Welcome And A Noisy Start

James Guttman 0:05

Hi Pod, it's James Guttman. I am the dad behind Hiblogom Dad.com. I am the host of HiPod Im Dad. What you hear outside is they're mowing the lawn or they're murdering someone with a chainsaw. One of the two. All I know is that I've been starting and stopping this for a while, and we're just gonna go with it. We're just gonna go with it. So welcome. It is June. It is June of 2026. Thank you so much for finding me on any Friday. I'm on every streaming service. Uh we're on HiPod I'mDad.com. Tons of places to find us. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell anybody who will listen to check us out. Thank you.

Why I Stopped Needing Speech

James Guttman 0:40

This week I wrote a blog on Monday about my son Lucas. He is nonverbal, he has severe autism, and I wrote about a familiar topic, something that I've touched upon before, I've written about from different angles. And this one was about why I stopped needing my son to speak. And it took a little while to figure out the title for this one, I'm gonna be honest with you, to get behind the curtain. Because at first it was um it was about like why I don't need my son to speak, which it's not that I don't need him to speak to speak, right? I don't like I want him to speak, but I don't need him to speak. And there's a fundamental difference. And this is like, and I know we're getting into semantics. This is like, you know, I like you, but I don't love you, or I love you and I don't like you. Like people have these weird ways of phrasing things. I mean it. I want Lucas to speak, right? I want Lucas to do everything. I want him to fly a plane, I want him to run for president, I want him to um, you know, become the Lord and master of time and space. I want him to do everything, just like I want his sister to do everything. Uh every talent, every possibility, I want him to have available to him. I want every door opened, I want every opportunity, all these things I want for him. That said, I don't need him to fly a plane. I don't need him to run for president, and I don't need him to speak. In fact, I don't need him to do anything.

Letting Go Of Living Through Kids

James Guttman 2:10

I don't need any of my kids to do anything. And maybe that's me, maybe it's where I come from, because I've seen this. I've seen people who you could tell they're living through their kids, they want their kids to do all their unrealized dreams. I don't have unrealized dreams. I've done everything I wanted to do. And I don't mean this arrogantly, I don't mean this like in a way, oh, I've done so many things. No, but there are definitely goals I had when I was a kid that happened, right? Like I'm a writer, I love to write, but even specific writing, things that you guys might not even think is a big deal. But, you know, I wrote for WWE magazine at one point. And as a kid, I used to make WWE magazines on paper. I drew it, I have it still saved. It's ridiculous. I drew Ricky the Dragon Steamboat on the cover, and I would sell it to kids in school for a quarter. And then I grew up and I wrote for the magazine. So for me, it was like that was a life dream that I had, and I did it, right? Did I work there for 20 years? No. Did I love it? No. Uh, in fact, a lot of those dreams when they did happen weren't that amazing. But the point is, my kids don't need to do anything for me. It's not like, you know, I couldn't play baseball and I need her to play baseball, and I couldn't, you know, do whatever I need him to do whatever. Everything I wanted to do, I did. So I don't live through my kids for any reason, but I'd like to think that even if I did have unrealized dreams, I still wouldn't do that. Just because, and you guys who who know me and who follow my blog here, you guys know when it comes to parenting, um, I try to be the adult that I wish was there when I was a kid, right? Not all of us had great examples or role models as parents. I didn't. I didn't I didn't see good parenting, you know, without getting into specifics of anything. I just didn't see good parenting examples growing up from anybody, whatever. Take it for you all. Um, so what you do is you say to yourself, Well, who do I wish was there when I was coming up? What adults do I wish were around me? How do I wish people acted? And then you do that. And that's what I do with my kids. So you go by the examples of what you don't want to be. And what always drove me crazy is that we as parents know what we're not supposed to be. We've been to baseball games as kids where parents were like, eh, I'm gonna kick his ass, and they run out there and they're fighting the umpire or whatever. And as a kid, you knew how embarrassing that was and how terrible it was, and how, oh my god, I'm so sorry about your dad. And then we grow up and we do it. And you hear stories, and I talk to adults sometimes, like, yeah, so that's why I got up and I went to the umpire, and I'm like, yo, yo, what are you gonna throw no? I'm like, You got up there in the middle of the game? Yeah, I'm not gonna let him throw at my kid like that. You know that's like you're not supposed to do that, right? Like, but for some reason we forget when it's our turn. I wrote in my book that we're a generation of people crying about the fact that our parents didn't go to our baseball games as we sit at home missing our kids' baseball games. Like it's such a silly idea. We know it's right, we know what we're supposed to do. So we know before our kids are even born, that we're supposed to accept them unconditionally, that we don't need our kids to do anything. We want them to be certain things. And we say this stuff out loud. We know it. Everybody says, oh, as long as he's healthy, that's all I care about. But then for some, once the kid is born healthy, all of a sudden it's like, well, as long as he makes the honor roll, as long as he's on, you know, the the champion lacrosse team,

Learning Communication Without Words

James Guttman 5:30

there's all these different things that you need your kid to do. And I was faced with this situation, with my son not speaking. And in the very beginning, I thought I needed him to speak. Not because I would love him any less, but because this was a fundamental thing for me that you need to survive in life. How do you survive without speaking? How would I ever have a relationship with this kid if he can't say a word, understand words? What are we gonna do? I had all these misconceptions about it. My thought was like, oh, maybe he just can't speak, but he'll be able to spell his words out because we watched TV shows about nonverbal. There was a show called, um I think it was called nonverbal, I don't remember what it was called. It was a sitcom. And the idea was always that, oh, they're if they're nonverbal and you give them a device, they're able to be like, hello everyone, I'm nonverbal, and I'm here and I want to say this and I want to say that. Lucas is not that. Chainsaw's coming back. Lucas is not that. Lucas is Lucas. And Lucas doesn't necessarily know how to spell, Lucas doesn't understand every word that comes out of everyone's mouth. Lucas marches to the beat of his own drummer. So coming up, thinking that my son might be nonverbal was terrifying. I'm like, how is this kid ever gonna survive? How is he ever gonna interact? And as I learned that you can get through this world without words, to an extent, right? Lucas is gonna need care for the rest of his life. That's a fact. Um, Lucas might not live with me for the rest of his life. That's a fact. Lucas has to do what's good for Lucas, and I've always been very firm about that too. Like I love my son and I always want him with me. But if he gets to the point where he's 30 years old or 25 years old, whatever he is, an adult, and there's a place where there's people that he enjoys being with and people his own age, and you know, and all these different people and they do activities, and he loves it, I would never make the decision to keep him with me out of selfish reasons. Lucas has to live his own life, Lucas has to do his own thing. But there are so many ways to communicate without verbal language. And it's weird for us, man, because I'm so used to just spouting off of the mount, man. I just talk. Just people say, How are you? And I'll just go on and on and on and on. You feel the emptiness. Even now, I'm sitting here just talking to myself. You know, you guys are like, oh, he's doing the podcast, he's talking to me. I am talking to you, but you're not here. So I'm just filling the air with words because that's what we're used to doing. My son doesn't do that. But I learned there's receptive language. Lucas understands things I say to him. Now we're at the point now where we'll be in the kitchen and he'll want to drink. And I go, dude, go find me a cup, please. Your cups are all over the house. Go find a cup. And he'll leave, and it's so cute because he scurries off like a little cartoon character, scurries off. And wherever he goes, he comes back with a cop. I'm like, You got a cop? And it used to be a cellar. It's still to this day, it's still exciting when he brings him. I'm like, Good job, buddy, way to go. I give him a cookie and we get excited. Um, says receptive language. There's his device, his uh communication device, where he's like, I want pirate booty, I want pizza. It's easy, easy peasy. Once you learn how to do it, and that's for him was easy because we started when he was little with pecs, which were pictures, and he would hand you this picture if you wanted uh, you know, a drink. He would hand you a picture of a drink, and you get him a drink. And this device is very similar in that it's pictures, he hits the pictures, and he learns it at school and he's really good with it. So he has that. We have gesture-based communication, where I do the whole thing, hey, hey, buddy, do you want to eat? Hand to the mouth. Okay, we're gonna eat after I make a rainbow motion. Hey, buddy, stop, hand out in front of me. Gesture-based communication. And he understands what a lot of those things are too. He gets it. We've gone over them and we've worked on them and he's learned them. There is, you know, enunciating words, which I've had to do. And when you do that, it leads to receptive language, where there were certain words that I would say to him, and I would say them over the top. Like, for example, and this is, and I'm not just throwing this out there because this is a real one. I I at one point I needed him to wait for me to do something. I forgot what I was doing. He was little, and I was cleaning something up or doing whatever. And I was trying to stop him. I think I was trying to stop him from. I'm gonna make this up. This is probably nonsense, but it's something similar, if not this. Like something broke and I didn't want him to come into the kitchen while I cleaned it up. So I put my hand out and I was like, hey, buddy, buddy, wait, like this pained, ridiculous way of saying wait. And he thought it was the funniest thing, and he laughed. I'm like, wait, we do it all the time. And to this day I still do it. We'll do it like as a joke or whatever. But because of that, now if I just say, hey, buddy, wait, I put my hand up, wait, he knows and he gets it right away. So a lot of that, it's a matter of realizing that I have to be teaching him something in order for him to ever understand it, right? There's things he's gonna pick up on his own, there's things that he's gonna get, but if there's something I really need him to understand, I teach him that thing and he understands it. In no way do I need him to speak words. I really don't. And if you think about it, and I've told this story before about um I had known someone who had a son who she told me he was nonverbal but not fully nonverbal, and then he said some words. And I felt so bad about myself. I was he was Lucas was little, he was like a toddler, and we're just getting him diagnosed. And this woman's like, Well, my son says some words. He was like in his teens, and I thought to myself, Oh my god, Lucas has no words because that was to me the biggest deal was that like all the kids had some, they'd say this, he had nothing to this day, has nothing he says. And then I had seen this woman at Target the following week with her son, and he was saying words, but he wasn't saying them specifically for any reason. He was saying them almost like a vocal stem where he was saying the word out loud, he was yelling it out, and he was repeating it over and over again. And she's trying to get him to like follow her and like stand by her side. And that was the day that was, I mean, I hate telling this story because it sounds like I'm talking about someone else's kid, and I'm a hundred percent not doing that. I'm telling you that that was the day that I realized, oh, even if he said words, there are situations where that's not necessarily the best option. And I would rather Lucas have no words and understand what I say to him than have three or four words that he doesn't fully grasp, that he just repeats on repeat. And I felt bad. I felt better about it that day. I felt bad before that though. And I think a lot of us, a lot of the parents who read that blog that I wrote on Monday and who respond, they've been in that situation where you feel really bad. In the early days of my son, I needed him to speak because I didn't want to feel like I failed him. And that was always the concern. I brought this kid here, I brought him into this world, he doesn't speak, and now I have to take this all on myself. It's my responsibility. And um the day that I finally realized, like, oh, it's not just about speaking, it's not just about saying words. That was I was like free that day. That's

Being Understood And Letting Go

James Guttman 12:40

it's like the first time that I said autism out loud when we were on a checkout line and the cashier said hello to him. And instead of me staring at Lucas, waiting to see if he might say hello back, I was like, oh, he's nonverbal. He might the whole wave. And I felt so good to be able to finally almost like be open about who we are and who he is and accept him and feeling like a good dad, like I accept my son. I I this is who he is, and I'm cool with it. And that was the point of the blog on Monday is that once you let go of a need, needing your child to be something, to do something, and you just accept who they are right now, you fully uh appreciate and understand your child. Perhaps perhaps for the first time. I know I did. Being able to see this is who Lucas is. He understands certain words, he says nothing, but he communicates what he needs to communicate. It's not about the words that he says, it's about the words that he understands, it's about the things that he needs that I understand, and it's about his way of communicating his needs. We don't have to do everything in the classic way. It doesn't always have to be uh speaking your words out loud. You don't have to recite a sonnet to be understood. And my goal with my son is to make sure he's understood. And that's why I don't need him to speak. I need him to be understood, and I will do whatever I can to help him do that. And if that brings about words, if that brings about spoken words and things like that, great, fantastic, wonderful. But if it doesn't, then my goal is to make sure that he gets through life in a way that he never has to wonder if he's gonna get fed, he never has to wonder if he's gonna get what he needs because he has ways to tell people what he wants. But that's my job, man. I'm his dad. And um and yeah, so if you're one of those parents, you're a new parent, you're a young parent, you're still in that position where you're trying to like, I need this kid to say some words. Um just know that you need your kid to communicate. It's not the same thing as speaking words. You need your kid to be understood, it's not the same as speaking words. And once you just change that small point of view, and once you finally just see, like, okay, this is not, I'm focusing on the wrong aspect here of what needs to be. Don't get me wrong, things need to be done, right? Like you need to be on top of things, you need to make sure your child reaches their full potential, you need to figure out what their capabilities are and get to that. But don't focus on one specific part of it without realizing that it's it's more than that. It's like the song. I almost closed it out by being like, it's about more than words. And then like, I don't know, I don't have the money to pay for the licensing, so I'm not gonna play the song, but you guys know the song. Um, yeah, more than words, man. My kid is, that's what he is. Lucas is he's one of a kind. He marches to the beat of his own drum. Uh, I couldn't

Closing And Where To Find Me

James Guttman 15:40

love him anymore. I couldn't be prouder of him. I'm just as proud of him as I am of his sister, who's uh like a rock star. So yeah. The luckiest dad in the world. And that does it for me. Until next week. James Gubman saying, be back next Friday, hiblog, uh, hipodomdad.com. I'll be on Monday, hiblogomdad.com with a brand new blog. I'm on social media, hi James Guttman, H I James Guttman, and that does it for me. Until then, this is James Gubman saying, be well. Bye, Podom Dad.