{"id":2523,"date":"2026-06-20T12:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T12:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2523"},"modified":"2026-06-20T12:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T12:37:16","slug":"what-my-dad-never-knew-about-having-an-autistic-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2523","title":{"rendered":"What my dad never knew about having an autistic son"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

To a son, his father is larger than life \u2014 the man with all the answers, the hero. Mine certainly is.<\/p>\n

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But while writing a book about my father, I learned the truth:\u00a0My hero was scared.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Starting when I was young, my father felt alone and unsure of what to do, certain the world had turned against his son and that he was the only thing standing between his little boy and ruin.<\/p>\n

The man I celebrated every Father\u2019s Day felt completely alone.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t. Last fall I wrote \u201cBorn Lucky: A Dedicated Father, a Grateful Son and My Journey with Autism\u201d as a love letter to one man; what\u00a0came back to me was an army.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve felt so lost for so long,\u201d a father in Massachusetts wrote to me \u2014 he is his autistic son\u2019s only friend, certain no one else on Earth was feeling the same.<\/p>\n

Hundreds have written since, almost every letter carrying the same line my father once believed about himself: I thought I was the only one, alone, hopeless and helpless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This Father\u2019s Day, there is an army of fathers who feel exactly that alone \u2014 and not one of them knows the others that are out there.<\/p>\n

At 8 I was diagnosed with what we now know to be autism. The psychologist had told Dad there was \u201cgenerally not much\u201d a parent could do for a kid like me.<\/p>\n

Dad decided that was the wrong answer and spent the next 15 years proving it.<\/p>\n

He quit his job and began trying to\u00a0adapt me to the world instead of adapting the world to me.<\/p>\n

To be fair, I\u2019m in my 40s now, and my wife says it\u2019s still a work in progress.<\/p>\n

Once the diagnosis was delivered, Dad told no one. Not my teachers. Not his friends. Not even me.<\/p>\n

The secrecy wasn\u2019t shame \u2014 it was the method. He refused to let a diagnosis become my identity, so he carried it himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I only understood how alone he\u2019d been when I sat down to write the book and asked my parents about years we had never discussed.<\/p>\n

To me, it was all about me \u2014 the bullying, the emotional cruelty, the physical humiliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He would sit in my room for hours listening to me cry and scream, trying to take my hurt and make it his own.<\/p>\n

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What I didn\u2019t know is what happened when he left my room \u2014 late at night my mother would find him alone, in our dark living room crying, certain he was failing, certain no one else could possibly understand.<\/p>\n

Dad didn\u2019t know of the army of others, and frankly I didn\u2019t, either.<\/p>\n

A single father in Las Vegas wrote that his marriage didn\u2019t survive, so he raised his son alone.<\/p>\n

The boy is 22 now, studying cybersecurity. They\u2019re best friends.<\/p>\n

None of these men knew the others were out there \u2014 and that is the cruelty of it.<\/p>\n

The holiday we built to honor fathers honors each of them in private: one family, one card, one dad.<\/p>\n

So no man in that army ever sees that he belongs to it.<\/p>\n

We mark the day with a tie, a grill, a \u201cWorld\u2019s Best Dad\u201d mug. A book (shameless plug!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

None of it is wrong. But all of it misses the point. Fatherhood isn\u2019t the trophy on the shelf. It\u2019s the man at one in the morning, sure he\u2019s failing, who gets up and does it again the next day \u2014 and tells no one.<\/p>\n

One year, around Father\u2019s Day, I asked my grandmother, \u201cif there is a Father\u2019s Day, when it is Son\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

She laughed and said every day is Son\u2019s Day. I had no earthly idea what she meant.<\/p>\n

I do now: Every day my father showed up, the day was already mine.<\/p>\n

But she was only half right \u2014 every one of those days was Father\u2019s Day, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not one Sunday in June. Every day a father shows up \u2014 for me, and for the children of every father in that army. That\u2019s Father\u2019s Day!<\/p>\n

Dad still says he isn\u2019t a hero \u2014 like all heroes the attention makes him uncomfortable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He is no longer my only friend, but we are best friends.<\/p>\n

We still talk every night to say we love each other.\u00a0 I wrote \u201cBorn Lucky\u201d so that in a small way Dad would know that I\u2019ve come to\u00a0understand, as much as I can,\u00a0the sacrifices he made over all those years.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

What he still can\u2019t quite believe is the rest of it: He was never the only one.<\/p>\n

For every father in that silent army, there is a child who grew up to understand exactly how lucky we are to have him \u2014 a second army, just as large, every one of us born lucky.<\/p>\n

So this Father\u2019s Day, I\u2019m not only saying it to my dad. I\u2019m saying it to the whole army that never knew it was one.<\/p>\n

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I love you, Dad \u2014 and Happy Father\u2019s Day to every last one of you.<\/p>\n

Leland Vittert is chief Washington anchor at NewsNation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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