Hi Pod! I'm Dad.

When They Stop Being Babies: A Father’s Journey Between Two Worlds

• James Guttman • Season 2 • Episode 260

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James Guttman reflects on the emotional milestones of parenting a neurotypical teenager and a nonverbal son with autism. In this week’s heartfelt episode, he shares how Olivia has grown from the little girl who monopolized his time after school into a self-sufficient 17-year-old — and how their bond has evolved along the way.

At the same time, James discusses the equally powerful connection he shares with Lucas, built on unspoken cues and trust. With honesty, humor, and vulnerability, he explores:

  • How his blog shifted focus as Olivia requested privacy
  • The unique but equal importance of both of his children
  • Family values that center on unity, not hierarchy
  • Lessons learned from heart surgery, divorce, and parenting through change
  • How positivity and self-respect shape the people we attract into our lives

This episode is a tribute to the evolution of parenthood, the power of love without comparison, and the beauty of building a life you’re proud of — one moment at a time.

WATCH THIS EPISODE HERE: https://youtu.be/1EpKjVaXoew

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James Guttman:

I want apple juice. Lucas wants apple juice. I know I heard him say that. Can I have apple juice? Yeah, you can have apple juice. Can I have soda? Yes, you can have soda. Can I press that button? No, you can't press that button. Why? Because that's going to play the theme song. I'm not ready to start the pot.

James Guttman:

Hi Pod, I am Dad. He's not just Hi Dad, he's my dad. James Gutman, folks, james Gutman, it's Hi Pod, I'm Dad.

James Guttman:

Welcome back to another edition of the podcast. Thank you so much for finding me. Whether you found me on highpodomdadcom, audible, spotify, iheart radio, you name it, we're there. Maybe on youtube you can see me at high blog I'm dad. It is up midnight friday. Every single week, brand new podcast video cross the board. New blogs highblogomdadcom Monday, wednesday. Just I mean, we're overloaded. Hi James Gutman on social media HI, james Gutman, you name it, we got it.

James Guttman:

I appreciate you guys taking the time to check me out and to follow the work that we do here and the things that I write about. It's been a good week and I'll tell you about it. For it's been a good week and I'll tell you about it For those of you guys who've been following along. You guys know that on Wednesday I got a chance to write about my daughter and, for those who have been around from the beginning, we had one of our, one of the readers, amanda Shreve. She was one of the first people to do no-transcript. He was young, he was first emerging on his autism journey. I was still worried about him running into traffic. I was worried about him never understanding me, never knowing who I was, never acknowledging me. But her I got.

James Guttman:

Olivia was my buddy. She was my best friend man for years. She would come home from school, she would come into my office, she would monopolize my time. We would watch TV shows and the Next Step and the Brady Bunch and just so many things. And I knew then that one day that was going to be different. Not gone, I hesitate to say gone, because we still watch TV. We're currently watching Schitt's Creek when we get a chance and we watch Big Brother in the summer when we can. So it doesn't necessarily go away, but it's different, it's not every day. She can't be my best friend forever. She has a life. She's a teenager. I was a teenager. I have vivid memories of being 17.

James Guttman:

So when the blog first began, I would write about her a great deal, and one of the things I wrote and always stuck with me was Let your Princess Grow Up. And it was an article about this commercial, this Subaru commercial, where the father has his daughter in the driver's seat of the car. She's like little and all of a sudden, like in a blink of an eye, she's like old enough to drive herself. And I wrote about it back then, about how I knew that was happening and when she's 17, it's going to happen and I get it. And now she's 17. And now she drives. And now she's a lady.

James Guttman:

And you don't even realize it because you feel like your kids are growing up. Right, and if you're listening to this and you have a kid who's like 10, 11, 12, you think your kid's growing up and you think to yourself my God, look at these pictures. This isn't the baby I remember. You have no idea the pictures that you're seeing now In a couple of years're going to look back and be like look, how little they were then. And that happened with olivia. Olivia is 17. She had her junior prom and we took pictures next to each other and I'm like who are you? How is this my kid, how is this? My daughter? You're a baby and I would always write about that. When I did get to write about her, I would write about like, how does the baby drive? How does the baby there's always a joke about that, but it's true.

James Guttman:

And for those of you guys who follow the blog and you know the evolution of the blog, I wrote about her a lot in the beginning and then slowly it started to morph a little bit. I wrote more and more about Lucas. I figured Lucas out a little bit more. I get Lucas, I understand Lucas now, but also she was getting older and she wanted her privacy and it was to the point where I would want to write about her and I would go to her. I go, I'm going to write this article about you. Let me send you some pictures. You tell me which ones I could use and she would say no to all of them and I'd be like do you not want me to write about you? She'd be like no, you can air if they don't want to be on there. She wants me to write about her and she's cool with it. Cool if she doesn't. Never, you know. That's why, even with lucas I know people listening to this go.

James Guttman:

What about your son? He's non-verbal, he can't say anything. Yeah, but I do make sure that the things I write about lucas if he was verbal, um, that he would say no to I don't like. You guys know, I don't write about you know potty, you know bath time or things like that. I mean, he's a 14 year old boy. Whatever he does, whether, whether I do and this, and by me saying that that isn't an admission that I'm bathing him or I'm helping him in the bathroom, I'm not saying anything either way, because then that's part of the privacy. You know, that's just something, that's just off limits. I don't talk about that with him. I don't talk about so.

James Guttman:

As the years went by, I wrote about her less, but I never stopped valuing her as one of the top people in my life and I remember we've had ups and downs and we've had incidents, even recently, where sometimes you have to remind your kids of what they mean to you. You think we go through this every day and she sees what I do and she sees that I drop everything for her and I'll drive her where she needs to go and I'll do these things for her. But sometimes they need to hear it. So I remember we were in the car and we're dealing with insanity as life goes on, all twisted as they say, and I said to her I go listen. I said, do you understand something? I'm like I don't write about you because you asked me not to, okay. I'm like, well, okay, but every single thing I write about Lucas, that's you Like when I'm like Lucas is the number one in my life and he's I'm like, that's you.

James Guttman:

I'm like I would throw someone in front of a speeding bus for you and then pay them to back over the person again. I would. I mean, you talk about ride or die in this family, like I've got my kids backs. And the reason why is because, especially with Olivia, I know that every single thing she does is with good intentions, because I made this kid and I raised this kid. I know who she is and I've watched her go through life and I've watched her become a better person. And for those of you who don't know her, holy God, this kid, she gets grades Like I can't even like.

James Guttman:

Imagine she goes back to me and she's just like a 99. I'm like what are you doing? How do you have a 99 average when I was a kid that wasn't even like a thing. It was like I was just trying to like get through class, you know. I mean I was forging like like notes and stuff. Like it was bad. Uh, as time went on it got a little bad, um, but yeah, dude, she works.

James Guttman:

She has a work ethic like I've never seen before and it's the kind of thing where now I feel like I have a work ethic now. But when I was her age I didn't. So I don't know where kind of it came from. I guess it sprouted early. She works so much like constantly working. She has two jobs on her own. Nobody makes her do anything. I don't make her do anything, but she is my number one girl. I have two kids, man. I have a boy and I have a girl. I have a neurotypical girl and I have a boy with nonverbal autism. The two of them are so different. It's so the same but really, like on paper, very different. And it allows me to have this unique relationship with both of them where they both are number one in their category Lucas and I. My son has a relationship with me, unlike I have with anybody else.

James Guttman:

I can look at Lucas and I can talk. I was on the phone the other day with someone and, as I'm talking to this person, lucas is walking around and he wanted food and stuff and I had an entire conversation with him without saying it works, I don't need to. I look over him on the phone, I'm listening, I'm like see, this is one of the before I go into this is one of the reasons why you need to subscribe on YouTube, because I'm doing the whole thing. So just bear with me. If you're on Spotify, if you're on iPod, just just give me a second. So I look at Lucas and I go. So I look at Lucas and I go. And he left the room and he came back and I gave him food. Just to narrate it, I was touching my mouth and doing all sorts of hand motions and things like that.

James Guttman:

So I'm allowed to have the most unique relationships with both of my kids. Like Lucas is my number one person in that category. There's nobody I have that kind of relationship with. Olivia is a neurotypical kid and I have tons of neurotypical relationships in my life and she is number one in that category, which means that basically, out of like 16 quintillion I don't know how many people are on earth? Man, I'm probably completely wrong. Out of everybody on earth, olivia is number one in terms of people who can talk in a relationship with me. I don't know a lot of nonverbal people. Lucas is number one for that. But Lucas is unique in that I can carry on these conversations with him and we have this bond and we built these things together that I've built with him and I've never built with anybody else. I've built with him and I've never built with anybody else. I've never had the need to and I've never had the reason to and I've never wanted to. He's my guy, she's my girl, this is my family, and I wrote in the thing man I have.

James Guttman:

I've had people try to, you know, come between people, you know. Try to, you know, make things more about them than my kids. And it's always been the same thing. Man, my kids come first and if anybody's in my life, whether it's a friend, whether it's a relationship, whatever it happens to be, that person is a part of the group. Right, you can be a part of this group. You can't be above anybody or below anybody. My kids aren't. Olivia is not above Lucas. Lucas is not above Olivia. I'm not above any. We're all part of the thing and that's what I'm trying in my life. You want to find people who belong there and, yeah, I want my daughter to know that she'll always come first and that she'll always be somebody that I value and dude.

James Guttman:

As a dad, you know I'm kind of. I mean you might be able to tell from the blog and from the things that I say and the things that I write that I'm kind of easygoing, I'm really easy to get along with. If you don't get along with me like, you're pretty much something with you, I try to be really accommodating. And the reason why I try to be accommodating is because I want it to be the type of situation where, if you don't like me or if you have a problem with me, I want to know 100% oh, it's you, it's not me. So I don't like to do things that like afterwards somebody's like I don't like James Gunn, why? Well, you know you call me a name or you did like. I don't want them to have reasons that make sense. I want their reasons to be weird. So I want to be the type of person that puts better things into the world than I take out of it.

James Guttman:

So I go out of my way to be positive and I go out of my way for my daughter to see that she knows and I've talked to her about this. I mean I said before her grades are insane, her work ethic is insane. But I remember I said to her one day I go, listen, the thing that you need to do is you need to be pleasant, you need to be able to get along with people. I said because it doesn't matter and this is some of my dadly advice that I annoy people with I said you have the best grades in the world. You can have degrees from everywhere, like you can have, like you know, masters and PhDs. I go. If nobody wants to work with you, you're never going to be successful. You're never going to be successful. You're not going to make any money. You need to be able to get along with people. That's the most important thing. I said there's things that you know. I've gotten work and I've worked with different people on projects that I know I'm probably not the best one in the world to do, but I'm easy to work with. I'm humble. I will apologize when I'm wrong. I'll go out of my way to really just show people that I'm doing everything I can to help the situation. I'm not gruff. I don't push things away. I don't, you know, not take responsibility. I don't pass the buck. I do whatever I can to let everybody know that when I'm with you, whether it's personal or professional, I'm there a hundred percent and I've watched my daughter grow into just an amazing, amazing person. I'll tell you this.

James Guttman:

So, years ago, when we had said, you know, don't, don't write about her, I was telling somebody about this. I'm like, yeah, I don't really write about Olivia. I'm like, because, you know, she asked me not to and this person asked me she goes when, when was the? And I realized that I hadn't. I had said things to her. Like you know, I wish I could write about you more. You know, one day, maybe, when you're ready, but I would never be like can I write about you this week? And I did. She said yes. I was so happy to share her with you guys and to hear from everybody about how she's grown Because, just like Lucas man, this blog has been around since February 2017. She was eight years old. She's 17 now. Lucas was five and he's 14.

James Guttman:

So every week of my life, I've written something about my life. So you guys have grown with me. You've watched these things. I've taken podcast weeks off before not a ton, I mean since 2019, we have like 250 episodes but I've never. When it comes to the blog, there's never been a week I've missed. I've missed a day on a holiday Sometimes, like on a Monday holiday, I won't do it or something like that but, um, every single week. There's never been a missed week. So every single week of my life, you've seen it and you've watched and you've seen how we've grown and how we've learned, um, and how we're there for each other. I'm so proud I, I really am. I'm proud of the work that we've done and there's a lot to this.

James Guttman:

I know the blog is mostly about autism appreciation, because I think that's one of the most important things ever and it's my duty to my son to be able to put him into a world that sees him differently than I feared they would. I mean, that's the whole goal, right, like, one day I'm going to be dead. My son's going to live in this world. People are difficult to deal with sometimes. I want them to know. This kid is amazing and if I can do whatever I can now to use my writing to be able to show people and talk about him and tell people about him. That's a win and that's something that when I'm gone, we'll be able to follow him.

James Guttman:

But there's so much more to our story than that. There's the idea of being positive. There's my quintuple bypass when I was 35, which I am going to talk about on here. At some point I want to do a specific audio just for it, just kind of tell you guys a story and bring you through everything that went through with it. But there's a lot of positivity and there's a lot of growth and I feel like I've gone through a lot of growth and I think one of the most important thing in my life has been to really acknowledge it and to be proud of myself when good things happen, because I'm I still struggle with that man.

James Guttman:

I'm still trying to to talk to myself in a better voice. You know I've done this. I've I've had moments where like, let's say, I'll misplace something, I can't find my you know bottle of water and I'm like, oh you idiot, you can't even find your bottle of water. What the hell's wrong with you? I'm saying this in my head and then I'll realize it right Now. This is, this is the first step of kind of evolving and I'll go. I'll go to myself why do you talk to yourself like that? And now I feel enlightened. Right, my God, I'm doing it. I'm talking bad to myself, about talking bad to myself, and then it becomes a cycle and you can't get out of it.

James Guttman:

I want to be happy and I find that when I'm happy, my kids are happy, my world is happy, I feel good, I don't feel stressed out, and it's about, really, it's about how we feel about ourselves. It's about the people that we surround ourselves with, because the way you see yourself is how you build your life. Right, if you think of yourself as kind of like angry, you're going to find people like that and you're going to put them around you. But if you say to yourself I'm a good person and I'm positive and I'm there for the people around me, you're going to find somebody whether it's a friend again, a relationship, anybody in your circle that's positive and that's good and that's somebody that you want to be proud of yourself with. It's important. Yeah, and it's one of those things that this, especially these last few weeks, I've been thinking about it and you know, being able to write about Olivia and being able to do these things, it's made me feel very, very proud of kind of what we built here, and not just in the blog and things like that, but my family. I'm so proud of everybody.

James Guttman:

As you guys know and maybe you don't, because I get a lot of questions about it If you Google me it was one of the first questions James Cuthbert married. I'm divorced. I got divorced years. I got divorced while writing this blog. You know I was married when the blog began. I got divorced in 2020 during COVID.

James Guttman:

So it was a rough quarantine in the house, but it changed my life and it changed my setup. I will tell you this I'm lucky in that. You know my ex-wife and I we both we share custody of the kids. I trust her to take care of the kids. There's not really a lot of issues here and there. I mean, obviously, you know when you go through a divorce, there's going to be things back and forth. What are you doing? Why are you doing that? But overall, like I know, I know they're fed. I know they're. They have a roof over their head. I know their clothes. You know it's the same thing with me and sometimes that's really the most important thing to know. So that's a good thing.

James Guttman:

But there's been changes and there's been different things that have just happened in my life and I feel like at the end of it I've popped out of it kind of a good person, a better person for it, you know, and it's just been constant states of evolving and I've written about all of those evolutions. I wrote about, you know, autism appreciation. I wrote about going through the divorce. I wrote about my heart surgery and even rewinding the clock. I wrote about one of my best friends passing away in 2004, my friend Chris. I think about him every day. Still, it was. It was a very difficult passing and these things that we go through that make us who we are. And I'll tell you, man, I've been through a lot. I'm happy about who I am, I'm happy about who my kids are and I'm happy about the world that we've created for ourselves and the people that we bring into it.

James Guttman:

And everybody out there listening right now you are some of the people that we've brought into it. You are some of the people that we've brought into it. You are some of the people that you know. I work for people that I want to be able to either change your opinion about autism, but at the same time, I also want to be able to tell you about my kid. I want to be able to give people the resources they might need to maybe send one of these blogs to to their you know in-laws or to you know their co workers, like hey, you have questions about my kid.

James Guttman:

This, this blog, kind of talks a little bit about a child similar. I want to put good out there, I want to do good things in the world and, uh, and you guys have allowed me to do that and you've made me feel really good about myself. This has been, uh, it's been, a journey. So, thank you. Thank you for all the support, too, for high world. I'm down the book right here, but a boom, it is out. Uh, it is available. I know there's a glitch, I think, on some of these sites where they have the wrong release date, but june 19th it's out. Do me a favor, go to spotify audible. You can listen to the what's it called? Audiobook. Audiobook that's available. Um, just like tons of things to share with you guys and I can't thank you enough for all you've done to to really just I don't know give my life a meaning that I'm really proud of. So thank you. That does it for me.

James Guttman:

I'm going to be back next Friday with a brand new edition of Hi Pod I'm Dad. We're going to be here throughout the week. Hi blog I'm Dad Monday, wednesday. Follow me on social media. We're posting more than ever. It's on Instagram and on Facebook, and on threads. I go on threads every once in a while. I have it. Hi James Gutman H-I. Hi James Gutman. Come on, check it out. Drop me a line. Thank you so much for all your support. Thank you for all you guys have done. Until next week, this is James Gutman saying be well, bye, pod, I'm dead. I'll see you next time.