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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1282 | Autism Isn’t a Superpower — or a Death Sentence: A Story of Tough Love | Leland Vittert
00:48:05
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- [00:01]
Ally
In an age when having a diagnosis is almost a badge of honor, Leland Fitter is telling a different story. From his perspective as someone who is diagnosed with autism, he says that the adversity that he went through growing up helped him become the successful journalist and reporter that he is today because his parents, while they loved him, refused to coddle him. The lessons that he learned, especially from his dad, about hard work, about overcoming difficult, are so incredibly important for us today. You are going to be so moved by this gut wrenching story and also encouraged as a parent, as a friend to ensure that we are helping people reach their highest potential in everything they do. You are going to love this conversation with our new friend, Leland Vittert. Leland, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.
- [01:06]
Leland Vittert
It's been a long time. Good to see you.
- [01:08]
Ally
It has been a long time. Okay. I wanna talk about your story. You're a newscaster, you've been in the news business for a long time. But a lot of people don't know that when you were little, you got diagnosed with autism. That's a big part of your story.
- [01:22]
Leland Vittert
It's a big part of the story. It's one I never told till I was about 43 years old.
- [01:26]
Ally
Yeah.
- [01:26]
Leland Vittert
And that was a big part of my parents philosophy growing up, which was we're not going to let you be defined by a diagnosis. We're not going to let you define yourself by a diagnosis. And my dad, from when I was 8 years old decided to try and adapt me to the world rather than the world to me. And that is the Born Lucky story. And the reason I'm willing to talk about it now. At 43 years old, going to therapy on national television is not exactly a bucket of fun. It's sort of like sitting in a bathtub full of scissors. It won't kill you, but it's not enjoyable.
- [02:02]
Ally
Yeah.
- [02:02]
Leland Vittert
Is if I, by sharing the darkest, deepest, most awful parts of my life, which are in Born Lucky, if that can help other kids, if that can help other families to know they're not alone, then it's worth it. If that can provide hope to other families and it doesn't matter if it's ADHD or anxiety or bullying or whatever the difficulties that kids are going through growing up. Born Lucky is real hope of what parents can do and the reception. You know, people have asked me, how's the book doing? I don't measure it in sales. I measure it in letters. And I've gotten hundreds of letters from families of kids dealing with autism, peanut Allergies, anxiety, physical disabilities, all saying how this has changed their perspective on their kid.
- [02:46]
Ally
Wow. So it's called Born Lucky, and you were given the nickname Lucky.
- [02:50]
Leland Vittert
I was.
- [02:50]
Ally
When you were little. Tell us why.
- [02:52]
Leland Vittert
So I was given the nickname Lucky when I was born. As a mom, you'll appreciate this. It was my mother's first pregnancy in 1982. She was older. She was 35. And when she went to her last appointment, they could see that I was breech. I was upside down. Before sophisticated ultrasounds, the doctor said, I've got a bad feeling. I think you should have a C section. And this is when natural birth was very in vogue. There was all this research. The doctors were prescribing C sections because it was more convenient, all the things. And my mom made a fateful decision. She said, if I'm not gonna take my doctor's advice, I should get a new doctor, not take his advice. Lesson later. Saved my life a couple times in the Middle east, but goes in for the C section, and there's the curtain, and I'm being born on this side of the curtain, and my dad and my mom are on this side of the curtain, and my mom is holding my dad's hand, and she hears, oh, my God. From the doctor. Not what you want to hear in a delivery room. No. Oh, my God. This is a lucky baby. Oh, my God. This is the luckiest baby. And my dad kind of peeks his head out. He's like, everything okay? And the doc goes, give us a minute. And then the nurse goes, oh, my God. And my mom about broke my dad's hand clenching down on it. And they said, this is the luckiest baby we've ever seen. And it was. The umbilical cord was tied in a knot and around my neck. So had I been born naturally, I would have been dead. Wow. And the next day, up in the little, like, nursery area or my mom's hospital room, wherever it is, there's this little whiteboard outside the hospital room that says, you know, Leland vittered how much I weighed last time I pooped, what I ate, whatever it is. And the doctor came up and crossed out Leland and said, call him Lucky.
- [04:33]
Ally
Wow.
- [04:34]
Leland Vittert
So up until when I was 18 years old, I introduced myself to everyone and as Lucky Vittert. And I thought it was a fitting title of being born Lucky. So many people would think about autism as this great challenge and how terrible and affliction and everything else. And I want to make it clear how lucky I felt to have the parents I had to have the dad who had dedicated himself in the way I did, to have the family I did. That came around me.
- [05:00]
Ally
And at what point did your parents say, okay, like, I think that there might be something going on with him and we might need to see a doctor?
- [05:11]
Leland Vittert
It's a great question. There were signs. I didn't talk until I was well past three. Took me to a speech pathologist. And this is way before the diagnosis culture that we have right now. There was a lot of, well, you know, just let them go along. At about 8, I was told. They were told I needed to be evaluated. So as a mother, you would know what that would mean and the difficulty there. So they brought me to one of those medical testing buildings. All been there. Linoleum floors, old magazines, stale coffee. They waited for a couple of hours, and the woman comes back and says, this kid's got real, real bad problems. So it had been years since I'd been invited to a play date or a birthday party or anything like that.
- [05:55]
Ally
But you were in school. Typical school.
- [05:56]
Leland Vittert
I was in typical school, but with lots and lots and lots of problems. In typical school, if a kid touched me or looked at me the wrong way or whatever, I turn around and slug them. So, I mean, I was pretty aggressive, temperamental, sensitive.
- [06:11]
Sponsor/Ad Speaker
Yeah.
- [06:12]
Leland Vittert
Big sensory issues. If I had socks on I didn't like, or a jacket on I didn't like or whatever, I would just melt down. Day would be over. And then the test showed these big learning disabilities, or what we now call learning disabilities. So IQ test is two halves of a test averaged together. A 20 point spread is a learning disability. My spread between the two tests was a 70 point spread. So basically, in the parlance of the day, from genius to mentally retarded. And the woman says to my dad and my mom, it is very difficult to understand what's going on inside his head. Now, my wife would tell you, it's still very difficult to understand what's going on inside my head.
- [06:54]
Ally
But.
- [06:55]
Leland Vittert
But when they looked at this, she said, it's the biggest point spread we've ever seen. You basically have to meet your son where he's at. He's just is who he is.
- [07:05]
Ally
Sorry to interject, but was there a pattern in which areas you were scoring so high in genius level and which areas you were really struggling in?
- [07:14]
Leland Vittert
They have it in the test in terms of, like, I think it's called knowledge and performance. The standards have changed. There was certain areas of math that I was quite good at. There were certain areas of language that I was terrible at.
- [07:28]
Ally
So.
- [07:31]
Leland Vittert
I had great vocabulary, but I couldn't spell, like, these kinds of issues. Got it. So the woman says, it's the biggest point spread we've ever had. Kind of just need to meet your son. Where he's at, there's not much you can do. Which to my dad was unacceptable. If for no other reason than where I was at was a disaster. And at that point he said, is there anything we can do? And she said, not really. So he said, I'm going to try my best to adapt my son to the world. Cause the world's not gonna adapt to him later on. And they wanted to make all these accommodations and therapies and on and on and on. My dad said, that's not the way real life is gonna be. So no therapies, no accommodations. They never told anybody. They never told a school administrator, a teacher, any of their friends. Never told me until I was in my 20s.
- [08:20]
Ally
Wow. And so what did your adolescence look like? Your parents know, maybe they're trying to work with you more because obviously they want you to do well. But what did school look like for you?
- [08:33]
Leland Vittert
Yeah, that, I think, is the part that's kind of taken people's breath away. A few sort of moments in Born Lucky, that kind of explain, I think, a lot of what kids go through. Fifth grade, this was my third school. I think my dad comes over one day to the school to see me and check on how I'm doing. Here's I'm at pe Goes up to the PE fields. It's a little small school and they've got a bunch of fields sort of tiered down. And the PE coach was a guy my dad knew from another school and said, hey, where's Lucky? And the guy said, oh, I think he's doing better these days. And on and on. And my dad goes, great, let's go see him. And the guy goes, I don't think that's a good idea. This is the coach. My dad says, why not? He says, well, he said I had to put him with the girls for the past month. So imagine as a father of a fifth grade boy, hearing the only sort of place his son can be is with the girls. That was about the same time that as my sister and I would walk home every day from that school. So fifth grade, my sister was in kindergarten. And I asked my sister, when we were working on Born Lucky, what's the earliest memory you have of me of your brother? She goes, oh, that's easy. Fifth grade, fall of fifth grade, year I was in kindergarten, meaning Liberty. And I would come to her classroom, pick her up, and we would walk home, actually, through all those athletic fields that I was playing with the girls at. And we'd get to the woods on our way home, and I would start crying every day. And she says, my first memory as a kindergartner is holding my older brother's hand as we walked home. And he was crying every day. So got pulled out of that school middle of fifth grade.
- [10:09]
Ally
And you were crying because.
- [10:10]
Leland Vittert
Just the bullying, you know, sort of just the relentless social torture.
- [10:16]
Ally
Is that why you were moved with the girls?
- [10:19]
Leland Vittert
Yeah.
- [10:19]
Ally
Because the boys were picking on you?
- [10:22]
Leland Vittert
Yeah. Both physically and emotionally. And then seventh grade, new school. My parents get called in in the second week, so they're hopeful things are going well in this new school. And the teacher or the principal says to my parents, right. When they sit down in the principal's office, everybody at this school thinks Lucky is very weird. Arrow number one. And then she follows up, and frankly, I do, too. Arrow number two. So now anything that happens at the school is my fault. Right. I think the thing that's been sort of stunning to a lot of people is how the teachers treated me. Teachers are supposed to be the ones to protect you. And. And in eighth grade at this school, I was in art class. Was not gonna become Picasso. That's probably still true today. But the art teacher didn't like something I had done or said or painted or whatever. And he says in front of the entire class, you know, Vinod, if my dog was as ugly as you, I would shave its ass and make it walk backwards.
- [11:24]
Ally
Oh, my gosh.
- [11:26]
Leland Vittert
In front of the entire class.
- [11:26]
Ally
To an 8th grader.
- [11:27]
Leland Vittert
To an 8th grader in front of the entire class. So if the teachers feel like they can do that, you know what the kids can do. Right.
- [11:33]
Ally
And this is at, like, a good, private school.
- [11:37]
Leland Vittert
Yeah. So you and I were talking about this before we got started. I went home that night, as I did every night, and sort of unloaded emotionally on my dad. He would sit there for hours and kind of let me unload emotionally, take out the physical, emotional beatings I had taken all day on him. But the next day, he made me go back to school. And I think that was really the story of my adolescence, of that adversity is your friend. And my dad's philosophy was, if you embrace adversity, embrace it honestly. And, boy, was it so much harder for him to hold my hand through it. Right. It would've been very easy for him to say, oh, he's got this diagnosis, he's got this problem, he needs this accommodation. On and on and on. Much easier for him and for my mother and for my sister. But it would not have taught me the ability to get through things later on in life.
- [12:27]
Ally
Foreign.
- [12:32]
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- [13:37]
Ally
I want to hear you talk more about that because this is certainly a novel approach. Like, as a mom, certainly our instinct is to shield our kids from all of that pain. Also to march up to the school and to like, I mean, I want to bully that teacher. I want to bully that teacher right now, however many years later. That's just such an awful story. But your parents chose not to do that. They chose to allow you to endure that adversity. And I know there's a balance. Obviously there is a point at which parents have to protect their kids, but your parents kind of chose a hands off approach.
- [14:16]
Leland Vittert
I. I don't think it was hands off.
- [14:18]
Ally
Okay.
- [14:18]
Leland Vittert
I think it was very hands on.
- [14:20]
Ally
Like, to you, to me, every night.
- [14:22]
Leland Vittert
Every night my dad would sit with me for hours. And I found out actually as we were writing Born Lucky, not even from my dad, but from my mom, that there were a lot of nights that my dad would go downstairs in the living room by himself after dark when my mom was asleep and just start sitting there crying himself.
- [14:42]
Ally
I'm gonna cry thinking about that.
- [14:44]
Leland Vittert
I have many times talking about this, but dad's idea was to hold my hand through the adversity. And I think what he realized Was that I was gonna face that adversity later in life, which I did. And if I didn't know how to get through it and also if I wasn't forced to adapt, I mean, in many ways, socially, I was an extraordinarily awkward, weird kid. I had to learn how to adapt and how to interact with the world as the way the world interacted, not as the way I wanted to interact with it.
- [15:16]
Ally
Yeah.
- [15:19]
Leland Vittert
Had terrible timing. I couldn't figure out when to be serious. I couldn't figure out how to relate to people emotionally the way they were emotionally. I couldn't figure out how to read a room, when to stop talking. All of these things I was gonna have to learn. And if you're put in bubble wrap, you're told how wonderful you are all the time, you're never gonna learn that. Right. So from the very beginning for my dad it was how do we teach this kid self esteem? So When I was 5 or 6 years old, I was doing 200 pushups a night. And you'd get, you know, after a couple months of doing that, you get some kind of reward. But my dad wanted to teach me self esteem is earned, not given. Which is a very different philosophy I think than what we see now.
- [15:58]
Ally
Totally. Yeah. Tell me what else your parents did in helping you. Because as you mentioned, it was a hands on approach at home, hands off approach when it came to shielding you from the difficulty at school. So what else did that look like in giving you that extra help that you needed to adapt socially?
- [16:16]
Leland Vittert
Right. So my dad figured out early on I'm not gonna have self esteem from having friends at school. Cause I wasn't gonna have friends. I wasn't going to have it from doing well in school because of the learning disabilities. And I wasn't going to have it from being good at athletics. Cause I wasn't gonna be good at athletics. Very uncoordinated. So his idea was how do we find things for him to have self esteem at at a young age? So push ups, stuff like that. The second thing was how to teach this eight year old how the world works socially. The social and emotional fabric that so many people understand naturally. And he couldn't do it with kids because no kid would be around me. I was repellent like a magnet. Some people attract people like magnets, but if you put the two poles of a magnet together, they repel. I was repellent magnetically and my dad said, okay, I will be his friend. So my dad started spending hundreds of hours with me, thousands of hours. Still is my best friend. What is this? We're recording this at a little before noon. And I've already talked to him, I think three times today. Still is my best friend. So he would then take me out to lunch and we'd go out to lunch with any of his friends. And because I spent so much time with him, I could sort of talk about business and politics and news and those kind of topics. But as soon as we'd sit down at some diner for cheeseburgers and milkshakes, as soon as his friend sat down, I would either start blasting him with questions or blasting him with stories about my push ups.
- [17:48]
Ally
Yeah.
- [17:48]
Leland Vittert
And my dad would tap his watch. And that was my dad's way of saying, okay, be quiet. So if my dad tapped his watch, I had to stop talking and I had to bookmark that moment. And the idea was later on, as we were driving home, it was like, okay, when Mr. So and so was talking about his weekend and you interrupted it to talk about your push ups. Why did you think he would be interested in that? Well, I don't know, dad. Okay. And then we would role play. What you could have asked Mr. So and so about himself.
- [18:17]
Ally
That's good.
- [18:18]
Leland Vittert
That would have elicited a better response. It was this very minute by minute teaching of the emotional and human dynamic.
- [18:29]
Ally
Wow, that's amazing. Were there any teachers or any individuals that were classmates that you can think of in your upbringing that stand out as actually being kind or helping you?
- [18:43]
Leland Vittert
It's a great question. And you'll notice when you read the book that we didn't use the names of anybody who was mean so that our teacher remains nameless. And it's not because I don't remember their names.
- [18:54]
Ally
Yeah.
- [18:55]
Leland Vittert
And my sister certainly remembers the names, of course, or the principal who called me weird or anything else. There were a few. And we used their names because we wanted to really highlight what a difference a teacher who's kind and who's understanding can make. Suffice it to say, they were few and far between. But there were a few, and I remain grateful. And I thought when I was writing the book, I thought it was gonna be harder to. To remember all the awful times. And really I got the most emotional thinking about sort of the people who were the kindest. I got most emotional in reading the audiobook. I know you've done that for your books, but reading the audiobook and telling the story of, like, when our dog died because of how much she meant to me, and that was the most important Part to me.
- [19:46]
Ally
Yeah. Can you tell us from your experience what makes a good teacher when you're a kid who just has such a hard time fitting in?
- [19:55]
Leland Vittert
That's a great question. And actually, of 171 interviews I've done, that's the first person who's asked me about that. I've heard what makes great parents. What advice do you have? I really believe that there are some wonderful teachers and people who really want to bring out the best in kids and to really help kids. I think, at least in my experience, most of the teachers who were so evil and cruel to me, it was about them. They were bullies themselves, and this was just sort of a free way to do it. I think that there is an enormous amount of cowardice in education because of lots of different incentives, and that's few and far between. I guess the obvious thing is the teacher's job should be to champion the most vulnerable among their students. Right. Not to champion the kids who are doing the best.
- [20:58]
Ally
Yeah. I guess the reason why I thought of it is because although you and I don't have the exact same experience growing up, anyone who's a little bit different, maybe, particularly at a private school where being uniform, like, there's just a lot of value on that, anyone who's even a little bit different could have a hard time. And, you know, I just didn't stop talking, which is exactly why I do what I do. But I remember also those teachers who, instead of just constantly beating the kid down, who cannot remember to, you know, keep up with his homework or whatever it is, positive reinforcement, kindness, friendliness, things like that, it really makes a big difference. And I just remember, you know, I remember my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Russ, so well, just because, like, she was that different teacher for me. And what a difference maker those people can be in the life of a kid who feels different.
- [21:55]
Leland Vittert
Yeah. And what, what a difference it can be when someone's really awful and cruel.
- [22:00]
Ally
Totally.
- [22:01]
Leland Vittert
And I think you point out rightly, for people who had a hard time growing up, me, you, the number of people who were nice is far smaller than the number of people who were mean.
- [22:14]
Ally
Yeah, it can definitely be that way. And it changes your perspective as a person, too, when you're dealing with people who are a little bit different. So you graduated high school, you went to college. What was that experience like?
- [22:25]
Leland Vittert
I did. I think college was the first time I started realizing that I needed to change. Right. Because my dad spent all those nights that I was so upset saying, look, when you get older, the Same qualities that are making you ostracized and bullied and having all these issues are the qualities that's gonna make you successful later in life. He was correct in many ways. He did not tell me in eighth grade that an eighth grade middle school classroom is great training for a Washington newsroom, which would later turn out to be very true. Still is. But. The college experience. My dad used to always tell me this story about when he was a freshman in college, Ripon College in Wisconsin, he had been blackballed from all the fraternities. He never got a bid at any one of the fraternities that was on campus. And it was a way of sort of explaining to me that he understood the isolation. He understood what I was going through. And the same thing happened to me. I called my dad on a January night at Northwestern. I had gone to all the fraternities, I wanted to rush. They all said, you're not getting a bid. I called my dad that night. 9:30, 10:00 at night, it's snowing at Northwestern, bitterly cold, tears are freezing on my face. And I called my dad, I said, I'm just like you. And then I said to Dad, I said, I need to understand that it may not just be everybody else. I'm gonna have to change. And that really became the college experience. To me, going to college wasn't really about learning economics, which I majored in, or journalism, which journalism. School is pretty useless. But it was about learning as a person and trying to put all of those lessons that my dad taught me into effect.
- [24:18]
Ally
Yeah. And so tell me the rest of your college career. Graduating, going into the industry that you're still in today.
- [24:25]
Leland Vittert
Yeah. Graduated college, started working in small market television stations. Was in Denver, Colorado when Fox called and said they needed a foreign correspondent.
- [24:35]
Ally
And first. Sorry, let me back up. How did you know this is what you would want to do? Because again, a little bit of a strange dream to have as someone who has struggled socially for so long. This is a very dynamic communicative role.
- [24:49]
Leland Vittert
Glutton for punishment.
- [24:51]
Ally
Yeah.
- [24:51]
Leland Vittert
But the one thing about journalism, and you know this as well, if we sort of look at this really broadly, is it is an industry that really bends to hard work. You know, if you want to be a great doctor, you pretty much have to be great at chemistry and biology and all of these things. I wasn't going to be that. You want to be a great lawyer, most have to be able to be very good writers. And on and on and on. There's some industries that just Yield to hard work, and journalism is one of them. So I got an internship when I was a kid in a radio station. And I figured out early on that if you just work hard and outwork everybody, that is of enormous value in journalism. And I began down that path. And When I was 20, I was 19 or 20 at a local TV station in St. Louis for my internship after my freshman year of college. And, and some reporter said to me, hey kid, you're pretty good on tv. I said, oh, okay, thanks. And he says, you may be able to make it to the network one day. Now, that doesn't mean you're younger than me, but in 2000, the network was still a big deal, right? You had Peter Jennings, you had Tom Brokaw, you had Matt Lauer flying around the world on the GE jet. It was just, it was a different world of television. And so I googled what's the youngest anyone's ever made it to the network? And it was 30. So I said, that's my goal, to make it to the network, to be a network correspondent. By the time I was 30 and started working in small market television stations, that's not really the way people come up anymore, but it's way back then. You did. I was in Denver, Colorado, Network job opened up in Jerusalem. And it's a funny story in Born Lucky because just to show how out of my depth I was when I got this job, I went over for an interview with the bureau chief, the Fox bureau chief in Jerusalem. And I didn't know the difference of the west bank and Gaza. So I wrote drew a crib sheet on my hand of the geography of the Gaza Strip and the west bank and everything else. And I get to Israel and I'm in the meeting with him and it's so hot and I am sweating so much, my whole hand just runs with ink. And still got the job.
- [27:02]
Ally
Yeah.
- [27:03]
Leland Vittert
Show up on my first night with my mom to go look for an apartment in Jerusalem.
- [27:07]
Ally
And what year is this?
- [27:08]
Leland Vittert
This is 2010. So Obama's given his speech, he's declared peace with the Muslim world. Hillary's gonna negotiate the Israel Palestinian conflict. Everything's gonna be fine. And I show up and we're at the American Colony Hotel, which is this beautiful compound in East Jerusalem, Old world neutral territory of the spooks, the diplomats, the journalists. Sort of everybody meets there and, and hotel and then a big garden where they serve drinks in East Jerusalem. Arab service run by a Swiss company. Neutral in every sense of the word. And I'm there In the garden with my mother. We're having a drink, and all of a sudden, just after sunset, there is the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons fire. So I throw my mom to the ground, and I think, oh, my God, the hotel's under attack. And I cover her with my body. And what do I do? It's before camera phones and stuff. So I'm thinking through all this, and all of a sudden, one of the waiters walks by, and he looks down at me on the ground. He goes, everything okay? And I said, no gunfire. And he goes, oh. He goes, oh. And he sort of mimes shooting a gun in the air. And he goes, no, no. Celebration. Wedding. Wedding. Happy.
- [28:19]
Ally
Oh, my goodness.
- [28:20]
Leland Vittert
So I pull my mom off the ground. Everybody's kind of looking at us. And that was my welcome to the Middle east of wow. Clearly, I was not in Kansas anymore or Missouri.
- [28:33]
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- [29:38]
Ally
Okay, I want to hear more about your time in the Middle east because I want to go back to something that you said in the beginning. I bookmarked it in my head. I. When you said that, your mom said, if I'm not gonna take this doctor's advice, then I need to get a different doctor, not. Not take his advice. And you said that came in handy when I was in the Middle East. What do you mean by that?
- [29:58]
Leland Vittert
It did, and this is a pretty amazing story. We're out running with the rebels in Libya, so Six months. Barack Obama was correct. Things were calm in the Middle East. And then the Arab Spring kicked off. Right. And they threw out Mubarak. Terrible decision in retrospect. The Libyan civil war started. The United States took the side of the rebels. So I went in and started running with the rebels in Libya in March of 2011. And we were at a checkpoint one town back from the front lines of the rebels. We're filming and talking to rebels and about to go to the front lines. And all of a sudden our security guy, who was a Kiwi SAS guy, Maori guy, so just this huge 6, 240 pound former rugby player looks around, he says, we gotta get out of here. I said, well, give us a minute, I gotta get a few more shots. He goes, no, now. And he grabs me and my photographer by the pull straps on the back of our flak jackets and starts pushing us and running us to the truck, throws us in the truck. And I could have protested, but I sort of at that point made the decision, if our security guys are saying, get out of here, we need to get out of here. Threw us in the truck. We drove about 100 yards back from the checkpoint and a Libyan jet flew over Gaddafi's jet and bombed the checkpoint. So had we stayed, we would have been among the casualties there.
- [31:24]
Ally
So how long were you in the Middle East?
- [31:26]
Leland Vittert
Four years.
- [31:26]
Ally
Four years.
- [31:27]
Leland Vittert
So I did Egypt, Libya, couple of Gaza wars, a little bit of Syria, and then ended in Ukraine in 2014 for the first Russian invasion of the East.
- [31:40]
Ally
Yeah.
- [31:41]
Leland Vittert
Remarkably, these. These storylines just keep coming back around.
- [31:44]
Ally
Yeah. Here's maybe a little bit of an. An odd question. Is there anything about your personality that maybe growing up was seen as a weakness that you actually think was a strength when you were over there in the Middle East?
- [31:57]
Leland Vittert
You know, Eli Beth, it's a great question, right. Because there's this whole idea now that being on the spectrum is a superpower. Right. That somehow being autistic, kids are told, no, no, this is your superpower. I wish I felt that or knew that, but I kind of don't know anything else. Right. People have asked, what was it like dating as somebody on the spectrum? Well, I don't know. I never dated not being on the spectrum. So I don't know if I can answer that. I can say the things my dad taught me of sort of that hard work yields results. Huge character is destiny, which was a big part of my upbringing, of that there's two things you can control in life. And I think this is true for any Kid having a hard time, really. 3. You can control your attitude, you can control your work ethic and control your character.
- [32:47]
Ally
Yeah.
- [32:48]
Leland Vittert
And that was really drilled into me by my dad. If you take pride in those things and the rest will sort of take care of itself because you can't control it. Um, so those things were extraordinarily important.
- [32:59]
Ally
Yeah. You know, I think it's so interesting, the perspective that you're bringing, that you're talking about how you are able to overcome adversity. You have this diagnosis. It was difficult, but you were still able to do these things. But you're not making the argument, as so many are, that, oh, that's. It's actually because of my autism. It's because it was this superpower, which I think is a very nuanced perspective on things. Because you could either say, just, like, ignore it altogether, pretend like it doesn't exist, just say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, or you could say, it's this wonderful thing that we need to endlessly accommodate. That's neither of your perspectives. It's interesting.
- [33:36]
Leland Vittert
Being in the Middle east teaches you life is not a thousand shades of gray. It's 3,000 shades of gray. But I'll give you two points on that one. In the current conversation about autism. Right. I'm always struck by how sort of angry and dismissive the left is of RFK's search for a cause of autism. There was Chris Hayes on a podcast saying, no, RFK Jr. Is obsessed. Obsessed with finding the cause of autism and really ridiculing that. Well, why wouldn't we be obsessed with it? If we could find a way for kids to not go through what I went through, Hallelujah. I've only been married for six months, but if my wife was pregnant and you gave me a piece of paper and said, your child will be autistic or not, I would check. No. And every other parent would, too. So I think that is a really important point. Or prospective parent, I should say, number two. And I think I've acknowledged this a lot, but people have asked me, after reading Born Lucky in interviews, what's your advice? I don't have any advice. The only advice in the book, really, is the last four pages written by my father, which is a couple of the principles that he used to sort of guide him in this moment. And I'm fully aware there's so many families who have things that are so much more difficult than what my parents were dealing with at home, whether it's physical disabilities, more severe cases of Autism, the list goes on. Right. But the one thing that has stood out is Born Lucky isn't a How to Cure autism book. It's a love story of what great parenting can do and how every parent can help their kid be more I heard from a father whose son, 22 years old, living in a group home, severe, profoundly autistic and never be able to live on his own. And the kid had some real, had understandably a lot of behavior issues, really angry, very physically sort of upset and unhappy all the time. And his father saw in the reports from the group home that he loved being in the pool. Three times a week they would take him to a pool and he was the happiest in the pool splashing around. And the father said let's teach him to swim. And the expert said you can't teach a 22 year old autistic kid to swim and he can drown and he's going to be upset when he gets worried and we can't do this. And dad goes, he's happy in the pool, let's lean into that. Let's try to help him be the most he can be. The kid now swims an hour and a half, swims a mile and a half every morning.
- [36:12]
Ally
Wow.
- [36:13]
Leland Vittert
And he's totally different physically and he's up every morning and dressed in his swim clothes and ready to go. And physically has totally changed. Mentally he's totally changed, much happier on all because a father said no, no, I can help my kid be more, I can hold his hand and help him be more rather than just sit there and meet him where he's at. As you pointed out, just take all the adversity away and make things as easy as possible.
- [36:39]
Ally
Yeah, it's so tempting to do as parents. It's just like we're hardwired in a way to want to like remove all obstacles from our children's life. It takes actually a lot of discipline and self control on the parents part to step back. It's much, it's actually much easier to control everything, all variables than it is to step back and let them maybe stumble a bit because of the lessons learned. But when I look back at my life and I remember the times of rejection or exclusion or difficulty or not making this or getting this or things being unfair, I remember very much the pain. But I also know that is where I grew a lot as a person. Not only just like character wise but also like sense of humor. You develop a really a better overall personality when you are made to go.
- [37:32]
Leland Vittert
Through things that are Hard adversity is a blessing. Adversity is your friend. And I think when parents teach their kids the resilience and to your point, right, that you learn, you can do hard things and get through hard things. And I think about when this sort of all came full circle. End of 2020, I got invited to leave Fox News. I was the only Fox News anchor who publicly questioned Trump's claims and we now know that.
- [38:01]
Ally
About the election, about the election.
- [38:03]
Leland Vittert
I had just ended a long term relationship. I had no place to live. I was living in a hotel out of a backpack and then I almost died of COVID all within about one month.
- [38:14]
Ally
You almost died of COVID Yeah, I.
- [38:15]
Leland Vittert
Was in the hospital for a week with COVID Okay.
- [38:18]
Ally
I didn't know that part of the story, so.
- [38:21]
Leland Vittert
But all of these three, you know, everything is sort of people, you know, your primary relationship, your job, where you live and your health. All the big four in one month blown up.
- [38:30]
Ally
Wow.
- [38:31]
Leland Vittert
So I have my little backpack and I get out of the hospital. I spend a couple days trying to get a little bit of strength back. I could only walk about a tenth of a mile in a half an hour. And I go down to Florida to my parents guest room and I'm sitting there and one night I'm watching TV with my dad and I'm feeling really low, just like I did back in eighth grade, right? And I've just, just really beat up, just beat up mentally. And I'm lamenting to my father how terrible everything is. He says, pretty good at feeling sorry for yourself. I said, uh huh. He says, well, he said, in eighth grade, every day you went back to school, you can do this, you can start over again and keep fighting. And I don't think had I gotten through what I had gone through in school, I would have known that I could do it. I would have had the fortitude to get back up and to start fighting again. And that really was the gift, right? And think about how hard it was on my parents through all that and my sister too. I think one thing that I've learned in writing the book, but also in the reception of the book is how families of kids who are having a hard time, doesn't matter, autism, physical, whatever it is, adhd, bullying, anything, how much the siblings are affected too. You know, there was. My sister went to the same high school I did. I was in 12th grade, she was in seventh grade. One teacher said to her, I hope you don't turn out like your brother. Kids told her to her face, you're the retarded kid's sister. So it was horribly hard on her. And I think what my parents did was make this a all of family effort. Right. It was us against the world. And that part really still sits around today and that core cohesion. And you think about kids who face challenges. 80% of parents of kids who have some real significant disability get divorced. And it can go one of two ways. It can either tear a family apart or it can bring it together.
- [40:36]
Ally
And for y', all, it brought it together.
- [40:38]
Leland Vittert
Absolutely.
- [40:39]
Ally
And so after Fox, did you go right to NewsNation after that?
- [40:43]
Leland Vittert
I did. So I had Covid. I almost died. And then in that transition period, Fox had basically said, you have a contract, but you can take some time off. And in that time, I started NewsNation, which was the opportunity to sort of do journalism the way I always envisioned it, which was to view the world as right and wrong, not left and right. And we've done well in that pursuit.
- [41:08]
Ally
Yeah. And you just got married, right?
- [41:10]
Leland Vittert
I did, I did. I met Rachel. And it's funny how the world works, right? From the lows, lows to the highs, highs. I landed in Chicago to start my news job at News Nation. I'm sitting on the plane, still moving to Chicago, and I get a text from a young woman I went to college with. Not young anymore, I guess. She's a mother of two. And she says, hey, I hear you moved to Chicago and I hear you're single. I said, that's right. She goes, I'm gonna find you your wife. And I said, I don't want a wife. I just got out of a long term relationship. I am moving to Chicago. I'm gonna focus on my job. I'm have a great time this summer. Live downtown. It's gonna be fantastic. She goes, I'm gonna find you your wife. And the next day she sent me a picture of Rachel and she wrote, I found you your wife.
- [41:55]
Ally
Wow. And then the rest is history.
- [41:57]
Leland Vittert
And the rest is history. So good. And look again. If the adversity had not happened, not embraced it, not accepted it, then meeting Rachel would have never happened.
- [42:10]
Ally
Yeah. That's amazing. Well, we're finishing up in the next few minutes, but I'm so curious, what is your thought about the state of journalism? You just said you like to view the world between right and wrong, not left and right. There's probably a lot of journalists that agree with you, but a lot who don't.
- [42:31]
Leland Vittert
Yeah, journalists make lousy media critics, so I'm not a media critic. What I can say is that I think we have gotten to a place where no one has to hear an opinion that they disagree with. Between the social media algorithms, the YouTube algorithms, enough cable networks on and on, people can live in these silos where. Where they're only affirmed, and therefore opinions become only more entrenched. And there's absolutely a lane for that. I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh. I love Rush Limbaugh. I don't know if that is what leads to sort of what brought out the best in America, which is that we came together and we compromised. Because if you live in silos, you think the other silo's evil and wrong and un American. That doesn't lead to good things. What we found at NewsNation, and particularly for my show, is we've found people who come to us and watch us because we give both sides hard times. They want that middle ground of a fair arbiter, call our show the fairest show on television, and that we view the world as right and wrong, not left and right. And I think that's a very different thing than is being done. And we're being rewarded for it. It's why News Nation's the fastest growing network in the country. And we would always love to have you on, but you're always busy.
- [44:02]
Ally
You know what? You know why? Because your show is right in the middle of bedtime. And so that is the tough thing. Seriously? Yeah. My assistant knows that we always, like, want to get on, and so we'll just have to, like, find a night, make it happen. But the bedtime dad can do bedtime.
- [44:21]
Sponsor/Ad Speaker
I know.
- [44:21]
Ally
You know what? We are outnumbered. And when you become outnumbered, the three against two is tough.
- [44:28]
Leland Vittert
Is this team? This is like team coverage. You go from man to man coverage to team coverage.
- [44:32]
Ally
Exactly. Yes, we definitely do bedtime together. But Also we have 6, 4 and 2 year old, and mommy is extremely popular. I am the most popular person in our home. So it can be a little bit difficult during bedtime, but we'll make it happen.
- [44:46]
Leland Vittert
Being in demand is better than the alternative.
- [44:49]
Ally
Absolutely. It's a blessing, 100%. But we'll definitely make it happen. Leland, thank you so much. I was so moved by your story and encouraged as well. Can you tell everyone where they can get your book? Born lucky.
- [45:01]
Leland Vittert
Amazingly enough, Amazon has it or any bookstore near you. And I've been so humbled by how many people have come on the journey. And I'll leave everyone with this. This story was about not to be told. And because my dad never Wanted to talk about it. Never wanted to talk about it publicly. Someone had heard about it. Don Yeager, who your father knows as well, heard about the situation. He called me, said, I really want to write this book. I said, I'm not writing a book. I'm not talking about this publicly. Not doing it. And he says, we need to write this book. I said, why? He says, well, he says, I have an autistic child, and if I had heard this story, I would have felt so differently, and I would have had hope. We start working on the manuscript. I'm working on it. I'm interviewing my dad, and at every story, he goes, I don't know if we can tell this. I don't know if we can tell that. I don't know if we can do this. I said, let me write the manuscript. If you don't like it, we won't turn it in. Now, as someone who's had book contracts, you got to turn something in. So it's Tuesday before it's due, and I give the manuscript to my dad, and he reads it, and he says, on Thursday. I can't do this. I can't.
- [46:15]
Ally
Wow.
- [46:16]
Leland Vittert
Got 60,000 words due. ChatGPT isn't going to bail you out. And I said to Dad, I said, let's turn this around. I said, you remember that woman who diagnosed me and who basically told you there was nothing you could do and there was no hope? And he says, yeah. I said, what if she'd handed you born lucky? What if she'd said, this isn't a prescription. It's not a cure. This is just a story of what a father can do. What would you have done? And he said, I would have read it every week.
- [46:43]
Ally
Wow.
- [46:44]
Leland Vittert
So I said, I think we kind of owe it to folks to put it out there and let the world sort of know that there is hope.
- [46:52]
Ally
Yeah, that's a good pitch. And it worked well. Thank you so much, Leland. I really appreciate you.
- [46:58]
Leland Vittert
Appreciate you. Good to see you. Congratulations on all the success.
- [47:00]
Ally
Thank you. Likewise, Sam.