Autism and My Sensory Based World
Date: 01-17-11
Event: Dr. Temple Grandin
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Autism and My Sensory-Based World
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>> Amy Hansen:
Welcome to Autism in My Sensory Based World conducted by the highly accomplished and talented Temple Grandin. My name is Amy Hansen and I'll be your moderator for today's online course.
>> Linda Schreiber: I am so honored this morning to introduce Dr. Temple Grandin to all of you. Dr. Grandin lectures parent and teachers throughout the U.S. on her experiences with autism. Her articles and interviews have appeared in the New York Times and People Magazine, and on National Public Radio, the View, and the BBC. She was also honored in 2010 by Time Magazine as being named one of the 100 most influential people in the world. We're extremely honored to have Dr. Grandin join us today from Fort Collins, Colorado, where she's currently a professor at Colorado State University. Good morning, Dr. Grandin.
>> Dr. Temple: Good morning. It is really good to be here.
>> Linda: We're so happy to have you. We're very interested in your views on autism and know you have a lot to share with us. I know you have a program set for us and I am going to have you begin.
>> Dr. Temple: It is wonderful to be here today on audio. I think I'll just start out with my program. I can't emphasize enough the importance of early educational intervention. If you have a young autistic two, three, four-year-old child sitting in the corner rocking, the worse thing you can do is nothing. You have got to start working with this child. I know there are situations where parents may be on a waiting list for diagnosis that might be a year or maybe two years away. Don't wait. Get students, get grandmothers, get anybody to just start working and interacting with that child. Play games with them. Teach them how to take turns. Play little turn-taking games. Autistic kids resist that. Turn taking was taught to me with board games. Do nursery rhymes. Teach them words. Work with them. The research is very clear; these young children need 20 to 30 hours per week of one-to-one instruction with an effective teacher. Now, there is a lot of controversy on exactly which program to use but everybody agrees that you need that 20 to 30 hours a week of one-to-one contact with an effective teacher.
This slide just shows a teacher grabbing a little kid by the chin and my speech teacher used to do this with me. She would say, "Come on, pay attention." A good teacher has to be gently insistent. If you push too hard then the child may go into sensory overload. If that happens you're not going to get anywhere. How do you know how hard to push?
If you take some kids into a big supermarket like a Walmart or someplace like that, they have a screaming fit. The child feels like he's inside the speaker at the rock 'n roll concert. Some of these kids are monochannel. They are not able to see and hear at the same time. They can either listen to something or they can hear something but they cannot do them both at the same time.
You have heard some of the different labels for problems with the sensory system - sensory problems - problems with sound sensitivity, problems with not tolerating touch, or visual sensitivity occur in many different disorders: autism, dyslexia, learning problems, ADHD, Asperger syndrome, oppositional defiant, head injuries, and many others. These labels are not precise; they are just labels, meaning there is no lab test to show it exists for a child. In the DSM V [about to be released] these labels, mild autism with no speech delay, Asperger syndrome; these will all be merged into autism spectrum disorders with the main emphasis being on problems with social reciprocity, back-and-forth social issues, fixated interests, and repetitive behaviors.
On this slide it shows a little boy putting his hands over his ears. Certain sounds hurt his ears. When I was a little kid, loud sounds like a school bell going off hurt, kind of felt like when a dentist drill hits a nerve. The worst sounds are high-pitched, like a smoke alarm or a fire alarm. You can sometimes desensitize children to these sounds but the child has to initiate the sound as you desensitize. In other words, you might take the smoke alarm, wrap it in five layers of towels and have the child reach inside and turn it on. Gradually you remove the towels so the sound gets less and less muted. Sometimes you can desensitize these things when the child initiates it and sometimes you cannot.
My next slide talks about auditory testing. If you do the standard hearing test where children hear little faint sounds, they will pass that hearing test (unless the ears are full of fluid or some problem like that). Most autistic kids pass it and so they're not deaf. But the auditory threshold is not the same thing as hearing auditory detail. This is the ability to hear the hard consonant sounds, like D for dog, B for boy, T for toy. My speech teacher would enunciate the hard consonant sounds. She would hold up a cup and say, "cup" [emphasized the p sound at the end] and hold up a picture of a dog and say, "dog" [emphasized the g sound at the end]. Slow down, enunciate the sounds. There are some kids that are echolalic and have speech flowing out of them. They know all the TV shows and videos but they have no idea what they mean. Some of these kids sing all the commercials and may try to do a commercial when it is dinnertime. They might sing a McDonald's commercial at dinnertime because they know that song is associated with food. The echolalic kids learn language with hundreds of flash cards. You have to have the picture of the object and then a word on the same side of the card. Some of those cards were shown in the HBO movie [Temple Grandin]. The cards had a picture of a dog and then it said dog underneath it. The word must be on the same side of the card as the picture and that helps the kids start learning how to pick words out of conversation.
This slide talks about attention shifting slowness. One of the big problems in many disorders is it takes much longer to shift back and forth between two different stimuli. For example, let's say a mobile phone rings. It attracts the child's attention. It takes much longer for the child to shift back to what he or she is doing. Tension shifting is very slow. You can sometimes get a phenomena called clipping. I might ask a child to hang up his coat and he might just hear coat and the words hang up were clipped. To help with clipping, get the child's attention first. For example, say, "Tommy, I need to ask you to do something." Now I've got the channel open. Then I would say, "Hang up your coat."
The next slide shows some work that was done by Ami Klin at Yale in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" - social kind of movie I find really boring actually. You can see the yellow line on the slide. The normal person looks at people's eyes. I didn't even know that people had all these secret little eye signals until I read about them in a book when I was 50 years old. The person with autism is looking at the mouth because, remember, they don't hear that well even though the auditory threshold is good. They can hear the faint sound of their favorite video across at the neighbor's house, but that doesn't mean they can hear auditory detail. Also, this slide illustrates attention shifting slowness. Look at how the yellow line shifts back and forth much more quickly and many different times. That yellow line switches back and forth while looking at the two people. The person with autism has not even switched back and forth once. It beautifully shows attention shifting slowness.
This slide shows how a visual image can fragment and break up. I want to emphasize that these sensory kinds of problems happen with many different diagnostic labels. I cannot emphasize that enough. For some people, the images break up, especially when they're tired. All these sensory problems get worse when a child is tired. I'm sure you've all seen when the satellite dish is shaking, and then the image pixelates and gets little spots all over it. That is how the central system can malfunction in some people. I don't have this problem. If I had this problem, I wouldn't be a visual thinker. People who have this problem tend to prefer the auditory sense. They are going to learn more using their auditory sense. I can't emphasize how variable sensory issues are. One kid may have a lot of sound sensitivity. Another kid may have touch sensitivity. Some kids are under-reactive to stimulation. Another kid will have visual problems. These visual problems are inside in the brain; they're not in the eye itself. In the brain, you have color, shape, texture, and different circuits. The circuits have to work together to form images to make the graphics file. Something is wrong with that system that binds all systems together. We call it a binding problem in vision research. Scientists have absolutely no idea how it works, but they know that the circuits have to work together, and if they don't work together, then you get these scrambled up images.
The next slide lists signs you might look for to indicate that a child may have something wrong with his or her visual system. Even though the eye exam shows the child's vision is fine, he or she may still have visual issues. Kids that do have visual issues may do a lot of finger flicking around the eyes, or tilt their heads when they read because they can see better with their peripheral vision. These kids often hate fluorescent lights-60 cycle fluorescent lights. That's the big one. They can see them flickering like a discotheque. There are some new electronic fluorescent lights that have a higher frequency and those may be okay for the student. I'm not sure about the new LED lights or new technologies coming in, but the old-fashioned 60-cycle fluorescent lights are absolutely terrible. People often ask me, "What would you do if you were designing a school for kids with learning problems?" I'd get rid of 60-cycle fluorescent lights; that is number 1 and most important to do. Some kids may have difficulty catching a ball. Again, the little quickie eye exams may show normal.
Now, my next slide shows what print looks like to somebody who has a visual processing problem. You can see how the print is kind of wiggling and jiggling on the page. This problem is common. I have a class in livestock handling where my students have to draw drawings. I have about 2 students out of 60 every semester that have this problem. I can tell they have the problem because they absolutely cannot draw. These kids cannot draw. Drawing is not going to be their talent area.
The next slide shows simple interventions you can do for visual processing problems. Let's say your student is stuck in that classroom that has the old-fashioned fluorescent lights. If there are windows in the room, get that kid's desk over by the window. If you don't have windows, then put 100-watt old-fashioned incandescent light next to the kid's desk. Old-fashioned, energy waster kind of bulb. Those don't flicker. You might also try having them wear a hat.
Also, get the right kind of computer screen. The old TV-type computers flicker, they're absolutely terrible. Some of the flat panels flicker and some don't, but the one kind of screen that absolutely does not flicker is the laptop. I had a student with dyslexia and she would have flunked out of school and failed her classes if she had not had her laptop.
Try printing homework on colored paper, maybe light blue paper, light tan paper, light lavender - all the pale colors. You'll have to find the pale color that works for the child. For each child, it is going to be different.
Another helpful thing is to have the child where irlen-colored lenses. Those are simply colored glasses. Try out all the colors like pale pink, pale lavender, pale gray, and pale tan. Keep trying different colors until you find the color where the print no longer jiggles. A lot of people have gone down to their local store and bought glasses and they found glasses that work. I remember one family whose little kid could only tolerate five minutes at the local supermarket; but after they bought some little glasses with pink lenses, some Disneyland glasses, their child could do an hour of shopping at the supermarket. It cost nothing to try this. I'm talking about going into a store and trying on sunglasses. You want to get the pale colors. I'm from the 60s and we used to call those hippie glasses. You have to shop around to find the color that works. Nobody knows why they work but they help a lot of people. I want to emphasize that not everybody with autism has these problems; maybe only 10% of people with autism have these problems. I'm talking about trying on glasses at a local store; doesn't even cost anything. If it works, it can be very, very helpful.
This slide just talks about some of the severe sensory problems that can exist. I cannot hear when there is background noise. Just the other day, I downloaded a journal article from www.PubMed.org that documented this problem with hearing when there is background noise. In fact, if you want to look up a lot of things, the PubMed database is wonderful. PubMed stands for public medicine. Type that into Google and click on the first link that says PubMed home. This website searches medical databases. You can look up information on autism, veterinary science, or anything to do with medical things.
Regarding auditory problems, a person with autism is often monochannelled. And some with more severe sensory problems have body boundary problems. They can't tell where their hand starts and ends and where the desk begins. Often they're auditory thinkers. If you have an older child who is nonverbal I recommend you get this book by Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, "How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Say Move? Inside My Autistic Mind." He describes a world of sensory scrambling and gives you a good glimpse into how the mind of a nonverbal person with autism works. I have my own books too, "Thinking in Pictures and the Way I See It." I cover a lot of things in there.
Scientists have learned a lot of things about the brain. One of the basic principles is that the frontal cortex of the brain is used less and thinking tends to be more in the back, rear parts of the brain, back in the visual parts of the brain. Basically I think with the visual parts of my brain. Also some recent research that was done on me showed that my amygdala was three times larger than normal. That's the brain's fear center. That explains why I was so anxious. Some people with autism are anxious, others are not. I was saved by taking a low dose of an antidepressant drug; it stopped my constant anxiety and panic attacks. There are other people on the spectrum where antidepressants don't work at all. A recent analysis showed that for people on the autism spectrum, the one antidepressant that works better than all the others is Prozac. You have to use it in very low doses. Too high of a dose causes agitation and insomnia. In my book "Thinking in Pictures," I go into a lot more detail about the use of medication.
This slide shows some brain scans. You can see here that when you see a word, think about a
word, hear about a word, or speak a word, different parts of the brain are turned on. Well, those different parts of the brain have to work together for the brain to work right. One of the big problems in autism is difficulties in the inner-office communication among the different parts of the brain.
The brain is set up in departments of like a great, big office building with all these different departments. The brain is compartmentalized but half your brain consists of white matter. Those are the inner-office communications that connect the different parts of the brain together. This is where persons with autism have abnormalities. At the top of the office building is the President or Chief Executive Officer. That is your frontal cortex. Then we go down to a division vice-president level and that is where language is. Under that level, you have the geek and 'techy' stuff, visual thinking, mathematics, music, all that kind of wonderful stuff. A little further down, we have the emotion center to stir things up, and then you have incoming data lines. Often there are troubles on the incoming data lines. The main abnormality in the brain is that there are just not very many circuits going up to those suits up there in the upstairs office. However, sometimes in some people there may be extra circuits, like down in the math department, that might account for something like amazing math and science skills. One of the basic principles in autism is that, often, there is an area of skill and an area of deficit.
Another big problem in dealing with autism is that is is such a large spectrum, going from geniuses or Einsteins or Mr. Zuckerberg (who created FaceBook), who are are not very social people to people, to those who are nonverbal, and are certainly not going to be doing anything out in Silicon Valley. A huge continuum. It is a true continuum.
This slide kind of shows the inter-office communications between different parts of the brain - sort of like an airline route map. On the east coast of this chart, kind of on the right-hand side, you have New York, Washington, D.C. and those kinds of places. Then you have Chicago in the middle - the amygdala. Then on the west side you have Silicon Valley. When flights get canceled up and down the east coast and a bunch of flights get canceled to Chicago; this causes imbalance, which may account for some of the problems with emotional control. Some of us have rage attacks and things like that because there is less top down control to the amygdala. There also may be extra circuits out on the West Coast and that may account for some of the special intelligence in things like art, mathematics, music, and some of those sorts of things. For one person, the language parts of the brain were wrecked, but art ability came out. You see things like art may be hidden underneath language.
This slide shows a perspective drawing done by a nine year old. Kids that are visual thinkers will often spontaneously just start drawing. These skills will often show up around third or fourth grade. I get asked by parents all the time, "How can I tell what kind of a thinker my child is?" Well, you can't usually tell in kindergarten. Sometimes you can tell but usually it is more around third or fourth grade or 7 or 8 years when it shows up. The visual thinkers are going to love to draw things. If a child just wants to draw airplanes all the time, try to broaden that out. Draw some places where airplanes go. Draw the airport. Draw an airplane hanger. Draw a catering truck that brings food to the airplane. In other words, broaden out those interests. You can take those fixated interest and use them to motivate the child. The child likes airplanes, so read about airplanes. Do math about airplanes. Read about the history of aviation.
This slide shows movie reels inside a little kid's head. My thinking is basically pictures in my mind. The HBO movie beautifully showed how my mind thinks in pictures. In the movie, there is a scene where the word shoe is said and a bunch of shoes come up in rapid succession in my mind. That is exactly how I think. The movie is very clinically accurate on showing my sensory issues, my anxiety, and my speech patterns. They did a really good job making sure those parts were accurate. Also they showed my projects accurately; all the things that were built in the movie were accurate. There were some things that were fictionalized but the sensory issues certainly were not.
The next slide shows a picture of one of my cattle-handling facilities. When I design a piece of equipment, I can test run it in my head. I know other people can't do that.
This slide shows the dip vac system that HBO built for the movie. That really turned me on.
This slide shows drawings I did back in the 70s for the dip vat and they did it right off the drawings. The way I sold my jobs (since I was weird) was to show people my drawings. I had to sell my work not myself. This is really important in employment - making portfolios. Show off your work. If you're good at programming, you show off some of your code. If you're good at art, you show off some of your art. Good at writing? Show off some samples of some newsletters you wrote. I sold my work not myself.
The next drawing just shows an aerial view of the dip vat. I love to show my drawings off.
This slide shows a circular handling facility in Canada. I just loved to fantasize that some day, 1000 years in the future, someone's going to dig this up and wonder what it was. I think that is kind of interesting.
This next slide shows a picture of a little boy with boxes in his head. This was written by the son of Karen Simmons and it is in a book called "Little Rainman." He's putting or sorting cat and dog pictures into little boxes. That is how the autistic brain thinks. Sorting images into different file folders. It is bottom-up thinking. My concept of what a dog is, is based on a whole lot of dog pictures I have put in the dog file. My concept of what a house is, is put in a file folder labeled house and apartment buildings. I'm seeing a different set of pictures for apartment building. For condo, I see a slightly different set of pictures than I do for house.
The next slide just says I realized my thinking was different when I asked people about church steeples. This is something I wrote in the 1970s. When I say church steeple, I just see a whole lot of specific ones.
This slide just shows what I found out when I questioned people. I was just shocked to find out that most people see this generalized generic sort of church steeple. It is a general image. What has been learned in brain science is that when people generalize, the thinking is coming out of the association cortex. When I think, I'm going all the way back into the primary visual cortex. About half the people see these generalized pictures, especially when they don't know the item or own one. If I ask you about your home, your car, or your dog, you will visualize specifics. But something like steeples, you don't own, so you tend to generalize. For me, I think of specific steeples, and they go through my mind like Google pictures.
You can click through these slides of steeple, my childhood church, the church at Fort Collins on another slide. And then you can click through a picture of old north church in Boston and Notre Dame and then Westminster Abbey. You can just kind of click through the slides pretty quickly. That is how they flash up into my mind.
This next slide shows some of my brain scans. I used to joke that I had a huge Internet line going deep into my visual cortex. Well, Dr. Nancy Minshew, at the University of Pittsburgh, and her colleagues did some scans on me. They found that I had a huge Internet trunk line going deep into my primary visual cortex. That would explain my visual thinking. When I saw that - WOW!
The next slide shows a scan taken as a slice through my forehead and you can see I have a really big one on the right-hand side. When I saw these pictures, they were real mind blowers. Some other research at the University of Utah has shown that my inner rhinal cortex, part of the brain's graphic card, is really huge. And then I do have a defect in my parietal cortex and that would explain my problems with math and doing algebra. Algebra was absolutely impossible.
This next slide is really important because it talks about specialized thinking types. I'm a photo realistic thinker. I think in photo realistic pictures. I absolutely could not do algebra. I'm finding this is true for some kids who cannot do algebra but they can do geometry. They can do trig. Kids who are not able to do algebra need to be allowed to go on to geometry and trig. Another kind of mind is a pattern thinker with more abstract visual thinking. These are the kids who are good at math, and often good at music. In fact, I was just reading a recent scientific article that showed that playing musical instruments and doing things with music actually helps kids learn mathematics. I think it is a real shame that so many schools have taken out art and music and wood shop and sewing and all of these kinds of hands-on things. The kids who are good at math are often poor at reading. I've actually found documentation for this now in the scientific literature; it's something I have been reviewing and I'm finding papers that support what I have on this slide. I think it is kind of interesting. I figured out this slide long before it got researched but just recently, as I've been digging deep into the literature, I have found studies that support what I say on this slide.
Then a third type of mind is a verbal thinker. This is the kid with Asperger syndrome who loves math. These kids can be average, and they love history, and they're not visual thinkers. They're poor at drawing. When you look at math skills in kids with autism, there is a segment that is superior and another one that is average. That is something that is showing up in the literature. There can be mixtures of the these thinking types.
And then you have auditory thinkers, people who are strictly auditory people.
The next slide shows a praying mantis made out of paper; it is made out of a single sheet of folded paper. No Scotch tape. What you see is the folding pattern. I have had some people criticize my slides because I don't have enough wording on them. I'm trying to get you away from words. Some of these people live in a world that is not words.
The next slide shows a rainbow. At the basis of the rainbow is an electric power tower. This is my visual image for the power and glory in the Lord's Prayer. I had absolutely no idea what it meant when I was younger. When they said, "Our father thou art in heaven," I didn't know what it meant, but one autistic kid thought it was God in heaven painting on an easel. I didn't know what a man had to do with the end of a prayer.
This is an important slide. All of my thinking uses specific examples to create concepts. It is bottom up and not top down. I cannot emphasize how important this is. All concepts are learned by taking lots of different specific examples and putting them into categories. The normal human mind is top down. Everything is learned with specific examples. This picture shows objects you can categorize. You can categorize these things into red objects. Work with getting the child to make up new categories, like "Pick out the round objects." He may pick up those old VHS tapes because they have round reels inside them. How about "Categorize the objects made of plastic," "objects you wear," "objects you might get at work." Take something like the ball, you might use that for a little exercise ball for your hand. It might be used at work. If you just use it outside then it might be used for play. An object can be used for different things under different circumstances. We need to teach kids that.
The next slide shows a test that measures seeing detail. You've got big letters that are made out of little letters. And the autistic kid will see the little letters quicker. You flash a letter on the screen and say, "Pick out the little letters," and they'll pick out the little letters quicker than picking out the great big S. They see the detail.
This slide just shows a bookcase full of lots of file folders. People always ask me if autistic thinking is just memorization? Well in the beginning, it is just memorization, scripting, but as you get more and more and more information shoved into the kid's head, he starts to put it into categories. When I was a real young kid they used to call me tape recorder. I couldn't figure out why they called me tape recorder. The reason why they called me tape recorder is that I always used the same phrases. As you get kids out and get them exposed to more and more and more stuff, there is more information loaded into the database. Sort of like filling up the Internet. I don't know, but we older people can remember when the Internet was new and didn't it have much stuff it in. Then gradually more and more stuff got put in it. You've got to get these kids out, expose them to lots of interesting things. Mother was always pushing me to do new things. Always pushing me. And, you know, she would give me some choices. Originally I was afraid to go out to the ranch and she told me I could go for a week or go for all summer. I ended up choosing to stay all summer. We have to get kids out doing things. And for me, table manners were just pounded in.
This slide shows teaching math with different lengths of blocks. I had a set of these blocks. They were very, very helpful to me.
This slide just shows teaching math with little puzzle piece things.You can add them up but I want to emphasize you don't want to teach math with just little plastic pieces because the child might think it only applies to plastic pieces.
So this slide emphasizes the importance of teaching number concepts using a variety of objects. Let's take candy. I can have five pieces of candy. I eat two. I have three pieces left. Teach fractions by cutting up an apple and use that to teach math concepts.
The slide shows my "Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships" book I did with Sean Barrons. Sean and I are different. There are things about us that are the same. We both had fixated interests - that was very much the same - but Sean had a few more social circuits hooked up and was very frustrated about his problems with dating. I'm kind of a geek; happy to go out and do my building things; and I chose brain scans. When I was looking at a brain scan and shown different pictures, pictures of people and pictures of things, I was a lot more interested. We need to have people in this world that are interested in things because we wouldn't have things like electricity otherwise. Edison, who invented the power plant, would be labeled autistic today.
The next slide emphasizes the importance of getting social interaction through shared interests - things like computer club, robotics club, drama club, art club, playing music. Get kids involved in these different specialized things because this is where they're going to find friends. This is where I had found refuge from teasing - and believe you me I had lots of teasing and it can be really damaging. I just read an article in my brand new psychiatry journal showing the really bad affect of verbal abuse on children and we need to work to get this teasing stopped. But when I was working on a shared interest like horseback riding or model rocket club, these were places where there was no teasing. And I think it is important to get kids into these specialized interests because these are areas where they can get friends.
The next slide just talks about categorizing behavior problems. Let's say you're working now with a kid who is a little more severe and you have a behavior problem - maybe having a lot of tantrums. You have to figure out whether it is it biology or behavior. Is it a psychological problem or is it a problem with behavior? The most common biological problems are sensory oversensitivity. A child might not be able to tolerate a noisy gym or maybe he doesn't want to go into a specific room because he sees the smoke alarm and is afraid it might go off. Or maybe she sees a cell phone and it reminds her of a cell phone with a horrible ring so she's afraid it might go off. Does he have a hidden painful medical problem? Some of the worst hidden, painful medical problems are gastrointestinal and that is starting to be very well-documented. There are a lot of kids that have acid reflux and sometimes they'll do weird stretching behaviors or oftentimes don't want to sit because their tummy hurts. They don't want to lie down because their tummy hurts. They need to be treated for acid reflux. Heartburn. Get some heartburn medicine. Be a good detective. Maybe he has an earache. Maybe he has a toothache. You've got to rule these things out in somebody that is nonverbal. Make sure the child doesn't have something medically wrong. Some other issues can be frustration because he or she cannot communicate. I was so frustrated when I could not communicate that I threw a tantrum. Sometimes you throw a tantrum to get attention and sometimes you throw a tantrum to get out of doing something. You have to figure out the motivation.
The next slide shows sensory and neural accommodations that we may have to make for certain kids. For some kids the sensory overload is so bad that you have to make accommodations for them - like the fire drill for some kids, you're going to have to take them out before fire drill. Some kids are not able to tolerate a large supermarket. Some kids may be fine when they're not tired. When they're fresh in the morning they might be able to tolerate the noisy supermarket. For others, you might desensitize them by making them do some things in noisy places. Some will never be desensitized. I can't tolerate scratchy clothes. I have real difficulty finding really comfortable things to sleep in. For me, different kinds of cotton T-shirts will itch - one 100% cotton T-shirt will itch and another one won't. It has something to do with the weave. I wear a lot of my underwear inside out. I have poor handwriting and some kids do too. Keyboards need to be introduced early. If you have a kid who is 5 years old but has no speech, get the keyboard out so he can learn how to type. Somebody like Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay looks very, very low functioning but he can type. I asked him one time what it was like before he had typing and he said it was emptiness.
Getting kids away from fluorescent lights is a biggy. Also just about everybody on the spectrum, no matter where they are, has difficulty with multi-tasking. I cannot multi-task. If I had to work in a busy office and type and answer the phone at the same time that would be a disaster.
Another thing for me is that I cannot remember long strings of verbal instructions. I have to write it down. Writing it down is really important for me. My upbringing really helped me. I was taught turn taking in conversations and activities. It was taught in the situation, like at the dining room table. If I talked for too long, my mother would say, "You have got to give somebody else time to talk." Turn taking was also taught with board games, so play lots of board games. Being on time was pounded in. I got an alarm clock when I was young and I was expected to use it and get up on time. I was also expected to do things I was asked to do, do things that would please other people, be considerate. How do you teach a concept like being considerate? I remember one time I woke up my mother so she could open a little bottle of glue for me. She was not happy about it. That was an example of not being considerate. When I made social mistakes, I was corrected. My mother didn't scream at me, she would just tell me what I was supposed to do. If I reached cross the table too much, my mother would say, "Ask your sister to pass it. " I was also taught to say please and thank you. That was just drilled in. All kids were taught that in the 50s.
This slide shows some bad behavior that was absolutely not tolerated. Being rude. What is being rude? Sticking your tongue out is rude. If I did that I was told that was rude. In the 50s you didn't call grownups by their first name. That would be rude. Bad table manners were rude. Also absolutely consistent discipline between home and school is important. The rules were the same at home and school. Parents and teachers have to work together on those sorts of things. Poor grooming is rude. I was a real slob. There is a scene in the movie where my boss slammed deodorant down on the table in front of me. This actually happened. I think back on it and I thank my boss for doing that. Laughing at somebody that is overweight is rude behavior. These are the things that Mother made very clear to me were not okay.
This slide shows Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory and a couple of kids with tie-dyed shirts. The point is, it is fine to be eccentric. Don't try to 'degeek' the geek. You're not going to make me into something I'm not. But a filthy, dirty slob, that is something you have to get cleaned up. Like a guy who doesn't shave don't - if you don't like shaving cream, use an electric razor or grow a beard. One or the other. You wouldn't have a civilized society if didn't have rules, people doing really bad things all the time, killing people, burning down buildings, and stealing everything.
And we have courtesy rules that help people get along. But you also have times to break some rules - maybe some stupid school rules - like if a kid is too young to go to the Community College and you sign them up anyway. There are rules where you have Draconian penalties, especially in the post-September 11th age. There are things that used to be naughty boy's games that now get you in tons of trouble. Little sexual transgressions can get you on the sex offender list and wreck your life. Those are the system rules and you don't touch those.
When I was in high school it [system rules] was sex, alcohol, and smoking. I found I could get away with lots of illegals, like riding my horse out in the pasture without a staff member being present, but not the big three. I figured this out early.
Teaching values is the next slide that shows in the 50s, the movies had much better values; very clear values about right and wrong. That is something that is not being taught today.
The next slide just shows some hidden, painful medical problems. I already talked about the acid reflux and heartburn. How about constipation? How about urinary tract infections? Yeast infections? I have had yeast infections. They're miserable. One of the ways to control those is to go on a real low-carb diet. What about ear infections? Toothaches? You have got to rule this stuff out. You might have a child who has been acting good, then all of a sudden he is acting bad. You have to make sure, especially if he's nonverbal, that he doesn't have a hidden, painful medical problem.
The next slide shows my squeezing machine. When I reached puberty, I had horrible panic attacksnstant fear. Now I know why I had constant fear. My fear center was three times bigger than normal. It still is today, even after being on antidepressants for 30 years. But the squeeze machine helped my anxiety. Another thing that helps anxiety is exercise. We have got to get these kids out exercising. We have got to get all the sugar and junk out of their diets. There are some kids helped by the wheat-free and the dairy-free diets. They are just a subgroup. But some of these kids that have all the digestive problems are the ones that may need that diet. And some of these kids actually have celiac decease. I recently searched this on PubMed on the Internet during Christmas vacation. That was really kind of fun. Getting the tons of sugar out of my diet and getting a lot more exercise really helps. There is mixed evidence on an omega-3 diet. For some, I think it is helpful, especially if they're getting a real Omega-3 diet.
The next slide just shows fearmain emotion in autism. That is certainly true for me.
This is another picture of the squeezing machine.
And the next slide just shows simple ways to do deep pressure in little kids. Little kids don't need to have an expensive squeezing machine; it would be nice to have, but you can do the same with simple things, like getting under mattresses and sofa cushions. Some kids crave pressure and other kids are not interested in pressure. This is where autistic kids are different. When you're doing this pressure, maybe do some speech therapy. Do some ABA at the same time. When you do some of the sensory interventions, it sometimes opens up a channel, because some of these kids are hearing with like a bad mobile phone. When you take the phone outside, it works better. When you do some of these sensory things, it's sort of like taking their phone outside; all of a sudden the bad phone gets better and their hearing stops cutting in and out. You want to do this for only 20 minutes at a time. You do it for 20 minutes and then you stop. I want to emphasize that not every child reacts well to deep pressure. You want to do this on the kids that are deep pressure responders. This is why in the literature you get so many mixed results. They're just assigning subjects by diagnosis of autism rather than assigning treatments based on what kind of sensory problems they have.
The next slide shows an occupational therapist swinging a child slowly on a swing. Sometimes you can get some speech out when you do this. Sometimes if you get them to sing, they can sometimes sing words before they can speak them. Do a lot of nursery rhymes. That can get them singing and talking.
Here is a little kid wearing a weighted vest. Some kids respond really well to weighted vests and others do not.
This slide shows the importance of getting kids so they'll tolerate hugging and affection. You need to work on desensitizing them. You're not going to get wool against my skin but it is possible to get kids that don't want to be hugged desensitized with deep pressure. You just have to be gently insistent and it is going to help them to develop feelings of kindness.
The next slide talks about preparing for employment. We've got to get teenagers doing jobs. I'm seeing too many kids get through college and they have never done any work. Kids in middle school too need to be working too, like walking dogs for people. I know there are no paper routes any morethink that is a real shameut mowing lawns, shoveling sidewalks, and another really good job for middle schoolers is fixing other people's computers. A lot of them are very good with computers. When that neighbor calls and her computer has crashed, they have to go and fix it. They need to be getting these work skills. The movie also showed my science teacher really well. When I was in high school, I was just goofing around. I wasn't interested in studying. A good teacher can really get a kid turned around. Oftentimes it is the shop teacher or science teacher that turns kids around. I think it is a shame that we have a shortage of these kinds of teachers. There are way too many drugs being given out to kids. I looked at some recent data on drugging, especially boys. Just saw a disgusting graph where the amount of psychiatric drugs being given out to young boys is absolutely revolting. Get kids exercising more, get sugar and garbage out of the diet, get them interested in classes, and take them out to visit interesting places. Visit factories. Visit farms. Visit all kinds of interesting places. Bring trade journals into class. View all kinds of great science websites. I was just looking at a wonderful website called Fold it. You actually do real science on protein folding. Actual results on folds can go into journals. There is another great site called Wolfram Mathematica. A great math website. Get kids interested in these things. Take kids out. They have to get out and see stuff. Also another thing I learned, I had to sell my work not myself. Lots of times a parent can teach kids their profession. Any job that is on a computer, done on a computer can be taught to a kid in middle school. No health and safety issues, and these kids obviously cannot work in a factory, but if the parent's job involved a computer the kid can be taught how to do the job. We have to emphasize what you're going to do when you grow up.
This slide shows an ugly house and how I fixed it up. I got fixated on the ski house but I didn't go decorate it with cattle deck rather I decorated in a way that other people would like it. This is really important. We've got to start teaching these skills.
This slide just shows Lego Mindstorms--another really great activity to get kids involved in. But the kid is going to have to learn how to work with another kid to make a robot. Maybe one kid does the program and the other kid does the mechanical parts. Also they need to learn that they have to make a robot to do an assigned task. This is really important. They have got to learn how to do or use their creativity to do an assigned task. The same thing needs to be done with drawing and mathematics and programming. They have got to learn to do an assigned task.
I just like to show off my drawings--that turns me on. Early on when I went to my first AOL engineering meeting, people thought I was weird but when I whipped out a drawing I got respect.
This slide just shows one of my facilities done using Google Sketchup. Google Sketchup is another really cool thing. It's a three-dimensional drawing program; you can download the beginner's version free off the Internet. There are a lot of people now retiring who can teach some of these kids programming, teach them engineering skills. We've got to start getting these boys engaged. I am really horrified about what is going on with some of the boys. And the amount of powerful drugs given out like candy is horrifying. There are some older children and adults that need medication. I was one of the ones that needed antidepressants and they worked very well for anxiety for me. The question is whether they work for depression. Prozac works absolutely fantastic for anxiety. I know a lot of visual thinkers that would be on drugs and alcohol if they were not on a tiny dab of Prozac every day. It turned their lives around. I know three people that had their lives turned around by that. Let's get into our educational resources like community colleges. That is where a lot of the good teachers are that are like Mr. Silverman, my science teacher. He got an honorary doctorate for the movies. He was a NASA space scientist. Some of the kids being tortured with teasing need to finish up high school online or at a technical school.
This slide shows really great science websites.
You have got to show kids interesting things. This is a scene from the HBO movie. I was shown a movie of this optical illusion room and I got really fixated on that so I built one.
This is an example of showing kids interesting stuff.
The next slide shows the HBO movie crew. There were a lot of people with Asperger down there on that movie crew. I'm not going to say what jobs they were doing because I cannot identify them. How did they get the jobs? This is through the back door because front door interviewing doesn't work. We have to figure out how to get through the back door where you can show your portfolio. Do you know somebody that can get you in? You have got to get the portfolio shown to the technical people or the writing people. Say a girl is good at writing. Maybe she needs to write for the church newsletter, or write for a neighborhood newsletter. She has to do things to build up a portfolio.
This slide shows the Swift plant where I started my career. There was a scene in the movie where I had a chance meeting with a lady that got me into the Swift plant. We had to call it Abbott because Swift still exists; they had to give it a fake name. There is a door and you have to find that door.
For the last few slides, I'm going to go over jobs for different kinds of thinkers. This slide shows good jobs for visual thinkers like me. What I do with cattle handling equipment is called industrial design. That is a great field. There are college majors in industrial design. In fact, one of my brother's kids is majoring in industrial design right now. He's a visual thinker like me. Other jobs for visual thinkers: Computer network specialist, graphic arts, animation, architectural drafting, auto mechanics. A lot of these boys would be great auto mechanics but you need to expose them to auto mechanics or they're not going to get interested in it. Fixing computers, photography, animal trainer, architecture--get them exposed to these jobs. We need to start exposing them in middle school. Now architecture is done on a computer. You have middle school kids who can start learning that--start learning the job. We don't have any problems with OSHA or safety if it is done on a computer.
The next slide shows jobs for the pattern thinkers, music and math thinkers, and the big ones are engineering, physics, and computer programming. A lot of these kids are getting addicted to video games. That is all they're doing all day--playing video games. Let's get them interested in programming of video games. The problem is for every kid who may be a good programmer, there are 10 others who are just video game addicts. We have to limit the video game playing to an hour a day. If they want to program the game, then it is fine to spend eight hours, but otherwise playing it is one hour a day is enough. Let's go on to verbal thinkers, like the guy that loves history. Some of these kids would make good special education teachers and good speech therapists and good journalists and language translators--good at anything to do with recordkeeping, doing legal research in a lawyer's office--they will be good at that. And I won't get into bad jobs for people with autism but one of the biggest problems can be multitasking and remembering long strings of verbal detail.
My final slide before I end shows jobs for people with poor verbal skills. There are lots of jobs--stocking shelves, shelving books in the library, (I need to take data entry off; that has been made obsolete), working in a recycling plant, inventory control; some are good at crafts and art. We need to get more of a mindset when kids get into middle school of what they are going to do when they grow up. When I was in high school and goofing all around and not studying, I was learning a lot of good work skills. I took care of nine horses. That gate that was shown in the movie, I actually built that. That was done when I was 15 years old. We've got to get thinking in that mindset. We now have five minutes left for some questions.
>> Linda Schreiber: This is so informative. Thank you so much, Temple. I have a couple of questions. You mentioned how important it is to be a part of a social group. I wondered how you felt about online social groups, such as FaceBook, and how that might either be an advantage or a disadvantage for kids?
>> Dr. Temple: I think FaceBook is a really wonderful thing but I think kids need some social interaction with live people. You know, like be in a choir, do artwork together, be a robotic's Mindstorm. Do band. All the different things you can do in high school. I think it is important for them to learn how to work with other people doing an activity. I think FaceBook is a great thing. I'm all for it. I don't think that replaces doing live activities. And we also need to be doing a lot more daily living things, like just going out to a restaurant. I found a kid who was in middle school and he didn't know how to order food at McDonald. That is ridiculous. These are the kinds of things you need to teach them, things like how to shop. By the time I was 7 or 8 years old I was shopping by myself and I learned that you don't touch something unless you're going to buy it. You have to take kids out in the community and just have them do these things. You take them into McDonald's when it is not busy and they have to learn how to order food. They have got to learn these daily living skills and we have not put enough emphasis on that kind of stuff.
>> Linda: That would really help them with social interaction as well it would seem.
>> Dr. Temple: Yes, learn how to talk to the person behind the counter correctly.
>> Linda: You mentioned that it is important to prepare kids for the job world. I wondered if you have any suggestions for preparing them for post-secondary education? If I were a high school teacher, how would I prepare a student for the next level of education? Do you have any suggestions for preparing the student?
>> Dr. Temple: Going to college or something like that?
>> Linda: Yes. Any postsecondary education, whether it is technical college or perhaps a four year college program. What can we could do to prepare them?
>> Dr. Temple: One of the things I think they need is to visit the place. You want to get rid of the surprises and so a few years before they're going to graduate from high school they need to go out and visit the technical school so they can get turned on about the great things they can learn there. The thing that got me turned around in school--in studying and going from being an awful student to being a good student--is I had the goal of becoming a scientist. If you take the child out to see how cool it is to be a mechanic, he may be motivated to study in school. He needs to see these places and have a goal. You want to get these kids fixated on having a career like being an auto mechanic (and the wonderful thing about that [auto mechanics], is that it is not going to get outsourced. I have been reading a gally proof or new book that Jon Robertson is coming out with and he talks about how he got his jobs and how he was introduced to auto mechanics. He became an auto mechanic. But when he was in high school, he used to go visit the University labs and it was wonderful he was allowed to do this (probably kind of illegal, but good). That is what got him turned around; he got to go out to the university labs and get to play with really fun electronic equipment. We have got to get kids doing these things.
>> Linda: Excellent idea.
You mentioned a couple of your books while you were presenting. Where can we buy them?
>> Dr. Temple: My books "Thinking in Pictures" and "The Way I See It" you can buy at any Barnes and Noble store. All of my books are available on Amazon.com. The Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay book you have to buy on Amazon or one of the other book sites. "Thinking in Pictures" and "The Way I See It," you can also order through Future Horizons.
>> Amy Hansen: On behalf of SpeechPathlogy.com, we want to think Linda Schreiber and Kristine Retherford for this wonderful interview with Temple.
Communication Access Realtime Translation is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.