a baby. I still think about him as a baby. We read the same books, we sing the same songs, we play the same games, I tickle him, I um I sit on his lap now, by the way. I guess that's that's a small difference. I mean, he sits on my lap too. I'll make him sit on me. It looks ridiculous, looks like I'm getting squashed like a Looney Tunes character, but I'll run over to him and I'll jump on him. I wrote on Monday a blog called My Baby Has a Mustache, and I'm still saying potty. And I gotta tell you, the baby mustache thing has long been kind of a theme. I've gone back to this before, just because it amazes me. Because he is a baby to me, right? Not a baby in the fact, oh, you're a little baby, but he's like, he's my baby. He's the baby of the family, he's the youngest child, he's sweet, he carries himself sometimes in a way that people might equate to someone much younger. And this is another subject that I've written about. At one point I had written, you know, my son is a teenager, he's not mentally six, and here's why that matters. And it's because I've always had an issue, and again, to each their own, say what you want to say, uh, with putting a mental age on my son. I don't like doing that. I don't like turning around and being like, you know, he's 15, but he's really three, or he's really-I don't. And the reason why is because it's never fully true, right? Like there are definitely parts of Lucas' life that mirror that of a preschooler or toddler, in some cases, even an infant, where it's such a a different way of approaching basic things that we at our age know how to do, know we should do, social things that we have to adhere to. And Lucas doesn't do those things. So it could appear that way, but Lucas is not six or seven or five or four. Lucas is a 15-year-old boy. Lucas has facial hair. Lucas has the need for privacy at times, Lucas has moody moments, Lucas has things that someone would put on a teenager. So it's almost unfair to turn around because it's easy for me or it's easy for me to explain to people to be like, well, he's really like five, because he's absolutely not five. There's things about his life that are mature, and there's things about his life that aren't. Lucas is none of those ages. Lucas is Lucas. He's himself. And I think that's one of the things that you know I devote this blog to, and I've devoted my life to, to trying to explain to people that just because it makes it easier to take a person and package them up to sell them to someone else by giving them either a mental age or a label or a description, sometimes that doesn't work. And when it comes to my son, none of those labels, none of those descriptions even matter. He's himself, and he is, honest to God, the most unique person I've ever met. Now keep in mind, I've met other kids who are pretty much the exact same age as Lucas, who have autism or who have even his style, style of autism, his profound autism, nonverbal kids, minimally verbal kids. And they're not just like Lucas. Lucas is unique, just like they are too. There's things about him, there's things about his personality, how he carries himself, how he communicates that make him uniquely himself. So when I wrote the blog this week about his mustache and about saying potty, it was about me, really, as a lot of these things are. It's about me and my approach to him and understanding who he is, and sometimes even just kind of reminding myself what year it is, you know? And that's what happened. Like Lucas has amazing receptive language. I discovered this about two, three weeks ago, probably maybe longer. I don't even know. Time gets away from me. I had lost my voice. I wasn't feeling well, and I kept thinking, well, this is awesome. I don't need my voice because Lucas and I can do everything through pantomime. We absolutely cannot do everything through pantomime or American Sign Language or whatever you think. We can't. Um, I noticed within a minute that I could not not say something. It was weird, it was awkward. Even in the car, I was silent and I was doing little hand motions or whatever. He would just tap me on the shoulder, like, all right. And I'd be like, Yeah, buddy, what's up? You know, I'm talking to him like that. I couldn't, there was no way of not doing it just because it's been a part of our life. But on top of it, not just me, his receptive language in many ways is amazing. For those of you who don't know what receptive language is, that's the idea that um, you know, this communicative language where Lucas would say words. He doesn't say any words. Receptive language is the words that he understands, that he can comprehend, that he can go out and do things and know what I'm talking about. And when you have a nonverbal kid like him, you don't really know what the receptive language skills he has are until they play out, until you say a word and you see that he gets it. And I've been progressively amazed every single time. There's been times where I'll say something under my breath. No major, like, Lucas, you want to go to bed? And I'm doing like, you know, hand motions and you know, like I look like a you know, a cheer captain jumping around with pom-poms, bed over here. You know, I'm not doing any of that. I'm just simply saying to him, all right, buddy, I'm gonna put you to bed. And he'll get into bed. And I'll be like, oh, I guess he knows what that means. This has happened with washing his hands, this has happened with different things. And I know, and I knew then, I'm positive of it now. Lucas knows words like bathroom, toilet, uh, bedtime, sleep. He knows those words. Yet, for me, in my comfort level, I would say potty, or I would say sleepies. We gonna go sleepies, buddy. That sounds cute. I like it, it makes me comfortable. But he would understand other words. And as I'm standing there, looking at this kid with his little tiny mustache, uh, who in shoes, as I'm standing there on bare feet, is pretty much taller than me, wearing pants that are bigger than mine, and I'm like, go potty. And well, he knows it's not potty. Now it was a moment that took me back. I wrote about it. It was important for me to write about it. But one of the things, and sometimes it gets lost in social media because I don't I don't share the entire article on on Facebook, you gotta click on it, you gotta read it. I talked about how it's not something that has to be done, right? Like I don't have to cut the word potty or cut the word sleepies out of our life. And I know this because I have a neurotypical 17-year-old daughter, and there's things that I say to her sometimes that go back to when she was tiny. You know, we have little uh things that we remember and things that we say, little minute, little lines like that. And um we do it as a form of kind of again, comfort, familiarity, something that we both can, you know, grip onto that we remember from when she was little. But I wouldn't go out and constantly refer to it as that, right? Like I will say potty once in a while and be like, we're gonna run, run to the potty, we're gonna go out, that kind of a thing. But I would never just refer to it as potty. I would never be with her in a public setting and be like, Did you go potty before we left? She'd be like, What the hell is wrong with you? So I try to give Lucas that same respect. Do I need to? No. Do you need to with your kid? If you have a kid like Lucas, no. You don't need to do this. This is not something that's like so important and so needed to do. But it's something that serves as a reminder every once in a while of who he is and what his true age is. And realizing things like that plays a bigger role in everything, right? Like, it's not just the words we use. It's not just, you know, updating the vernacular to match the fact that this kid has a mustache and he's tall. It's the fact that he is 15 and he's gonna be 16 and then 17 and 18, and till eventually, like I'm 120 and he's whatever, you know, at that point, I don't even know, 90, 80. He's gonna be a man, he's gonna be a grown man. And there's a lot of things that come with being a grown man, respect levels, um, expectations, maturity expectations that come with it. That unless I make myself accept, acknowledge, and understand that he's now a little man, I might not be able to handle that when it comes. I might not be able to see those moments as they arrive. And a day like this, where I sat there and I'm looking at this dude who I have to shave his face, going, I go run into the potty and then we'll shave your face. It sounds so ridiculous. Recognizing that prepares me for when the time comes that I'm gonna have to deal with this man with a beard and whatever comes with it. I don't even know. I don't even know. I don't even know. As I said, Lucas is unique in so many ways that when he is 50, I can't even fathom. I don't know what he's gonna be like, what he's gonna do, who he's gonna be. Maybe he'll sit on my lap, maybe he'll jump up and down and clap, maybe he'll be chill, maybe he'll be, you know, just like the rest of us at 50. Like, don't make me get up, you know. Um, but he is. He's gonna be an adult and he's gonna be a man. And with that, I have to remember that, I have to acknowledge that. And sometimes language is that first step, right? How I how I talk to him denotes how I treat him, denotes how I see him, uh, and plays a bigger role in a bigger picture. So that was the whole point of writing that. It is crazy. I can't believe that this kid is 15. Um, birthdays have been a major thing. I'm gonna write about this, I think, on Monday. I'm I'm prepping myself mentally uh about birthdays. Birthdays were a big deal. If you guys got my book, High World, I'm dad. I wrote like almost, I think it was a chapter or half a chapter devoted to birthday parties uh for him and how difficult they were. So we could talk about that too. But this has been a monumental week for a monumental kid. And I thank you guys for letting me talk to you. I thank you guys for letting me share with you, and that does it for me. Until next Friday, join me back for another episode of High Pod I'm Dad. HiblogomDad.com on Monday. Brand new blog. Until then, James Gutman saying, Be well. Bye, Pod. I'm dad.