Quick Hello And Why I Hit Record

James Guttman 0:00

It's the journey made with hard Hypod on Dad. Folks, James Gutman, HiPod on Dad. Thank you once again for finding me wherever you found me. I'm everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Everywhere.

James Guttman 0:13

Anywhere you stream, podcasts, you can stream this one. So thank you. You can find all the archives at highpodomdad.com. It is the end of August. It is a Friday. It is 2026. I appreciate you joining us once again. You may hear Lucas far off in the background. I'm recording this right now because every once in a while he'll do something. And once he does it, I'm like, I'm going to go do the podcast right now. I gotta, I gotta tell people about this. So there's a reason why I don't assign a mental age to my son, which people often do when they have a kid who is nonverbal or is on uh is on the spectrum. They'll be like, he's 12, but he's really three mentally, or he's 40, but he's really like 22. All right, I got it. And I know, and some of you might do it. I'm not coming down on you. Whatever works for you, works for you. This does not work for me, and I'll tell you why. So my son is my baby, he's my squishmallow. I can go squeeze him and hug him and love him and all that great stuff. And he lets me do it. He's 15 years old. So he's technically 15. And

Why I Reject Mental Age Labels

James Guttman 1:10

there's a part of me that wants to be like, but you know, he could be like six, seven, because he likes a lot of shows from when he was six and seven, and he would play toys from that, you know, different time periods when he's four or three. He's got toys from, you know, when he was literally a toddler that he still loves, like C and Say and Jack in the Box. Um, but just now he goes into his room, and I told you he has a gate on his on his door, and he's got a door on his door, but he's got a gate right there, and he doesn't realize at this point that that gate was originally there to save him from jumping down the staircase when he was like five, or from leaving the house and going out and I don't know, renting a car and driving cross-country, or whatever he was going to do, we wanted to keep him in the house. So he put a gate on his on his room. Now he doesn't go anywhere, he's not gonna leave. Um, he might wander off if he's not paying attention, but he doesn't, he's not intrigued to leave. He likes to be around, he likes to be around me. Um, but he's not really an eloper, as they say. However, the gate is still there, and he's come to see it as almost like his door. Like he treats it like a teenager uh in a classic sense would treat the door of their room. He doesn't close his door, he closes his gate, and he'll close it in your face. And he literally just did that to me. I was down the hallway and he goes into his room, like Lucas, come here. Hey, buddy, come here. I put my hand out, and he makes eye contact with me and just closes the gate. And when you close that gate, it makes this clanging noise that it's unmistakable. And it's it's like such a rhythmic way of being like, you know, up yours, Pop. And like, ha, hey. So it cracks me up when he does. But yeah, that's that just happened, mental age. But when I

The Gate Slam That Says It All

James Guttman 2:45

think about him, right, when I think of Lucas and I think of how old he is, I picture baby Lucas. And the reason why I picture baby Lucas isn't because he's on, you know, the spectrum or he's non-verbal. It's because I do that with both my kids. I think of my daughter and I picture baby Olivia. I still, when she texts me, I have a picture of my daughter from when she was like three. That's the picture that I use for her thing. And it's funny, she'll write me, she'll be like, bro, what the hell? And I'm looking up and I'm seeing this little three-year-old face. And I'm like, that's my baby. Same thing with him. Baby Lucas is the eternal Lucas, and that's all I imagine. Um, so when I do things and I make plans, when I go places, I sometimes default back to when he was little. The movies are a big example of that, right? Like, we haven't been to a movie in like a decade. And it's because it used to be a chore to keep him in place and to get him to relax and do his thing. I will tell you guys, do sensory-friendly movies if you can. If you have a kid like mine, um, it is so much easier. We went there, it wasn't too loud, but there was one kid who was like singing at one point. And as a parent of someone like Lucas, I'm so used to that background noise. Right now, I don't know if you could hear it, it's down the hallway. He's literally like

Sensory Friendly Movies And A Big Win

James Guttman 3:55

singing in his room, doing the, you know, making noises, making sounds, and it's just background noise in my life. I watch TV like that, I study like that, I work like that, all the things I have to do in the background. And it's fine. So if you go to the movies and someone else is doing it, it's not like, hey, what's that kid doing? No, I get it. Like I'm used to it, I know it. And Lucas was great, man. He sat next to me. He had his iPad, which was helpful. He's cool if the iPad is on like one volume. Like he puts it right up to his ear, he plays with it, he's happy. And he watched it. And a few times I took the iPad away and put it down. He got to sit there with popcorn and soda, and it was the Paw Patrol movie, and that was kind of the gist of the blog. I mean, the big point I'm making now is that you know, I ended up taking him somewhere. I haven't taken him in a while. It was not difficult. He made it through the movie. That's moral lesson number one. Moral lesson number two. I took him to the paw patrol movie, which is not for 15-year-olds. And there's a part of me at some point in my life that would have been like, I can't take him to this, it's ridiculous. Why? He says 15, it doesn't matter. Didn't matter. And I didn't even think about it this time around. Bringing him to the Paw Patrol movie was just kind of like, I wish they had a better movie, but whatever. That's it. There was not one second until we were getting out of the car that I thought to myself, oh, is this for little kids? Like, all right, but I didn't care. I stopped caring a long time ago when it came to what's age appropriate and what's not.

Age Appropriate Pressure And A Toy Aisle Memory

James Guttman 5:20

There was a story, one of the first blogs I wrote, because things bothered me, right? When I first started doing this blog, there were stories that bothered me that I needed to get out, that I needed to tell people, because they were just in my head. And as time went on, as I wrote these stories and I shared them with you guys, they got out of my head. They still exist, I can still recall them when I have to, but they don't rattle around and rattle around. Maybe that's I don't know, it's weird. It's definitely it's part of my process. But this was a story that was in my head, rattling and rattling. I went, and it was when Lucas was little, and again, coming to grips with the fact that this is an autism diagnosis. It was after my surgery, but still it took a few, it took a while. It wasn't an instant where suddenly I'm like, oh, I accept everything right now. No, it's a process, you go through it. But I still I supported him. I just had to deal with people outside the house, and I didn't really know how to deal with that. And I went to go buy him a toy. Because one of the problems with buying Lucas toys was that it was always I'd find something that I know he'd like. I'd be like, oh, you'd like that. And then I would pick it up and there would be like an infant on it on the box, and I'd be like, I want to punch that baby in the face. I put that into a blog, one of the earliest ones. I was like, How many autism parenting blogs do you read about wanting to punch a baby in the face? But I did, you would look at the box, I'd be like, You baby, like that's my kid's toy. Lucas was like, you know, six, seven. I didn't do that on purpose. So I go to a thrift shop and I pick up like a CNC, you know, that he loves to this day. He loves CNSAs and Jack in the Box. And I'm walking around with the CNC trying to see if there's anything else to buy because the CNC is like $2, it's dirty. So I'm looking around for additional items. And as I'm walking around the thrift shop, a sales lady at the thrift shop is following me from afar and calling out to me while she's picking up baby toys. And she goes, How old's the baby? I'm like, oh my god. And I'm walking and I'm doing the I can't hear anything thing where I'm just walking.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

How how how old is the baby? Hello, how old is the baby?

James Guttman 7:28

Oh my god, dude. And it's you know what's funny? This is and this is not, I'm not working you, this is not part of the podcast, this is not part of anything. I don't remember how that story ends. I don't remember if I said anything to her or if I walked out. That's pretty crazy. And I'm not, I know people I swear on my life, I've done 300 episodes of this podcast. This is rarely, if ever, happened. Like, I'm telling the story, and I'm remembering the story, and I'm telling you guys how it gets out of my head by writing it, and I don't remember how it ended. And it's written online. I remember, I remember, I have a crazy memory, which is what's crazy about this too. Like, I remember the title of it. Um, it was called uh something about age appropriate. There was something about there's no such thing as age appropriate. But yeah, no, I don't remember how that ended. That's a big deal because I think, and this is again, again, this is not a work. I'm not doing this to pretend like, oh, look what I discovered. This is genuine. Uh, but in light of it, like honestly, it speaks volumes for kind of like what has happened and going to this Paw Patrol movie and going from caring so much about what the world

Living Like Lucas And Letting Go

James Guttman 8:40

thought to not even thinking about it. There's no thought. If Lucas, Lucas and I are doing this thing, will he hate it? No, then we're gonna do it. I don't care if it's for three-year-olds, I don't care if it's for 80-year-olds, I don't care what it is. And I try to live my life like that too. Like there's things that I do because I love doing them. You know, I don't care about what people think of my hobbies, I don't care what people think of my company, the people I surround myself with, the things I do, the choices I make, I do them to make me happy. And I learned that from Lucas, because Lucas does the things that he loves and he goes and he enjoys. He doesn't complain about anything. Anything. It really doesn't. A little bit like, you know, he's a kid, I'll be squishy here and there, whatever. I like that term. But he's pretty easygoing overall. And I think one of the reasons are events like this, bringing him to the movies, and one of the reasons I suggest a sensory-friendly movie is is yeah, like you might be out money for it. I mean, it wasn't cheap, it was a movie, and movies are expensive, the food's expensive. But I always go places with him with the understanding that if he hates this thing, we're gonna leave. I won't be like, we wasted the day, whatever, it's not a waste of a day. We try it, we find out. Um, and he was good. So hopefully we'll be back. We'll go to another movie, we'll enjoy it, we'll

Wrap Up And Where To Find Me

James Guttman 9:55

have a day out, uh, and it'll be fun. So, yeah, that does it for us. That does it for me, guys. I appreciate you listening. Uh, be sure to check it out. Hiblogomdad.com. We have the blog every single Monday. Uh highpodomdad.com. All the archives of this podcast are on there. Follow me on socials. Hi, James Gutman, H I James Gutman. Until next week. This is James Gutman saying, Be well. Bye, Pod I'm Dad.