301 – Jonathan Bennett of Ontario, CAN Executive Leadership Coach, Author Reflects On Raising An Autistic & Non-Binary Child

Transcript:

Tom Couch: [00:00:00] Special thanks to Horizon Therapeutics for sponsoring the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast, working tirelessly to research, develop, and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics mission at HorizonTherapeutics.com.

Jonathan Bennett: The most important thing I can share with any other parent – and this would be a parent especially of an autistic kid – is the people with the best advice are autistic adults. Not scientists, not doctors, not OTs or PTs or speech language pathologists or anybody else. If you really want to understand what is happening in the mind of your kid, listen to autistic adults.

Tom Couch: That’s our guest this week, Jonathan Bennett. A leadership coach, a poet, an author of seven books. We’ll hear some sage advice from Jonathan about raising kids with special needs and in particular those who are autistic. That’s on this Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad podcast. Now say hello to the [00:01:00] founder of the Special Fathers Network and host of the Dad to Dad podcast, David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Hi, and thanks for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad podcast presented by the Special Fathers Network, a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs.

David Hirsch: The Special Fathers Network MasterMind group experience is the most comprehensive program the 21st Century Dads Foundation offers. Dads raising children with special needs meet virtually on a weekly basis and form meaningful relationships while sharing weekly wins, discussing books, and sharing heartfelt challenges. One of the highlights of the year is attending an in-person weekend retreat. We’re launching 10 new MasterMind groups in 2024 with 10 dads per group. That means we’re only looking for 10 like-minded dads in each community. If you’re a dad raising a child with special needs, we hope you’ll join a local MasterMind group and make the investment to become the best version of yourself. For more information, please see the show notes or simply go to 21stCenturyDads. org.

Tom Couch: So now let’s hear this intriguing [00:02:00] conversation between Jonathan Bennett and David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: I’m thrilled to be talking today with Jonathan Bennett of Ontario, Canada, an executive leadership coach, author and father of two. Jonathan, thank you for taking the time to do a podcast interview for the Special Fathers Network.

Jonathan Bennett: It’s great to be here, David. Thanks for having me.

David Hirsch: You and your wife, Wendy, have been married for 25 years this year, and are the proud parents of two children who are 17 and 19 years old. Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up? Tell me something about your family.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, sure. Hi to everybody that’s listening in. So I was born in Vancouver, Canada. My father is Canadian. My mother is Australian. I lived for the first four years of my life in Vancouver, and then my folks packed up and they went back to where my mom is from, which is Sydney in Australia. And I grew up there and I lived there until I was 16 or so. I have two brothers and a sister. And when I was 16 and change, some work changes happened for my dad and we moved back to Canada, this time to Ontario. And I have been bouncing backwards and [00:03:00] forwards from Canada to Australia ever since, but I’ve by and large lived in Ontario for 25 years.

David Hirsch: That Australian accent comes through a little bit louder to me than it did maybe the first conversation that we had.

Jonathan Bennett: I was probably up all last night watching the cricket. And so that tends to rejuvenate my accent [David chuckling] when I listen to the commentators.

David Hirsch: Is your dad still alive?

Jonathan Bennett: Yes, he is. Yeah.

David Hirsch: How old is he?

Jonathan Bennett: My dad is 81 and he is just about to come live with us actually. Yeah.

David Hirsch: Okay. What did he do for a living?

Jonathan Bennett: My dad started his career as a chartered accountant. Moved into executive roles and traveled the world, frankly. Had a pretty exciting career.

David Hirsch: What industry did he work in or what companies did he work for?

Jonathan Bennett: He worked for by and large one company, it’s a Canadian company, in oil and gas, in the oil and gas kind of sector.

David Hirsch: Okay. And how would you describe your relationship with your dad?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, we’re really close. We’re really close. I think, like a lot of father-son relationships, we’ve been on a journey together. He was a larger-than-life figure for me when I was [00:04:00] growing up, but he was a very caring, present father even though he traveled a lot. He was a very emotionally available dad, which I know not everybody enjoys and so I was super lucky.

Jonathan Bennett: He’s a quiet kind of contemplative person. He’s a big reader and a deep thinker. My parents got divorced when I was about 19. We spent a lot less time together over the course of the next kind of 20 years. And then his second marriage, like he got divorced again. And in the last five years, it’s been a renaissance for the two of us. He moved up close to where I live now. I see him a couple times a week. And turning 81, he’s just getting to the point where having more people around and that kind of thing might’ve been interesting. So we started talking like, hey, why don’t you move in? And he thought that was a pretty good idea. And so he’s just about to do that literally in two weeks. Yeah.

David Hirsch: Wow, I love it. Thank you for sharing. And I’m wondering if there’s some important takeaways when you think about your relationship with your dad, perhaps some lessons learned that maybe you’ve tried to incorporate into the way you’ve been a dad as well.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah. My daughter would laugh if she heard me [00:05:00] say this, and maybe if she listens to this, she will laugh. A motto of mine in general in life is play the long game. And I definitely played the long game with my dad. There were many times when I think over the, especially when I was a much younger father and just felt like he was not there for me because he was busy with his second marriage and those kids, felt like there was just a lot of distance between us. I think I was able to draw on that kind of idea of just playing the long game. I don’t need to blow this up. It’s not great. But maybe one day something will be different. The conditions for success will be there and they’re not there right now. And so just wait. And I just kept it as alive as I could under the circumstances. And sure enough, the day came when he just arrived on my doorstep with his bags packed. And I think if I had not played the long game and been patient with that, that day wouldn’t have arrived in the way that it did. And I think about that as a kind of life lesson, but also as something that I think about a lot in lots of areas of my life, frankly.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. Brilliant [00:06:00] insights, especially in a divorce situation, right? There’s a tendency to take sides and sometimes the bridges get burned beyond recognition. And you just can’t go back, right? There’s been things said and really hard feelings. And it’s just, it’s really hard to let bygones be bygones. And I can relate to what you’re talking about. So kudos to you for playing the long game. Any other thoughts that come to mind as it relates to lessons learned with your dad or…

Jonathan Bennett: I think that there’s just a lot of ages and stages in life and sometimes we can lose touch with people because where they’re at and where we’re at just aren’t close enough. Like the circles aren’t intersecting. But eventually maybe the circles come back together and they touch or, even better, they overlap. And I’ve certainly felt that with my dad. We’ve been able to reconnect in the last five to seven years in a really deep and meaningful way. We’ve had some really powerful conversations. We’ve explored parts of our past. We filled in the gaps for one another. And I just, I really cherish the time we’ve spent talking and just reconnecting and [00:07:00] rebonding because it may not have happened easily enough. And I know it doesn’t happen for lots of folks. So I don’t take it lightly that it happened for me.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And you’re referring to yourself as the beneficiary. I’d like to project and say that your children are also the beneficiaries because they have no doubt a more meaningful relationship with their grandpa than they would otherwise.

Jonathan Bennett: Oh, totally. Yeah, that’s really true. Thanks.

David Hirsch: I’m thinking of father figures and I’m wondering if there’s any other men that come to mind that have played an influential role in your life.

Jonathan Bennett: My wife’s father has been an important figure in my life. His name is Reese. I’ve spent all of my kind of adult life in this relationship with Wendy and she is one of seven girls. And so they have a huge family and they’re all relatively close except for one who lives on the other side of the country, but like everybody else is pretty tied in. And so Reese has been at the center of my larger familial life. And he’s been a really important influence for me. Somebody that I’ve been able to talk to and talk with and talk through things. [00:08:00] And it’s different when it’s not your own dad. You don’t come with any baggage. He’s just a really thoughtful guy. He’s retired now and he was a provincial court judge here in Ontario. So he’s heard just about all the stories. And he’s just wise and a terrific human. And I’ve been so fortunate to be able to get to know him.

Jonathan Bennett: It’s funny, when you have a profession like a judge… It’s private; judges in Canada, they’re appointed. It’s not like they’re elected like in the US. And so you can’t be political. You have to be very private in how you conduct yourself. Because I was part of the family, I was able to get to know him in a way that very few other people got to know him socially, and I always felt that was a real privilege for me.

David Hirsch: Yeah, I love the way you’re singing your father-in-law’s praises. Everybody should be so lucky. And it’s not lost on me that you mentioned that Wendy is one of seven girls, right? He must have been a minority in a sorority with all that estrogen. So maybe it was a relief, if you will, at some level not being judgmental, but to have male conversations, male relationships, right?

Jonathan Bennett: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I think he, I’m [00:09:00] sure he would say that. Yeah.

David Hirsch: That’s wonderful. Thanks again for sharing. My recollection from an educational standpoint is that you have quite a bit of education. You started at Scots College, Appleby College, you went to Western University where you took a BA in literature, and then you have degrees from University of Toronto, as well as McMaster University. And I’m wondering when your initial university experience concluded, where is it that your career was taking you?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, so I have an undergraduate degree in English Literature and Comparative Lit. And all I ever wanted to do when I was a young man was to write books, write novels, poetry. And so I just decided to go all in on that crazy dream. And so I had a really wonderful time as a young person after university in Toronto in the writing scene and I worked in and around publishing. I published a bunch of books and I got to do a lot of really fun, exciting things, reading at festivals and I won some awards and it was great. It was a really wonderful time in my life and I feel really fortunate to have done that.

David Hirsch: It sounds like you [00:10:00] actually utilized your university degree.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, it’s like, what are you going to do with that English degree? I’m going to write books and I really did. So yeah, it’s true. I make a joke, but actually these days I’m an executive coach and I spend time in senior management teams, and a big part of my life is governance, is board governance. And storytelling affects the way we think about the world in lots and lots of different ways. And so I have a particularly well-attuned mind for narrative and conflict, and I use it in my coaching, my consulting work, my board work all the time. So all jokes aside, although it’s a very tangential way to get that kind of experience, it’s served me well over the years for sure.

David Hirsch: Yeah I can attest to the fact that storytelling is a very effective way to communicate, right? People can relate, they understand, they remember where they might not remember a lot of data or just information. I think that more people would benefit from developing those skills, those narrative and conflict related skills. So thanks for sharing. I’m curious to know how did you and Wendy meet?

Jonathan Bennett: Oh we met [00:11:00] in university. I was in second year, she was in first year. We were in the same residence. It’s a pretty typical, normal kind of way to meet. Yeah. Yeah.

David Hirsch: So let’s talk about special needs. And I’m curious to know, prior to becoming parents, did you or Wendy have any connection to the disability or special needs community?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, Wendy did. Wendy’s elder sister, who’s no longer with us, had Down syndrome. And it’s a congenital heart defect, which these days is typically dealt with surgery when they’re infants. But back in the early 1970s that wasn’t true. And she just got older with this heart condition. And she lived into her 40s. It was pretty amazing. She was medically fragile her whole life. That was an important kind of context to Wendy’s childhood and how Wendy looked at the world, sees the world and all that sort of stuff. So that was our introduction as parents to our own kids and the fact that, it turns out one of them has a disability.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And it does inform you because if neither of you had any exposure connection to the world of disability, it might hit you a little bit [00:12:00] harder or might be a little bit different to accept than having it be with you from the time you were born. You had mentioned this is Wendy’s oldest sister, right? She was on the scene before Wendy showed up and Wendy comes along and she doesn’t know anything any different, right? That’s just the way it’s always been. It is a different context. So it’s your older child, the 19 year old that has the special needs. I’m wondering what the diagnosis is and how did that come about?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, for sure. My eldest is autistic. They also have ADHD. I’m using “they” because they’re non-binary, so they use they/them pronouns. We knew they were like a really unusual kid as an infant, as a baby for the first few years. It was certainly difficult. It was really difficult. They were achieving some milestones, as you would expect. Pediatric kind of milestones and then others not at all. It was complex for us to just incorporate and go on that journey. What is really happening here? And should we be doing anything? And maybe it’s this, and maybe it’s that, and multiple ear infections, right? And you’re like, ah, maybe [00:13:00] it’s the ear infections. Turns out it wasn’t, it was the autism. But you just don’t know. It’s your first rodeo, right? Your first kid and you don’t really know.

Jonathan Bennett: I’ll tell you a story. They were maybe four years old. And they had these really unusual interests. They would become obsessed with something. And for a little while for no reason that anybody could figure out, they really wanted to do tap dancing. And so we’re like okay. And so we run out and find a class and find some shoes. And so we take them to this class, right? And they’ve never shown any interest in doing anything else collectively with any other kids in any other way up to this point. So we don’t really know how this is going to go or whatever, or whether there’ll be a meltdown or anything else. So we hand them to this teenager who takes them behind a door into this dance studio. Hardwood floors, mirrors, right? And there’s all this noise and music happening. And we’re just like, oh, how’s this going? And about halfway, like half an hour into it, this teenager comes out and looks at us [00:14:00] really earnestly and says, “Would it be possible for you to tell us what they have? Because I think if I knew that I might be able to better match the kind of teaching that I’m doing to their disability.” [Jonathan laughs] It was a very humbling moment. Because we’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to get on that.” We just left feeling like if some random 15 year old is pretty much seeing this, probably we should be getting on it.

Jonathan Bennett: And so we did, obviously. We went through the relevant testing and pediatricians, et cetera, et cetera. And the diagnosis… For us, I remember doing the screening, the parent screening. And there was a teacher that did the screening and a caregiver screening and all those things as they triangulate the diagnosis. And I remember going through that and filling in this questionnaire and thinking it wasn’t a questionnaire. It was a series of questions that were obviously designed to explain my child to myself. And it was a great relief. I experienced it as a great relief because up until that point, we just didn’t really have what we [00:15:00] needed to be able to understand. But when that happened, when we got a diagnosis and when we realized we weren’t alone, and when we realized there was lots of people out there that had information and support, then we were able to, I think, begin the journey in good faith.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. Very poignant story. And it sounds like it was a liberating experience, right? To go from the sort of unknown to the, “Ah, aha!” Now that you have a diagnosis, then you can start addressing that and bringing resources and therapies to hopefully unlock some of the pieces of the puzzle. And I’m wondering after the diagnosis was made, were there some fears that you or Wendy had as parents from that point going forward?

Jonathan Bennett: No, not really fears. I think it was more… There’s an old kind of line, I’m sure you’ve heard it on your podcast before, you get this ticket and you think you’re going to Paris. And the plane lands in Amsterdam, right? And there’s nothing wrong in Amsterdam, it’s just not where you thought you were going. And that all I think [00:16:00] explains, in a little metaphor, what it’s like. My fears were I’m from Australia. Oh my god, I’m going to have a boy child, and I’m going to be stuck in hockey arenas for my entire next 15 years of my life. [David chuckles] And it is the opposite of what I want to do. But I was like, if I’m going to have a kid, it might happen and then here it is. None of those things came true.

Jonathan Bennett: For me it was just about learning I think. I needed to relearn what my perception of being a dad was going to be. And I needed to gain skills in ways that I had not had. And it was very hard when they were little, especially. They had a lot of sensory overwhelm. They had a lot of meltdowns. And it took a long time for us to gradually learn how we could accommodate them to keep them as safe as possible and as calm in an environment. We realized it was not about them adapting to the environment. It was about us [00:17:00] making the environment right for them.

Jonathan Bennett: That included up to and until we hit grade seven, and school was just an impossible task. And we just realized it’s just actually not that important. It’s more important for us to keep our kids safe and whole. And we just walked away from the school system completely. And it was the best decision we ever made because they’re really smart. Their ability to stay regulated went up because they weren’t having to deal with social situations and all of the other complexities that happen in a school building. And they simply just weren’t able to do it. And I think it would have been a kind of – I don’t want to overstate this, I really mean this – it would have been a kind of violence to subject them, or forcing them to attend some kind of, quote unquote, normal kind of school environment.

Jonathan Bennett: And for us, it was a learning journey. And for me in particular as the dad, I became in a way their person, their safe person. They stay regulated by – so if there’s any autistic people listening to this – by info dumping, which is a really common expression that [00:18:00] autistic people use, which is a very calming thing for them to do. They often will have a special interest. And to stay calm, they just talk about it in a stream. And so I became the receptacle for that and a series of very esoteric topics. I would have to sit and hold the space for three, four, five hours every single night. And I won’t lie, it was hard at times. It was really hard because sometimes you might, your mind starts to drift. And if it does, that would be quite upsetting because I wasn’t listening. And I wasn’t, to be honest; I wasn’t. But the stamina that I built up by listening to topics that I maybe might not otherwise have decided to listen to an encyclopedia on, I was gaining other skills. And now I’m an executive coach and my 10,000 hours of practice was just holding the space for my kid on a whole bunch of topics that weren’t my interests. They were their interests. And so now a client that’s wanting to bang on for an hour, I’m good. That’s nothing. That’s not even a warmup.

David Hirsch: Yeah. You’re an [00:19:00] endurance athlete when it comes to that. And one of the things, you didn’t use the word patience, but that’s the thought that came to mind. That you were really exercising your patience muscle, right? Because for most parents, I’ll put myself in that situation, that would be very difficult, right? You would lose your patience, right? And you can’t go from being patient for five or 10 minutes to being patient for four hours overnight, right? That happens over a period of time. Like I said, that’s like an endurance sport almost, right? You exercise a certain muscle, not a physical muscle, but a mental muscle to be able to get there. And it’s brilliant, right? Great that you were able to embrace that and own that, right? Because I don’t think a lot of parents, that’s not what they signed up for. That’s not where the wheelhouse is. That’s not what they’re doing with their other kids, right? And I think that would create a lot of friction, potentially create a lot of friction. So was there some meaningful advice that you got that helped you get there?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, I’m sure. The most important thing I can share with any other [00:20:00] parent – and this would be a parent especially of an autistic kid – is the people with the best advice are autistic adults. Not scientists, not doctors, not OTs or PTs or speech language pathologists or anybody else. If you really want to understand what is happening in the mind of your kid, listen to autistic adults. They will unlock it for you. They’re on the internet. They’re in groups with one another. They’re ready, willing, and able to share what it’s like. And many of them started out in really socially compromised positions and went through an awful lot of harm and trauma in order to become an adult that maybe now has a job, maybe now is at school, maybe now is just living, but is living in a way that is authentic to themselves.

Jonathan Bennett: And the stories and the insights that they have into how their minds work and what they need and what helps, that’s where the gold is. And I think that it took me too long to [00:21:00] realize that. My kid was probably in their early to mid teens by the time I realized the playbook is there right in front of us. And it’s a kind of weird ableism that we would think and a medical model of thinking that we would think somehow a pediatrician or a neurobiologist or somebody or a social worker is going to somehow have the answers that the person with the lived experience doesn’t have. And it’s just wrong-headed.

Jonathan Bennett: And if you’re listening to this and you’re wondering what’s going on in your six year old’s mind, start plugging into the actually autistic community and go on a learning journey there and you’ll benefit from that enormously.

David Hirsch: Were there some specific resources, organizations for that matter, that played an influential role in helping you and Wendy climb that steep part of the learning curve that you were just referring to?

Jonathan Bennett: Probably, to be honest, I wish there were more. I found online communities fairly helpful along the way, just when we were dealing with specifics. And again, mostly they were adult autistic people that were doing YouTube videos on what’s actually going on [00:22:00] during a meltdown. Why are your meltdowns changing when they’re in their early and mid teens? And why are they now having shutdowns? What does the overwhelm feel like? What does dysregulation feel like? How can you change a dysregulating moment? How do you catch it earlier on the change curve?

Jonathan Bennett: So for example, many parents, if they’ve got autistic kids, they’ll relate to this. You become hyper aware we’ll call it like to the weather in your house. And you can sense if there’s an early storm brewing somewhere, you probably don’t have very long before you can create better conditions so the storm doesn’t come your way. And if you wait too long or you just want to get to the end of your show, the moment is past. And the consequences for everybody concerned are big. And so you become really attuned to this kind of weather phenomenon.

Jonathan Bennett: And I would describe it, I’m going to mix metaphors here a little bit, but I would describe it like if I could catch a meltdown early before it dipped, I could have a really shallow dip [00:23:00] and bring it back. And there were things that I learned how to do by speaking to my kid, asking a series of rapid fire, open-ended questions on their special interest. And I had to know what they were thinking about recently in the last 24 hours for it to be interesting enough to catch a spark. It was like grabbing a toehold or something. And their voice had changed by that point. They were not doing well. There was a flat effect. And this still happens to this day. But they’ve grown up now, there’s slightly different tools. But when they were a kid, I would hear it, and I learned how to ask the kinds of open-ended questions that I could grab. And if I could just get it early enough, I could just dip a little bit, and then the voice would brighten, and we’d spiral up, and we missed it, and it’s gone.

Jonathan Bennett: But if I missed that moment, we’d be right down and they always took 45 minutes and they couldn’t talk. And it is pain and harm happening for them when they’re in that state because they’re completely dysregulated. Their brain is just… And no one likes to see their kid in pain. I would do anything I could.

Jonathan Bennett: I became hyper-vigilant about the storm coming, and [00:24:00] they were coming every day. It’s a lot to pay attention to. And it’s at about this moment where somebody says, “Imagine what it must have been like to be the other kid in the house.” Because my daughter grew up, this was her lived experience was being in a house that was being vigilant against the storm coming. And she just became exceedingly patient and mindful of what we were going through and what we were doing. And that is a hell of a lot to put on a little kid. And probably nobody will be surprised to learn that she’s 17 now, and sometimes it feels we’re living with a 40 year old. She’s extremely mature, very patient. I’m quite sure when she does therapy later in life, it’ll be all about this. Because that was a hard series of things for her to have to be a child and live through.

David Hirsch: Yeah, thank you for the enlightenment. The weather analogy, nipping the storm in the bud if you will is really key, right? It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. And you want to be preventative, proactive as opposed to just dealing with the aftermath of one of these [00:25:00] meltdowns, this dysregulation that you’re referring to. And I think reading the signals, being in tune enough to be aware that there’s something brewing and doing something about it, right? Knowing what to do about it, right? And I think that the insights that you’re sharing are going to be very valuable particularly for those that have children with autism like you were saying. And not to focus on the negative, but you’ve focused almost entirely on the autism aspect, and I’m wondering if the gender journey if I can call it that, the non-binary aspect, how would you relate that? Because that’s a totally separate issue than what you’ve been describing, the autism.

Jonathan Bennett: What we don’t really know, and by we I mean the scientific community, not that I count myself part of it, but like just, is what the intersection of autism and gender really is and means. What we do know is that there’s a big over representation of gender fluidity and autism. I know that’s true anecdotally. And some of this, there’s some [00:26:00] good papers and good research and my eldest’s psychologist happens to have done their PhD in it. And so there’s definitely something going on there.

Jonathan Bennett: So what it was like for us, it happened gradually and they were on a gender journey. We didn’t immediately know what that meant. So we had some learning to do as parents. And as they grew through their teens, they started to talk about being asexual. They started to talk about being non-binary and coming out. That was difficult for them to do, not because it wasn’t that they wouldn’t have been accepted. They absolutely were. And they knew that. It was some of the social skills from the autism side were preventing them from just needing and wanting and being able to communicate more broadly. And also just, I think, doubts about how maybe the broader world would receive them.

Jonathan Bennett: So I think all of those things are true for any kids going through some kind of gender journey. There’s obviously a lot of pretty hurtful politics happening out there right [00:27:00] now. And as a parent, obviously, if you haven’t guessed already, folks, I’m pretty progressive. And so as a parent that loves my kid who happens to be non-binary, I have some quite specific views about the harm that’s being vocalized out there. Because I can tell you, they’re absorbing it, these kids. They’re listening and they’re feeling pretty hated on. And the consequences to this social backlash we’re having, I think will be real.

Jonathan Bennett: But just to keep it focused here, it was pretty new for us. So I don’t know what others have experienced coming through. When I was in high school, you didn’t come out as gay, let alone be trans or non-binary, which weren’t even words. So somewhere between when I left high school and when I became a parent of a teenager, this all happened in my lifetime.

Jonathan Bennett: And when this started to happen, I’d seen some documentaries and talked to some friends and some things, but I felt like I just didn’t really know enough. And we took a class. We just signed up with a bunch of other parents and we took a class. We went weekly for a whole bunch of months. It was a journey to [00:28:00] learn about everything that we didn’t know about ourselves, about how we understood our own gender, about how gender is a construct, about the difference between sexuality and gender, about what non-binary means, about everything. And God, I was grateful. I don’t know, you get into your forties or something, you think, stuff. And then you’re like, I don’t know anything. What have I been doing? At least I got the language and I got the basics. And you have these little confronting moments, right? Like you realize there’s bits of homophobia there, or there’s bits of weirdness. And I need to work through that and express it aloud and let it go and all of that. I feel like I did some decent personal work through that and I’m grateful. I’m a better, more accepting person now and better able to show up as a good dad. And yeah.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. If I can paraphrase what you’ve said, the learning curve was rather steep. Like you said, all this transpired from your high school to being an adult, being a parent, and you’re like, where have I been? What’s going on, right? You took the time to take a step back, right? Educate yourselves. You mentioned you went [00:29:00] to these classes, you and Wendy went to these weekly classes. And you invested your time, right? And that investment is paying huge dividends…

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah. Yeah, it is.

David Hirsch: …to you now, at least. That’s my observation about what you’re describing. And not all parents have that bandwidth or are making that effort, right? And no doubt, it’s gotta be a struggle for the young person, the child, as well as the parents, right? And if there’s other family members, it’s a crapshoot as far as how they’re interpreting all this. Which gets me thinking, what impact has your 19 year old’s situation had on the younger child you have, your marriage or your extended family for that matter.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah. Like the extended family, they’re not the only autistic person in the extended family and they’re not the only gender fluid person in the extended family. I think I’m a different person. Becoming a dad when I did in my, whatever I was, 30 something. There was an awful lot I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it was going to be like. And I didn’t know that the patience was within me to have. [00:30:00] Probably like close to the beginning of the pandemic, I realized that the weight of the hard part was starting to lift. That their ability to regulate themselves, their ability to communicate what they needed and to communicate where they’re at in their own gender journey, in their own life. And friends online and all of that kind of stuff started to take hold. And the capacity that I had as a person and the capacity that Wendy and I had in our relationship just went up. And it was a pretty, pretty nice feeling.

Jonathan Bennett: We’d been without any capacity really for the first 14 years of their life, I’d say. Yeah, none, less than none. We were working on fumes. I remember we were at a couples therapy once and one of us described it as the money in the bank that we had in our relationship, we were spending it down really fast. Just over relying on the fact that we just didn’t have time and/or the bandwidth to communicate properly, to do the things for one another that we thought we were going to be able to do. And [00:31:00] that is why many marriages dissolve when there’s a disabled kid or an autistic kid is just a capacity issue and there wasn’t the reserves there. And it’s sad and hard, but just a reality.

David Hirsch: Yeah. You’re using that investment analogy, one that I can relate to as a financial advisor. Some people have sports metaphors. I have financial metaphors. Use that bank account, right? Draining your bank account, and there’s only so much there and you have to be filling it up. There’s the concept of the dipper in the bucket, right? When your bucket is full, you feel very resilient and able to handle a lot of things. But if your bucket gets drained, there’s nothing left. You’ve run out, if you will. You’re at the bottom and you’re at the breaking point basically. And unfortunately marriages are fragile, can be, and there’s a lot of broken relationships as a result of all this. So thank you again for the many insights. It’s been very enlightening.

Tom Couch: We’ll be back with more of the conversation on the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad [00:32:00] podcast in just a few moments. But first, this quick message. Please help 21st Century Dads gather research on families raising children with special needs by having them complete the Special Fathers Network Early Intervention Parents Survey. A link to the survey can be found in the show notes. As a token of our appreciation, each person, mom or dad, who completes the survey will receive a Great Dad Coin. Thank you. Now, back to the conversation.

David Hirsch: I’d like to talk a little bit about your your writing, which is, I think, the foundation for much of what you’ve done, right? It’s provided you with a really secure vocabulary, right? You’re very articulate, and you’re able to communicate in a way that I think is exemplary. And I know that I had the chance to listen to one of your books, Enlightenment. And it’s a story of the Aspinalls, Canadian affluent or wealthy, super-wealthy Canadian family. So I’m curious to know, starting with [00:33:00] the book Enlightenment, what’s the backstory? Is it based on reality or is it just straight fiction?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah so Entitlement is completely fiction. It’s just made up. I wrote it quite a long time ago now. And it’s a novel and it needs conflict. And so it needs a baddie and it’s got a baddie. It started in Australia. My mother, who’s not with us anymore, she had a house in the country and it was pretty near the country estate of a very famous Australian kind of family. It’s now a kind of inn and it has beautiful grounds. And I remember we went for lunch there or something and I remember walking through the grounds and I had one of those sort of moments where I was like, God, it would be great to write a big house novel, like in the spirit of Brideshead Revisited or Howard’s End, a sort of British Edwardian big house novel. But wouldn’t it be great to try to set one in Canada where I now lived? I’d only up until that point written books about Australia. But I lived in and was going to live in Canada I knew for the rest of my [00:34:00] life. And so could I set a big house novel in Canada? And so that was the sort of challenge I set myself and the family came to my mind’s eye from that.

David Hirsch: It’s very creative. There’s a lot of conflict and maybe that’s what makes it interesting, right? You’ve got all these relationships, the parent-child, the sibling relationships. It’s just, it’s real stuff. It’s not it’s totally fabricated. There is a show, I think it was decades ago and it has nothing to do with your book. What comes to mind is the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

[ Audio excerpt from the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous]

David Hirsch: Don’t miss a sizzling second of the all new Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Television’s unchallenged authority on fame and fortune delivers big surprises, bigger stories, and the biggest…

David Hirsch: [Fade out audio excerpt]

David Hirsch: And they were like profiling people and their big houses and their cars and their trips and it’s like we should all aspire to be like those people.

Jonathan Bennett: I remember that show.

David Hirsch: What you’ve done is you’ve said, maybe not.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, it’s not all great behind the scenes. Yeah.

David Hirsch: What I really enjoyed is having been an advisor to high net [00:35:00] worth, ultra high net worth families for the better part of four decades now, literally into my 40th year, you realize that when you’re a young person, you think, gosh, if I just made a little bit more money I wouldn’t have the problems or the challenges that I have. And then you get to a certain point where you’ve either achieved that goal or you haven’t. And you realize that life is a little bit easier when you’re making a higher level of income. There’s individuals with excessive amounts of resources, assets, income and you’d think gosh, what problems would they possibly have? And it’s the wealth that actually creates some of the problems or it actually embellishes some of the challenges that we all have as human beings, right? When you dump an extraordinary amount of wealth into the equation and it’s the sad reality, right? There’s probably something to be said for somebody who is like upper middle class, not being upper class, right? You’ve got maybe that work ethic that you had to embrace to get to where you are, as opposed to having things handed to you on a silver platter or having not had to work for things, right? I think there’s a phrase, I don’t know if it’s a US phrase [00:36:00] or it’s universal. It’s you’re standing on third base and you think you hit a triple.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah.

David Hirsch: And you didn’t.

Jonathan Bennett: No.

David Hirsch: You just started on third base, right? Anyway, I really enjoyed the story. I can highly recommend it. And I’m wondering just to do like a lightning round let’s go through each of the titles in whatever order you’d like.

Jonathan Bennett: Oh, okay. For sure. So I’ve written seven books in total. My first novel is called After Battersea Park. It’s a story of a set of twins that were separated at birth. My next book is called Verandah People. And it’s a collection of short stories set in and around Sydney. My next book after that is Entitlement, which we just spoke about. I then have a couple of books of poetry. The first is called Here is my street, this tree I planted. I have another book of poems called Civil and Civic. I then published a novel called The Colonial Hotel. Finally, my final last book was a book of poems called Happinesswise. Where that title came from, I’ll just tell you a tiny story. Where that title came from is, you always know your very dearest friend, [00:37:00] and they look at you and they say, “How are you going?” And you say, “Oh, good.” And they go, “No, happinesswise.” And then you’re like, “Oh, all right, we’re doing it, are we? You actually want an honest answer from it.” Yeah. So that’s where that title comes from.

David Hirsch: I love it. Okay. Thanks for sharing. I really admire your writing skills, your ability to communicate.

Jonathan Bennett: Oh, thanks, David.

David Hirsch: Like I said, it’s enviable. So I’m thinking about advice now, and I’m wondering what advice, perhaps beyond the scope of our conversation, the advice you’d give to parents, specifically dads, who realize that they’re in uncharted waters.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah. Get a therapist. Get a therapist, fellas. You’re gonna need it. If you’ve got a kid that’s exceptional in some way, shape, or form, has a disability, then it’s not gonna look like what you had growing up. How are you going to get your needs met? How are you going to understand where you’re at? You’re going to need to be able to talk it through with somebody. And so to go on a long-term journey with a therapist is a sign of strength. It will give you the capacity that you need to be able to be the kind of partner [00:38:00] and the kind of human that you know you can be. You need to withstand tough times in your marriage and/or as a dad. That will be the added capacity. That’s the secret to doing it. So that’s one thing.

Jonathan Bennett: The second would be you don’t have to do it all yourself. There are people around you that can help. And it might not be the help you think you need. So what I mean by that is, you think that what you need is respite care, or you think that what you need is somebody to help you with this particular issue with your kid. It might actually be help for you, or it might be help for your partner, or it might be help with the house, or whatever else. And that additional resource might free up some capacity elsewhere. So if you’re the only one that can take care of the daily needs, then you might be the only one. And that might be true. But if you’re also doing these other things over here, maybe you can outsource those pieces. So for sure think about the whole of everything that you do and the resources required for all of it, [00:39:00] as opposed to just the most pressing part of it, which is potentially your kid.

Jonathan Bennett: So there are two things off the top of my head. How’s that, Lando?

David Hirsch: I love it. The importance of reaching out to others, the need for therapy. Some people think that therapy is a weakness but you realize it’s a strength, right? To be able to pull over and ask for directions when you’re lost. I joke about it often that it’s testosterone poisoning, right? Which is an affliction that the male gender has because it’s our inability to take direction, ask for direction and ask for help, right? We think we’re supposed to figure it out ourselves. We’re fixers. And that’s probably not a bad trait to have, in moderation. But if that’s your only tool in the toolbox you’re going to be sorely disappointed and you’re not going to help your child reach their full potential. And then you didn’t use the word, you’re not alone, recognize that there are others that can help in different ways. And I love the phrase that you used that it might not be the help that you think you need. So be very open-minded to accepting, taking a different direction. So [00:40:00] I’m curious to know why you’ve agreed to be a mentor father as part of the Special Fathers Network.

Jonathan Bennett: I was happy to get the call. I think I’m finally at the end of this phase of my journey where I’ve had a chance to consolidate maybe what I’ve known and what I’ve learned. And I’ve done a lot of therapy and I happen to be married to a psychotherapist. So I think if you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have been right in the thick of it and I would have been no use to anybody. I was too busy trying to find the oxygen mask for myself. But now things are calmer. I’ve had a chance to reflect and I think I’m happy to share my story. If a little chunk of it landed for you then it’s been worth it.

David Hirsch: Yeah. We’re thrilled to have you. Thank you again for sharing. I’m wondering if there’s anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up.

Jonathan Bennett: Just as my father-in-law would often say to me, this too shall pass. And in addition to play the long game, they’re the two things that I mutter to myself when things are hard. The little things that you can focus on to get you through whatever it is that’s right in front of you is about what you can do. Because it [00:41:00] is a daily exercise in patience, in self-belief that day-by-day you will persevere and get through this. And your kid is beautiful. And your beautiful kid will grow and they’ll be able to be whatever they’re going to be. And you’ll be alongside them.

David Hirsch: That’s fabulous. Let’s give a special shout out to Fiona McDougall at Healthy Futures in the Cayman Islands for helping connect us.

Jonathan Bennett: One of my very favorite people in the whole world. And a fun fact: a long time ago, I helped Fiona write the Parent Autism Guide for Ontario. I bet it’s woefully out of date now, but at the time I was like the parent person on the writing group. And anyway, she’s a very cool human.

David Hirsch: Thank you for that factoid. If somebody wants to learn more about your work or to contact you, what’s the best way to do that?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, for sure. I’m a leadership coach, a business coach, executive coach. So I spend time with CEOs and leaders right across North America and beyond. You can find me at www.clearlythen.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. [00:42:00] Jonathan Bennett. And I’d be happy to spend some time with you. I always give an hour of time to potential future clients and if I can help out then reach out.

David Hirsch: We’ll be sure to include that information in the show notes so it’ll make it as easy as possible for somebody to follow up with you. Jonathan, thank you for your time and many insights. As reminder, Jonathan is just one of the dads who’s part of the Special Fathers Network, a mentoring program for fathers raising a child with special needs. If you’d like to be a mentor father or are seeking advice from a mentor father with a similar situation to your own, please go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

David Hirsch: Thank you for listening to the latest episode of the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. As you probably know, the 21st Century Dads Foundation is a 501c3 not for profit organization, which means we need your help to keep our content free to all concerned. Would you please consider making a tax-deductible contribution? I would really appreciate your support. Jonathan, thanks again.

Jonathan Bennett: Thanks, David.

Tom Couch: And thank you for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. The Special [00:43:00] Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children match up with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support other dads. To find out more, go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we would be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to facebook.com, groups, and search “dad to dad.” Lastly, we’re always looking to share interesting stories. If you’d like to share your story or know of a compelling story, please send an email to David@21stCenturyDads.org.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast was produced by me, Tom Couch.

Tom Couch: Thanks again to Horizon Therapeutics, who believe that science and compassion must work together to transform lives. That’s why they work tirelessly to research, develop, and bring forward [00:44:00] medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics at HorizonTherapeutics.com