Have you ever felt like the 'black sheep' in your family, or perhaps, in the world? We embarked on a journey with Sam Huber and his father, Bob, who vulnerably shared their personal experiences with autism, the monumental challenges they faced, and the triumphs they ultimately celebrated. Sam gives us a vivid glimpse of living in a neurotypical world while having autism, and Bob candidly reveals how these dynamics impacted their family, especially Sam's younger brother, Nick. We went back in time to the 90s, shedding light on the misunderstandings and misconceptions surrounding autism, and the enduring importance of understanding and acceptance.
Building a bridge of communication and understanding in parent-child relationships is no small feat - particularly when autism is part of the equation. In our heartfelt discussion with Sam and Bob, they emphasized how shifting perspectives to view the world through the eyes of an autistic child can be a game-changer. We tackled guilt, reflected on past mistakes, and highlighted the necessity for continuous growth in a positive direction. We couldn't help but heap praises on Bob for his remarkable parenting journey, and Sam's suggestion that he takes a 'victory lap' for his accomplishments with his autistic son who has grown into a successful adult.
Wrapping up the episode, we dared to challenge the conventional perception of autism, proposing a shift from viewing it as a medical condition to recognizing it as a culture. This enlightening debate with Sam and Bob offered a fresh perspective on what it means to be autistic. We stressed the significance of storytelling in bridging cultural gaps and implored society to strive for better understanding and acceptance of those with autism. Remember, you are not alone in this journey. We hope you'll join us in spreading awareness and acceptance of autism within our communities.
https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Have you ever felt like the 'black sheep' in your family, or perhaps, in the world? We embarked on a journey with Sam Huber and his father, Bob, who vulnerably shared their personal experiences with autism, the monumental challenges they faced, and the triumphs they ultimately celebrated. Sam gives us a vivid glimpse of living in a neurotypical world while having autism, and Bob candidly reveals how these dynamics impacted their family, especially Sam's younger brother, Nick. We went back in time to the 90s, shedding light on the misunderstandings and misconceptions surrounding autism, and the enduring importance of understanding and acceptance.
Building a bridge of communication and understanding in parent-child relationships is no small feat - particularly when autism is part of the equation. In our heartfelt discussion with Sam and Bob, they emphasized how shifting perspectives to view the world through the eyes of an autistic child can be a game-changer. We tackled guilt, reflected on past mistakes, and highlighted the necessity for continuous growth in a positive direction. We couldn't help but heap praises on Bob for his remarkable parenting journey, and Sam's suggestion that he takes a 'victory lap' for his accomplishments with his autistic son who has grown into a successful adult.
Wrapping up the episode, we dared to challenge the conventional perception of autism, proposing a shift from viewing it as a medical condition to recognizing it as a culture. This enlightening debate with Sam and Bob offered a fresh perspective on what it means to be autistic. We stressed the significance of storytelling in bridging cultural gaps and implored society to strive for better understanding and acceptance of those with autism. Remember, you are not alone in this journey. We hope you'll join us in spreading awareness and acceptance of autism within our communities.
https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Speaker 1:
Welcome to why Not Me, the World? Podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, usa, nashville, tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry. People like people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to why Not Me, the World. Today's guest has been on my show before Sam Huber. His story was so good and went over so well I decided that he needed to come back and talk a little more. Along with him is his father, bob, that's joining us because they've got so much to tell us. They've got a podcast, they've got a book coming out just so many different things. Welcome to my show. How are you? Thanks for having us on? Oh, it's my pleasure. Well, let's start it off this way, because we've got so many things to talk about. When Sam was diagnosed, what were some of the thoughts that went through you, Mike?
Speaker 2:
Well, the beginning of it in a kind of formal diagnostic way was Sam was in first grade in public school and his first grade teacher in the sticks of South Jersey and his teacher said when I'm teaching Sam is kind of looking around, he's not doubted, he's not paying attention, he doesn't quite seem to be there. My wife and I who has a background in psychology got him diagnosed with ADD. He was six so it would have been 1995, mid-90s Probably, guess where I'm headed. He went on Ritalin. It did help him focus.
Speaker 2:
Our bent then, our almost mania you could say Sam probably would was to pull him, drag him, urge him, help him into the neurotypical world right into doing well at school. So the next year he went to a private Quaker friend's school up the road. He repeated first grade. Then he went on from there to a couple other private schools. He had tutors. We were kind of pushing hard to help him learn to read, to fit in, to get up to speed was sort of the focus and the attitude. I sense you that path very differently than we did then. But it's kind of the mania of there's something wrong with our child. He has some sort of disability. Let's do everything we can to correct that and get him up to speed. Sam's got some really strong thoughts about all that, as I do now as well.
Speaker 2:
The sort of quick and dirty of his educational background is he went to three or four different private schools, did some homeschooling, did some tutoring, landed in a school private school that worked pretty well for kids on the spectrum called Hilltop and Rosemont, pa and the suburbs outside of Philly, then went on to Levin Valley College. Levin Valley was a school that would make accommodations for kids on the spectrum to an extent. He could have his tests read to him instead of having to read them. He would get more time for tests and so forth. And he did fine there. He did quite well.
Speaker 1:
That's great. So we hear how, when a family has an autistic child, they can change their dynamic, because they've never dealt with anything like that. Did that affect you, or did you just find a way just to keep forging ahead?
Speaker 2:
I think mostly with Karen, his mother and me. It was orging ahead and doing it. As it turned out, a good bit of that was misguided because we were pushing too hard into the neurotypical world In terms of creating family problems. Karen is kind of the psychological expert in the family and she would also do some research and she would come to me and say why don't you take him to ex school and see if that's a fit for his next step? I was sort of the hands-on guy checking out of school taking Sam to that school. I was working as a freelance journalist so I could fit that around my schedule. Karen had a school-based job where she had to show up. Then we're pretty well. We were pretty much in agreement.
Speaker 2:
The one family dilemma or family problem which I think emerged later was Sam's younger brother, nick, four years younger, who was neurotypical. Well, he was the guy who was doing fine without support and so forth. A lot more attention went to Sam, went to Sam's issues and Sam's problems. As we thought of it then, nick felt left out in ways that we discovered later. That became the family issue and an issue for Nick that so much more energy and time and commitment went to Sam. That was the real family problem that developed. That's since been sorted out. Nick is doing well and our relationship with Nick is fine. I think Sam's relationship with Nick is okay and getting stronger.
Speaker 1:
That's good to hear, Sam. With everything that was going on, your parents trying to figure this out, your brother trying to figure everything out, what was your thought process?
Speaker 3:
I guess thought process that goes through a lot of autistic people growing up in the 90s was autism was not as in the limelight as it is today. There's just something wrong, because a lot of these schools that I was taking to were kind of these out of the way. Hilltop was a great school. Was this mansion that was turned into a school on top of a hill, cut off from everyone else. It was kind of like this is where the crazies go. To learn a bit of that.
Speaker 3:
I would hear about my brother's dad. He'd have therapy in the middle of school and I had a much more intent. You know I needed that and it laid the idea down that there's something wrong here that I need to assimilate back into a neurotypical culture in order to have a chance at anything. The other big thing was seeing my relatives get internships and all these opportunities. I just always felt kind of like the black sheep of the family because that wasn't what you know. That happened for me. I had just drifted through 20s until I met my wife while they were just skyrocketing through law school and having these big jobs and I'm like that's not for me because I'm disabled, and that ultimately led to me confronting my parents eventually with this, the way you treated me, and that wasn't okay. Whereas why was Nick offered all these either? We turned them down, all these internships and I wasn't offered one of them when I could have used the one, because I married my wife very quickly, we had our kid very quickly and I need to move up in the world.
Speaker 3:
I needed help, but I never felt like a god. My mom answered to I know you have connections, we help you. Her answer was you should be grateful that you have a job. I don't think you can handle a job with any more pressure. Just again, I just keep repeating this cycle of something's wrong with me.
Speaker 3:
It wasn't until I found faith really that I was able to see I had a role to play in all this. I could get myself a good job, and since then I have. I got into the pharma industry and really moved up in my career and able to really have a future career, rather than just being stuck in a dead-end job, which is a problem that many authentic end up falling. A lot of them are even are lucky to be employed or stuck at McDonald's. It's the best I can do and they're still so reliant on their parents and their cycle that I've been describing, but it just really took having a very strong wife behind me Like, no, I have, I have. If I want to change my life, I have to be the one to do it. I have to stop packing my parents for what they did or didn't do. That's where I think the real change happened.
Speaker 1:
Sure, so, bob, with all this happening and this has got to be really tough you've got one son that needs some help. The other one doesn't need the help yet. They both see what's going on. You're trying to navigate this so that everybody can get along. What are some of the things you did so that you could keep the family dynamic in such a way that everybody could get along and you could move forward still?
Speaker 2:
Well, I'd really like to address the point where Sam is in his mid-20s Okay, I think that's such an important moment he just brought it up where he confronted me and his mother and brought us into therapy and confronted us about the way he was raised that we want engaging him and looking at him in terms of how he engaged the world and who he was. So why was that? Why did we do that? Why were we so bent on him doing so well in the typical ways Also became a bit of a confrontation with me, particularly about the way I live my life, which is I work a lot. I'm very busy with work, and Sam began confronting me about that. Why are you so invested in work? Why did you spend so much time working when I was so young and you still are? What is that about? So it was kind of a double thing for me that he's confronting his mother and me about how he was raised, but also beginning to confront me about how I conducted my own life. So that was painful and difficult. Yet I tried to listen to it, honor how he felt, hear what he was saying and begin to understand it. I began watching him going through these powerful changes because he was essentially demanding I am going to live in terms of who I am, and his faith eventually became part of that.
Speaker 2:
I think it began a little earlier than that, meeting Gisette, who had become his wife, but also just his determination that I think and feel and perceive the world in the way I do and I'm going to go at things that way.
Speaker 2:
I've now watched him do that have a successful relationship with Gisette and now a successful marriage and have two sons who are now six and two, and be a wonderful father to them and be successful in the work world and be very drilled into going at those things in his own way. That in turn has now reflected back on my life, for me as a kind of gift watching Sam, because it has gotten me thinking about okay, what do I use work for? Why do I work so much? It's really gotten me reflecting on who I am. So I'm learning from my autistic son in certain ways how to live. It's a wonderful arc that Sam and I have traveled. So much of that is through Sam's demand that I am going to go at things my own way. It's the only way that can work. That's who I am and that's where I'm going.
Speaker 1:
You know what I think is really good in what you just said. You allowed Sam the opportunity to voice his issues. The biggest part of anything in something like that is the ability to listen, the ability for conversation to happen. I've seen so many situations where the parents, one or the other, couldn't communicate with their son or their daughter. There was always conflict going on because they weren't on the same level of dialogue. What you just said sounds like you've abridged that gap in a really big way.
Speaker 2:
I think at this point we have. It took time and it took a leap for me to have that willingness right, because it's painful Sure, it's painful to hear from your son, who you love dearly, that what he was getting from me specifically wasn't helpful to him. It wasn't helpful enough. I wasn't perceiving him for who he was. We go back to him being very young, at about that point in first grade where his teacher was saying he's not listening. Maybe a little earlier.
Speaker 2:
There's a scene that's going to be a seminal scene in our book, which is Sam and me in our living room in South Jersey. He's upside down in the armchair rusting Batman and Robin away. He's five or six years old, very typical kind of play behavior for a very, very young child. I'm sitting on the couch with my legal pad, writing away and passively working. Sam could play like that for hours and hours and hours and much, much later, as an adult, he told me, dad, when I was doing that, when I was playing like that, I was watching you, trying to figure out you, waiting for you to show some feelings, some emotions, something that I could touch. You're just sitting there, nothing in your face, staring at the window, working away, whereas I'm thinking well, he's fine, he's just playing his game, there's not much else going on, he's just in his fantasy world. Lo and behold, there was a lot more going on. He's trying to figure out me, but couldn't get there.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's very interesting. We always have to look at another person's perspective and it's very difficult at times. I think there's a technical term for it, but I can't remember what it is at this point.
Speaker 2:
It's called parallel play, right, when two are together playing, but they're not playing with each other. We were sort of living parallel Saturday afternoons in the living room. I'm working and I'm thinking well, I'll just keep working because Sam is fine in this fantasy world. Sam is thinking that's all bad is doing or capable of doing. And who the hell is he? He's showing nothing, he's just scrolling away in his legal pad.
Speaker 1:
That's a lot to look at, but when it's put in that perspective then it's a little bit more understandable.
Speaker 2:
It took a long, long, long time Sam in his 20s for me to kind of perceive that from his point of view and how difficult that was for him, because he couldn't figure me out or feel that I was interested in him.
Speaker 1:
Sure, yeah, that's a fine line. Even for neurotypical or autistic that's a fine line. That's what people tend to do. They will let their kids do what they want to do within reason, of course and not realize their kids are just working on whatever they're doing, hoping that there's going to be a reaction from you. I think that's a really great point to put across to our listeners as well. I'm sure many people listening will be able to relate to what you just said. If anyone listening to this can relate to what you just said and be able to apply it to their lives, then this is what the whole thing is about.
Speaker 2:
Yes, absolutely, that's the goal, for sure.
Speaker 1:
It is. I saw Sam smile, so I would say that he definitely approves as well.
Speaker 2:
Sam and I have talked about that a lot and written about both. Written about it. It can be painful but it's very important to get past me from my point of view, as the dad guilt or things I did wrong. It's important to take ownership of that as we just talked about, to listen to it, to hear it. Right Early on coming out of therapy I apologized to Sam for what I had just learned about his childhood. I'm not feeling guilty or like a bad dad these days.
Speaker 2:
I think one has to get. As a father, as a person. You have to get past that. Look at it in terms of okay, how can Sam and I move forward in our relationship? What can we share with the world about that? What have we learned? What do we look like moving forward?
Speaker 1:
Right, it's about evolving.
Speaker 2:
It's about evolving. For me to get to the point where Sam is sharing his life with me in a way that helps me as a person is I can't tell you how wonderful that is. It's a marvelous thing to have that work with your son, especially a son who struggled in the past.
Speaker 1:
Well, the one thing that I will say is I had a chance to interview Sam on one of my previous episodes. In that 30 minutes I got to know him a little bit and how he thinks. Everything that's come out of what I learned from him earlier. What I'm learning from you now is, whatever you did, it seems to have worked. His thought process is good. He's a good guy. Overall, you've got to say you did a good job. It turned out well.
Speaker 2:
Well, I appreciate you saying that and hearing that. I mean, as Sam and I have been talking about the book and of course we've talked a lot about things that didn't work and how parenting could have been different, it's easy to spend a lot of time on that. One point Sam turned to me and said Dad, for the book, I think you should write a chapter giving yourself a victory lap, because most men 30 or so, with my level of asperger's and autism, or a lot of them at any rate are living in mom's basement and don't make it out. I see the light of day much here. I am college graduate with a job and family and so forth. In other words, you must have done something right. So go right up that chapter, dad.
Speaker 1:
That's awesome that he recognized that.
Speaker 2:
Yes, sam, you want to talk about that a little.
Speaker 3:
Sure, the one thing I want to say for it and I think that on the end of my end, this also, I think, for a lot of those 30-year-olds that are in the basement is they don't let go of what their parents did or didn't do, or what schools didn't do. The biggest lesson that I want people to take with me is the power of forgiveness and letting go. Say your piece but then shut the door because you're just living in the past. You can never move forward if you do that, which led me to really want to start a show with my dad, because I said when we started talking today, where are the dads? You can find some, but I find a lot of them are very superficial, maybe in some vulnerability where a dad talks about his parents and they honestly can be or are war-tagers to be celebrated in the way their badges are. So we know what they went through. We still don't really know what dads go through. I spoke a lot in the autism and affiliate community and there's just so many families where the dad is just not there. This whole justification was my child will be better off without me. I'm just in the way because they try to alter their way, discipline their child into a difficult world.
Speaker 3:
In this book I will call my parents Now. They still gave me a lot of good things. I allowed me to go out to concerts at 2 in the morning. My dad was always there to pick me up. Let me have typical teenager experiences that you see in the movies.
Speaker 3:
My dad trusted me that if I was in trouble I would call him, regardless they are, and he wouldn't have them. Get me if I ever needed that. And it was that kind of trust that, you would know, took me a while to figure this out, like it was such a valuable thing, and I think it led to our show, which is called what's Under your Mind, bob, which is my dad's show. Since he doesn't have no technology to Well, I'm running it, but it's about us discussing excerpts from the book we're hoping to get published and just starting the conversations that a lot of fathers and sons or men, I think in general are too afraid to have. And because there are so many autistic moms out there, they're like. I would love to know what went through my husband's head, because my dad is so gifted with words he could maybe hate a picture. This was what went through my head, honey, when we were raising our child.
Speaker 1:
I think that's a great concept. There's so many people that could learn from that book and what you went through. Now I understand that you have a podcast. Can you give us a little information about that?
Speaker 3:
We talk about it like we text throughout the week, like today's episode, in fact, was about when dad interviewed me about how I managed to raise kids and be on the spectrum at the same time, like what are my fears and stuff? So I was my curtain to be vulnerable. Other weeks I'll challenge him so that our viewers can like get a little insight into what was his thinking process. Where the subject is like picking a school, getting a job and just the things we've been talking about today is like us both being open to challenging each other and hopefully picking interest in our book.
Speaker 1:
So let's talk about that book. What's the title? What's it about? Give us a little information.
Speaker 3:
It's called Sam I Am because it's like my dad said. It's about me making that big decoration on that'll live my life the way I am. It's basically gonna be us telling stories rather than just me. This is a device book, cause most people like will buy a device book but they won't actually thoroughly read it. We thought let's entertain people and also let's have some laughs. Everyone talks about what a tragedy autism is. It's not a tragedy, it's just being a different way, a different culture. It's just basically the stories illustrate what goes through a dad's head and it will go through my head Like my dad's teaching me how to drive one chapter and I'm telling him like I noticed this beautiful tree that I saw from the side and I started thinking about whatever happened around that tree and then all of a sudden I start veering off the road and they just like what are you doing? So we're half full with that. And then we also talk about things like how do you let your autism child go out and get into his chef as a teenager?
Speaker 1:
Driving is a scary thing. I had a couple of different dads that I've had on my podcast when their kids got ready to drive. They said they was scared to death but they was not gonna stand in their way. They wanted to make sure they could still live a full life. So they tampered down their fears and let them go Now. Another point you brought up is that concert. It's hard for a parent to let a child go to a concert, even in the neurotypical world, let alone the autistic world. So I think that's just fantastic that not only did he let you go, but you was able to handle it. That just speaks volumes on the both of you, on how you handled your life outstanding.
Speaker 2:
And it can be very hard for parents, no matter what their children are like, to remember what they were like at 16, 18, 20 and how clueless you were and how you had to be out there checking stuff out.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
Now, of course you don't want them to get in trouble, you don't want them to get hurt. So watch out for that extreme of it. But otherwise you've got to let your children mess up and figure things out themselves.
Speaker 1:
You know it is the only way I agree, you have to let them live and learn, but still watch over so that they don't crash and burn.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. So Sam brought up forgiveness and in terms and you just asked about the book one of the places the book is going to go is in witnessing Sam and being confronted by Sam and then witnessing Sam's life and having that be a way for me to think about my own life. I've come around to begin to forgive the boy I was meaning, the boy who wasn't good enough in my own mind to really think far and about my work obsession. All right, to what extent have I used work obsession as a way to make up for that boy? That boy that's in all of us as men that wasn't and still isn't good enough? What would happen if I began to understand and appreciate and forgive that boy? Which has got me dipping back into my own relationship with my father, sam's grandfather?
Speaker 2:
My father was a virtually silent person. He was a mart man, a builder of things. He spent all his time in his workshop. I was never comfortable, almost never comfortable, in the workshop with my father because there was no conversation, which is what I was craving. So I would be lying on the couch inside of. I was supposed to be in the workshop with my father watching sports instead, so being a kind of goofy little little boy dreaming and rolling around the couch. It's got me thinking about all trying to understand that boy through Sam's understanding and forgiveness. The way all this rolls through generations is fascinating, if we're open to it and, I think, help us enormously. Why am I working so hard? Why am I such an obsessive about that? What am I escaping? Am I escaping Sam's problems? Am I escaping my own great food for thought and our story? Delving into all of that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I get it. I think what you just brought up is a generational thing.
Speaker 2:
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:
My father was born and raised for the Great Depression. I grew up on a dairy farm. He was the silent one. My mother was the one that would talk. Yep, because of that, he would work on the farm seven days a week and it just never stopped. Yeah, just because he didn't say anything, I knew by the things that he did how he acted, reacted. I knew exactly what he felt and what he was thinking. Yeah, so I do think that some of the things that you brought up is generational. However, I think it's great that you can look at it, write about it. People can read about it. Then they can hopefully apply it, make some changes involved to the family that they want to have.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I think that's absolutely true. And you're right, it's a very generational thing. My father was born in 1920 and served in World War II, so it goes pretty far back and he was a guy whose behavior showed me a ton. Just a quick little story along those lines my father took me to my driving test at 16. I flunked it because I was driving my mother's standards shift 1965 Chevy. It stalled and I didn't put the emergency brake on when I restarted it. So I flunked at that moment and I was so annoyed, so pissed off at that.
Speaker 2:
My father let me drive home from the from the test and I was making a left hand turn and I slam my left hand down on the turn signal and snapped off the stalk of the turn signal. My father didn't say a word. He just had me drive to the local gas station. We had it repaired. It cost $30 some dollars. He paid the bill and he never said a word about it. That just showed me so much about how he understood that moment for me. He understood that getting annoyed or pissed off or making me pay $30 some dollars, no, that would have been counterproductive at that moment. I am telling that story 50 years later.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there's a thousand and one stories we can tell about our parents. My father was born in 1910, grew up through the Great Depression farmer, hard worker. One day I missed the bus and I was six miles outside of town. He had to pick me up. We should disrupt it, his work pattern. I knew that I was going to get it, I was just waiting for it. He picked me up. We drove six miles and I have the worst discipline that I've ever had in my life. He didn't say a word when we got there. He just said okay, get changed up, get out of the farm, let's do our chores for the night. And that was it. So it was the worst punishment I ever had. But yet I think about it and remember it today.
Speaker 2:
It would have been far easier for you if he's screaming at you the whole time, right?
Speaker 1:
Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
I really think what both of you are doing is great. I think the podcast idea is really super. I also think writing the book and telling the stories is the way that you do in such a light, hard way. I think that's great. I think that's what people want to hear. They want to hear and read things that people are going through, rather than just diagnostic stuff.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
If you can hear it or read it and relate to it, I think you've got the right thing, because that's what people want.
Speaker 2:
I agree with that completely, and I think it's far more powerful than straightforward advice. Sam was alluding to a lot of books out there written by mothers. Some of them are better than others, but so many of them are almost broken down into bullet points of do this, do that. Okay, there's something to that. Not that much in my opinion. I mean, stories are so much more powerful.
Speaker 1:
I agree 100%. This has been a great conversation. Before we leave. Is there anything that you'd like to leave with our listeners?
Speaker 3:
I think the biggest thing that you're doing on this podcast and what we're also hoping to do in this book is one of the things I would always hear when I worked with autistic children for my coworkers was I wish I could walk around in your mind and understand how you feel. I feel like the biggest thing that this podcast is doing, what this book will do, is we have to get away from the medical understanding of autism. Autism is a culture and not a diet. Yes, it is a dinosaur, but that's. It doesn't defy the.
Speaker 3:
If I were to call myself a Jewish or whatever, like that my entire identity or Christian or whatever I want to call myself, there's something about mental health that once the diagnosis is altered or looked at like we're dying, I suppose people think that they get away with. Look, we pick up on it. You don't look at your face, your energy just speaks that you pity us and we don't want that. We want acceptance as much as the next culture. You know, as we talked about when I was on the show previously, it's culture, something that everyone can wrap their head around.
Speaker 3:
We still don't know what causes autism. The saying goes you've met one person with autism. You've met one person with autism. But let's get some pharynx. It's much easier to defy and understand and we know where it happens in the brain. We don't know what's causing autism or even if it's worth tactically and medically. This is more of a cultural misunderstanding than an illness. I think if you just look at that approach and wait till you hear our stories, does that help humanities communicate with the dawn time is telling stories.
Speaker 2:
I would just like to add this Sam touched on it a couple of minutes ago which is that a big chunk of the book is in his voice and him telling stories, so that we do learn about it from his point of view, in his words, as I'm sitting next to him in the car and he suddenly starts driving on a lawn toward a tree for reasons I certainly didn't understand at the moment, or he talks about being in school and getting bullied in a very intimate, wrenching, pretty awful way. Awful from this is dad to read and many other experiences, some quite positive. But the point being, we really spent a lot of time in his head from his point of view. What is it like to be an autistic person in the world negotiating the world? We hear that from Sam. Yeah, he's quite a good writer. I might move his commas around a little bit, but Sam can write.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's great to hear. So this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you both coming on. Thank you so much for having us on.
Speaker 3:
Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1:
It's been my pleasure. I just want to give you just their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask Tell everyone everywhere about why not me, the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.