It’s Time!

📘 Hi World! I’m Dad: How Fathers Can Journey From Autism Awareness To Acceptance To Appreciation
James Guttman’s new book hits stores worldwide on June 19th!
But you can get it now! Also Available in Audiobook!
👉 Click here to get it on Amazon

I’m going to say something that sounds ridiculous at first. The trick is to wait for the follow-up. As a father to a non-verbal child with autism, it’s something that I’m kind of allowed to say.

Raising a non-verbal child with autism is easy.

What? Send in the troops. Cancel me from the world. What a tone-deaf thing to say. No parent, especially those with a child like mine, would agree.

But wait…there’s more. I told you to wait for the follow-up.

Raising a non-verbal child with autism the right way isn’t easy at all.

And there it is. That’s the line that makes all the difference.

I understand if it sounds like clever word play and semantics exercises. It is, however, something that many parents like me understand. We know because our kids, set in their ways and content with being content, aren’t overly demanding.

Lucas is 14 and, since the age of zero, he’s been happy doing his own thing. In the early years, as his autism was starting to come into view, we struggled to get him to be a part of our world. Family events, greeting guests, happy celebrations – you name it, he didn’t care about it.

He would sit there, captivated by whatever light-up toy or glaring window was in his view, and act as if he was a character on television. He felt removed from the situation and oblivious to those around us.

For a dad who wanted his son to be present, it hurt. I wondered if he was ignoring us, deaf, or simply showing signs of the thing we all whispered about. It all seemed pretty straightforward.

Even now, as I type this out, my son is in his room. He’s clapping and cheering to the same iPad videos he’s been watching since Obama was president. I know he loves it and I let him more than I would allow a neurotypical child to do it. In my mind, he’s earned it.

After all, Lucas has the hardest days of all of us. His commute to school is longer. His days are longer. His work is more daunting given his skill-levels on many lessons they teach. No one works harder than my little guy. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to blow off steam with his favorite device?

Letting him sit in that room all day, every day, would be easy. He loves it and, as a dad, I can forgive myself for allowing it. He yearns for it and routinely will bring me upstairs to close the gate behind him as he goes in. To this day, he doesn’t really get that the gate on his doorway is for his safety. I believe he thinks it’s to keep us all out. And maybe, in his eyes, that’s a feature, not a flaw.

So when enough feels like enough and I want to drag him into the real world, I’ll come up and try to coax him out. He resists in many ways. Whether it’s stretching his body back in the bed with an anguished whine or physically taking my hand and tossing it towards his door as if to say, “Piss off, ya scallawag,” he makes his wants known.

Still, I persist.

Keeping him in there is easy. Letting him miss family functions and outings that he may or may not hate feels simple. He’s happy in his room. So I can easily let him stay there and miss everything. At least he’s happy.

And I mean all day. He’d happily spend it entirely in that room. I can run up to trade out iPads as they die and throw food at him like a chef chugging Red Bulls. He’d be thrilled. I’d be relaxed. No worries. No money spent. We’re crushing this special needs parenting thing, right?

Wrong. Just because Lucas is the least squeaky wheel doesn’t mean he doesn’t need grease. The reason I take him out is to discover what he loves outside those four walls. The reason I insist he joins the family is because, well, he’s a part of it.

I do the same for my neurotypical daughter. She’s content with her own thing too, but I will put my foot down on certain activities and celebrations. As she’s gotten older, I haven’t had to as much, but it’s the same concept.

The difference is that Lucas requires more work on my part to watch over in those situations and his room is the type of escape that he will gladly embrace forever, if I let him.

If I did that, though, we’d never know how much he loves swimming in the pool (and trying to drink the water) or walking through the outdoor outlets here on Long Island. Sure, arcades and things like that were misses. But for every ten failed outdoor adventures, there’s one that became a favorite.

So, yeah. I could let him stay in there all day. He’d be happy. I’d be happy. In the eyes of many, I’d be doing things right.

But I don’t want us to do things “right.” I want us to do things great. To do that, I need to step out of my comfort zone and pull him from his. It might not be easy, but it’s the best way. It’s what he deserves and what he needs…even if he doesn’t know it.

If it sounds thankless, that’s because it can be. There’s nothing worse than wrapping your day around your child and creating extra work that, in the end, would have been better left undone.

You never know which things will stick, though. That’s why I keep trying.

Because every time I nudge Lucas out of his comfort zone, I give him a shot at something new-something joyful, something memorable, something that might just become a part of his world. And even if he doesn’t show it the way others might, I believe, deep down, he knows I’m trying.

That’s the real work. That’s the hard part. Not the silence. Not the repetition. Not the routines. The hard part is choosing the harder path every single day in hopes it leads somewhere better.

Raising a non-verbal child with autism can be easy. But raising him well? That’s where the love lives.

And love is never supposed to be easy. Just worth it.