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For new parents, autism is a scary word.

Sure, any special needs or challenges can be worrisome, but “autism” is one of the few that has a word attached to so many warnings. Whether the tip of a needle or the liquid in a bottle, everything your kid goes through comes with someone warning you about autism.

So naturally, I was scared of it when my kids were little. Any parent, with little knowledge of what autism means, would be.

My daughter Olivia was simple to figure out. She hit her milestones early and was delivering on- liners before she was out of diapers. To this day, I still remind her of the time she was eating Eggo waffles. I decided to make a dad pun that wasn’t funny, but it was fatherly.

Eggo, huh? Where does the egg go?

Funny? No. Not really. Even at five, she was used to my eye rolling humor. So my daughter replied.

It goes in my mouth!

She laughed. I laughed. But then I reminded her…

I thought you didn’t like eggs.

Without missing a beat or a bite, she chomped down on her waffle, shrugged her shoulders, and said a line that still blows me away.

Clever wordplay.

I swear on my life. My kindergartner said, “clever wordplay.”

Having a girl like that makes you somewhat arrogant as a parent. I figured I had done everything right to raise this little genius. Every milestone she hit was a feather in my fatherly cap. As a dad, I had it all figured out.

That’s why Lucas felt like a layup. Not only had I raised little Miss Wordplay over here, but I had years of experience at that point. Teaching him how to be funny, witty, and charming would be another day at the office.

But no. This was a different kid. This was a different office.

Unlike his big sister, Lucas came with warning signs and red flags. The missed milestones were simple verification that there was something unique about my little man.

People don’t really get that part. It’s not simply a matter of keeping a checklist and marking what they miss. It’s a compilation of many missed things coupled with random observations. The fear over that scary word was building by the day and just as you’re talking yourself out of focusing on one obstacle, ten others pop up.

Like I did with Olivia, Lucas heard me talk constantly. We’d drive down the street and I’d call out every single thing we passed.

House! School bus! Side street! TD Bank!

An old game that started with my daughter, the idea was for the babies to grow up and repeat them back. She did it with no problem because, as I mentioned earlier, I was the arrogant father who could do no wrong.

For my son, though, the game was a monologue to a disinterested audience. Lucas would barely look out the window, much less repeat anything. To this day, this game is only mine to play.

Still, I play it. In fact, I talk to my son more than anyone on Earth. I tell him the fun things I do, the dreams I have, and all the things that annoy me about life. If you’ve wronged me, Lucas knows. He’s my ride-or-die. Watch yourself.

The red flags started to build up and, even though I was doing the same things I did for my vocal daughter, it wasn’t clicking for my guy. I worried about him all the time.

People came to me with advice. To an outsider, the answer is easy. To an insider, their suggestions are insulting.

You need to talk to him.

I already do. Constantly.

You need to spend more time with him.

He hasn’t left my sight for nine days.

You need to leave him in the playpen until he asks to come out.

If I listened to that, he’d still be in there today.

It all built up until I had a heart attack in 2012. It was the heart attack that nearly took my life and, putting it plainly, saved my life.

Without it, I wouldn’t have known that I had a genetic heart condition that clogged my arteries at the age of 35. I wouldn’t have had a quintuple bypass that same night. I wouldn’t have come back into my world with a new view, less worries, and appreciation for the people who loved me.

The last picture I took on my phone before that heart attack was an iconic one. It was Lucas, sitting at the dining room table, hammering pegs into a wooden toy.

I remember taking that picture and thinking about how he was struggling. It scared me to think what that could mean. It scared me to think of autism as the answer.

Coming out of surgery, I knew that autism was the answer. My boy had autism. I was aware and I accepted it.

Now what?

Now nothing. Granted, life changes when you have a non-verbal child with severe autism. It doesn’t, however, end. All it did was become a special and often-beautiful personality quirk of one of the people I love most in the world.

There was nothing to be afraid of. Life went on and everything settled as it should. I didn’t fear the future anymore because I spent years doing that. When that scary future became the present, it wasn’t as bad as I worried it would be. In fact, it was perfect.

Perfection is having my children with me and knowing that they love me. It’s about knowing they put their effort into everything they do and seeing them for who they are. Autism, in our home, became another word like “sweet”, “funny”, or “loving.” It was simply another descriptor for a member of our family and there’s nothing bad about it, at all. If you knew Lucas, you’d understand why.

Funny how the scariest word turned out to be just another way to describe someone I love. Clever wordplay, indeed.