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It’s official. My baby boy outweighs me. The doctor confirmed it, but I already knew.

At 14, Lucas might be non-verbal and demonstrate an affinity for things below his age, but he’s physically every day of that 14. He’s a growing boy who grows by the day and suddenly, when I sit him on my lap, it looks ridiculous.

Still, we do that. It doesn’t even hurt or crush me. I think mentally, I’m like, “This is a baby. It’s fine.”

That mentality works with many things my son does. There is, however, an aspect of his massive size that makes me rethink certain approaches. The big one?

What do I do if this giant boy lashes out? What if he flails or falls to the ground? How does a father, growing older by the year, handle his son, who’s growing bigger by the year?

For longtime readers, you might be saying, “Lucas doesn’t lash out. Everything his dad writes is about how positive and wonderful things are.”

You’d be right, for about 80 to 90 percent of the time. My teenager, however, is still a teenager. He’s a man of many moods, and sometimes, that mood is frustration.

When I talk about autism appreciation, a big part of that is how my boy handles his emotions. No one wears their heart on their chewed up sleeves more clearly than Lucas. At his happiest, he cheers, claps, and jumps for joy. Even if it’s something small, like the same YouTube video, he screams like he’s a girl in the ‘60s watching the Beatles beat.

Sadness? It shows up fast. The smallest sense that I’m upset with him or that he’s in trouble and Lucas loses it. Real tears stream down his face. A firm “no” can bring about a tearjerking moment out of nowhere.

Frustration? That has its own response, too.

Keep in mind, my kid is one of the least fussy people you’ll meet. Lucas is easygoing and happy to oblige. However, the moments when he can’t take it can be tough for those outside our home. To be honest, it can be difficult for those in this home too.

Lucas doesn’t hit. There’s no intention on his part to do harm or be violent. Intent and action, though, are two different things. What happens is a full-body reaction to whatever is bothering him. His frame, arms included, go flailing like an inflatable display outside a car dealership. There are so many ways you can get knocked, even if it’s unintentional.

People think that the best way I stop Lucas is through force on my own. They thought it when he was little. I’m sure they think it now. Honestly, they’re mostly wrong.

I say this because returning any of this swinging and attacking with swinging and attacking on my own will produce those massive tears I wrote about earlier. Lucas reads the room and whatever emotion I show him, he mirrors back tenfold. It does nothing to help the situation and, frankly, will only make it much worse.

It’s the same thing with yelling. I’m not a yeller, but that’s a good thing. Responding to Lucas with anger or aggression only breeds anger and aggression. The best way to handle him is to be calm, even in the face of pandemonium.

During meltdowns, I sit by his side. Sure, I try to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself, but even when I’m wrangling his arms and trying to keep him balanced in a parking lot, as he screams bloody murder, I do it with serenity.

Shhhhh. OK. Shhhh. We’re good, buddy. We’re good, buddy.

Within seconds, he’s hugging me with tears in his eyes and letting me rub his back. I know what he needs. This is what he needs.

Meltdowns are a different story from day-to-day fussiness. What do I do if Lucas refuses to go up to bed? In his most defiant moments, how do I ensure that he does what we need to do? How do I stop him from taking over our lives like that Twilight Zone kid who wished people into the cornfield? (If you know, you know.)

Sure, I can wrap my arms around him and rustle us up the stairs. But, I don’t do it. That’s because I know I can…

But only for the time being.

There will be a day when I can’t outpower my kid and I know that day is closer than I might realize. I don’t want him to think that the only reason he should do the things we need to do is because someone in the house is stronger than him. That would produce a few problems.

First, if that was his reason for following rules, he would only do it until the day I became feeble. Also, he wouldn’t do it for anyone else that he realizes can’t overpower him. Those are two major problems and two lessons I don’t want him to learn.

So, in those moments, I calmly ask him to follow the rules. I’m insistent and, if he freaks out over wanting a cookie or something, I make him wait. I never reward the tantrums or allow him to have the thing he’s being overly oppositional about.

Here’s the secret I have for those roughest confrontations when he refuses to move. It’s silly but in my house, it always works.

Lucas doesn’t understand defense. To be honest, he barely does offense. His flailing isn’t done to hurt others. It’s done to demonstrate his unhappiness. In his mind, this isn’t a fight. This is just him acting out in some way.

So, during those bedtimes, when he’s turned to the staircase to go up to bed, and he stop short in front of me, I’ll watch him peer over his shoulder with a look of “now what”?

That’s when I take one single finger, rigidly place it into the middle of his lower back, and start walking up the stairs behind him.

It’s not painful for him. It’s not violent. Actually, he has no idea what is happening. All he knows is, “I better move up the stairs.”

Through whines and attempts to understand what exact witchcraft I’m using on him, he’ll eventually get up the steps. It’s one of the easiest tricks in the bedtime book around here.

Up from the ground? Slightly harder, but there are tricks to that too. A double poke to his ticklish hips causes him to laugh immediately and stagger to his feet. Does it work every time? No, but it works better than any other methods during those harshest times.

At the end of the day, though, I try to make him follow the rules simply through my words. We’ve had more than a few standoffs and, admittedly, there are a handful that end with me holding both his hands with one of mine and snatching his iPad away before scurrying out of his bedroom and hitting the lights. It’s like escaping from Alcatraz.

There are, though, many more that end with him handing it over without incident. Those are some of my proudest moments. Of course, he will then grumply refuse to let me kiss him goodnight afterwards, but it is what it is. I kiss him on the hand he’s using to block his forehead. He’s a sweet boy, but he can be a scutch.

I want a kid who is good all the time, not just when his dad is there. As a parent to a boy with severe autism, that’s my biggest responsibility. I need to turn him into a man who can do as much for himself as possible, but also one who never finds himself in a situation where, even accidentally, he might hurt someone.

We’re getting there, one bedtime at a time. I’m proud to say we’re doing pretty well. Is there more to do? Absolutely, but we have time and, with a heart like his, I think we’re going to do pretty well.