July Updates And Friday Routine

James Guttman 0:00

Hypod I'm Dad. Hi Pod, it's James Guttman. Once again, it is a Friday. It is sweltering. It is July. Thank you for finding my any streaming service. High Pod Om Dad is available on Audible and Spotify and yada yada yada. And also HypodomDad.com every Friday. Archives right out there. So yeah, it's July. It's birthday month. It's my birthday month. It's a good month. I appreciate the support. It has been kind of a disjointed week, as happens to a lot of us. I know when the summer hits and the kids are off from school and schedules change, and we've been kind of dealing with that over here as well. Kind of wrapping my head around things. And when that happens, often I will I will find myself struggling for something to write about. I'm trying to figure out like, well, what can I write about? What's a what's a topic maybe I haven't talked about a lot as it relates to my son and autism and understanding things and epiphanies and all that stuff. And thankfully, in moments like that, my my boy Lucas will come over and be like, let me give you something to write about.

A Spill-Proof Cup That Isn't

James Guttman 1:06

And that's what he did last week. It was one of those blogs that I it happened, and I literally went up to my computer and I immediately started writing about it. And if you saw it, you know why. It was called Patience is Different When You're Raising a Child with Autism. Here's why. That was the name of the blog. And the whole point of it was to explain a um a pretty insane story that had just happened to me and why I was patient during it. Now, quick, give you the abridged version. My den downstairs, you guys have seen a million pictures of through this blog, has a sectional couch that I keep right in the middle of the room. Lucas has a recliner in the corner. I love it. I put I have a shutterfly blanket with everyone's pictures on it. Um he sits on it, he plays on his iPad, and he likes to drink anything that I give to him. This kid is a huge drinker. And there are cups all over the place. He leaves his sippy cups. He's got this, these cups he's been using since he was little. Now, Lucas can use real cups. He picks them up at the table. When he eats lunch, he picks it up and he's got a straw in it. Regular cups. But when he runs around the house, I give him these ironclad, spill-proof, no-nonsense metal sippy cups, right? That have straws that you screw in, you put them in, no spill, no musk, no fuss, the whole nine. That's what they promise. My son, however, is like a magician. I don't know how he does this. So let me explain this. And it's so hard. I wish I wish you guys were here right now so I could take it out and show you. So the way the cup works is there's a top, plastic hard. Uh, the base of it is usually metal or hard plastic, and then the straw is two pieces, and you put one part in, and then you screw the bottom part in and you close it, and there's no way to get it out because it's screwed in underneath. I don't know how he does it, but he unscrews it. He puts it in his mouth, he chews on it with his teeth, he walks around and as his head kind of goes back and forth as he's walking or whatever. I don't know, he unscrews it all the time. So he'll come to me with this rattling cup and hand it to me. On rare occasions, and this one, I have no idea. I wish I could see it when it happens. He's able to unscrew it and have the top half of the straw in the cup. No clue how the hell that happens. Just and that's what happened last week. And I'm sitting on the couch, he's sitting behind me, he's on the recliner. Now, as I mentioned, I'm I'm the cup guy, I'm the cup filler. So as soon as the cup starts to empty, he comes to me. If it's broken, he comes to me. Even if the cup is full, this is this kid. If I walk into the room, he is so used to me being his cup guy that if he sees me, he'll pick up his cup, he'll sip it to see if there's anything in it and shake it, and then he will chug it and hand it to me. So he always wants a fresh drink. And that's what happened last week. I'm sitting on the couch, I'm not paying attention. And here's a sweet part. And here's the part of the story that isn't part of this story, but it's a part of the overall story, and it's part of the reason why I wasn't alarmed at first. Lucas likes to come up from behind when I'm sitting on this couch and tap me on the head or kiss me on the top of the head, you know, just to get my attention. And it's I'm like, hey, what's up, buddy? And I'll give him a hug. And you guys have seen the pictures where I'm like looking up at him and beautiful moment. So I heard faintly his footsteps on the carpet behind me. And that's what I thought was gonna happen. I didn't realize he had once again pushed the straw into the cup. There was a hole at the top of the cup. Cup was filled with water. He couldn't drink it because there was no straw. And he wanted to hand it to me to fix. Again, still following. Beautiful, cute, sweet. He reached over my head to hand it to me. But as he did it, he did the thing that I have been trying to drill into his head for years. And this is a big thing in the house. Um, he held it upside down. And he does it all the time. He'll put it upside down on the couch, he'll put it upside down on the floor, spills it everywhere. So it was upside down, and there was no straw. And as I was sitting there, Lucas proceeded to pretty much drench me in an entire cup of water. Um, and I made, you know, the the analogy to you can't do that on television when Christine Moose McGlade, I have a weird memory, uh, would say water and they would pour water on her. This is exactly what happened to me. And I am sopping wet with what and I was like, what? I jump up from the couch and I'm reclining too. So when you do that, the whole thing kind of tips forward. And I stood up. And if you guys know me, I am chill, I am very chill. So I stood, I'm trying to process what happened. And then I realized, and he's looking at me like, oh my god, what up? So I look at him, I make eye contact, and he could tell from the expression of my face that I am not happy with him. And I took a breath, and I took a moment, and I went, go upstairs. That's it. And he knew he just scrambled right up the stairs. I was like, oh my God, this freaking kid. Now I'm dripping water from my head, and you know, my clothes are wet, and there's the couch is wet, and thankfully the electronics didn't get wet, but I'm like, oh my God. So I start gathering up all the stuff that we have in the den because I'm like, I guess we're going upstairs now. I'm gonna have him go upstairs and you know, maybe I'll uh make food or whatever, which comes next. So I start gathering things and I go up the stairs, still dripping. I'm gonna go get a towel, clean myself off. And as I come up, he's in the kitchen waiting for me. And as he sees me, he strains his neck to look at the cup as if to say, Did you fill that? And I was like, and then I filled up the cup, and that was my story. And that's what it's like raising my

Why Yelling Does Not Teach

James Guttman 6:53

son. Now, before you turn around and go, well, you have to be patient like that with all kids. You do. You definitely do. But I have a neurotypical daughter. Olivia's 18, and Olivia was little, and there were times where she would do something bad or something that maybe is inadvertent but was annoying to me. And then you could be pointed, be like, are you paying attention? Are you looking at what you're doing? Why did you do this? That's normal parenting stuff that you would do to a kid. You reinforce, what are you doing? Don't do that. Lucas doesn't get it. Right. Now, the lesson of not holding the cup upside down is something that's ongoing, right? Every time I see him do it the wrong, I go, Lucas, turn it and turn it around. But in that moment, with the heightened uh emotions and all that stuff, if I turn to him and I express myself the way most of us would if someone dumped a cup of water on our head as we were sitting on a couch. Um, even a little bit, it wouldn't, if I got up and I was like, Lucas, what are you doing? It would not go well. He would get upset and he would cry or he would be, you know, I don't know. I wouldn't, it wouldn't help my situation at all. It would make it more difficult to then move to the next step. It doesn't help him because he didn't do it on purpose. And he's not the kind of kid that learns from yelling. You can't really yell at him, you can't punish him, you can't do that. He doesn't register that. He doesn't get, oh, I did this thing, so this bad thing happens to me if I do it again. He doesn't see it like that. Um, it wasn't on purpose. Lucas doesn't do bad things on purpose. That's a truth. Like there are naughty things that come out of it, right? Like even when he steals food from people back and then he doesn't do it anymore, but he's to steal food all the time that you were eating. I don't think he even saw that as naughty. I thought he, I think he saw that as I need to get fed. I need to feed myself. I don't know if these people know that I'm hungry. Let me get this. So that's the kind of way that raising Lucas differs from neurotypical parenting. And I realized this when he was little, right? Because when he was little, you're still trying to figure things out. And we would have times where he would do something. I'd be like, Lucas, no, what are you doing? And now, now he's bawling his eyes. I'm like, bro, I barely, I barely raise my voice to him. And I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you so upset? And you still have to then correct whatever

Handling Public Meltdowns With Calm

James Guttman 9:16

happened, right? So let's say you have to go to the supermarket, and he's fighting you on his way in, and he doesn't want to go into the supermarket, and he sits down on the ground outside the supermarket. All things that have happened. This has happened to me many times. I don't say many times, but more than once, or more than 10, or more than a lot. And you can't grab him by the hand and pull him, come on, big boys go to the supermarket. What are you doing? We don't do that. It doesn't work. Now you're in the supermarket and he's losing his mind and he's crying and he's fighting you. So I would sit with him and I would rub his back and people would walk around us because people knew they would see me with my son and they go, Oh, this dad is taking care of this. He must know what he's doing. People don't give you negative comments if they think you are in control of your situation, raising your child with special needs. They give you comments if they think you're not handling it. If you're the type of parent that goes, I'm just gonna let him cry it out and I'm gonna walk these aisles and these people will deal with it. No, they're gonna come up to you and be like, you know, he should really be, you know, and it's and it's gonna be insulting and it's gonna start a fight and you're gonna be on news 12. I don't know what what your local news, we have news 12, um, you're gonna be in trouble. That's it. You're gonna have to deal with it. But if you sit with your kid, even if you're sitting in the middle of a crowded area and you're just rubbing your child's back and they see that he's having somewhat of a meltdown, they leave you alone. They respect you for it. I've had people compliment me on doing this, and it's been you know, eye-opening and changing for me. But make no mistake, that patience is something that has to be uh built for myself, and it has to be something that you really believe it. You can't fake it. It's hard to just stop yourself and be like, I'm gonna be cool. Maybe no, I mean, it's all about thinking, right? Now, I tell this story to some people who don't have special needs kids. And what's sweet, and this is what I love about it, and people, especially if they know Lucas, they'll be like, Well, why would you get mad at him? Like, he doesn't mean it, and it's true. Why would I get mad? And that's the way I think. Like, why would I get mad at him? But I'm gonna be honest, and this is why it sometimes gets tough. That story that I told you, as a standalone story, as a one-time thing, he poured water on my head. It is adorable, and oh, you can get over it. It only happened one time. This is not a standalone story. There have been many times, little things, losing his shoe somewhere. I'm like, where the hell is your shoe? Why did you take your shoes off? There's that, there's um, I'll

Moisturizer Snack And Emotional Mirroring

James Guttman 11:56

tell you a story. This is kind of, and I don't, uh this is this is funny and it's cute, and he's old enough now that I would tell this story. So as you guys know, I I tend to um I want to respect his privacy, right? So I don't talk about certain things about my son. He's going through puberty, and there's a lot of life skills that we work on. I don't talk about all those in depth. But there are definitely embarrassing stories from when he was little that are funny. And if he was a neurotypical 15-year-old, I would tell this story from when he was like eight, and it would be cute. There was one day where I had uh a little Tupperware filled with um moisturizer that he was supposed to use on this skin rash that he had. It wasn't toxic, it was some little white cream, it's supposed to help clear up skin issues. And it was in his room, and I had gone into his room to get him in the morning, and I see the Tupperware sitting on the floor, and it's empty. Now, when I say Tupperware, keep in mind too this is not a tub of Tupperware. It was one of those like single serve size of your hands kind of Tupperwares. And I look and it's empty, and I knew it was full the day before, and I see what looks like like little finger-like tracks in what used to be the moisturizer, and then I look at him and he's got moisturizer around his mouth, and I'm like, oh my god, he ate the moisturizer. And I was like, Lucas, what are you doing, buddy? And I picked it up to take it out of the room, and he ran over and he grabbed my hands and grabbed it and started crying because I guess he wanted to eat the rest of it or whatever. And I was like, bro, I'm like, I'm saving your life right now. Like it was the craziest thing. But that right there was a patience moment. Because my instinct as a parent who worries, and I know there's people right now listening to this, being like, oh my god, it's toxic. Bring him to the hospital. This was eight years ago. We're good, he's alive. But I know, and as a parent, I had that same initial thought of, oh my god, this kid's gonna die from moisturizer. I did this, I left. And your brain is like, dude, flip out. And I'm like, no, brain, I can't flip it. It's like, no, flip out. I'm like, no, brain, I can't flip out. It's not gonna help the situation. And even that thing of going, Lucas, what are you doing? And picking it up caused him to run over and get worked up. My son is a mirror. I I think I actually wrote a blog called that at one point. Lucas mirrors the kind of emotions of the people around him. And I I struggle with the phrasing of that because Lucas has his own emotions. Lucas doesn't copy emotions. But the mood in the room is sometimes picked up by him, especially if it's directed at him. So if everybody's happy and laughing and having fun, Lucas is happy and laughing and having fun. Uh, if people are quiet and sullen, he might be the same way. And he, I think nine times out of ten he is, but sometimes he just does his own thing. But how you react to Lucas is how Lucas reacts to you. If you are sweet and loving to Lucas, Lucas will be sweet and loving to you. If you are calm like I am with Lucas, Lucas will be calm with you. Um, I have long made him stop and take a breath. And I don't I don't really think he knows how to, you know, take a breath in the traditional sense. I don't think he can just be like but when he's running a mile a minute and he comes over to me, he's all excited, or he's clapping, or speaking, I go, hey, hey, hey, and I'll take the iPad out of his hands and I put my hand on his chest, I go, hey, breathe. And he will stop and he will stand there and he will breathe. Not like a purposeful kind of breathe, but he will just breathe and stop, and he gets it. And once he's calm, he gets his iPad back. And I've been doing this with him since he was little. So that's why now in our life, no matter how worked up he gets, I could always get him to stop.

unknown 15:53

Breathe.

James Guttman 15:54

Breathe. And it helps me too, because sometimes I need to remember to breathe and relax. So he's like that. Um but if you respond to Lucas with anger, with frustration, with kind of that heightened sense of anger, he'll respond the same way. And I don't want that. I don't want him to feel that way. But I also, if I'm trying to teach him a lesson, if I'm trying to get him to understand something, it doesn't help to create this frantic, chaotic, you know, environment around us as we do it. It's important to remember who he is. I'll tell you one final story about this that um that makes sense.

When A House Mood Feels Loud

James Guttman 16:43

And it's it's it's not about Lucas, and it's an older story, it's about someone that I knew who had a child very similar to Lucas. Um and this woman had a relative, right? Um, her father would come by. And her father was very, his attitude was always like the two of them, just always like not yelling, but like, yeah, you know, those people, I'm loud, I'm Italian. I'm Italian, I'm not really that loud. But some people just think that that's their their key. I'm allowed to scream at everybody, I'm Italian. So it was one of those failings. Everybody's just yelling and oh my god, brother's very negative stuff. And every time this father would come over, this woman's son would go over and take his hand and bring him to the front door to make him leave, like right away. And they couldn't figure it out. They're like, no, that's no, no. Why are you walking him out of the house? And they could never understand. But I got it. Kid never walked me out of the house. And it was that heightened sense of emotion that we forget is in the air. We feel it. We feel it, right? As a neurotypical person, I feel it. If you walk into a place where there's, you know, something in the air or something is off, you feel what that is. But for a child like mine, and a child like that who has limited vocabulary and their understanding of the world around them is based on mood and based on the people there, it means everything. So to get worked up and to get angry at Lucas for something that wasn't his fault is the kind of thing that it would make me feel better in the moment. I've said this a million times, right? Like, so if your kid does something bad or something frustrating, or it's four o'clock in the morning and he's wrecked his room, that's happened too. I wrote that blog at three o'clock in the morning. Things happen in the middle of the night. Last week, something happened in the middle of the night. I had to get up and go in and take care of all this stuff. Um, when those things happen, the initial thought is to lose your mind as a parent, like, oh my God, what is happening? And just, you know. Because we've been conditioned to think that that makes you feel better. It makes you feel better to scream, it makes you feel better to yell and go crazy. Um, but I don't do that because it doesn't. It might in that first moment get it out. But the aftermath of that, I'm gonna be more upset. He's gonna be more upset. The problem is still there. We still have to deal with it, we still have to fix whatever needs to be cleaned or or put back together or whatever, man, like crazy stuff you have to do. But now I'm doing it with a screaming kid. I feel bad, he feels bad, we all feel bad, as opposed to what I've done before. I just kind of quietly put my head down, I start doing it. And what he will do, and this is what makes Lucas like, oh my God, one of my favorite people in the entire world, he doesn't, he doesn't then get upset, right? So now we've done this thing, and like let's say the moisturizer, right? So I'm cleaning up the moisturizer. He will come over and he will literally like tap me on the shoulder and I'll look up and he'll smile at me. Or he does this thing that he's always done, and I love it. It's the cutest thing ever. If I am on the ground, whether I'm like getting something or looking, tying his shoe or whatever, he will place his hand under my chin and lift it up to look at him and smile at me. And it's the sweetest thing he does. And I live for that. To me, that's worth more than yelling and screaming and all that.

Teaching Later Plus Where To Follow

James Guttman 20:06

Now keep in mind, and if you are listening to this, you're a grandparent, you come from a generation that's different. I'm not saying I don't teach him to correct this behavior that he does wrong. I'm not saying that we let it go and we think it's cute and he does it to other people in public, and I go, what do you want? I don't do that. He learns his lessons, but he doesn't learn them in that moment, and he doesn't learn them through frustration and anger. It's targeted and we sit with him. Lucas, how do you hold the cup? And then we're gonna go over it next time over and over and over again. If I go into the basement and it's upside down, I go, Lucas, I make him turn. That's how Lucas learns. But in those moments, he doesn't. He doesn't get punishments. There's no sense of like, you know, you're gonna be in a room all day. He doesn't even know what you're talking about. He can, when he comes home from school, if he had a bad day, I could never even be like, What did you do at school today? Doesn't get it. So it's a matter of dealing with that behavior later on. And any anger that I can express that would make me feel better, I just throw that away. I don't, I don't need it. I'm good. No reason to be angry with a kid like this. I love him. Um, but read it. There's plenty more blogs like that if you search around the site. Uh a lot of uh funny and cute things. My kid is both funny and cute. I love that kid. So thank you once again for letting me share him with you and tell you the stories. Uh, check it out, man. Hiblogomdad.com every Monday. New blog. Been doing this every week since 2017, February, which is insane. Um, hipodomdad.com. Every single Friday, I'm back here. And follow me on social media, whether it's TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or whatever. Hi, James Gutman, H I James Gutman. That's me. Hello. Uh appreciate your support. That does it for me. I will be back on Monday with a new blog. I will be back next Friday with a new podcast. Until then, James Guttman saying, be well. Byepod. I'm Dad