Quick Hello And Summer Energy

James Guttman 0:00

It's the journey made with Pod. Hi Pod I'm Dad. Hi Pod, it's James Gutman. Welcome back to another edition of the podcast. It's August. It's hot. It's a Friday. Thank you for finding me anywhere. HiPod I'm dad.com. Any of the streaming services, yada yada, yada. Everywhere you find it, that's where we are. And yeah, it's been uh it's funny, man. I feel like whenever the winter comes, it kind of feels sullen, like you're inside and it's dark and it's dingy and just low energy and people complain about it. But I gotta tell you, man, summer, I think it's because we're out so much, we're doing things, we're in the heat. Um, I don't know, man, just zap your energy out. It's a big summer, too. My daughter's starting college soon. And yeah, and there's also that pressure, right? Like to get out of the house. I can stay home all day. I like being home to an extent. Now, as I'm getting older, there's definitely times where I'm in the house a little bit too much where I'm like, I gotta get the hell out of here. But when I was a kid, especially, oh my God. I remember during COVID, my daughter, who was at the time, how old was she? Like uh 12, 11, 12 years old. She told me it was like her dream come true. I'm like, are you okay that you can't leave the house and go to school? She's like, this is my dream come true. I'm like, okay, but I totally got what she was saying. And I feel the same way, but we want to get out, we want to

Bringing Lucas Back To Lindenhurst

James Guttman 1:15

do things, right? And that's what I wrote about on Monday because I brought my son, uh Lucas, to Lindenhurst. Now, if you don't know, Lucas is non-verbal, he has um severe autism, as I guess we call it now. Lindenhurst is where I grew up. I'm from Lindy, I've talked about Lindenhurst on here. One of those things where you grow up in a place and you don't really appreciate it for what it is until you're gone. And then I don't know, it's always a party. So I have memories there. I spent so much time there. And I wanted to bring my son out, right? I mean, I brought him there before. We've been to Fireman's Park, we've been to Venetian shores, all the different. I'm giving you all the locales in Lindenhurst. But I like going there, man. And the and the Wellwood Docks, Linenhurst Docks, is a place that I essentially grew up at the docks, right? Like my my senior year, my junior year, all these things from high school, we would spend all night at the docks just hanging out, and people would show up. Oh my god, you're at the docks. And it sounds when I talk about it now, I sound like a Billy Joel song, you know, hanging out at the docks. Um, it was literally we're hanging out at the docks. Uh no singing, no dancing, but whatever, whatever. And I love it, man. To this day in my house, at the uh and every staircase, I think it's every staircase, there's it leads to docks when you get to the top of the stairs. So I have it, the one going upstairs, when leaving the house, going out the back door, there's docks. It's just a lot of imagery, right? I'm big on symbolism, but I love the docks. And I brought my daughter there when she was little. My daughter is now, as I said, going to college. So she's beyond the age of like, let's go to daddy's hometown, take pictures of you there. She'll be like, what the hell's wrong with you? So we don't do that with her, but but my boy, I could do that with. Lucas is awesome because Lucas will come along for everything. And I brought him. I brought him to Lindenhurst, and he was fantastic. He got out, he took pictures. It's cute. He does that pose with his hands, a little polywalnuts in front of his body, little T-Rex arms, and he's like, Oh my Lucas. Um that made me happy. It makes me so happy to be able to do this. He's he's my son, right? He's the only son I have. Um, even if I had other sons, he would be the only 15-year-old son, whatever the age was, whatever he was, he would be the only one that I have. So the idea that trips like this, which full disclosure, I don't think he really cares about, right? Like, so it's not like he gets excited about it. It's not like I can even tell him, I can explain it to him. Like, look, this daddy came here. He doesn't get a lot of it, doesn't really understand it to the best of my knowledge, right? Whenever I say this, people like he understands everything. Okay, he understands everything. So I'm around him all the time. I know there are certain things that he doesn't get. And I've come to believe that there's like deeper uh language and communication things that I try to impart that he might not understand. So he might not get like when I was little, I grew up here. I don't know if he understands the concept of when I was little or growing up in a particular area or location. I don't know. But I tell him anyway. We drive by my old house. Daddy grew up there, right there. Look, look, look, look, look, look, look. And I make him look. And he looks up at the iPad. I'm like, see, see? Doesn't care. And that's why the name of the blog

Why The Trip Matters Anyway

James Guttman 4:25

on Monday was Does My Son with Autism Care About These Trips? That's not the point. Because it's not the point. The point is not to find a trip that he cares about. The point of these is that he's my son. And this is something I would want to show my son. And if even one percent of him is aware of where we are and what is happening, I want to do that with my kid. It's not a waste of time, it's not pretending, it's not these things. It's it's sharing something you love with someone you love, right? And we don't do this for a reaction. And I got news for you, man. There's been times you ever give somebody a present and they don't react at all. I mean, it sucks, but you still gave them the present. You know what I mean? It's not about I don't do nice things for you for you to be like, oh my god, thank you. Like, I don't want you to be a jerk to me afterwards, but it's not we don't do it for the reaction. We don't say hello for the hello, we don't do the things for thank you. In this case, this was kind of for me. And Lucas was great. And he was great because we've been doing this since he was little. And this is at the end of the day, in the very least, this is something different that we're doing. It's an activity, it's spending time with his dad. He might not know the meaning behind it, he might not understand why we're here, what we're doing, but he knows that he's with me. And he knows that I bring him out and I do these things with him and I love him. And at the end of the day, that's the point of what we're doing, right? We're we're spending time with our loved ones, we're showing things, we're sharing things with them. And I'm proud of that. And it's been hard in his life to do any of these things with him. And I've talked about this before. And this is a different, it's an adjacent topic, but it's a topic that kind of works with it. And I actually had to make a note in the beginning of the blog that I wasn't talking about these kind of trips, right? So for these trips, these are for me. This is for me to share with my kid. But there were so many trips that I would bring him to that he didn't want to go to, that I did on the off chance

Chasing Activities That Might Click

James Guttman 6:20

that he might like where we go, right? Um, I've talked about bowling. This was a big thing in the beginning when I first started writing this blog about 10 years ago of literally dragging him into bowling alleys, leaving like heel prints of the uh like a car skinning out of control with his feet as we drag him into the bowling alley, only for him to get inside and jump around happy and go bowling. I'd be like, dude, you're killing me. Or even activities that he didn't like, right? So this is the big thing, and this is what makes it so hard for parents of a child like Lucas. Um, in some cases, especially if you are in um a couple situation, if you're a single dad, right? If it's just me and I bring him out as a pain in the butt, dah-da-da, he might not like it, so it goes, right? But when you have somebody else, the whole dynamic changes. Because here's what happens you have to pick something out. Okay, I think Lucas is going to like um miniature golf. I don't think he's gonna like miniature golf. That's just an example. But let's say I say that to myself, Lucas doesn't like miniature golf. I would then have to get him up when he was a little up to get him up, get him dressed, pull him out of the house, which he didn't want to leave. Get up often early because you want to get there before people, you want to deal with it. Get there, pull him out of the car as he's like crying, doesn't want to go in, doesn't want to go in. Then you get there and he hates it. And you're like, oh my God, after all this, and you have to leave in five minutes. This has happened to me. This happened to me with like petting zoos, this happened to me with a sensory plagiar. Like, there were definitely things I brought him to. I was like, oh my God, all right, all right, you hate it. Take three pictures and we leave. Take a picture of him, look at smile and crying. Picture we go. It's horrible. But you're like, oh my God, what a waste of my day. And now you've spent like five hours on a Tuesday, especially with somebody you have to drive to. There's nothing worse than driving back from out east on Long Island, like, oh my God, and he's happy in the backseat on his iPad. Like, we could have just driven in circles. But it's worse when you have a partner, a spouse, a friend, even who has a kid with special needs, whatever you're out there with. If you're with somebody else who doesn't get why you're doing it, it is the worst. Because then it becomes, I don't get it. Why are we here? He hates it, I hate it, I don't want to be here. And you're just like, oh my God. And in your head, you're thinking, I don't want to be here either. Why are we doing this? And the reason why you're doing it is because out of every five things you go to, he might like two. And now you've discovered something that he likes that you can go to. Lucas loves the pool. We go to the pool. First time getting him to the pool wasn't that easy. He liked it and he got used to it from different things he did. But to get him out of the house was hard. And now it's his favorite place to go. I show him a picture of a swimming pool on my phone and he points to it and we go to the pool. But even that, man, even that

The Pool Day He Refused

James Guttman 9:12

can sometimes be an issue. And I had it again, I was hesitant to talk about it because it wasn't really a victory, right? So I brought him to the pool. Um, and I think I wrote about it a few weeks ago that when I first brought him back for the season, he loves it. He goes in, he smashes around. But some days he's not into it. This day he wasn't into it. And right now I don't even know why. I can only guess at it because even with you know, knowing my son as well as I do, all the time we spent together, there are still fundamental lapses between our communication where I won't get it and he won't get me. So we go to the pool, and I'm thinking, you know, I don't have any pictures of him getting in the pool. Let me take a picture of him. So I'm standing there, go, Lucas, go in the pool. And he goes on the stairs and he's backing into the pool, and I'm taking pictures, and I have these two pictures of him getting into the pool. And I have two because after those two pictures, he got out of the pool and he stood next to the pool and he sat down next to the pool. And I'm like, look, what are you doing? And he's on the concrete, just sitting there. No one's there. It's like a very me and a lifeguard and Lucas. And I'm like, Lucas, get up, get off the get off the ground. And you know what this kid did? I swear on everything. He turned his body away from me as he's sitting on the concrete, like kind of like, oh what? And I'm like, oh my god, what this I'm like, what are we doing, buddy? And I sat down next to him and rubbing his back. And this time he's and as he's getting bigger, I don't know, man, when he just plants, it is like a little monument just sitting there on the concrete. I'm like, Lucas, we gotta get and I tried everything to get him up. Can we come on? And in the end, I kind of felt like it was the silence. It was when I just sat there, didn't say anything next to him. That kind of moved him the most. And the one thing, and I don't know if this is good or not or how this works. I I used to talk when he was little, when he wouldn't get up and he was still starting to get big. I used to double under hook his arms and just stand him up, right? Just hook his arms and stand up. My son doesn't really understand defense, right? So if I have to get him up the stairs and he does that thing where he stands still, like on the stairs, or it's dangerous, or in the middle of the road, which he's done before, too. I take one finger and I put it in the small of his back and I push him with one finger and he doesn't know what the hell is. He can't find it. He's trying to stop me. Um, so I used to do that all the time. I would underhook his arms and stand up. It doesn't hurt, it's not leverage. He just feels his body lifting itself up in the natural way and goes with it. I don't know if it would still work now. I've tried to do it with him before, but he's really big. But I think as soon as I put my arms in like that, he just stands up. He's like, oh, this is what's happening next. So eventually he did, and he got in the pool. Now the point wasn't like, oh, I did so good on meltdowns. The point is he loves the pool. We went to the pool that day for him. I normally wouldn't just go to the pool midday. I knew he liked it, I knew he would want to go, but that day he didn't. I don't know why. I can't really explain why. All I know is that if I was part of a group and there was somebody there who was just like, why did you even decide to go? Now it's ten times worse. So you have that. But

Building Routine Without Needing Praise

James Guttman 12:22

the reason why we do it is to build up this routine, so to speak, right? Like he knows that dad takes him out. If I never took him out, then the few times I did take him out would probably be monumentally annoying. Like I think back to when he was little and you would like to prepare him to go out, and we never did it, and we first started doing it, bringing him out to different things, and how hard it was. If you rarely do it now, the few times that you do, it's gonna be like that every single time. But he's used to it at this point. We go out, we get in the car, we go places, he appeases me at times. Um, and you build up that back and forth while at the same time knowing that you might not get that immediate reward. You might not get the thank you, you might not get the hello that you're expecting from giving a hello. Sometimes Lucas no sells different things, meaning that he doesn't react in ways to things that you want. Lucas doesn't jump for joy over a present. You can get him a present of something that he wants and he will walk away from it. And you'll know he likes it because an hour later you'll hear him playing with it in his room. Just is what it is. Um Lucas doesn't do anything but be Lucas, right? So if he's in that moment, he doesn't feel like going in the pool, he's gonna sit down. And that doesn't mean it was a waste to go to the pool, it doesn't mean that you wasted a day. It just simply means you'll try again another day. It simply means that's what he felt like doing right then and there. And sometimes it is annoying as a parent, sometimes it is more work for me, but damn it if I don't respect him for it. I wish I could do that. That

Wrap Up And Where To Find Me

James Guttman 14:06

does it for me. I think that's a good way to end, right? What do you think? Good? Good way to end? All right, good. That does it for me. Until next Friday, guys. This is James Gutman, HiPod. I'm dad. Check me out on all the streaming services. Hiblogomdad.com every single Monday. Follow me on socials. Hi, James Gutman H I. James Gutman. Till then, be well. Byepod. I'm dad.