Okay, how about your color? Okay, that was my son and today, i'm gon na tell you a little bit about him. It might come as a surprise to a lot of you that i even have a son, because in eight years of making videos, i've never really put him on camera, i'm fairly private and protective. When it comes to my family on my channel now, you might say hold up you put your niece and nephews on here all the time, but in my defense i feel, like i've made it pretty clear at this point that i don't really care about them. The reason i'm so protective of him is because he has special needs he's on the autistic spectrum, and this is the internet.

So, even as i make this video i'm incredibly terrified, but this is something that my wife and i feel really strongly about a lot of times. People hear he has autism, they want to know what he's really good at like. Does he have a photographic memory, or can he do really complex math in his head? For example, if you tell my son's friend any date from any year, okay, he will tell you the day of the week. It lands on gon na randomly generate a date june, 2nd 2004.

What day is that on wednesday, it's gon na take me a second even to get there uh. What did i say june, 2nd 2004. You said wednesday, here's june june, 2nd 2004.. Let's do one more! Okay, i'm gon na generate another random date, may 26 2006 um friday, and there he goes.

What did i even say, may 5th uh may 26th. Oh may 26th. Okay, his parents and teachers have no idea how he has the ability to do this and he doesn't know how to communicate that to us either. We need some help.

You need some help. Okay, let's go make fun of it's actually a common misconception, but the truth is the majority of the kids on the autistic spectrum. Don't have remarkable abilities like this. Our son, however, does have a remarkable ability, although if you see him in public, this ability isn't immediately apparent a lot of times.

When he's around lots of people or in a crowded place, he might look disengaged or it might seem like he doesn't really know. What's going on, carly fleischmann has autism and was able to explain why this is and what you should know about. Carly is that because of her erratic behavior, and because she can't speak for years, people thought she was just severely autistic and had other extreme mental handicaps until one day when they put her in front of a computer where she could type and then they realized there Was so much more going on in her head than anyone could have imagined? I am autistic, but that is not who i am take time to know me before you judge me this amazing breakthrough made it so carly was able to explain how it feels to have autism. Our brains are wired differently.

We take in many sounds and conversations at once. I take over a thousand pictures of a person's face when i look at them, that's why we have a hard time looking at people. Basically, people with autism don't have a filter in their brain like the rest of us. So if you and i are having a conversation here in this park, i can ignore everything around me and just focus on your voice.

But if i had autism, i would hear the ice cream man ringing, the bell behind me and the kid crying because he's not getting any ice cream and the car is going by and the plane up there as well as the train in the distance. Not to mention all of the different smells and the fact that the tag on my shirt is kind of rubbing on my back. It's sensory overload and everything comes in all at once, and it's really overwhelming and makes it hard to focus. This is why headphones can be really helpful at a place like disneyland but at home when he's in a familiar environment without a bunch of distractions, you start to get a glimpse of who he really is.

You wouldn't know this from seeing him in public, but he loves to laugh to the point that sometimes he can't even breathe. This is us doing our nightly bedtime routine. He loves routine and repetition because it's familiar and predictable, which makes sense because his brain knows what to expect and it doesn't need to filter and as a dad. His love of repetition is the best because my same jokes totally kill every time.

Some of these i've used easily hundreds of times, and i still get this response. I have a name. Oh i'm, sorry, turtle. This leads to his remarkable ability i mentioned earlier, and it has to do with how he spends his free time at home by himself when he first meets someone.

He will ask important questions like what your favorite color is, and if your house has stairs, then the first chance he gets, he will make you a full-page mural completely covered in about two pounds of your favorite crayon color and he'll write you a personal letter on The back, as you can see, he takes this job pretty seriously, and so we are constantly running out of envelopes and stamps. What's so remarkable to see as his parents is how happy people become when they get one of his letters and the letters themselves certainly aren't any literary masterpiece, but people know they mean something special coming from him. Most kids are 12 years old. They get home from school and they're on their phones or they're thinking about themselves and how to look cool, but his biggest thrill is interacting with others.

His super power is making other people happy. He also makes people better birthday. Parties are a really big deal for him, even if it's not his, and everyone is always compassionate and patient with him, so he can make sure things happen. Just right having a child with special needs can be challenging at times, and certainly some cases out.

There are much harder than others, but his mom has always done a great job of finding and focusing on the best parts about our son and then making sure other people can see and celebrate those parts as well, regardless of your religious or political beliefs or your Favorite sports team, or any other way we like to divide ourselves into tribes. I think we can all agree that a successful life is one where you leave the world better than you found it sort of a net positive effect. Due to your influence. There's a lot of normal functioning people who are critical and seek to tear others down or who have made a ton of money, but are just terrible people and by my definition, they're.

Not successful. People with special needs might not fit the traditional criteria of success by benefiting gdp or getting a phd to cure disease, but they have such a net positive effect on the people that get to interact with them. They personify traits like perseverance such as with jason here, who has autism and was the dutiful sports equipment manager for four years, so the coach put him in for the last four minutes of the game his senior year. He sank, not one, not two, but six.

Three pointers, including one right at the final buzzer for performance. His supportive classmates will remember for the rest of their lives. People with special needs ground the rest of us and demonstrate the simple joys life can offer with our hectic schedules and task lists. They remind us that things don't have to be that complicated.

I love you kiddo or in the case of carly, that our initial critical snap judgments of each other might be totally wrong. My son will never be the star of his little league team. He won't be the first person to step foot on mars, nor will he invent the cure to cancer, but by the best definition of success i can think of him and his special needs buddies and everyone else out there like them are giants living amongst us, mere Mortals they make the world a better place and we're lucky to have them. Thank you for watching the video.

If it resonated with you in some way, please share it with someone in your life who you know, might benefit from hearing the message. I also have a very exciting announcement. It's super distracting. If you're mouthing all my lines, i was doing that yeah just hold the cards or i could sit.

You don't mind right, i mean do i have a choice. This is your house, oh yeah, that is my house all right mark and i will be co-hosting three hour: live stream for charity on mark's youtube channel on april 30th, friday, 5 p.m, pacific 8, p.m. Eastern! You can figure out all the other times we'll be doing this together. It's called color the spectrum, because you know my son likes to color and we'll also be joined by some folks.

You might have heard of such as mr beast, the demilio sisters jacksepticeye. I have a friend named jack that will be joining us too jack black conan o'brien stephen colbert, adam sandler, chris rock heard of him not to mention jon stewart, john oliver miranda singh, sarah silverman mark hamill, andy samberg, ijustine, maya, rudolph, terry crews, paul rudd and zach Frickin galifianakis we'll also be joined by these folks as well i'll, be there i'll, be there i'll, be there we'll be there. I know you already said my name but i'll be there. All of the proceeds are going to a really great.

A well-respected charity called next. For autism, who specialize in supporting folks on the autism spectrum as they transition into becoming adults, there are resources for kids and teens affected by autism, but there isn't much for adults yeah it kind of drops off. So selfishly. My son is coming up on that milestone.

So if you've ever wanted to support my channel financially, i don't have a patreon. So this is the most meaningful way you can do it. So click the blue donate button over there or down there, and we can start raising funds now, even before the big live stream. It's gon na be a lot of fun, we're bringing the biggest stars of social media and old people, media together for uh, a great night great prizes and, most importantly, we're going to raise an actual ton of money to help some special people who could use it.

So follow the link in the video description for more information, get pumped, go, donate and we'll see you there, i'm already pumped, as am i.