Temple Grandin and The Autistic Brain
Temple Grandin was diagnosed with autism as a young girl, but has not let that stop her from becoming a highly respected professor, author, and doctor of animal science. She’s done extraordinary work in animal behavior science and on the study of autism, and is an activist, an inventor and a role model for many. Temple recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about her new book,”The Autistic Brain.” Excerpts of the interview appear below.
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Ron Bennington: Congratulations on the book. And there’s been a lot of new findings about autistic thinking over the last couple of years.
Temple Grandin: Well, there’s been a lot of changes in diagnosis too. In the first chapter of “The Autistic Brain”, Richard Panek and I review the history of the diagnosis, which since the ’50s has changed a whole lot – from being psychological to neurological. Also, the diagnosis has been broadened to some. Originally in the diagnosis, you had to have speech delay in order to be labeled autistic, now you can have just social problems and get labeled “Aspergers”. Now they’re changing that. It’s not a precise diagnosis. Autism is a big sprectum and it goes from Einstein who had no speech until age 3 to Steve Jobs to somebody who remains non-verbal and very very severely handicapped.
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Temple Talks About the Autism Spectrum
Ron Bennington: Like you said, some amount of it is fantastic. It helps you excel and find things and other parts of it could be disabling.
Temple Grandin: Well, yes. And the thing that happens on the high end of the spectrum is uneven skills. At one of the spectrum, you’ve got a brilliant radio engineer that’s keeping this station on the air. If you didn’t have a little bit of autism, you wouldn’t have a radio station. It never would have been invented. And you get too much autism and you’re going to get very severe handicaps where even with the best education, the person would have to live in supported living. It’s a big spectrum. It’s like a little bit of the trait, you get somebody that’s an artist or you get somebody who might be a good musician or a math whiz, computer programmer. Good at one thing, bad at something else. One of things I always emphasize is building on the kid’s strength. My ability when I was young was art and that I turned into my animal behavior studies and also you use it in designing equipment.
Ron Bennington: So you were able to build upon your first passion by adding new passions to it and new senses of discovery for you.
Temple Grandin: Basically, I’m a total visual thinker – where a lot of people that end up in radio tend to be more verbal thinkers. See, every thing I think about – there is a picture. And then there are other people who are very verbal and there are other people that are more mathematical pattern thinkers and they’re people that are good at computer programming. And in “The Autistic Brain”, we’ve got a whole chapter dedicated to research showing that there are two kinds of visual thinking. There’s the object photorealistic visual thinking and then there’s the more mathematical “where you are” pattern thinking – where you’re located in space. Basically, the art type and the engineering type. And to get good projects, you need to have both of those working together.
Ron Bennington: And what we need to do with our kids is not to act like any one type of thinking is better than another type of thinking.
Temple Grandin: Different kinds of minds compliment each other. As a visual thinker, I tend to be disorganized. So, Richard Panek, the wonderful science writer, he got the book organized. See, you have to have different minds working together. Like for example, on something like the Fukushima nuclear power plant – I can’t design a nuclear power plant, but there’s no way I would have put those emergency back-up generators for that super important emergency pump – put those things in a non-waterproof basement where those generators are going to drown and not work. There’s no way I would have done that. Because I would have seen the water coming in there. And what I found out is that the mathematician didn’t see it. They just don’t see it.
Ron Bennington: And it’s because their brains, their minds don’t go to that spot.
Temple Grandin: Their minds don’t go there. My mind doesn’t go into the mathematics that would be required to design a nuclear reactor, but my mind can visualize all different kinds of ways it could break. And I could see water going into that non-waterproof basement. Those generators and all the wiring is under water and you’re in so much trouble. It’s just terrible.
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Temple Talks About Being Autistic as a Young Girl
Ron Bennington: Well, when you were coming up, most schools didn’t understand autism, correct? Your parents had to kind of help you find more and more places where you could excel.
Temple Grandin: One thing, Mother had a really good sense of how to stretch me and push me. I’m seeing too many kids that are kind of geeky and on the real mild end of the spectrum – you know, they ought to be a computer scientist out in California. And they haven’t learned how to shop. I mean just basics. How to shake hands. When I was a young child, I was probably about 7 or 8 – I put on my party dress and mother had me shake hands with her dinner guests and then I had to say “how do you do?” – to them. And I had to serve them hors d’oeuvres. And I loved doing it because it was kind of grown up. But it was teaching important social rules. Learning how to take turns. Also, in the ’50s, those things were taught in a much more rigid way, But I’m seeing too many kids on the mild end of the spectrum who haven’t been taught to shake hands, they don’t know how to shop, nobody’s taught them any manners – and these things have to be taught like coaching an actor in a play. One of the big problems we have in autism is – at one of the spectrum you’ve got an Einstein who didn’t talk until age 3 and at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got somebody much more handicapped and is going to have to be living in supported housing for the rest of their life. See, it’s almost like 2 groups here.
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Temple Talks About Parenting Advice for Children with Autism
Ron Bennington: So, what would you do and say to people…and we have many listening to our show that have children or family members with autism – what types of things should they be doing right away?
Temple Grandin: Well, first thing is – little kids. If you’ve got a 2 year old or a 3 year old that’s not talking – worst thing you can do is nothing. You’ve got to work with that child. And if you’re somewhere where there’s no services, get some grandmothers, some students to volunteer, play turn-taking games with them, teach them language, teach them words, nursery rhymes. You’ve got to work on engaging that kid. You also have to be careful about the sensory problems. They’re very variable. There’s some kids, you take them in a big, crowded, noisy supermarket and they just can’t stand it. Because they feel like they’re inside the speaker at a rock concert. And there’s others where that won’t be a problem. There’s others that can’t stand fluorescent lights. Sensory problems are extremely variable and they can be real problem. People need to understand that. The other thing you’ve got to do – is take something the kid is good at. And there’s a lot of people in music I’m sure that are a little bit on the spectrum.
Ron Bennington: Sure.
Temple Grandin: Let’s work on developing that. Well, if the kid doesn’t take music in school then he’s not going to get exposed to it. I think one of the worst things the schools have done is take out art and music and cooking and sewing and wood shop and welding – all those practical hands on kinds of things. Because this is where a lot of these kids can excel. And if they’re good at music, we want to develop that. My ability in art was really encouraged and I was encouraged to do lots of different kinds of art. Not just the same horse heads over and over and over again.
Ron Bennington: Right. And because of that, you were able to start designing over and over because you had great eye and hand coordination.
Temple Grandin: Well, the other thing is – I learned work skills. I’m seeing too many of these kids that get a label. They have ADHD and they get a little bit of Aspergers, autism in the diagnostic system when they changed it, they made social communication disorder. They get a label and they go – poor little Jimmy. He’s got a little bit of autism, we’ll order his hamburger for him. No. Little Jimmy’s got to go up to the counter and learn how to order it himself. Learn how to shop. Learn you can’t go into the stores and touch everything. Learning just these basic skills. Saying please and thank you. It’s just got to be taught out in the community. And I’m seeing too many kids that have never learned to work. When I was 13, I had a little sewing job that my mother arranged for me. Two afternoons a week. And then when I was 15, I was cleaning 8 horse stalls every day. There’s a discipline to doing work. And I think it’s a shame that the paper routes are gone. What kids could do today in the city is walk dogs for people. And this needs to start at around 12. And they’ve got to walk that dog every day even if it is raining. There’s a discipline to work. Even if you’ve got a job that you love. Let’s take music for example. Constantly packing up your stuff and moving to another venue, that’s not fun, but that’s part of that job. There’s grunt work that goes along with the fun parts because it is work after all. And I’m seeing too many smart kids aren’t learning the discipline of work and they’re sitting at home playing video games all day. And they’re not going into the video game industry. If they’re going in to that, I would be fine with that. But they’re not getting employed because they hadn’t learned how to work.
Ron Bennington: Well, it’s because we don’t like things to be unpleasant these days. When you were younger, you thought “unpleasant” is just part of life. Today, we stay away from anything that’s unpleasant.
Temple Grandin: Well, I love the kind of…you know I got recognition for running a horse barn. I had to put the horses in and out of the barn, clean the stalls, repair the barn, make sure I was very careful about how I fed the horses. And there were parts of that job that weren’t fun – carrying bushel baskets of sawdust up the stairs to bed the stalls was not fun. That was one part of that job I actually hated and I rigged up a pulley system so I wouldn’t have to do that anymore.
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Temple Talks About the Importance of Learning Practical Skills
Ron Bennington: Because when people are employed, it changes the way they think about themselves, it changes the way they think about society.
Temple Grandin: I’ve seen students where they’ve gone all the way through college and they a degree in something like philosophy or political science and they’ve never worked. By the time I got out of college, I had done an internship. It was an unpaid internship where I worked in a research lab and I had to rent my own house with another person. And another place – I rented a room in a house when I did a job one summer, taking care of little autistic kids. I had a lot of work skills by the time I graduated. I painted all kinds of signs for different events.
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Temple Talks About Handling Social Problems
Ron Bennington: So what do you do when you have that shy kid or we think about him as a shy kid and he doesn’t want to get out there and get social, what do we do for those kind of kids?
Temple Grandin: We’ve got to get him into doing things. And one of the things to do – you can’t just suddenly throw a surprise at him. You can’t just toss him in the deep end of the pool. I’m using that figuratively. That does not work. But let’s say you take that shy kid and let’s say he’s interested in music – well, we’re going to get him into music class. Let’s get him in with peers where there’s a shared interest. I was teased horribly and bullied in school. Now the only places I was not bullied was science lab and horseback riding. Because the students that did that, didn’t bully. Get him involved in those sort of things. But you are going to have to get him out of the house. When I was 15 and I had a chance to go to my aunt’s ranch – well, mother gave me a choice, not going wasn’t one of the choices, the choice was – one week or all Summer. And once I got out there, I loved it. But we’ve got to stretch these kids. There’s a tendency sometimes to coddle these kids – gotta stretch them. Okay, if you know someone who’s knows music, you bring them in here and start showing them stuff. We’ve got to show kids interesting stuff. The radio station is a really interesting place, they don’t ever see it. We’ve got to use those back doors on how we can get kids in, showing them interesting stuff because autistic kids tend to get fixated on things. I want them fixated on things that can turn into work. Like being a radio station engineer.
Ron Bennington: Now, you said it made you nervous to try new things when you were a kid because if you hadn’t seen it before, you didn’t know what you were going to get into.
Temple Grandin: Mother had a really good sense of how hard to push. And one thing that did show up in my brain scan is that my fear center was 3 times larger than normal. I have now been on anti-depressants for years. And there are some individuals with high panic attacks and anxiety where they need to take a little bit of Prozac, a really low dose, because if you take too high a dose, you’re going to get agitated and insomnia. That will also help keep you off the drugs and alcohol. Because I know that’s a problem with a lot of creative types.
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Temple Talks About Getting Kids Out of the House
Ron Bennington: Do you think we’ve got to get kids into nature more too, Temple?
Temple Grandin: Yes, I think we do. And we’ve got to get kids exercising a whole lot more and we’re getting too many video game reclusives. Some people say – well, you’re just an old fogey that doesn’t like video games. Look, if that kid can learn programming and go into that industry, fine. But I’m the kind of kid that could have become a video game addict. I can’t program. I tried it. I had access to the exact same computer that Bill Gates had access to and I could not do it. And then, I don’t do the right type of artwork for video games. And we can’t let them just become reclusives in the house. We’ve got to pull them out. And there’s some, where a little help from some anti-depressants to cut down on anxiety will be needed. Exercise, but we’ve got to get them doing things. And teaching work skills. It needs to start in middle school. Around 12, 13 years old – like walking dogs and how about fixing computers for local shops? Work in a farmers market. How about be about being a tour guide in a museum? Some museums will take them at age 12. Then they can be taught social skills, like you don’t stalk the clients around the museum, you don’t stand too close. You coach them on how to talk to the visitors at a museum.
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Ron Bennington: Temple, thank you so much. What a pleasure to meet you. But I hope that some of the folks that are out there that could get the most out of this book – “The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across The Spectrum”. It’s in stores now and online. Thank you so much for coming in.
Temple Grandin: Thank you so much for having me.
Ron Bennington: And I’ll see you next time coming through.
Temple Grandin: Okay, great. Thank you.
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For more information, go to templegrandin.com. You can order her book , The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum
on Amazon.com now.
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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. Not yet a subscriber? Click here for a free trial subscription.
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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews atRonBenningtonInterviews.com.
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