Welcome And A Dad Reality Check

James Guttman 0:00

Hi Pod I'm Dad. Folks, James Guttman, host of HiPod, I'm Dad, the dad behind HiblogImDad.com, and now officially the father of a 15-year-old nonverbal son with severe autism, as they say. My daughter, also 17. This is the brief time period where the two of them are only two years apart. But yeah, I um I'm ancient. I have these two kids in their in their mid to late teens, and it does not feel normal because in my head, I'm like, what am I, like three years from when I was 17? It just happened. Just a few years ago. Nirvana, you guys remember? No, that wasn't that was the 90s. All right. But yeah, it was um it was a good week. It was one of those weeks where, especially with a boy like Lucas, every once in a while you need one of those milestone moments to remind you where you are in the timeline. And it will kick you in the face if you're not paying attention. For example, Lucas grows facial hair now, and it is stubbly and it is real. And initially, when it first started coming in, it was cute. It was like, oh my god, look, he's got these little fuzzy little whiskers. Now he's got like Fred Flintstone, half his face from the sideburns down, slowly working its way around. It's it's dark, that lucky kid. I'm the one with the with the salt and pepper that everyone tells me is great, and I don't think it's not great. But yeah, Lucas is I'm a little man right before my eyes, tall, and even without having words, even without having verbal language, you could hear the change in his voice, in his tone, the sounds that he makes. I rue the day when he turns around, he's making his noise, and he's like, Ugh. And I'm like, oh my god, but it's coming, man. He's a he's a little dude. Love this kid. So yeah, we had a good birthday. And as I said before, and I wrote about it this week, birthdays have gotten progressively better as he's gotten older with the less that we've done. When he was little, it was a mad dash to emulate what everyone else does, to emulate what his sister did, to emulate what friends were doing with their kids. Have parties, hire a clown, get a magician, throw balloons around. And he wouldn't care. To this day, and if you guys follow me on TikTok, there's a time period I was making cartoons out of some of the stories that I tell during my speaking events and things that I do. And one of them was his second birthday party, where he did not care at all. And the party was pretty much for everybody else, and Lucas would have been content not doing it. In fact, he would have been happier not doing it. And now, as he's gotten older, birthdays are about him. They're not about inviting people, it's not about making everyone else have fun, it's about finding what he likes, and that's what we do. Now, if he liked things that we can invite people to and we could all do, we'll do that. If he doesn't, we don't. Lucas taught me that I don't have to worry about doing holidays and celebrations the right way. I just have to worry about being happy and making sure that the people who are kind of the guests of honor are happy, and he's the guest of honor. So we had a good birthday. We had fun and we, you know, we went out to eat and had cake and presents and all the good stuff that you do. And he was thrilled and it made me happy. And as he gets older, one of the things that has really been amazing as a dad to a child like him is the things that I've learned about Lucas. As our kids grow, right, neurotypical kids, and and those of you who don't have children on the spectrum like Lucas, you learn about who your kid becomes. Your kid gets older, they change, they develop new likes and new loves and new things, and you learn about them. But someone like my son, I learn about him every year, but a lot of the things that I learn about him are things that have been there, things that I didn't know. One of the issues with not having verbal language on his part is he can't tell me when he's figured something out. There's never a day where he's like, oh dad, by the way, I know what um, you know, I know what peanut butter means now when you ask me if I want it. You know, that that's not there. I don't know what words he gets, I don't know what concepts he understands. Just one day he understands a thing. He understands you want a bagel, he knows what a bagel is. When did that happen? I don't know, but it happened, and you discover these things as you go. And one would think that at the age of 15, a lot of the things that he knows, I know already, and I don't. And I realized that, I think I talked about it when I lost my voice about two weeks ago. I couldn't do the podcast, I didn't have any voice. And I thought to myself, well, now I'll be able to do signs and I'll be able to talk to him in ways where I can, you know, kind of like do pantomime and show him things and all that stuff. And what ended up happening was it just didn't work. Being silent around him didn't work. It felt awkward for me. I like to talk, I'm a talker. Uh so I'm sitting there trying to like fight the words out of my mouth. But also on top of it, Lucas doesn't only understand signs and think just because he's nonverbal doesn't mean that I can be nonverbal with him. And that's something I learned about when he was little. And those of you who talk um about autism appreciation and and what it truly means, what it means to me, and some of the people who don't really get it, they'll think that autism appreciation is something that when your child is little, you tell yourself, oh, this is a beautiful thing, it's a wonderful thing. And it's almost like being delusional, which is an offensive thing that has been said to me in the past, where this idea that me celebrating my son and the things that he does is somehow me trying to convince myself that it's good when it's not. But I will tell you this. As he's gotten older, I've learned to appreciate his autism. Who he is now and the way that it affects his personality is what I really say love about autism. But and don't get me wrong, man, there's parts of autism that are difficult and they're hard, and I don't love every aspect of it, but the ways that it affects Lucas' personality are beautiful. And that's something that I've learned as he's gotten older. But when he was little, no, not at all. I didn't know what it was. It was scary, it was a boogeyman concept, you know? Your child has autism. Oh, that thing that you told me to avoid, the thing that, like, we had to watch what we fed him and watch what we said to him and watch what toys he did and check for signs and warning signs and stims and all that stuff. And you worry about it, and you worry about it. And then when it happens, no one is immediately like, this is great. I'm so happy to hear this news because you don't know what it means. You have no idea. But one of the things I remember from when he was little was people talked about receptive language, teachers, administrators. And they said, look, what's really important is receptive language. It's what he understands, not what he says. And I hated that because to me, talking was the end game. This kid had to be able to say words, and if he didn't, it was a failure. It was a failure for me, for him, for everyone around us. Receptive language to me was it was made up. It was in the wrestling terms. If you guys don't know this wrestling term, it was a work. Um I don't know if I've talked about on here before. I use wrestling slang sometimes for my past life and things. Work is when something is it's a con, it's it's fake, it's it's pretend. So people would be like, oh no, receptive language is important. I'd be like, yeah, receptive language is important. And oh my god, receptive language is important. Lucas understands a lot, and it is such a big deal. Um, and like I said before, I lost my voice, and I realized there were certain things I had to communicate to him that he wouldn't follow, which is simply me doing hand motions. At one point, I wanted him to come upstairs, and I'm looking over at him and I'm waving and I'm waving my hands, and he's just staring at me. Like, what do you want, bro? And I'm like, I'm like, you know, and I'm doing it now, even you guys you can't see what I'm doing, but I'm waving my hands, I'm doing basically air traffic control, or I'm on the ground, I'm waving flags, I'm throwing balls in the air. No sense of if I should follow him, so I had to be like, Lucas, come upstairs. And he got up and he came upstairs. He knows what it means, he understands the words. Did I teach him the word upstairs? No, I don't know when he when he picked that up. I just know that through the years, since he was little, and this is the most important thing, and if you take nothing else from this podcast, take this. I talked to my son the entire time he's been alive. When I didn't think he could hear me, I talked to him. When I didn't think he could understand me, I talked to him. When I didn't think he cared, when I didn't think he was present, when I didn't think he was, you know, processing anything that I was saying, I talked to my son. And doing so, and the repetition and the words and the over and over again, he's at a point where he might not be able to repeat it, he might not be able to emulate the way that I form words with my mouth, but he picked up on what they meant and he got it. And it was so important for him as he grows up. Now, receptive language, the thing that I scoffed at and I thought was ridiculous, ended up becoming more important than verbal language. And the reason why is that if he can't say words, he has the ability to communicate still. He has a device that he presses buttons on and it requests for things. I want apple juice, or you know, I need help, I want a break. All those things he can say through his communication iPad. Hand motions. He can make hand motions. He wants more, two fists together, he wants to eat, hand to the mouth. Pecs. Those of you guys have used pecs, we use them for years. Showing pictures and handing you a picture. You know, he wants to watch TV, he hands you a picture of a TV. To this day, if we're going somewhere, and you know, I have to show him, I'll show him pictures on my phone. Hey, Lucas, we're gonna go here, we're gonna see these people, we're gonna do this. And he gets it. Pictures are so important. All of those things can take the place of verbal language. The one thing you can't replace is receptive language. If he doesn't understand a word or phrase, that's it. You have he has to understand it. And honestly, looking back now and all these years and going back to when he was little and the people telling me this and how important receptive language, I am so happy that I worked on that and that we we sat with him and we talked to him, we made him a part of our family at a time where it would have been easy to just kind of like, you know, hang out, looking, sit there and we'll do something else. And we work around him, but we didn't. I always included him. I talk to him more than anyone else in my life. The second I see him, hey, buddy, we're gonna do this, blah, blah, just talking to him and talking to him. And do I do it to teach him? Sure. I do it so he picks up on the words, but I never did it for that reason. I did it because I don't know, he's my captive audience. He's stuck there. He's gotta listen to me. So I could tell him about my day. I could tell him nice things and happy things, I could tell him secrets. There's things that Lucas knows that no one knows. I often say, I'm like, if he ever one day just all of a sudden just starts talking regularly, I'm gonna have to be like, um, don't listen to everything he tells you. I've told him everything for my life. Um, if I've had an issue with you, Lucas knows about it. If something has happened, Lucas knows about it. I just talked to him and talk to him and talk to him. And he's because of that, he's been, I don't know, man, he's been so important in my life. He's been such a um just a great person to have there. I look forward to seeing him. I look forward to telling him things. I look forward to, I don't know, just being around him. He's a great kid, and I am so lucky for both of my kids. Um, for the last 15, 17 years, I've been, I don't know, I've truly been blessed with everything that I have. And my son might have, you know, severe autism, profound autism, all of these things that I'm supposed to want to change and fix. And I gotta tell you, he has it all, but I wouldn't trade him for anything. Kate is amazing. And I'm so glad that I get to share him with you and tell you guys these things and urge you, talk to your kids and make sure they have receptive language. If your child does not speak, you know, there's a chance they might not. But receptive language is the kind of thing that through repetition, I mean, they might not understand every single thing. I don't think he understands every single thing. He's 15. 15-year-olds who have words don't understand every single thing, but he understands far more than I ever expected. Um, and he probably understands far more than I realize. And as he gets older, we're just gonna learn more and more. And for that, I'm truly blessed. So thank you guys for taking the time to listen. I will be back on Monday with a brand new uh blog on hiblogomdad.com. I will be back uh next Friday with a brand new podcast, HiPod I'm dad, or any streaming service. Um we have tons of stuff. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, hi JamesGubman, H I James Gutman, and that does it for me. Until then, James Gubman Sam, be well. Byepod.

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