Welcome And May Day Check In

It's a journey made with hard iPod I'm Dad. Hi Pod, it's James Guttman, the host of HiPod I'm Dad, the dad behind Hiblog I'dad.com. Thank you for finding me on Friday, May the 1st, May Day, May Day. Thank you for kicking off the month with me here. Uh yeah, it has been it's been a good week, man. It's been actually a good 2026. I've been really happy. Great year in general, last 365. I can't complain. I won't complain. I don't like to complain. And this week was an example of that because my blog was a subject that people who know me, people who are close to me, are familiar with, uh, where I talk about the fact that all the things I worried about when it comes to having a child with severe autism, profound autism, nonverbal child, came true, right? A lot of the concerns that I had when he was one, two, three years old that kept me up at night came true. And yet we are happy, we are content, we are in a good place beyond what I ever even imagined. And it taught me a lesson. It taught me a lesson about the things that you think you need versus the things that you want. And for me, I thought that I needed a child who could say words, a child that could communicate easily, a child that wouldn't have any struggles or disabilities or, you know, delays. And in the end, my son had a lot of those things. A lot of the things that I thought were deal breakers in my life ended up being things that were part of my life. And I couldn't be happier. And I mean that a hundred percent. And every year it's a little bit better. And it's crazy because I read this when I was younger, right? I read that as people get older, they always credit uh the further decades they go as the happiest decades of their lives. And I kind of get it because I feel like every year I've kind of, I don't say matured, but I've learned. I've learned about myself, I've learned about life, I've learned about the people around me, and I found where I belong more and more and more and more as I become more comfortable with who I am, more comfortable in my own life. And I couldn't be any more comfortable than I am with my kids, Lucas, especially. So yeah, he has profound autism, and there are issues with that, and I totally get it. Now, listen just to put it out there, I write positive things about autism, and sometimes people will criticize that, and they'll say, Well, it's not like that for everyone. I know. That's kind of the whole point. I mean, this is our story. It's the only story I can tell. It's the only truth that I know. I'm happy, and I couldn't be any happier than I am having a son like mine. That's it. Top to bottom, across the board. People want to criticize, people want to get on top of it. I know you're listening to this. Some people hear this and they go, who's criticizing? People are criticizing, man. For whatever reason. Some people are in my situation, right? Some people have a child like Lucas. It's difficult for them, and they read what I say and they get angry and they turn around. It's so hard. My kid does this, my kid does that. My kid does a lot of stuff too. I'm not discounting what your kid does. I'm telling you the same thing that I've written about in my book, Hi World, I'm Dad. I've written about on the blog before. I don't know your kid, right? I know my kid. My kid's great. My kid does all those things. My kid doesn't speak, and my kid acts out sometimes. He has behavioral issues here and there. He gets impatient at times. All those things have happened through the years and it's gone up and down. We're in a good spot now, but we've had crazy, not good spots, nights where I'm up all night with him trying to get out of bed and chasing him down hallways and trying to find him and finding where his shoes are in the car, all that stuff. I dealt with all of it. But I love my kid. And for me and for him and for what we've developed, it works for us, right? Now, look, I don't know your life. You might have a completely different life. So when I talk to you about how I feel and about my son and about the world that we've built together, I get it, man. It is not everybody. If it was, I wouldn't need to do this, right? If every single person was like exactly like me and their kid, and they were cool with it, and their son does the things that my son does, and their daughter does the things that my son does, and they all look the same. Why would I need to write about my life? You would just read it and be like, I know, dude, I get this, I get it. I get it already. So I go into these blogs knowing full well that it's not the same for everyone. And it's such a silly thing, man. I'm gonna be honest, and I don't like to fire back sometimes, but I don't know. I feel like maybe people get so in their own head that they don't seem to understand that not every single thing that they hear or read is about them or for them. It would be as if you had, you know, a relative get sick. And during the time that they're sick, you bond with them, right? They're in the hospital and you spend all your days with them and you sit with them. They have, you know, some sort of disease, they have a heart disease, and you sit with them in the hospital and you're you're learning from them and you're talking to them, your relationship's getting better, and in the end, you write something and you say, you know what? I know how horrible it is, but for our family, the best thing that happened to us was my dad's heart disease because I was able to sit with him and talk to him in the hospital. And then someone turns around and goes, Heart disease isn't like that for everyone. Yeah, I know, dude. I mean that's the point. That's why I'm saying this. I'm saying it because it's a surprise. It was a surprise for me. Autism was supposed to be our death sentence. It was supposed to be the end of our world. And guess what? For some people it was. And there's other people in life who have kids just like mine, exactly like mine, who have let it end their life, have let it become the prevailing story of their life. I get it. I know. I know we're unique. I know that, you know, what we have in our home is for us and us only. So I tell you our stories and I talk to you about how we've grown and what we've learned and how we've come together. And I've always said, take from that what you can, right? If you relate to it, great, you relate to it. How cool is that? Or if there's something that I said in any of these posts or any of these blogs or podcasts that help an idea, a way of thinking, a point of view that can help you out, by all means, please take it. But in no way is the things that I'm saying supposed to be your life. It's not. It's my life, it's our life. This is my story. What else am I supposed to tell you? I'm supposed to make things up. I've also been realistic. And that's what gets me. Just because my entire story isn't about the negative doesn't mean I've ignored the negative. I never have. In fact, the big part of telling my story is that you have to go through the early days, the negativity that first came, the fear, the worry, the heartache that came with not knowing who my son was going to be. That all is a part of the long-term story because it is a surprise that we are where we are, but also the fact that I've learned to understand him in the ways that I have is a complete out-of-left field type of a thing. I never saw it coming. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to write the blog as I did. I've told the story a million times about when Lucas was first diagnosed, going online and trying to find information about autism, about parenting a child like his, and finding these heartbreaking, heartbreaking blogs. I had never read blogs before. I was like, is this what a blog is? It was awful, just terrible, like uh pity porn, where by the end of it, you just wanted to jump out a window. There was no hope, there was no bow to wrap it up at the end. There wasn't even a moral lesson in the end. Even if it's a negative story, you could turn around and be like, listen, I told you this story, but you could also look at it this way and learn this. None of that. It was just like, look how miserable I am. The end. And as somebody who was new to the situation, going, oh my God, this is what my life is going to be like. I it was terrible. So I didn't write about Lucas immediately. Lucas was like five before I started writing about him. But by then I started to realize all these things that I had been worried about, all these things that people talk about so openly about autism and how hard it is. Yeah, there's harsh things that you have to deal with. There's heartache and pain. But in the end, there's good and there's family. And you have a child, a real child. Lucas is my child. Does he do the things that typical kids do? No, right? Like he's not, he's his own self. He does his own thing. Some of the things require more work on my part. Some of the things are things that I had to figure out that were confusing at first. But there's a beauty to who he is. And I'm able to see that because I'm able to look past all of these things that were so worrisome for so long that by the time they arrived, I'm not sitting here going, Oh my God, I can't believe it. I can't believe he can't talk. I can't. I stopped saying I can't believe he can't talk when he was like six. Do I want him to learn words? Yeah. Do I still try every day? Do I go to Luke and say, hi? Hi. It's like a joke with us. Hi. And he laughs, he tries to do it. We'll be doing that until he's like 50. Hopefully beyond. I stopped at 50, but hopefully I make it past then for him. But at the end of the day, this is our story. And this is how I see everything. It's how I see everything in my life. And I wrote about it in the blog. I wrote about overcoming different things and how many things in my life could have been the end. They could have been my story. I could have just rested my hat on this pity story. I could have turned around and said, I had a quintuple bypass when I was 35. Woe is me. Listen to how sad this is. Oh, I'm estranged from my birth family. Oh, I had an abusive childhood. All these things that I came from, that I dealt with, that I came past. I would rather tell you about how I got past things and have you be somewhat inspired by it or find things within those stories that you could grasp on to or relate to or understand than have me tell you terrible things and have you go, poor James. How sad. Not poor James. Don't pity me. Don't feel bad for me. Because despite all of these things that other people could write off as being the most negative thing in the world, I don't live like that. Life is not to be lived like that. You take lessons from what you can and you find the positives in everything. Because no matter what, there's positives in everything. If, in the very least, you've discovered how not to end up in that situation again, there's a positive to it. So every person who's done me wrong, every person who has has crossed me, every single thing I've been through, I've taken, and I've learned from it. Right. And in some cases, you have to make yourself find the value in it. Somebody treated you terrible at some point, you try to find how did this affect me? How did this make me a better person? Well, that requires a little more work. When it comes to Lucas, it doesn't require a lot of work, man. I get it. Lucas is great. And I'm so proud and I'm so lucky to be his dad. And I will tell people about it until the end of time. Because it's the truth. It's the only truth I know. So that does it for me, guys. Thank you for joining me this week. I will be back next week. Um, as we're in the midst of May. And until then, this is James Guttman saying, Join me Mondays for high blogomdad.com. Buy the book, Hi World, I'm dad. Join me on social media. @HiJames Guttman, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'll see you next Friday. Until then, James Guttman, be well. Bye pod. I'm dad.