Anyone can be a special needs parent. It isn’t a specialized vocation that only the “strong” apply to do. It is life playing out and, for anyone who has a child, that option is always there.

You don’t even go through much to become a parent. Ironically, you’ll face more scrutiny getting a library card than when welcoming a new life into the world. For one, I needed a utility bill and two forms of ID; for the other, a nurse simply handed me a miniature person and sent me home.

Having any child, on or off the spectrum, makes you do a lot of self reflection. You dig through your memories for every negative comment that anyone has ever said to you. You wonder if those words were true and if you, this completely unqualified parent, can raise your child?

I went through that too. What made things different, this time, was that the challenge wasn’t to push the words out of my head so that I could do something positive for myself. This time around, I was fighting my own negativity so that I could benefit the lives of others. My children deserve more than I ever felt I did.

Most parents feel that way. We eat scraps of leftover macaroni and cheese while the gobble up the lion’s share. We forgo sleep for the sake of their sports games and school schedules. We endure conversations with parents we never would have bonded with in real life. We do what we do for our kids.

This was easy for me. Choosing to be a better parent for my kids than a caretaker for myself felt natural. For many of us, there’s an innate drive to prioritize our children’s needs over our own.

When Lucas came along, it sort of flipped the script on me. The whole concept of being a good dad for my daughter was easy to follow. After all, I had been a kid. I knew what I wanted and liked to do, so I did that with her. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

My son was an entirely different sort of person. As an infant, I treated him the way you would any infant. I rocked him in his swing and propped him up in his tiny little bouncer chair to watch TV with me and his older sister. Tummy time. Formula. You name it. I knew the infant stuff.

As he started to enter the age of familiarity, things took a turn. Although he was now at a point where I would start playing action figures with him or showing him sports toys, he had no interest. I couldn’t really understand it and, since that was the case, I struggled to be what I would consider a “good dad” for him.

I beat myself up during those times because every attempt to engage him seemed to go in the wrong direction. He would be confused about which ones were toys and which things were food. I stopped him from putting everything from chalk to Mr. Potato Head parts down his throat. I felt like I was failing him every single day.

Had he simply been into other toys, I could have just done that. I wanted to do that. When he became obsessed with the Wiggles, I got him all sorts of Wiggle toys. Guitars. Song mats. Dolls. Anything you could jam into your Big Red Car, he got. I would eagerly await his reaction when he saw it.

Nothing. It was as if I was forcing him to do algebra. The most I’d get was an annoyed expression or a whine. I didn’t know what to do.

The answer came on the day that I started engaging with his toys the same way he did. I learned what he was doing and did them too. There was no way for me to introduce fun to this kid if I didn’t know what he thought fun was. It was on me to find out what that was.

Through the years, I have found so many ways to bond with him through his unique view of the world. I have found laughter and happiness in ways that no one could know without knowing Lucas.

One of my favorite examples of this is the song “Something In My Shoe” by Raffi. It is one of many songs that have hand motions and tickling attached to it when I sing with Lucas. He loves it and, since he was small, it has been our thing.

When it was time for bed, he didn’t love it. Around six years old, he was very anti-bedtime. So, as he began crying, I would start singing it to calm him down. He was not happy about this. He let me know in a very direct way.

First he would cry out. Then he would hit himself on the top of the head.

Immediately I would stop. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was enough to make me spring into action. I’d rub the spot and tell him “no, no, no.” Then I’d apologize and he would begrudgingly go to bed.

This happened a few times until one day, as bedtime approached, I started singing the song.

As I was going out for a walk…

His eyes widened as he looked at me, prepared to show me his unhappiness. Just as he did, I took my hand and slapped myself on the top of the head…comically falling to the bed face-first with a thud.

And he lost it. Uproarious laughter.

It was probably the funniest thing he had ever seen up until that point in his life. Why was it funny, you ask? I can’t really explain it. To him and me, it is. If you know, you know, as the kids say.

My goal was to be a great father to my son and it was interactions like these that helped me feel like I am. The secret was to pay attention and find those connections of understanding. Then you build on them to make moments like that and the many like them that followed.

At the end of the day, I don’t need to listen to those negative words that are sometimes in my head. If my son has taught me anything, it’s that words are overrated.