Ten Years Of Learning Autism

Folks, it's James Guttman. It is HiPod I'm Dad. Welcome back. We are just past the midway point of April. It is 2026. I appreciate you finding me on any streaming service. We're on all of them. And I also appreciate you guys checking out HiblogomDad.com, which is where I write about my son. I write about everything I talk about here. And it's a blog I've been writing for nearly 10 years. It'll be 10 years. Oh my God, it'll be 10 years in February, which is crazy. And the reason why I'm bringing that up is because on Monday, I wrote about that a little bit. I looked back on the 10 years that have passed and how things have gone with my son and the changes that I've seen in him, and more importantly, the changes that I've seen in myself, how I view him, how I view autism for him. And I like to talk about this a lot because I think not only do I feel it's helpful for people who are just embarking on, I know we call it a journey, whatever you want to refer to it as, people who are just embarking on a new diagnosis for their children and for their family, the confusion that settles in, the worry, the concern, the um there's no timelines on when you know when things are happening. I just talked about this yesterday. I had spoken to uh an office for Autism Awareness Month, uh, did a bit of a call it a speech, but more storytelling, talking about Lucas, my one of my favorite topics to talk about. No one gives you a date where they tell you your kid is nonverbal. To this day, no one has said to me, your son is definitely nonverbal. I mean, we refer to him as nonverbal, but there was no deadline. There was no, well, if your kid doesn't talk by seven and three months, they're nonverbal. You don't know. And everyone's always telling you, just wait, just wait and see. And we waited and we waited and we waited. And the problem with uh waiting for language is that other things we've waited for came to pass. Lucas eventually walked. Lucas, you know, he he stands up, he rolled over, he did all the things that took him a while to do. He did. So speech, of course, that'll happen. Maybe that'll be longer, maybe it'll take a while. In his case, it never happened. Not even a word. I mean, I look back on some of the old videos when he was little, and there would be times where I'm like, oh, he's saying uh-oh, but he wasn't knowingly saying uh-oh, because to this day he'll say words accidentally. He'll be in the backseat, kind of riffing. You know, it's it's like it's like a little human beatbox in the in the backseat, and I'll just hear like dad-dee, daddy. And I'm like, he said daddy, but he didn't he didn't say daddy. Because the second I say to him, Lucas, say daddy, he'll look at me and he'll tap his mouth, like, what do you want from me? I'm like, I want you to do what you just did. Uh, but he doesn't do it. So that concern, those early days of waiting and waiting and waiting, can kill you, especially if you're a parent who thinks that that is the most important thing in the world. And I've learned by having a son who's nonverbal that it's not about the words that he says, it's about the words that he understands, it's about the way we can communicate. He might not be able to tell me he wants pizza with his mouth, but he could do it with a device. He could take me by the hand to the fridge and show me pizza, he can point to a picture of pizza. There's a million ways that someone can tell you something without telling you something. And I've learned that through the years and how important receptive language was. But perhaps the most important thing that I had to learn and that Lucas had to learn was trust. He had to learn to trust me. And I've written about this before and I've talked about this before, and I cannot overstate the importance of building trust when you have a child who has communication issues. A lot of Lucas's meltdowns, a lot of his behaviors were tied to trust. The idea that the person he's with, he needs to trust, knows what he wants, right? If Lucas is hungry and he doesn't think he's gonna get fed with the person he's with, he is going to grab any piece of food that he sees, whether it's on the ground, whether it's on a plate, whether it's something he shouldn't eat, because he needs to eat. Now, if he knows with me that I'm gonna feed him or I'm gonna give him exactly what he wants to eat, he's not gonna eat garbage. He's gonna come to me and ask for pizza or ask for cookies or whatever he wants. And what I've learned with him too, and before you listen to this and you go, oh, so you give him everything I he wants, I don't. I don't give him everything he wants. But he knows if he doesn't get it now, he'll get it eventually, or if he doesn't get it, he'll get something else. Or if he doesn't get it, there's a reason for it. And we've had moments like that. I'm like, Lucas, just wait. We're gonna go out and I'm doing pantomime and the rainbow motion with my hands. We're gonna go to the to this house and we're gonna eat dinner with this family, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, all these different things that I have to explain to him. And he might not get every single word of it, but he knows that I'm telling him something that means something. I know what he wants, I understand what he wants, I'm not shooing him away. And sadly, I did that when he was little, you know, because I'm so used to the idea that people just know what you're doing, right? So when you have a kid like mine and they come to you and they say they're hungry, or they express that they're hungry, and Lucas would come over to me when he was little and tap his lips and he wants to eat. Or I would do what a lot of parents do when you have a young child, you base it on time. Oh, he's getting fussy, it's five o'clock. I'd better feed him. So I'd say to him, Lucas, I'm gonna make you dinner. He didn't know what dinner meant. He didn't know what make you dinner meant. And he would come into the kitchen. I'd go, I'm I'm making dinner, and I would do my hands, go play, go play. And I would shoe my hands, go play, go play. And he would lose it. Cry, lay on the floor. I'd be like, what the hell? Dude, I have to cook for you. And it wasn't until I put myself in his shoes, which I've done over and over and over again, and it's a huge piece of advice to anyone again who has a nonverbal child or a child with communication delays or issues. Put yourself in their shoes. He's hungry. He's coming to me. He doesn't know if I understand him, he doesn't know if I'm cooking, he doesn't know what's going on. All he knows is he's hungry and there's no food in front of him, and I'm telling him to go away. So he loses it. So my job became teaching him that when you ask me, I know, right? So for a while it used to be showing him I'm putting it in the oven, I'm I'm making it, I would bring him over. He would come into the kitchen repeatedly, and I'd have to bring him over to the oven, turn the light on. I used to call him my little supervisor. He was my little supervisor. What are you doing in here? Nothing, boss. He's your pizza, you know, that kind of thing. And building that trust bled into so many different aspects of our life. He would melt down when going to a new location to this day, right? And I know that it would be the same thing because I've had it, I've dealt with it. To this day, he can't go trick-or-treating. Lucas used to lose it when we would go from door to door. I don't know why. Back then, I well, I should say, back then I didn't know why. I've learned to figure it out slowly but surely. And I do stand by the fact that I still don't know why because I can't verify it 100%. But Lucas has issues with transitions, and Lucas also likes to go home. Right? He's like me. He wants to go home, and that's the reason why sometimes when you pull into a parking lot, he doesn't want to go, or if you try to pull him into a building that he doesn't know what it is, he doesn't want to go. So when you would bring him to a strange house and you walk up to the door, he would freak out. So trick-or-treating on Halloween involved keeping Lucas in his wagon, pulling the wagon along, and his sister would go door to door and bring him back candy. I have so many pictures of this kid in a wagon, and the day that he outgrew that wagon was so sad because it was adorable. He's just sitting there in his little costume, and that was it. And as he got older, we didn't go trick-or-treating. Even that, even going down the street, it was kind of a pain because you would go, Lucas, let's go get candy, but he didn't want to go up to doorways. Because to him, doorways were, oh, they're gonna make me go to this place that I don't want to go to. Would it work now? I don't know. It might. His transitions have gotten better with me. And I I think back to the worst times and the best times. And I had written an article back in 2018, 2017 called Nearly Missing Our Greatest Memories. And it was uh about Lucas not wanting to go into places. I was gonna bring him into a bowling alley and fighting him to go into the bowling alley, and he's digging his feet in and he's scraping, and he's laying on the ground in the gravel and crying, all to pull him inside where he loves it, we're inside and he has a great time. And I would be like, bro, what are you doing? You're killing me. I have your best interest at heart. I'm gonna do something fun. I'm not gonna bring you to get murdered. I got you. And we would go through this over and over and over again. The best memory though, the day that I knew we had crossed over a bridge was about two years ago. He had a party to go to. I wrote about it. I called the power of preparation, uh, my son's let me find the exact name for it while I while I talk about it. But essentially what happened was Lucas was invited to a birthday party. And we went to it. It was at a miniature golf place, one of these, like, you know, golf and stuff. And um inside there was arcade games and all these things that he usually doesn't like. And to get him into this place, the power of preparation, my son with autism's party success story, that was the name of it, um, was a lot easier than I thought. And when we got into this party, he was completely different than I expected. He played on video games with me, he walked around, he didn't like miniature golf, but he tried, you know, two holes. Um, I got pictures of him doing it. I was so proud of him. And then the coup de gra, and getting back to the food aspect of it, Lucas sat at a table and there were kids around him, and they were serving chicken nuggets and pizza, and he's eating and he's not taking anyone else's food. And I am literally standing across the room, watching him with this sense of pride in taking pictures and blown away because this was a huge risk. I said to myself, I said, He's being really good. So why don't I try this? Why don't I give him trust instead of hovering over? I hover over this kid all the time. Instead of hovering over him, why don't I watch from afar and see what he does? And guess what, man? This kid was perfect. And when I say that he was eating and other kids were eating, he wasn't eating the whole time. He would finish his chicken nuggets, and the kid next to him's got chicken nuggets, and he wouldn't then grab them. He would just wait patiently and sit there. I have pictures of him looking around and looking at me. So proud of him. And that was trust. I mean, it's maturity too, and there is maturity involved. And the reason why I don't completely credit maturity for it is because I know that Lucas, today at 15 with other people, whether it's school or relatives or whatever, will not act that way. Lucas will go back to old habits. I've heard stories at school. Well, you know, we went to Panera and he went over to the table and he was trying to like take the kid's food. Doesn't do it with me. Doesn't do it with me to the point that on Easter one year, we went to one of these buffets on Long Island. I talked about this before, where we were wedged into uh a hall almost like a wedding. Complete, complete fire safety code where tables were on top of each other and people were shoulder to shoulder to shoulder. And to get to our table, we had to go and we had to squeeze in between different tables and he was literally inches from other people's plates. And he didn't take any food from them. And then I got up to go to the buffet to get him food, and I left him with his sister. And he didn't get up and walk away and take people's foods. A couple of weeks ago, we went out and we were at a um a pizzeria, we were meeting people at this at this pizza place, and as we were going to the table, a waitress came by holding a steak on a tray, and she's holding it, and we're sliding past her, and it literally went past his nose, and he watched it, his eyes got huge, and he didn't grab it. That's trust, and that's him knowing that I've got his back, and that is the most important thing I've ever had to teach my son. And I wrote about that, I talked about that on high blog. I'm dad. I try to tell everybody who listens that's what's important because they sit there and they go, Well, you have such a great kid, and my kid's not like that. Maybe you're right, you know, maybe there's some natural, you know, calm or understanding that he has, but I know that it would take nothing for him to act the complete opposite with me because he acts the complete opposite with other people. For Lucas, I don't know about other kids on the spectrum. I would imagine it's true. I don't like to paint everyone with a broad brush. I think Lucas tends to act the way he's expected to act. So if you expect nothing from him, he will give you nothing. If you expect everything from him, he will give you as much as he possibly can. And for that, I am proud of him. I love him. Uh, I couldn't, honestly, I couldn't be happier with both of my kids. You know, my daughter's going to college soon, which is nuts. And uh, and my little man, he's becoming mature. And as I sit there shaving his face in the morning as part of his routine now, which is like, oh my God. Um, I'm so proud of him and the and the little man he's becoming. So it's been a real fantastic journey. And I appreciate you guys for the last 10 years letting me share our stories with you. Uh, you have no idea how much that means to me. I will continue to do it. I will do it next Monday with a brand new uh blog. I will do it next Friday with a brand new podcast. I do it on the weekends when I I post uh quotes on my social media. Hi, James Gutman, H I, hi, hi, James Gutman. Uh that's on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Facebook, I'm on uh I'm on everything. Well, not everything, but I'm high on life. You should be too. And that does it for me. Until next week, this is James Gutman saying, um be well. Byepod. I'm dead.