We talk about our adult son, about being the autistic parent of a non-autistic child, about shaving Chad’s beard (hasn’t happened in decades, so there’s a price), nudity, and generally about what we want for our son’s future.

Transcript

K: So, lately I’ve been thinking about our amazing, beautiful, talented, wonderful, adorable, charming son. (laughs)

C: Yeah? That one? Not the other one?

K: Yeah, not the other one. We only have one son, but yes. He can be two different sons. He can be like, the exact-opposite-of-everything-I-said son, but right now, I am absolutely head over heels in love with our adult son. He recently turned 25, and I feel like a lot of what I’m in love with is the fact that he’s an adult.

C: Uh-huh.

K: Are you into it?

C: Into him being a quarter century? Yeah.

K: (laughs) So, he moved out when he was 20.

C: No, it hasn’t been that long.

K: Yeah, it has been.

C: No, he was like 21 or 22.

K: No, he was 20. 

C: Was he?

K: Yes, because I remember the person he was dating.

C: Uh-huh.

K: And it was- I don’t want to go into any details because I don’t want to put anybody on blast.

C: Okay. It was when he was 20.

K: Yes. It was… 

C: Okay.

K: It was significant. I’m doing vulgar hand gestures.

C: Yeah, you’re doing a vulgar hand gesture of a two and a zero.

K: (laughs) Of a one and a zero.

C: Well, he didn’t move out when he was ten.

K: (laughs) They know what vulgar hand gesture I’m doing.

C: Yeah. If you don’t, don’t worry about it.

K: Yeah. I’m doing the universal oomph oomph hand signal. The tchk tchk hand signal.

C: Oh, when he was trying to be a DJ.

K: Yeah, the rrrrr hand signal. 

C: When he was trying to be a dj with some beats. Got it. 

K: Exactly. No, it was back when he was salsa dancing regularly.

C: Yes.

K: And he stopped salsa dancing regularly when he was about 23? 24?

C: Yeah. It just got too expensive and…

K: Yeah, and I think he started regularly salsa dancing when he was 18, 19?

C: Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

K: But I’m really sure he moved out when he was 20.

C: Okay, I’ll take your word for it.

K: Before his 21st birthday. So, he’s been out of the house for… gosh, five years now.

C: Yeah.

K: And it’s been pretty sweet.

C: It has been.

K: (laughs) So, getting him from 12 to 25 was… challenging.

C: 13 years’ worth of work.

K: Yeah, but it was challenging doing it in Japan.

C: Yes.

K: So, some facts about our kid is that he graduated high school at 12, I think we might’ve said this before.

C: You’ve said that before, yeah.

K: And then graduated high school at- I mean graduated college. So, high school at 12, college at 16, and finding something to do to entertain and a way to keep him safe and engaged… was really challenging because he didn’t have any age-appropriate friends I think until- like friends that were actually the same age as him until the past two years. 

C: Yeah.

K: Which I always told him would be the case.

C: Right.

K: Because he was so ahead of the curve. Which he hated. 

C: Yeah. He had to wait until his contemporaries had graduated from college and had jobs and things, so.

K: Yeah. And he absolutely hated being exceptional.

C: Yeah, and then you and I went through that too.

K: Yeah.

C: I mean, when I was 15, I was a senior in high school. When you were 16, you got your GED and emancipated. So, both of us have our own… being accelerated.

K: And we talked about on the o