The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show – Why Does Daddy Always Look So Sad? By Jude Morrow

Episode Date: June 2, 2020

Why Does Daddy Always Look So Sad? By Jude Morrow Judemorrow.com

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com, thechrissvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We've got the most excellent author and he's got a wonderful book we're going to be talking about on the show today. Before that, take your friends, relatives, neighbors, just grab their phone and subscribe them to the Chris Voss Show or the cbpn.com, the Chris Voss Podcast Network. There's nine podcasts over there with over 500 episodes. Oh, my gosh.

You can just listen to podcasts and never leave your house for, like, weeks at a time. Not that I'm saying you should or shouldn't, but go ahead. I mean, you know, you might learn something. Anyway, guys, we certainly appreciate you tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Forge. That's Chris Voss. And if you're listening to the audio portion of our podcast, you can watch Jude Morrow, who we're going to be talking to here in a second. You can watch him on YouTube to see the video that we are making today. So today, as I mentioned

before, we have the infamous Jude Morrow on the show. He is a speaker, an author, and an autistic voice. From an early age, Jude knew he was different. Following an early childhood filled with quirky behaviors, marginalization, Jude was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. With the support of his parents, Jude navigated through school and university, albeit with difficulty. Jude's life changed when he discovered he was going to be a father. Coming to terms with becoming a parent and denying his Asperger's diagnosis started to cause a rift between Jude and his infant child. This is a view of life and love through the eyes of an autistic adult from non-verbal and aggressive to acceptance and letting go. He's published the book Why Does Daddy Always Look So Sad,

a memoir that you can find on his website and Amazon.com. Welcome to the show, Jude. How are you doing? I'm doing very well, Chris. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks for being on the show and educating our family, our audience here. And give us the websites people can go to check you out, order the book and all that good stuff. Well, my website is www and all that good stuff. Well, my website is www.judemorrow.com.

I'm at Judemorrow10 on Twitter, Judemorrow author on Facebook, and my debut book memoir, Why Does Daddy Always Look So Sad, is available from all major online retailers and bookstores. I got that down to a T. There you go, man. You sound like one of those commercials. You got got it nailed Eddie. One breath on everything. When I publish my book I'm calling you to pitch it. So let's talk about your

origin story how you grew up and we'll get to how you got here. Well I grew up in a pretty familiar environment. I had one mother, one father, one older sister, Emily. Just one? Just one, yeah. One picket fence, one dog. And although that's pretty much a typical nuclear family type scene, that's where most of the normality ends. I always knew I wasn't quite like everybody else. It took me much longer to walk, to talk, to mix with my peers. My parents always knew that although I was intelligent and could understand, I just couldn't communicate very well. So I went to a couple of playgroups

whenever I was young, or kindergartens as been known in the States. And the one before I went to primary school was a playgroup for mixed abilities. So that's where I went. That would have had everything from Down syndrome, autistic children like me, or other classical learning disabilities as well. So I was one of the first kind of wave of autistic children to go into mainstream school in the UK and Ireland, because before that, maybe towards the late 1980s, autistic children would have went to special education schools. But I went to just a mainstream school and secondary school although I had a classroom assistant follow me pretty much everywhere except to go to the bathroom or eat

and I needed a lot of extra assistance from teachers especially in subjects that I wasn't really interested in but I had to do anyway and despite all of that despite all the hardships and challenges as I viewed them then I went on to university and trained as a social worker I know it's a bit ironic that the guy who wrote a book about all his social difficulties actually grew up and became a social worker I suppose that's a different story. And whenever I was a young man, well, I still kind of am. It's my 30th birthday in August. But I mean, a younger man at 22, whenever I had a university degree and a car and was over six feet in height and started to grow a beard, that being autistic was something

that only really affected little people. When people think of autism, they think of the classical white male child in a corner building things and I suppose that's where my mind was too, even as an autistic person. But in November 2012 I found out I was going to be a dad. I know I would have a little child of my own. And it was then that the kind of, the autistic kind of want for, thirst for knowledge and what was going to happen and my inability to cope with the unknown started to come back to haunt me, I suppose,

because being autistic was something that I'd left behind. And whenever Ethan was born on the 23rd of July 2013 I mean children grow up really really quickly like he was walking and talking and I mean being rude and being playful and every day was just so different and I just couldn't cope with this because I mean babies aren't really robotic creatures they don't wake up at the same time they don't eat the same things they're not interested in the same things all the time. And my struggle with Ethan's kind of early childhood and my refusal to accept that I was autistic

led Ethan to ask what will hopefully become the most iconic question in all of literature to my mother. And it was, why does daddy always look so so sad and the reason I did look so sad is because I didn't come to terms with the fact that I was autistic and I had a real shame and resentment of my own childhood and it was then I knew I had to go on the kind of cheesy stereotypical motivational speaker II journey to enlightenment and preaching to the world. Was some of it denial, or was it just not accepting it, or understanding the limits, or the issues that were happening between you and your child?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I was in no way blissfully unaware. I mean a lot of people would use the term a lack of understanding of the world around them and believe me Chris I totally understand the world around me warts and all. I suppose it was denial, I knew I was different, I knew I wasn't quite like everybody and I always kind of craved approval because I felt so inadequate and unoff myself that over time it just became absolutely exhausting and my life was a bit like Hollywood method acting. I was in character and I was the class clown or village idiot or whatever way you want to look at it for most of my life and that just didn't come to terms with it and I suppose whenever Ethan was young I didn't want Ethan to have the same kind

of childhood or life experience as what I had and I suppose I maybe babied him and smothered him a bit too much and just worried all the time. It's easy to do because you're a parent and you love your child and you want the best for him. So what came about, what instigated writing the book? What brought you down that pathway? Well, I've always been a prolific reader and writer just for fun and I always wanted to write a book and I didn't decide what type of book that would be, whether it would be, I don't know, science fiction or a book about the Titanic or carpet samples I don't know I just

wanted to have something out there with my name on it and Ethan is such an aware child I mean he musses absolutely nothing and he's starting to realize now that daddy's not quite like him and he would describe me as fussy and daddy likes doing things at certain times but like he would he would point to the clock and say you know when the big hands at the top and the small hands at the bottom that's when daddy likes to eat dinner which is six o'clock so he realizes those things and I wanted to have like an account of what my early life was like growing up as an autistic child, because I'm not like him, and his early life as well, so that that record is there. And like every aspiring writer, I really believed in my story,

thought it was a real important thing for me to get it published. At the start, I didn't go anywhere, and I decided to self-publish it, a real important thing for me to get published. At the start, I didn't go anywhere, and I decided to self-publish it, and it just seemed to resonate with so many people, so many autistic people, so many parents, because I've been there. Like, the children that parents are worrying about,

I was that child, and my mother was them. You know, it's a very relatable relatable story and it's so common. I mean autism and autistic children and people touch nearly every single family and a lot of memoirs are about surviving in outrageously difficult conditions like climbing Everest with no oxygen or loving in the rainforest for 30 days surviving only on urine but my story is is a daily thing and it's it's so unremarkable that it seems to become remarkable I haven't got my head around that one I've stopped trying yeah and and we've seen a lot more understanding, acceptance, adoptance, more, more,

more people seem to be understanding the spectrums of autism and the challenges. I think everyone knows somebody these days, especially here in America. I don't know. I seem to have a lot of friends on Facebook or friends with children that are having it. You know, I had a hard enough time with me and my father and we didn't have any issues other than just being dad and a son. And, and I can't imagine having, you know, to deal with the difference of aspects and the challenges that

come from that. And so there's, and so this book, you, you go around, you speak on this, you say it's resonating with a lot of people. so you're finding it's helping a lot of folks that are on both the parent in the child side yeah definitely because I would speak to so many groups I mean locally and now internationally because we have zoom and the kids always ask it all of my life shows the kids always ask it. All of my live shows, the kids always ask the most questions because they know I'm like them. And I can understand them. And it's funny that we autistics, we tend to test each other.

And I'll give a bit of a funny story where a child had said, you know, do you like cars? And I love cars. I'm a real, real car freak. And I used to line them up in my windowsill in my mum's house. And he pulled a toy car out of his pocket and said, what type of car is this?

And of course I knew it. I said, that is a Porsche 550 Spyder. And I said, well, for all the rest of the parents in here, I said, that is the car that James Dean died in. And then his hand went up again. And I said, well, for all the rest of the parents in here, I said, that is the car that James Dean died in. And then his hand went up again. And he said, well, he was actually thrown 15 meters from the car. And I said, right, okay, I'm sorry. So, I mean, it's all lighthearted and fun as well at the same time, because I viewed my life as one challenge

after another which I suppose it was but I had to get a kind of a different lens to look at my life and I suppose I realized it was more one victory after another as opposed to one challenge or one setback after another and I suppose it gives parents hope that autistic children can grow up, they live happy and successful lives. And I mean, that's the mission that I'm on, is because I don't want any children to feel the way I did whenever I was young. And that I hated myself and just did everything destructible to fit in with everybody else,

which wasn't the right thing to do. Well, you, you're, I mean, it, I, I can't,

I can't imagine living in a world because it's, I think it's my perception of it is, is you feel almost alien and, and, and, and, and you feel very different than us. The communication level is different.

Uh, I know with my, uh, friend's, uh, son who's uh autistic you know he doesn't talk much uh he goes to speech therapy uh and then anytime that i'm zooming with them he'll come in the room and be like hi chris and i'll be like hey and we'll have a little

conversation then he'll look down his ipad and leave and and i'm just always so overjoyed when he talks to me because i'm like they're like he likes you he talks to me. Cause I'm like, they're like, he likes you. He talked to you. He likes you. I think it's awesome. Um, one of my favorite, uh, videos that I ever saw was Katy Perry with the young girl who, uh,

did her song. Um, I forget the, uh, name, uh, of it, but,

uh, uh, she, uh, we've seen some autistic people that they, they don't communicate much, but if you give them a piano or a musical outlet, they, they just become these beautiful, um, um, uh,

beings that can share their, uh, stuff. Uh, I noticed, I think I noticed somewhere on either your Facebook or your Twitter, uh, you guys had, um, uh, uh, a discussion or some sort of post. I know the young lady, um, lady, and I forget her name. I'm just forgetting names today. Is it Gretchen? She's the climate change gal. Greta Thunberg.

Greta Thunberg. Where am I getting Gretchen from? Greta Thunberg. Yeah, she's in the club. Yeah, she's in the club too, isn't she? Yeah. And there's a lot of brilliant people that are artistic in the autistic

spectrum i mean i've seen the videos of the savants you know there's one gentleman he can name like every postal zip code in america i can barely name my own oh i i mean autistic people have been there all all through the ages. As more understanding and acceptance of neurodiversity and autism exists, it's been shown that some of the most talented people ever do have lived. Look at Einstein, Michelangelo, Mozart. It's that drive, it's that passion and whenever the nearly the other first one of the first things that comes to people's minds when the autistic discussion is happening is challenges or obstacles. And one of those is obsessive and repetitive behavior. Like, can you imagine someone said to Michelangelo, nah, put your paintbrushes down,

stop painting. You know, you need to stop doing that, you do. And it's something I said, I remember with, whenever the book was self-published, I suppose the happy side to it now is that it is published now. It's published by Beyond Words, the publisher of The Secret. The publishers, Michelle and Richard Cohn, we went for lunch in Frankfurt and I said that to them and I just I just the the reaction was like yeah right enough well you know if you look at all these famous and talented people through the ages and it leads me to think that without autistic people God knows where mankind would be would we still be spearing fish and living in caves and having you know to you know survive in the wilderness who knows yeah but I mean technically

uh I mean there's a there's a broad spectrum of people in the world and everybody should be able to contribute and be able to be a part of our society and uh I think once we start looking down on certain people and going well you have nothing to contribute and closing off their minds uh I think it's great that autistic people are now more and more accepted. Everyone I know seems to be learning more and understanding. There's of course the variations of the spectrum, but I think it's great. The more we learn to understand one on each one another and how we, and how to communicate better and communicate with each other,

it's really important. And it could just make for, you know i i ran my business for years where i would always say i don't care who has the best idea as long as we have you know we find the right idea and and stuff so um how people can contribute and be a part of our society is really important uh what are some of the other things in your book you want to uh take a mention or plug or things you think can be helpful? Well, the book as a whole, it kind of gives two perspectives. It goes from my childhood right up until I was 25, 26, you know, that kind of age bracket on the book. So, you know, for autistic people and parents, you know, it has such a wide reach. It's not just a book for autistic people. Look, I know it's a PR no-no to say this is a book for everybody, but there's one underlying message that doesn't really have to specifically sit with autistic people. It is

that whenever you accept and love yourself good things happen because i didn't i didn't i the autistic no way that's not me i'm not i'm not i'm not like that and now i i scream it from the rooftops i've had a complete perspective change and and that can go that can go for anything whether whether it's physical disability, mental health. It could go for anything. Whenever you accept and love yourself and the hand that you have in life and how you can improve it and change it and better it, the happier people will be. And I suppose that's the real true underlying message.

I mean, a lot of people can have scars from their childhood that deeply affect them and their adulthood, which I did have. So face them, acknowledge them, smash them, move on with your life and tell everybody about them and the hope that you can help someone else. I think a lot of us are on that journey, whether we know it or not. And there comes a time in our adulthood where we have to look at our childhood and go, you know, wow, wow okay that seems to have had an effect I know over time I've looked back on things in my life and you can see the

pattern you can it's much easier to have hindsight because you can see the patterns of your life you know you can go wow okay I've really been operating a certain way for a while uh how did your son receive the book he absolutely loved it and he loved hearing about himself in the book and i mean ethan with with ethan and me whenever we did book signings and so on um we met groups ethan does something special for me and i'll tell you what it is. I'm not great at, like if you and I ran into each other I wouldn't be like, oh hello Chris, my name is Jude Morrow, I am the author of this wonderful life changing book. I mean, Ethan sort of does that for me. Like whenever the Queen, like whenever the Queen has a public engagement,

do you know the way she has a guy in white gloves that says, this is the queen? Ethan does that for me. It's so funny and I'll tell another funny one about Ethan. This is just how Ethan and I are poles apart and it's the main reason why I love him too. We were

at a famous fast food chain that involves famous arches. And we were, we were sitting, enjoying our ice creams when Ethan gasps. And I said, what Ethan,

what's wrong? And he went, and there was a lady sitting, just reading it. We can see in your book. Oh yeah. Yeah. And,

and then I said, Ethan, don't. And then he went went and then i just turned for one second and then i looked back at him and there he is standing beside her pointing over me that's my daddy's book that's me and that's him and there was me i was like uh well and then surely the pen came out of the purse and i was like i'm happy to sign your book well that's awesome that's awesome well you've got a pr agent as a son then oh he's oh he's oh he is great i mean he is gonna he is gonna go far he's a real he's a real people person and even whenever we get photographed he has the hollywood smile

and he has the pose and he knows what way to put his hands and he knows he's great yeah there you go he's gonna walk the right car there you go um well i think it's great it's it's it's a it's a good document of your journey in accepting yourself and and and, and your catharsis of, of who you are and what you're about. And then trying to find a way to integrate that with your child and the differences that you guys have in communication and, and approach different things. And, and I think it's great. I, I think, you know, my father had his issues. I don't know, maybe I was born in this world with some issues, who knows. Well only father had issues, and the biggest contention that we had, actually, most of our life was his issues.

And probably the residual of his issues that he gave me as a child. And it didn't take us until our 70s to resolve those issues. And even then, I'm not sure they were fully resolved, but we forgave each other. And, and, uh, there came a time where I knew that, um, the time was short with him. Uh, you know, his health was in deterioration, dementia, et cetera, et cetera. But all of our life we had loggerheads with each other. And, uh, and, and so him not dealing. And there, there was one time, I think in 2009 where he came to us and he, he'd had, uh, and, and so him not dealing and there, there was one time, I think in 2009 where he came to us and he, he'd had, um, he'd had a disconnection with his, uh, he had some

narcissism and some disconnection with us emotionally. And, uh, and I don't know what it was from his upbringing or whatever, but he'd, he'd seen a psychiatrist and, and realized that he came to us. But not being able to do that early on in childhood, I think definitely has some scars. So I think it's awesome that you have been able to bridge that gap with your child, whether still at a young age, whether still impressionable and where they can understand you better. Because I had a hard time understanding my father. And I, I had a hard time understanding my father. Um, and I think he had a hard time understanding himself. Um, and, uh, I think he meant well, but you know, everyone does

the best they can. And it's, it's a highly compressed situation being a parent of a child. You love them so much and you're trying to communicate with them and they're a very different person than you. Uh, in every case, I mean, I, I was very different than my father in personality and how we just approach things. So I think it's great that you figured out a way to bridge that gap and then been a leader for other people who are going through these challenges. You know, that's the one thing I found is with a lot of my friends who have Asperger's, who have autism on the spectrum, when they're working with other people in a working environment, we don't do a lot of my friends who have Asperger's who have autism on the spectrum, when they're working with other people in a working environment, we don't do a lot of training and work environments and how to deal with each

other and communicate better and stuff. Even in like school, there should be more training. I wish they'd just teach basic communication at school. Like they teach English, but we really don't teach how to really talk to each other and understand and levels of communication and, and nuances, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe we'll come to that, but it's really great. So you travel, you travel in the world, you speak, you, um, you've got the book,

um, you talk to different people. Um, and I think it's great. You talk to young kids that are going through, uh, classes because that, I know that my friends who have children they're artistic that's their biggest you know trying to understand their child trying to communicate sometimes trying to get them to do they go to bed that sort of thing it's the the biggest stigma attached to being autistic and autism as a whole is that so many people, whether it's parents, whether it's society at large, knowingly or unknowingly, want autistic people to conform to them and their wants and their desires. And that's not the way things should be.

It should just be an unconditional acceptance that being autistic is simply a different format of thought and belief and perception of the world around us because I perceive the world differently, for example, because you're here, you. It doesn't mean that I don't understand the world around me. what it is is that we perceive the world differently and that's that's absolutely fine and a lot of parents would ask a lot of questions the same big questions that my parents would have asked when i was growing up like how will jude manage in secondary school well how will jude manage in the workforce how will jude manage being a parent how will jude manage during-19 although that's not really in the book but uh we were before that well maybe yeah maybe perhaps and uh I mean I hope that I can

answer some of those questions as well and because a lot of parents will worry and that's fine as you know what are things going to be like when things get older and um i hope that i can shed some light and give a bit of hope from that as well that's awesome i think i think it's great because i know i've seen the journey some of my friends and parents have been on uh i know like i said i've had i've had my friends that are autistic that have talked about their issues at work communication and and and that's why i mentioned it can feel very i can imagine it can feel very alien because imagine it can feel very alien because like you said we're all trying to make you conform to us when really we just need

to understand how you communicate and we need to find a place to work together and meet in the middle and make everyone happy when it comes down to it and hopefully that's a journey we're on as a as a as a society i mean we're seeing're seeing a lot of different things that are going on with protests and stuff, riots that are going on right now, because we're not communicating with each other properly, we're not taking care of each other properly, and we're not being concerned about other people, and we're not listening very well. So that's what we need to do. So this is pretty awesome like it's it's funny to another

misconception that you that you say is uh you know a lot of people believe that autistic people um don't are dempathetic or aren't caring or are quite robotic and i suppose this is a bit of a topical statement this one i would bet my life an autistic police officer wouldn't put their knee on someone's neck. I mean, I'm fed up trying to get people. The logic that people have, I mean, the world, I mean, I look at the news at the moment and I think, thank goodness I live in a tolerant, happy island that everyone claims lineage from. Like, everyone in America, oh, I'm a third Irish from X amount of relatives long before me. And it's really scary, Matt, it is.

You know the way things are in America, and some deep-rooted issues seem to be very much still in society at large, and it's something I just can't get my head around don't think that's an autistic thing though and i i don't think so like even i uh was really shocked i thought when we uh had obama as a as a uh african-american president i voted for him uh i thought we kind of started you know making some real progress turns Turns out we just found out how angry people were in a closet of racism. But I suppose

I don't know. We have to see how that story ends I guess in November or January when this gentleman will be leaving office. So we'll see how it goes. But I think it's great what you do. I think it's awesome. People should check out the book.

Give us your plugs so people can go check them out and order up the book and get to know. I mean, even if you don't know somebody who has autism, understanding the difference of the communication style and how we interpret things is really important, dude, because you're going to come across someone and being able to communicate with them is going to be very important. So shoot us your dot coms, if you would, Jude.

Oh, sorry. That was my go-to. That was my long roundabout there. Sorry. I wasn't sure if that was the closing statement or whether it was for me to say a bit more. My website is www.judemorrow.com. Reach out to me. I have a contact page for the speaking and the book questions. I'm very available on social media.

I'm not one for playing it cool. And if anyone asks me questions while they're reading Why Does Daddy Always Look So Sad, please ask them because to date I've answered every single one from around the world that people have asked about my experience. I want to offer as authentic and interactive an experience as possible and once again the book's available on amazon.com, all major online retailers and book depository as well so um have a look check it out read it and please please ask questions because i love hearing people's stories as well as telling my own of course that's awesome we need a boat we need a world where you communicate

better with each other we understand each other better and uh rising tide lifts all boats so uh thanks jude for being here thanks Thanks Monty's for tuning in. Uh, be sure to go to the CBPN.com, the Chris Foss podcast networks, and Chris subscribe to all nine podcasts over there. You can go to, uh,

youtube.com for just Chris Foss. And you can see our video, uh, interview with Jude moral here. He is the author of why does daddy always look so sad, a memoir, check it out on Amazon and all your other booksellers out there on the marketplace.

Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time.