1KHO 861: Hope in the Chaos | Paul Voss, Autism Sucks

**Will** (0:00)
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I'm so excited to introduce our guest today. He's written a book about his life as a father of eight children, and the youngest daughter has autism. And so this has been a journey for you and for your family. Paul Voss, welcome.

**Paul Voss** (1:21)
Thank you. Excited to be here.

**Will** (1:24)
Okay, eight kids. And that's incredible. What a cool thing. Everybody's names start with M. So you had just quite the journey talking about even just moving and career and all of that. But I would love if you would kick it off with the sort of turning point with your daughter, where you start to realize, okay, there may be some developmental things different here and she's the youngest of eight. So you're not expecting it in how this really starts to change your life. But you've written a book about it called Autism Sucks, Finding Hope in the Chaos, about searching for answers and also how along the way, this has made you a better parent. But take us back to those initial 18 months-ish, or around that time where you're starting to notice that there might be something different going on here.

**Paul Voss** (2:08)
Thank you. Definitely, Will. You really nailed it. With seven other kids, by the seventh, I found myself being a lot more patient. When you're first kid, anything that's a delay, you're all over it. Why aren't they walking yet? Why aren't they talking? But by the time we got to eight, you know that kids sometimes just figure it out on their own over time. But it really started in January 2022 We had COVID hit our house and it was fascinating just thinking about it because I got hit really hard. My wife got hit really hard. I had long COVID, so it was awful. Seven of my kids got sick for a day and were fine. With my youngest daughter, we just started seeing some sleep or her ability to go to sleep and stay asleep, just go away. So the first two weeks, it was like she wouldn't go to bed. She would be just up, literally seemed like all night wanting to go downstairs, watch TV. We were still letting her watch TV at that time. She'd want to eat at two or three in the morning. If we got her to go to sleep, it would be maybe two hours if we were lucky.
It never really got better, I would say.
We just dealt with it, and then we started to see other things over time.
It's crazy how it evolved because, and I talk about it in the book, she loved this show called Muppet Babies, where the character would spin. She started spinning and I thought she was literally imitating her favorite character, Ms. Piggy, and that wasn't it at all because I had no idea of really what. I had heard Autism before. I had no idea how complex it was or what all the symptoms were or effects of Autism could be. That was one. And then she still wasn't really talking. Like she would say a few words. The words she had were inconsistent. And that was really what triggered us to start looking into something. So we had mentioned to her pediatrician, we decided to start speech therapy. Connecticut has a program called Birth to Three, where they send a specialist out. The very first time she came to our house, she said, have you had her tested for autism? Which really shook me and my wife, because I think at that point, it hit us something is wrong. And I just started researching autism. And it was like everything she did, check the box, struggling sleeping, stimming, the babbling.