A Radically Different Approach to Raising Kids with Autism | Leland Vittert

0:00When I was about eight years old, my parents were told they needed to have me evaluated. They took me to one of those medical office buildings, right? Linoleum floors, stale coffee, old magazines. They waited for a couple of hours as nervous parents would. This is before cell phones or anything else. So they just sat there and like, what's going on with our kid? The woman brings me back and she says, boy, your kid's got a lot of problems. Big behavioral issues. If somebody touches him in class or in a line or in playground, he's going to turn around and slug him. So no birthday parties, no play dates, nothing like that.

0:29Big sensory issues, if there's socks or a jacket he doesn't like, he melts down, the day's over. And then big learning disabilities, right? So an IQ test is the average of two halves of a test. So two halves, average them together. 20-point spread is a learning disability. I had a 70-point spread. Someone said this was the largest spread they'd ever seen. And my dad goes, okay, what do we do? And she says, well, you know, not much. you sort of meet him where he's at and, you know, kind of he gets along. And my dad goes, you know, what do we do? And she goes, there's not much you can do. And that became a challenge for my dad.

1:09So, you know, they never told anyone, no friends, no family, no teachers, no counselors, no therapists, nothing. And it was my dad's mission to really adapt me to the world.

1:26All right, I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today is News Nation's chief Washington anchor and author of the book Born Lucky, Leland Vitter. Leland, good to finally talk to you. Long-time listener, first-time caller, Dave. I feel like our worlds have been slowly, slowly colliding, and it is finally happening now. The asteroids have met in outer... There we go. And we will see what happens. First off, you have perfect news anchor hair. Is that 90 % of being on television news from the swamp in D.C. as you are? Well, I'm talking to a guy who has, I think, probably even better, perfect Miami Beach hair.

2:03But, you know, the funny part about this, everybody's got to have something, right, going for them. I was given hair. But my mother, as a gag gift a couple of Christmases ago, gave me something called Duke Cannon News Anchor Pomade. I know the brand, Duke Cannon. Yeah. Yeah, there we go. I am not a paid spokesperson, but all things good come from Duke Cannon. It perfectly does the lift, the movement. It's all there. All right. Well, we could probably do a half hour or so on hair, but we'll talk about a bunch of other things. People know that since we're off for Christmas week, these are pre-taped episodes where I'm trying not to do too much about just the fighting part of politics and everything else.

2:44So I mostly want to focus on the words right behind you there, born lucky. But let's do a little bit of political sort of general stuff. I saw an interview, and it's a story that you've told many times, but I think it's worth telling again for my audience that maybe hasn't heard it. Because you were with Fox News for a while. You did a lot out of the Middle East and out of Israel specifically. And you at one point sat down with a Palestinian suicide bomber who, well, you know what? I don't want to tell the story too much. Maybe you could just kind of recap that story because it connects to how you woke up about a lot of things happening in the world and the media and much more.

3:19Yeah, I think that's a great point. And, you know, one of the things that I've been known for on News Nation is a moral clarity about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Middle East, the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States. And people have asked me where that came from. And we wanted to share that in Born Lucky, my book. The book isn't really about my time in the Middle East, but I think this story is illustrative in so many ways. So this is 2011. I've been a foreign correspondent for about a year. And when I showed up in Israel, I didn't know anything. In my first interview for the job as a foreign correspondent, I was an anchor in Denver.

3:56I knew so little that I had written a crib sheet on my hand as if it was like, you know, a social studies test I hadn't studied for of the difference between the West Bank and Gaza. And of course, I'm in our bureau chief's office in Jerusalem in this interview, and I'm sweating so much from being nervous and as hot as it is in Jerusalem, the ink all melted on my hand. So that part didn't work out well, but I got the job. And I've been there for about a year. And when I showed up, I kind of had this sort of conventional wisdom viewpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that it was the root of all causes of evil and disagreement in the Middle East.

4:30If we solve that, everything will be OK. We need to have a two-state solution. and the Israelis would just give a little bit more, then everybody could live in peace and harmony because that's what really everybody wants. That's my worldview. That all changed the end of 2011. The Israelis traded a thousand Palestinian prisoners for one guy, for Galad Shalit, who was a soldier from Israel who had been kidnapped a few years before. In the trade back to Gaza, back to Hamas, a few people went over, obviously many, but a couple of notable ones. One was Yaya Senwar, the guy who planned the October 7th attacks.

5:09The other was this woman named Wafa. And Wafa had been a failed suicide bomber. For obvious reasons, you don't get to interview a lot of suicide bombers, but the failed ones, that is an opportunity. So it was ahead of Christmas about, actually probably right about now in 2011. And I put in a request to go to Gaza and interview Watha. And Watha's story went like this. She was a young woman in Gaza. She pulled a pot of boiling water, had some kind of cooking accident, and got severely burned because the Gazans and Hamas spent all their money building rockets and buying weapons. They don't really have great hospitals.

5:51So they sent her to Israel where the Israelis treated her for free, saved her life, gave her skin grafts, best medical care in the world. And then she would go back and forth from Gaza to the hospital that had treated her, and she had a pass, which during the Second Intifada was a big deal. So she was recruited by the Alaska Martyrs Brigade to be a suicide bomber. She was given a choice of three targets, a bus, a cafe, and the hospital that treated her and saved her life. She chose the hospital that treated her and saved her life. So Wafa gets to the border crossing between Gaza into Israel. They realize that she has a suicide bomb on her.

6:31They detect something's wrong. She tries to detonate the suicide bomb. It doesn't go off. She's arrested. She's thrown in jail in Israel. The Israelis continue to treat her wounds and burns and give her continuing medical care. They also give her a college degree. She gets back to Gaza. So I go to Gaza thinking this is going to be some great story of redemption. And for your viewers and listeners, I promise this is almost done. But the setup here is important. And we show up at her very awful tenement of a Gazan apartment. Most Gazans' apartments are. And she is there. And I bring with me an iPad that has the video of her trying to blow herself up.

7:18there's a bunch of cameras watching her watching me watching her watching the video and I play the video and I said I just want to understand what you're thinking at this moment and she watches the video and she goes oh and for those of not watching on YouTube she got this huge smile on her face and I said what are you thinking right now and she goes oh she goes that was the moment I almost tasted paradise. Not what I was expecting. And I said, okay, like, would you do it again? And she goes, oh, absolutely. That is my mission in life, to be a martyr and to die for the Palestinian cause. Okay.

8:06And that is when my worldview changed, that if this person who the Israelis saved her life. They treated her as if she was an Israeli, probably even better than a lot of Israelis in terms of health care. Then she tries to kill them. Then they still treat her and give her an education and send her back to Gaza. If that person does not want peace, there really is no chance for peace. So that is, I think, where the moral clarity came from. And what's surprising to me is when I tell that story, Dave, there is so many people on the left, the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas types, who get so angry at it, at that story.

8:46And they say, well, you know, that's the exception, not the rule, blah, blah, blah. I say, that's fine. Why don't you go to Gaza, spend a couple of days there, and then come back and talk to me? Feeling heavy or low on energy after the holidays? Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet helps you reset your body and habits to start the new year strong. Good intentions fade without a plan. Prolon offers a simple science-backed program that helps turn those intentions into action in just five days. It's a plant-based nutrition plan designed to nourish your body while keeping it in a fasting state developed through decades of research with USC's Longevity Institute.

9:24Everything comes prepackaged and labeled by day, so there's no guesswork. Research shows that completing three Prolon cycles can reduce biological age by an average of 2.5 years and waist size by about 1.5 inches. Right now, get 15 % off Prolon's five-day program at ProlonLife.com slash Dave. That's ProlonLife.com slash Dave for 15 % off. And they rarely take you up on that, I assume, particularly the gays for Palestine. Yes. No, I've not had anyone take me up on that, but I'd be happy to have that conversation. What was it like for you as a correspondent? And I think it's interesting and it's noteworthy and honorable that you mentioned at the top of this.

10:06You did not know a tremendous amount about that area that they sent you to. But then to wake up, to have a wake up moment while you're there that goes so against the conventional thinking there. How was that for you? Just sort of how did you blend that into your professional ability to do your job and go against the grain? Obviously, Fox is more in line with what I think is reality there. But still, amongst the journalist class, to say what you just said is still not thought of as allowed or something. Well, it's heresy, frankly, with the journalist class, okay? Yeah. Let's be real. And still, with a lot of networks, I think that kind of thinking is heresy, right?

10:47I mean, we saw what happened after October 7th and how the pro-Palestinian folks were treated. in the media. So I think very differently. You know, Dave, I, maybe it's my upbringing, maybe it's the born lucky story of how I, you know, how I was ostracized in high school and how I, you know, was beat up and tortured in middle school that I've kind of not, I don't really care what other people say or think. You know, I live in Washington. I'm not of Washington. I don't go to the cocktail parties. I don't, I don't play the game. I kind of have this, the saying that um you know i eat when i'm hungry and i dance when there's music uh and it just never it's never really bothered me and i look i didn't get invited to the stuff you know all the the foreign correspondent stuff in jerusalem either that's fine um is it probably because of my reporting yeah i think i think it's something that's so important about this profession that i was talking to one of our news nation correspondents about this of like how journalists now and the pundit class almost take it as a matter of pride that they don't go be amongst the people they're reporting on right and and i think you see this why people were so surprised in 2016 and to a certain extent in 2024 when trump won is that they they didn't go into wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania and north carolina and georgia and and really understand the people that were going to make this decision.

12:21And in the same way, I think that there's a lot of people who sit in wherever they are, New York, London, whatever it is, or even in Jerusalem and not get out into the West Bank or into Gaza. And therefore, they don't really understand who and what they're reporting on. What do you make of the general state of journalism at this point as someone that was sort of mainstream with Fox, you know, News Nation's a little bit of both sort of a blend, I would say, or kind of hybrid between, you know, sort of mainstream and online to someone that your political opinions obviously are outside of what is accepted mainstream, let's say.

12:55What do you make of the state of the online versus mainstream world? You know, journalists make lousy media critics, so I leave that to somebody else. What I'll say— Fortunately, I don't consider myself a journalist. Well, there you go. I opine on it endlessly. You can opine away. I think what's really interesting is when we started NewsNation now five years ago, people used to come up to me and say, well, you know, I saw you on Fox. Where are you? And I said, I'm at NewsNation. And they'd go, News what? Where? What's it called? Who? And now people come up to me and say, I watch you on NewsNation.

13:32I watch you because you give both sides a hard time. And I love that you talk about what's right and wrong, not what's left and right. So there is an appetite for what we're doing. And I know that because people are repeating it back to me. Not my viewpoints, but how we approach things. And there's a reason we're the fastest growing cable network, not just news network, but cable network in the country. And that's because people are seeking this out. All right. So let's back up for a moment and talk about the book a little bit, because that obviously is the setup to what leads to where you are now.

14:07Well, give me the premise of the book. I know the premise of the book, but give me the premise of the book. born lucky is the story of growing up with autism and my father choosing to adapt me to the world rather than the world to me so we wrote it as hope for every family of a kid having a hard time for every parent grandparent doesn't matter if it's autism adhd anxiety bullying physical disabilities. It's hope of what the power of great parenting can do to help kids be more. And nobody's talking about that right now. Nobody talks about the power of parents and nobody talks about pushing kids to be more.

14:50There's just this overwhelming industry and desire to create accommodation. And that's obviously not what my father did with me. So Born Lucky is that story. and I think the reason it's resonated is because there is a thirst right now for parents who say, wait a second, I don't think the experts are right here and I want to push my kid to be more. What is it that your dad saw or where did his line of thinking come from? Because back then, do you mind if I ask how old you are? I'm 43 now. So I was diagnosed with what we now know to be autism at about seven or eight years old. There were some diagnoses earlier.

15:36I didn't talk until I was well past three, but yeah, that was - Right. So back then, so 80s-ish, it was thought of as very, it was thought of very, very differently than it is thought of now. I always kind of joke with my staff here because they're a bit younger than me. When I was growing up, I'm 49, we had kids that definitely now would have been diagnosed with autism or certainly ADHD or that kind of thing. But back then they were just sort of thought of as rambunctious or some of them were just super quiet or just the way we dealt with them in class was just it was very different than now we're likely to be medicated, et cetera, et cetera.

16:14It's been a massive shift in just a couple of decades. Yeah. And to be fair, there was a lot of things that were offered to me and offered, I should say, to my parents for for me, accommodations, possible medications, on and on and on. And my parents said, absolutely not. So when I was about eight years old, my parents were told they needed to have me evaluated. They took me to one of those medical office buildings, right? Linoleum floors, stale coffee, old magazines. They waited for a couple of hours as nervous parents would. This is before cell phones or anything else. So they just sat there and like, what's going on with our kid?

16:46The woman brings me back and she says, boy, your kid's got a lot of problems. Um, big behavioral issues. If somebody touches him in class or in a line or in playground, he's going to turn around and slug them. So no birthday parties, no play dates, nothing like that. Big sensory issues. If there's socks or a jacket he doesn't like, he melts down the days over. And then big learning disabilities, right? So an IQ test is the average of two halves of a test. So two halves average them together. 20 point spread is a learning disability. I had a 70 point spread. Someone said this was the largest spread they'd ever seen.

17:23And my dad goes, okay, what do we do? And she says, well, you know, not much. You sort of meet him where he's at and, you know, kind of he gets along. And my dad goes, no, no, no, what do we do? And she goes, not much you can do. And that became a challenge for my dad. So, you know, they never told anyone, no friends, no family, no teachers, no counselors, no therapists, nothing. And it was my dad's mission to really adapt me to the world. And so what did that actually look like? I mean, how do you take a kid with some serious stuff and throw him into the world and good luck? Yeah. And, you know, dad, the born lucky story is a parent who decides rather than trying to take the adversity away, which is quite in vogue now.

18:06Born lucky is my dad holding my hand through the adversity. Right. So I saw from an early age there was no way that I was going to have friends in school, be good at school or be good at athletics. Those are the three things that kids, and to be fair, a lot of parents derive self-esteem from and take pride in. So dad said, how do I give this kid some kind of self-esteem? Self-esteem is earned. It's not given. He said, all right, push-ups. So I started with 200, 250 push-ups a day, five days a week for a couple of months, and then I would get some kind of prize. But it was all this idea of trying to find a way to have me have accomplishment.

18:45Dad said that I wasn't going to have any friends. So he said, I'll be your friend. And he was my only friend, still my best friend, but my only friend for a very long time. And he would take me to restaurants or take me to coffee with his friends. And I would start, you know, sort of gibbering on and talking and interrupting. And he would tap his watch. And that was my signal to be quiet. So if we were out with Dave, it would have been with Mr. Rubin for coffee. And as soon as we sat down, I would have been peppering you with questions, right, about your podcast and how do you sell ads and how do you book your guests and how long do you decide to go for it on and on.

19:28My dad would tap his watch. He'd say – the tap watch was be quiet and bookmark this moment. So as we would leave the restaurant afterwards, I hadn't been humiliated by dad saying, you know, lucky, be quiet. but the flip side was we then post game it right and you know he go okay so when mr rubin was talking about his weekend in miami beach and why he decided to move to florida why did you start peppering him with questions about how he books guests gee dad i don't know that was kind of interesting well what could you have asked mr rubin that he would have been interested about lucky and then we would we would go on um with that and and play that so just there was this very intimate hour by hour, day by day, trying to teach me the social emotional fabric that comes naturally to so many.

20:13Where was he getting his training on this? I mean, was he just, was he reading books on this or was he just, this was just on the fly. How do I help my kid? I'm just going to try some stuff. Yeah. I mean, he, he had, my father has an EQ, the temperature of the sun. Um, so does my wife. Uh, and you know, my dad, phenomenal salesman and entrepreneur. and, you know, that understanding came, I think, innately. It also came from How to Win Friends and Influence People. The Dale Carnegie book was always sort of his Bible. But he also realized that, you know, I was going to get beat up emotionally and physically every day at school.

20:47You know, when I was in seventh grade, I'd been through three, four schools. Principal called my parents in and said, look, everybody at this school thinks Lucky's really weird. So, you know, they're sitting there at some little principal's office across the desk thinking, you know, two weeks into school, hopefully this is just a check-in. Really weird. Arrow number one through their heart. Arrow number two comes, and frankly, I do too think he's weird, said the principal. So my dad realized he was my only protector. Eighth grade comes along, and there's an art teacher who doesn't think I'm going to be Picasso.

21:22So we're sitting in our class, and, you know, teacher looks over at me when he doesn't like my painting and says, hey, Vitter, if my dog was as ugly as you, I'd shave its ass and make it walk backwards. Wow. Yeah. So you think about if the teachers are saying that what the kids are doing, I go home, I tell my dad, and like every night, he would sit there and just sort of let me vent and take the emotional frustration and hurt and cruelty that I had experienced sort of onto himself. And, you know, Dave, I didn't know this until we wrote Born Lucky, but so many nights, he would then go down into the living room by himself and sit there and cry himself for hours.

22:03But he would make me go to school the next day. And that really is the resilience part that he taught me. When did you start seeing a shift in your behaviors or your ability to communicate or have friends and all the rest of it? It's a great question. My wife would argue it's still a work in progress. And to be perfectly fair, it is, you know, people have asked about Born Lucky as it's come out and we've gotten this great reception, not because of me, but because of what the story is and what it says. And some have said, well, you know, how do you cure somebody of autism? Or, you know, read this to cure people.

22:42And I said, no, you're never cured. I mean, I equate it a little bit like to being an alcoholic. I will always have autism. I will always sort of fight my own instincts. To answer your question, probably out of college, as I got into the workplace, I started realizing kind of how to really moderate my behavior and read the social and emotional cues that people are giving. But it's still to this day is a discipline. It's not natural to me. Have you ever looked at the ingredients on a regular bag of chips? There's seed oils, MSG, artificial dyes, and natural flavors that don't sound like food at all.

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23:53Ready to give Masa or Vandy a try? Use code Rubin for 25 % off your first order at masachips.com or vandycrisps.com. Or click the link in the description or scan the QR code to claim this offer. Not in the mood to order online? Masa and Vandy are now available nationwide at Sprout, so grab a couple bags next time you're there. So in what sense? Like, if we were, if you and I were doing this, which I'd always prefer to do, is do these in person, and we've all been left in these little boxes, unfortunately. But I know a lot of people with autism either have some eye contact problems or there's just a general uncomfortability.

24:27Are you constantly aware of that and working through it? Yeah, so it's just with you, basically. Let me give you a perfect example. A couple of months ago, right before the book came out, I was playing golf with my father-in-law up in Idaho. And we finished the golf game and we played with this other guy. I'm in the parking lot trying to pack my golf clubs into the travel bag, which is one of life's more frustrating experiences to begin with. I don't know if you're a golfer, but golfers all understand this. But I'm down on my hands and knees trying to pack the clubs into the travel bag near where the car area is.

25:02And this guy who we had played with comes over and he's standing above me as I'm shoving the clubs in. He says, hey, Leland, looking down at me. And I say, huh? Shoving the clubs in the bag. and I'm late and one classic characteristic of autism is being very task focused right you sort of like just zone everything out and he tries to talk to me he's an older man and I'm just completely ignoring him I'm just focused on the golf bag in the golf clubs and not being late and I could almost hear my dad in the background being like okay lucky you need to stop you're you know eight-year-old lucky stop stand up look mr.

25:40so-and-so in the eye shake his hand tell him how nice it was to play golf with him take a minute you're not that late it's not that important and i could not do it like i couldn't stop myself and he finally just walked away i was it was so unbelievably rude to him i found his phone number i texted him and i said hey look i just want to apologize for being so rude to you totally unacceptable on and on i i did not follow up and say oh by the way i have autism or oh that's the autism you know talking or whatever because my dad always taught me the standard's the standard and you need to learn to operate in a world that is how the world operates, not the world changing for you.