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I'm Seeing Too Many Kind Of Socially Awkward Kids That Get Through Schools And Then They Can't Hold A Job Because They Haven't Learned The Discipline Of Get Up In The Morning.

-Temple Grandin

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I'm Seeing Too Many

Temple Grandin

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I'm Seeing Too Many Kind Of Socially Awkward Kids That Get Through Schools And Then They Can't Hold A Job Because They Haven't Learned The Discipline Of Get Up In The Morning.

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I Feel Very Strongly That If You Got Rid Of All Of The Autistic Genetics You're Not Going To Have Any Scientists. There'd Be No Computer People. You'd Lose A Lot Of Artists And Musicians. There'd Be A Horrible Price To Pay.

You Could Train Cats Do Things, A Lot Of People Don't Think Cats Aren't Trainable. Cats Can Be Trusted Just A Friend.

Seeking Is A Combination Of Emotions People Usually Think Of As Being Different: Wanting Something Really Good, Looking Forward To Getting Something Really Good And Curiosity. Seeking Gives You The Energy To Go After Your Goals.

Engineering Is Easy - It's The People Problems That Are Hard.

We Found If You Took The Dog Out For 45 Minutes A Day And Worked With It That The Solitary Stress Hormone, Cortisol, Went Down. But Then It Went Right Back Up Again Because They Didn't Keep Doing It.

If You Start Using A Medication In A Person With Autism, You Should See An Obvious Improvement In Behavior In A Short Period Of Time. If You Do Not See An Obvious Improvement, They Probably Should Not Be Taking The Stuff. It Is That Simple.

Research Is Starting To Show That A Child Should Be Engaged At Least 20 Hours A Week. I Do Not Think It Matters Which Program You Choose As Long As It Keeps The Child Actively Engaged With The Therapist, Teacher, Or Parent For At Least 20 Hours A Week.

I Think A Brain Can Be Made "more Thinking" Or Made "more Emotional." At What Point Does This Become Abnormal? Autism In Its Milder Variants, I Think, Is Part Of Normal Human Variation.

My Life - Autism's An Important Part Of It, But It Bothers Me When I See Kids Where Autism And Their Autism Is The Only Thing They Think About. I'd Rather Have Them Think About, You Know, Some Art Work They Were Gonna Do Or Some Science They Wanted To Do.

My Mind Works Like Google For Images. You Put In A Key Word; It Brings Up Pictures. See Language For Me Narrates The Pictures In My Mind.

I'm Pure Geek, Pure Logic.

If By Some Magic, Autism Had Been Eradicated From The Face Of The Earth, Then Men Would Still Be Socializing In Front Of A Wood Fire At The Entrance To A Cave.

People Wouldn’t Have Become Who We Are Today If We Hadn’t Coevolved With Dogs.

In Fact, There Are Autism Clusters, You Know, Around Some Of The Big Tech Centers. You Take Two Socially Awkward Computer Programmers And Put Them Together, That Can Kind Of Concentrate The Autistic Genes.

I Have Been On The Same Dose Of Anti-depressants For 15 Years, And My Nerves Still Go Up And Down In Cycles; But My Nerves Are Cycling At A Lower Level Than They Were Before.

Fear Was My Main Emotion Until I Started Taking Anti-depressant Medication. And I Was One Of The People Where, As I Got Older, The Fear Got Worse And Worse. So I Can Really Relate To An Animal Getting, You Know, Scared And Traumatized.

Animals Do Have Emotion. But Fear Tends To Be One Of The Most Primal Emotions.

Here's Certain Things That Are Similar To Cats And Dogs. Dogs Are Just Hyper Social And They Have A Want To Please You Way More Than A Cat Does.

The Reason Why Feral Kitties Are Hard To Tame Is Because They Have Missed Socialization The Period - You Need To Be Touching And Petting Those Kittens When They Are Real Young.

It's Very Important For The Parents Of Young Autistic Children To Encourage Them To Talk, Or For Those That Don't Talk, To Give Them A Way Of Communicating, Like A Picture Board, Where They Can Point To A Glass Of Milk, Or A Jacket If They're Cold, Or The Bathroom. If They Want Something, Then They Need To Learn To Request That Thing.

I Don't Define Myself As Autistic First. I Don't Want To Be A Professional Autistic. I Think It's Important To Have A Real Job.

There's No Black And White Dividing Line Between A Mild Aspergers, Which Is The Mild Autism, And Computer Engineer, For Example.

Black And White

I've Been On Antidepressants For Years, And It Worked To Stop My Anxiety And Didn't Limit Creativity. Some Of The Best Work I've Done, In Fact, Is After I Started Taking The Antidepressants.

My Advice Is: You Always Have To Keep Persevering.

My Life Is Basically My Work.

I Think That The Definition Of Autism Is Too Broad. You Got To Remember, Autism Definition Is A Behavioral Profiling.

I Think It's A Real Shame So Many Schools Have Taken Out The Hands-on Classes. Art, Music, Auto Mechanics, Cooking, Sewing, These Are All Things That Can Turn Into Jobs. You Know, Wood Shop, Steel Shop, Welding. These Are All Things That Can Turn Into Great Careers, Get Kids Interested. Things They Can Do With Other Students. Other Things For Our Word Thinkers: Journalism Clubs, Drama Clubs.

Sometimes You Have To Go Outside Your Field Of Study To Find The Right People.

I'm Seeing Too Many Geeky, Nerdy Kids Get Addicted To Video Games And They're Going Nowhere. It's Making Me Crazy.

I'm A Visual Thinker, Really Bad At Algebra. There's Others That Are A Pattern Thinker. These Are The Music And Math Minds. They Think In Patterns Instead Of Pictures. Then There's Another Type That's Not A Visual Thinker At All, And They're The Ones That Memorize All Of The Sports Statistics, All Of The Weather Statistics.

When You Take A Drug To Treat High Blood Pressure Or Diabetes, You Have An Objective Test To Measure Blood Pressure And The Amount Of Sugar In The Blood. It Is Straight-forward. With Autism, You Are Looking For Changes In Behavior.

If You Have A 2 Or 3 Year Old Who Is Not Talking, You Must Start An Early Intervention Program. The Worst Thing You Can Do With An Autistic 3 Year Old Is To Do Nothing.

These Diagnostic Profiles Like Depression, Adhd, Autism, Dyslexia, It's Half Science And The Other Half Is A Committee Of Doctors Bickering Over What It Should Be, And It Has Changed. It's Not Precise Like A Diagnosis Of Tuberculosis Would Be Very Precise.

I Know A Lot Of Animal Communicators And I Think A Lot Of Them Are Just Good Behaviorists Because They Pick Up On A Lot Little Posture Things Like How The Eyes Look, The Posture Of The Cat Ears, Is It Tense? They're Picking Up Just A Lot Of Their Body Cues From The Dog, The Cat Or The Horse.

I Was Nonverbal Until I Was Four Years Old. Back In The 50s, I Was The Kind Of Kid They Used To Just Put Away In An Institution. But Then You Get The Milder Autism Where There's No Speech Delay, But They're Socially Awkward. Those Kids Were Around When I Was A Child. They Were Just Called Geeks And Nerds.

In A Dog Social Cue From A Master Can Override Where He Saw The Being Placed. That Won’t Happen Unless We Have Bred A Social In Tune Animal, That’s What A Dog Is. That’s Why They Got So Much Trouble With Separation Anxiety – You Leave Them Home Alone And They’re Chewing Up The House And Stuff. A Lot Of Dogs Don’t Handle Being Home Alone Very Well.

Language Just Gradually Came In, One Or Two Stressed Words A Time. Before Then, I Would Just Scream. I Couldn't Talk. I Couldn't Get My Words Out. So The Only Way I Could Tell Someone What I Wanted Was To Scream. If I Didn't Want To Wear A Hat, The Only Way I Knew To Communicate Was Screaming And Throwing It On The Floor.

I'm A Believer In Biochemistry. But I Tell People To Try Only One Thing At A Time To See If It Works. And If You Do Give A Powerful Drug To A Kid, It Better Have A Big Wow Factor.

It [cats Going Outside The Litter Box] Might Have Something To Do With - You Know, I Am Just Thinking That If I Am The Cat, When I'm Pooping, You Know, I've Got To Strain A Little Bit More And Maybe That Affects How The Kitty Litter Feels On My Paws. I'd Try A Different Sub Straight, Or Something Like That - Make Sure It's Not Slippery.

Medication Should Never Be Considered The Only Tool For Helping A Person.

Social Thinking Skills Must Be Directly Taught To Children And Adults With Asd. Doing So Opens Doors Of Social Understandings In All Areas Of Life.

If You See A Child With Autistic-like Behaviors At Age Two And Three, The Worst Thing You Can Do Is Just Let Them Sit And Watch Tv All Day. That's Just The Worst Thing You Can Do. You Need To Have A Teacher Working With That Child, Working On Teaching Language, Working On Social Interaction, Working On Getting Them Interested In Different Things, And Keeping Their Brain Connected To The World.

I Want Get People To Think About Sensory Based Of Thinking.

I Get Asked A Lot Why Cats Mess Outside The Litter Box. The Simplest Thing Is If You Have More Than One Cat And You Have Two Litter Boxes, Don't Put Them Right Next To Each Other.

Sometimes Cats Just Avoid Using A Litter Box But That [cat Going Poop Outside The Litter Box But Pees Inside The Litter Box] Is Kind Of Strange. Most Time People Ask Me Why They Go Outside The Litter Box Period.

By Looking At Autistic Kids, You Can't Tell When You're Working With Them Who You're Going To Pull Out, Who Is Going To Become Verbal And Who's Not. And There Seem To Be Certain Kids Who, As They Learn More And More, They Get Less Autistic Acting, And They Learn Social Skills Enough So That They Can Turn Out Socially Normal.

Whereas An Elephant That Was Scared To Death That Diesel Powered Equipment, Equipment That Ran On A Gas Engine, Was Just Fine. Because Somebody Had Attacked It With Construction Equipment. But If It Had A Diesel Engine, It Was Bad.

The Thing About Being Autistic Is That You Gradually Get Less And Less Autistic, Because You Keep Learning, You Keep Learning How To Behave. It's Like Being In A Play; I'm Always In A Play.

A Cat You Train With Clicker Training And What You've Got To Do Is Pair The Click With A Food Reward. And He's Doing The Stuff Because You Get A Food Reward. Once You Can Do It All After A Lot Training With No Food Reward.

I Think Using Animals For Food Is An Ethical Thing To Do, But We've Got To Do It Right. We've Got To Give Those Animals A Decent Life, And We've Got To Give Them A Painless Death. We Owe The Animal Respect.

One Area Of Study That Still Needs To Be Done Is The Kind Of Autism Where Kids Have Speech And They Lose It. Some Parents Say It's Happened Right After Vaccines. That Group Needs To Be Studied Separately From Others.

Some Children May Need A Behavioral Approach, Whereas Other Children May Need A Sensory Approach.

I Think One Of The Worst Things Schools Have Done Is Taken Out All Of The Stuff Like Art, Music, Woodworking, Sewing, Cooking, Welding, Auto-shop. All These Things You Can Turn Into Careers. How Can You Get Interested In These Careers If You Don't Try Them On A Little Bit?

You Have Got To Keep Autistic Children Engaged With The World. You Cannot Let Them Tune Out.

Cats Are Great With Clicker Training. There's A Great Video You Can Get Called "clicker Magic". There's A Scene In That Video Where A Cat Is Trained To Go Through A Mini Dog Agility Course - It's All Done With Food Motivation And Clicker Training. You Can Train Them To Do All Sorts Of Thing.

I'm Seeing Too Many Kind Of Socially Awkward Kids That Get Through Schools And Then They Can't Hold A Job Because They Haven't Learned The Discipline Of Get Up In The Morning.

When You're A Weird Geek, The Way To Sell Yourself Is To Show Your Skills.

You Simply Cannot Tell Other People They Are Stupid, Even If They Really Are Stupid.

My Grandfather Was An Engineer Who Invented The Automatic Pilot For Airplanes.

I Feel Very Strongly, We've Got To Give Animals A Good Life. I've Worked Really Hard Improving Slaughter Plants And Animal Handling And Transport. And People Have Said To Me, Why Don't You Work On Improving Conditions On Pig Farms? And Basically, To Be Effective On Making Real Change Out There On The Ground, You Can Only Work On So Many Things. You Know, You Get Too Distributed, You're Not Effective.

I Use My Mind To Solve Problems And Invent Things.

In Special Education, There's Too Much Emphasis Placed On The Deficit And Not Enough On The Strength.

I Believe There Is A Reason Such As Autism, Severe Manic-depression, And Schizophrenia Remain In Our Gene Pool Even Though There Is Much Suffering As A Result.

If You Have Autism In The Family History, You Still Vaccinate. Delay It A Bit, Space Them Out.

A Treatment Method Or An Educational Method That Will Work For One Child May Not Work For Another Child. The One Common Denominator For All Of The Young Children Is That Early Intervention Does Work, And It Seems To Improve The Prognosis.

Half Of Silicon Valley's Got A Little Bit Of Autism.

When I Was Younger I Was Looking For This Magic Meaning Of Life. It's Very Simple Now. Making The Lives Of Others Better, Doing Something Of Lasting Value. That's The Meaning Of Life, It's That Simple.

Meaning Of Life

One Of The Places Where Research Is Needed Is All The Sensory Problems. And You Get Sensory Problems Not Just With Autism, But With Dyslexia, Learning Problems, Adhd, Attention Deficit, You Know, Things Like Sound Sensitivity, Problems With Fluorescent Lighting.

You Have To Get Autistic Kids Out And Expose Them To Things, But Do This Without Any Surprises, So They Know What To Expect. You Have To Find Skilled Mentors To Teach Them Things. For Me, It Was An Aunt, And It Was My Science Teacher. You Need To Find The Things They're Interested In And Good At And Expand On This.

As You May Know, Some Of The Stereotyped Behaviors Exhibited By Autistic Children Are Also Found In Zoo Animals Who Are Raised In A Barren Environment.

But My Favorite Of Einstein's Words On Religion Is "science Without Religion Is Lame. Religion Without Science Is Blind." I Like This Because Both Science And Religion Are Needed To Answer Life's Great Questions.

And While We Are On The Subject Of Medication You Always Need To Look At Risk Versus Benefit.

I Think That Autistic Brains Tend To Be Specialized Brains. Autistic People Tend To Be Less Social. It Takes A Ton Of Processor Space In The Brain To Have All The Social Circuits.

I Don't Like The Way Most People Think. It's Imprecise. I Find That When Parents Ask Me Questions, They Ask Very Imprecise Questions. They Say, "my Kid Has Behavioral Problems At School." Well, I Have To Say, "what Kind Of Problems? Is He Hitting? Is He Rude? Does He Rock In Class?" I Need To Narrow Questions To Specifics. I Am Very Pragmatic And Intellectual, Not Emotional. I Do Get Great Satisfaction When A Parent Says, "i Read Your Book, And It Really Helped Me."

My Mother Was Always Expanding My Art Skills And Getting Me To Paint Different Things. You Always Got To Push Some. And, I Mean, I Learned Basic Things Like Getting Up On Time, How To Shop - You Know, You Don't Touch Things In A Store You're Not Going To Buy. These Things Were Taught Very Young. I Don't See Today Enough Of This Basic, You Know, Basic Skill Teaching.

Normal People Have An Incredible Lack Of Empathy. They Have Good Emotional Empathy, But They Don't Have Much Empathy For The Autistic Kid Who Is Screaming At The Baseball Game Because He Can't Stand The Sensory Overload. Or The Autistic Kid Having A Meltdown In The School Cafeteria Because There's Too Much Stimulation.

Sometimes We Forget About Common Sense. Autism Is Used Too Much As An Excuse For Bad Behavior.

I Would Never Talk Just To Be Social. Now, To Sit Down With A Bunch Of Engineers And Talk About The Latest Concrete Forming Systems, That's Really Interesting. Talking With Animal Behaviorists Or With Someone Who Likes To Sail, That's Interesting. Information Is Interesting To Me. But Talking For The Sake Of Talking, I Find That Quite Boring.

Autism Is A Big Continuum, Going From Someone Who Remains Nonverbal, All The Way Up To Geniuses On Silicon Valley. And Some Kids Are Visual Thinkers Like Me. Other Kids Are Pattern Thinkers - Your Mathematicians, Your Programmers. And There Are Others, They Are Word Thinkers. Uneven Skills. You Need To Take The Thing That They're Good At And You Need To Work On Developing It.

People Are Getting Too Far Away From The Real-world. Politics Is Just Ridiculous, It's Totally Dysfunctional.

I Look At The Successful People That Have, You Know, High Functioning Autism And Asperger's, They're Ones Where Maybe The Parents Were In The Computer Industry And They Just Taught The Kids Programming At, You Know, Age Eight And Nine And They Just Went On Into The Industry With Their Parents.

I'm A Child Of The 50s. I Was Expected To Have Table Manners. There Needs To Be Some Expectations For Behavior. I'm Seeing Some Children Today, They Don't Push Them Enough.

One Of My Sensory Problems Was Hearing Sensitivity, Where Certain Loud Noises, Such As A School Bell, Hurt My Ears. It Sounded Like A Dentist Drill Going Through My Ears.

What Do I Do When I Go Home? Work. That's Basically My Social Life. I'm Married To Work.

You Get These Fear Memories That Are Hard To Undo.

The Thing Is, Autism Is All Different, You Know, Variables. And You Start Out With A Certain Amount Of, You Know, The Point Where The Differences In The Brain Are Going To Just Be A Personality Variant And, Like, For Very Mild Asperger's. But You Get Into More Severe Kinds Of Autism Where There's Obvious Speech Delay, Obvious Abnormal Behavior In A Two And Three-year-old Child, You Know, The Initial Neurology Is Different From Case To Case. But All Children With Autism Are Going To Do Better If They Get Really Good Educational Intervention.

Things Like Microphones Are Dangerous Things Because You Never Know When They Might Feedback And Squeal.

You Got Barn Cats And You Want To Make Them Tamed, You Need To Get Them As Kittens.

I Can Remember Being Bullied And Teased. It Was Absolutely Horrible. I Got Kicked Out Of Ninth Grade For Throwing A Book At A Girl Who Teased Me. It Was Absolutely Terrible.

Autism Is A Neurological Disorder. It's Not Caused By Bad Parenting. It's Caused By, You Know, Abnormal Development In The Brain. The Emotional Circuits In The Brain Are Abnormal. And There Also Are Differences In The White Matter, Which Is The Brain's Computer Cables That Hook Up The Different Brain Departments.

Us Visual Thinkers Like Me, Be Good At Things Like Industrial Design, Graphics, Art, Those Kind Of Jobs.

Some Autistic Children Cannot Stand The Sound Of Certain Voices. I Have Come Across Cases Where Teachers Tell Me That Certain Children Have Problems With Their Voice Or Another Person's Voice. This Problem Tends To Be Related To High-pitched Ladies' Voices.

Autism's An Important Part Of Who I Am, But I'm A College Professor And An Animal Scientist First. And I Wouldn't Want To Change 'cause I Like The Logical Way I Think.

It Is Never Too Late To Expand The Mind Of A Person On The Autism Spectrum.

A Real Common Problem With A Lot Of Animals Is That Guys Are Bad, Hate To Say It, But They Will Tune Into Some Big Feature Like The Glasses, Maybe The Beard, Baseball Hats, You Know Some Unique Feature Like That. And They'll Generalize Like, "okay! All People With Baseball Hats Or Black Rimmed Glasses Are Bad."

Giving Those Animals [in Shelter] Quality Time - Now, I Have Been In Some Of The Shelters Where The Cats Have Been In Group Housing. Well If You Have A Cat That Never Gets Out Of Sternal Recumbency, Now What That Means Is That [inaudible] - That's A Stressed Cat. If They Lay On Their Side, Then They Are Not Stressed Out.

People On The Autistic Spectrum Tend To Get Fixated On What They Think.

People Are Always Looking For The Single Magic Bullet That Will Totally Change Everything. There Is No Single Magic Bullet.

I'm A Big Believer In Getting Kids Involved In Things Where There's A Shared Interest Because That's Where They Can Have Friends.

The Squeeze Machine Is Not Going To Cure Anybody, But It May Help Them Relax; And A Relaxed Person Will Usually Have Better Behavior.

I Feel Very Strongly That We Need To Give Beef Cattle A Really Good Life. When They Go To Slaughter, It Needs To Be Painless.

You Take Somebody - One Person Has Definitely Got Autism, You Got Another Person That Maybe Has Some Of Those Traits And Maybe There's Some Anxiety, Depression, Some Epilepsy Or Something In The Family History. Put Them Together, You're More Likely To Have A Severely Autistic Kid Than If You Don't Have Any Neurological Problems In The Family History.

I Am A Big Believer In Early Intervention.

Autism Is An Extremely Variable Disorder.

For Example, If Ears Are Back On A Horse, It's Obviously Not Very Happy. And The Eyes Show That It's Not Happy. Now, If The Eyes Are Nice And Soft And Brown, Then It's Calm. You Can See These Things In Horses And Cattle, And I Think That Some Of These People Are Just Really Good At Picking Up These Signals, But They Don't Realize It.

We Owe Them [animals] A Decent Life And A Decent Death, And Their Lives Should Be As Low-stress As Possible. That's My Job. I Wish Animals Could Have More Than Just A Low-stress Life And A Quick, Painless Death. I Wish Animals Could Have A Good Life, Too, With Something Useful To Do. People Were Animals, Too, Once, And When We Turned Into Human Beings We Gave Something Up. Being Close To Animals Brings Some Of It Back.

I Am Also A Believer In An Integrated Treatment Approach To Autism.

I Try To Return My Calls But I Get Inundated With Emails And I Can't Answer Them All. So Often, I Have To Refer To Them My Webpage And The Frequently Asked Questions Or Refer Them To The Books. But If They Take The Time To Call Me, I Try To Call Back. You Know, I Am Really Busy, But Just Happened To Have An Hour In The Hotel Room And Had Some Time Before I Have To Meet Some People About 20 Minutes.

When Kids Are Really Little, They All Look The Same. No Speech, No Social Relatedness, Cannot Emphasize Enough The Importance Of Early Educational Intervention.

Dogs Serve People, But People Serve Cats.

Animals Are Like Autistic Savants. In Fact, I'd Go So Far As To Say That Animals Might Actually Be Autistic Savants. Animals Have Special Talents Normal People Don't, The Same Way Autistic People Have Special Talents Normal People Don't; And At Least Some Animals Have Special Forms Of Genius Normal People Don't, The Same Way Some Autistic Savants Have Special Forms Of Genius. I Think Most Of The Time Animal Genius Probably Happens For The Same Reason Autistic Genius Does: A Difference In The Brain Autistic People Share With Animals.

I Had People In My Life Who Didn't Give Up On Me: My Mother, My Aunt, My Science Teacher. I Had One-on-one Speech Therapy. I Had A Nanny Who Spent All Day Playing Turn-taking Games With Me.

Some Autistic People Have Savant Skills. All Autistic People Do Not Have Savant Skills. Autism Is A Very Variable Disorder Varying All The Way From Einstein, Emollient Scientist, Just A Little Bit Of The Trait, Many Scientist And Engineers, Down To Somebody That's Going To Remain Nonverbal.

Mild Autism Can Give You A Genius Like Einstein. If You Have Severe Autism, You Could Remain Nonverbal. You Don't Want People To Be On The Severe End Of The Spectrum. But If You Got Rid Of All The Autism Genetics, You Wouldn't Have Science Or Art. All You Would Have Is A Bunch Of Social 'yak Yaks.'

Basically When It Comes To Autistic Kids And Animals There's Kind Of Three Ways That They Work, Some Of Them Are Instant Best Buddies, They Understand A Cat, They Understand A Dog - They're Best Studies With It, They Just Know How To Communicate With It. Then There's Other Kids That Begin With A Little Bit Of Fear Of The Cat Or The Dog, But Then They Begin To Like It And Then There Are Other Kids Where You Have A Sensory Problem - The Cat Meows And It Hurts Their Ears, So They Want To Stay Away From The Cat Because You Never Know When He Might Meow.

There Needs To Be A Lot More Emphasis On What A Child Can Do, Instead Of What He Cannot Do.

From A Scientific Standpoint, Aspergers And Autism Are One Syndrome. Aspergers Is Part Of The Autism Spectrum, Not A Separate Disorder.

An Animal’s Memory Is Not In Words, They’ve Got To Be In Pictures – It’s Very Detailed So Let’s Say The Animal Gets Afraid Of Something. Like, For Example You Beat The Dog Up And They're Looking At You And Your Nike Shoes Or Any Sneaker Or Anything Like A Nike, He's Likely To Be Afraid Of That - So Anything Without That Nike Wingtip, He's Likely To Be Fine. If You Think About It, That's A Different Picture, Than A Nike Type Shoe. Its Specific Because Its Sensory Based.

I Get Satisfaction Out Of Seeing Stuff That Makes Real Change In The Real World. We Need A Lot More Of That And A Lot Less Abstract Stuff.

I've Got My One Area I Work In And I Want To Educate People About Autism And I Also Want To Improve, You Know, Animal Handling And Transport And Make A Real Change Out In The Field On The Ground.

There Are Three Basic Ways [to Use A Dog To Work With Autistic Children], One Is Just To Be Companion Person And I'm Thinking Now More Of Autistic Kids Not Somebody In A Wheelchair Or The Dog Belongs To A Therapist And Then It's Used As An Ice Breaker To Get The Kid Talking And Get The Kid Interacting.

Some Cats Don't Like Different Types Of Kitty Litter. So Might Try Different Types Of Kitty Litter Sometimes That Works. You Know, They Don't Like One Type That Sticks To The Paws And They Don't Like It.

Some Teachers Just Have A Knack For Working With Autistic Children. Other Teachers Do Not Have It.

You Can't Punish A Child Who Is Acting Out Because Of Sensory Overload.

One Of The Big Areas I'd Like To See A Lot More Research Done On Is The Sensory Problems, And It's Real Variable. One Kid's Got Sound Sensitivity; Another One Can't Tolerate Fluorescent Lights. I Can't Stand Scratchy Clothes.

When I Was Diagnosed, Mothers Were Blamed For Causing Autism. There Was No Autism Support. They'd Put Autistic Kids In Institutions. I Had Severe Autism. But My Mom Wouldn't Accept That. I Was Put In Speech Therapy. My Mother Was Always Pushing Me To Do Stuff.

Well The Dog That Is The Most Is The A Labrador Retrievers Because They Tolerate Kids Tugging On Them And Things Better Than Other Dogs. They Are A Real Good Natured. They’re Also Real Calm And Sometimes When Working With Autistic Children That’s Probably More Popular Dog Breed - Now There Are Different Ways To Use Service Animals.

Different Cats Don't Like Certain Litter. They Also Don't Like An Unstable Floor, No Animal Like's Unstable Floor. So If You Put A Thin Piece Of Plastic Down Under A Litter Box And The Cat Walks On It And Starts To Slip, They Don't Like That. Any Animal Doesn't Like An Unstable Floor.

I Can Explain How A Person With Autism Thinks. I Am Very, Very Interested In How People Think. It's Been A Gradual Process Of Learning More And More About How My Thinking Process Is Different. You Know It's Bottom Up - You Take Specific Examples To Make Concepts And Then I Put Them In Categories.

The Dog Is More Social. I Am Not Saying That Cats Are Totally Unsocial But Dogs Are More Social.

The Autistic Brain Tends To Be A Specialist Brain, Good At One Thing, Bad At Something Else.

In An Ideal World The Scientist Should Find A Method To Prevent The Most Severe Forms Of Autism But Allow The Milder Forms To Survive. After All, The Really Social People Did Not Invent The First Stone Spear. It Was Probably Invented By An Aspie Who Chipped Away At Rocks While The Other People Socialized Around The Campfire. Without Autism Traits We Might Still Be Living In Caves.

Just Think About It Yourself; You Don't Want To Put The [cat's] Litter Box Down The Basement Because That's Too Far, On The Other Hand You Don't Want To Put Where Everybody Is Traipsing In And Out The Back The Door.

I Studied A Lot Of Animal Behavior And One Of The Things I Find Really Interesting Is The Whole Idea That Animals Are Sensory Based Thinkers And I Wrote About This In My Book, Animals In Translation. That An Animal's Memory Is Not In Words, They've Got To Be In Pictures - It's Very Detailed So Let's Say The Animal Gets Afraid Of Something - They'll Get Afraid Of Something That They're Looking At Or Hearing, The Moment The Bad Thing Happens.

One Of The Things I Want To Do Is Be A Decent Role Model. I've Got A Lot Of Emails And Stuff From Children. They Look Up To Me. Kids Get Different Labels And Things Like That And I Want Those Kids To Succeed.

People Talk About Curing Autism. But If You Got Rid Of All Those Traits, Who's Going To Make The Next Computer?

You Got To Get Away From Words If You Want To Understand Any Animal. It Thinks In Pictures, It Thinks In Smells, It Thinks In Touch Sensations - Little Sound Bites Like, It's A Very Detailed Memory.

Everything I Think Is In Pictures.

I Think There's Some Kids That Need To Go From Being A Child To Being A Grown-up. You Get Out In The Tech Communities, The Parents Just Apprentice Their Kid Into The Industry And They Just Skip Being A Teenager.

Unfortunately, Most People Never Observe The Natural Cycle Of Birth And Death. They Do Not Realize That For One Living Thing To Survive, Another Living Thing Must Die.

The World Needs Different Kinds Of Minds To Work Together.

Working Together

Pressure Is Calming To The Nervous System.

I Strongly Recommend That Students With Autism Get Involved In Special Interest Clubs In Some Of The Areas They Naturally Excel At. Being With People Who Share Your Interests Makes Socializing Easier.

The Most Important Thing In A Shelter Is That Volunteers, Especially With Dogs, Come In Everyday, Take That Pet Out For An Hour Of Quality Time.

There Tends To Be A Lot Of Autism Around The Tech Centers... When You Concentrate The Geeks, You're Concentrating The Autism Genetics.

I Am Different, Not Less

You Can Be Honest Without Sharing Your Opinions On Everything.

We Breed Dogs To Be More Social Than The Wolf. There Is Very Interesting Research That Has Been Done With A Wolf And A Domestic Dog. If You Have A Tamed Wolf And You Have Him Sit In Front Of The Experimenter Or Stand In Front Of His Master And His Two Dishes, One To The Right, One To The Left – So That The Dog Or Wolf See The Food Put In The Left Hand Dish But The Owner Points To The Right – The Domesticated Will Go Where Owner Points, Whereas The The Wolf Goes Right Where He Saw The Meat Thing Put. In Other Words, In A Dog Social Cue From A Master Can Override Where He Saw The Being Placed.

Now There Are A Few Things With A Shelter - Like With Noise Control, Don't Face Dog Runs Facing Each Other That Tends To Encourage Barking. The Problem You've Got Is That The Kind Of Materials That Absorb Noise Are Difficult To Clean. One Of The Biggest Problems In The Design Of Animal Shelters Is That Animals Are Barking And It's Like The Sound Of A Jet Plane Taking Off.

I Think Sometimes Parents And Teachers Fail To Stretch Kids. My Mother Had A Very Good Sense Of How To Stretch Me Just Slightly Outside My Comfort Zone.

The Big Companies Are Like Steel And Activists Are Like Heat. Activists Soften The Steel, And Then I Can Bend It Into Pretty Grillwork And Make Reforms.

When I Was Younger, I Didn't Even Realize The Way I Think Visually Is Different.

It Is Important That Our Relationship With Farm Animals Is Reciprocal. We Owe Animals A Decent Life And A Painless Death. I Have Observed That The People Who Are Completely Out Of Touch With Nature Are The Most Afraid Of Death.

I'd Rather Have A Kid Come Up To Me And Tell Me That He Loves Dinosaurs Or He Loves Airplanes Or He Likes Training Dogs Or I Like Shakespeare. I Mean, Just Something.

Autism Is Part Of Who I Am.

If Language Naturally Evolves To Serve The Needs Of Tiny Rodents With Tiny Rodent Brains, Then What's Unique About Language Isn't The Brilliant Humans Who Invented It To Communicate High-level Abstract Thoughts. What's Unique About Language Is That The Creatures Who Develop It Are Highly Vulnerable To Being Eaten.

People With Autism Aren't Interested In Social Chit-chat.

What Would Happen If The Autism Gene Was Eliminated From The Gene Pool? You Would Have A Bunch Of People Standing Around In A Cave, Chatting And Socializing And Not Getting Anything Done.

The Thing Is, Autism Is A Big Spectrum. Going From Folks Who Remain Nonverbal, All The Way Up To, Ya Know, Famous Scientists And Musicians. And We've Got To Work On Strengths. We Also Have To Work On Teaching Basic Manners And Skills.

The Animal That I Have Worked With The Most Is Beef Cattle, So That's My Favorite Animal, But I Like All Animals.

Who Do You Think Made The First Stone Spears? The Asperger Guy. If You Were To Get Rid Of All The Autism Genetics, There Would Be No More Silicon Valley.

I've Got A Lot Of Other People Who Do A Lot Of Things For Me, So I've Gotten To A Part In My Career Where I'm Doing A Lot Of Talks Because I Want To Get Kids Turned On. I Want To See These Kids, These Geeky Nerdy Kids, Go Out There And Do Something.

The People That Were Socially Awkward From My Generation, They All Had Paper Routes And That Taught Them The Discipline Of Work.

We've Had Several Cats. I Had A Cat When I Was A Kid. My Aunt Had Lots Of Cats And I Got Lots Of Calls About Cats.

In My Opinion, One Of The Greatest Animal-welfare Problems Is The Physical Abuse Of Livestock During Transportation.... Typical Abuses I Have Witnessed With Alarming Frequency Are; Hitting, Beating, Use Of Badly Maintained Trucks, Jabbing Of Short Objects Into Animals, And Deliberate Cruelty.

You Have To Use Food Motivation Whereas A Dog Will Do Things For You Just For Social Motivation, Praise And Petting. Also With Any Animal You Want To Stroke It. Don't Pat It, Stroke It. Most Don't Like Patting.

I Believe That The Best Way To Create Good Living Conditions For Any Animal, Whether It's A Captive Animal Living In A Zoo, A Farm Animal Or A Pet, Is To Base Animal Welfare Programs On The Core Emotion Systems In The Brain. My Theory Is That The Environment Animals Live In Should Activate Their Positive Emotions As Much As Possible, And Not Activate Their Negative Emotions Any More Than Necessary. If We Get The Animal's Emotions Rights, We Will Have Fewer Problem Behaviors... All Animals And People Have The Same Core Emotion Systems In The Brain.

The Most Important Thing People Did For Me Was To Expose Me To New Things.

How Do You Have A Think In Pictures? Well, You Have To Sort The Pictures Into Categories. You Know, For Example, A Dog Knows That, You Know, There's Good People And There's Bad People. And I Talked To A Lady The Other Day Where Her Dog Was Afraid Of People With White Beards Because She Had Adopted Him From An Animal Shelter And Somebody With A White Beard Had Abused Him. And This Dog Was Now Afraid Of Everybody That Had A White Beard. That Was The Bad Category.

Animals Make Us Human.

I Obtain Great Satisfaction Out Of Using My Intellect.

What Parents And Teachers And Caregivers Did With Me That Actually Worked And A Lot Of That Was The Old Fashion 50s Upbringing. They Just Gave The Instruction When I Did Something Wrong - Life Was More Structured. So Basically It's [my Work] Based On Experiences With Me That Worked And It Was Teachers And Parents That Made Me Have Those Experiences.

People Can Live Up To High Standards, But They Can't Live Up To Perfection.

Language For Me Narrates The Pictures In My Mind. When I Work On Designing Livestock Equipment I Can Test Run That Equipment In My Head Like 3-d Virtual Reality. In Fact, When I Was In College I Used To Think That Everybody Was Able To Do That.

Lets Get Into Talking About How Autism Is Similar Animal Behavior. The Thing Is I Dont Think In A Language, And Animals Dont Think In A Language. Its Sensory Based Thinking, Thinking In Pictures, Thinking In Smells, Thinking In Touches. Its Putting These Sensory Based Memories Into Categories.

Research Has Shown That A Barren Environment Is Much More Damaging To Baby Animals Than It Is To Adult Animals. It Does Not Hurt The Adult Animals The Same Way It Damages Babies.

I Think The Mild Aspergers Have Always Been There. You See, Asperger's Diagnosis Did Not Become Common In The U.s. Until The Early '90s. And An Aspergers Has More Or Less Normal Speech Development And They've Always Been Here, That Hasn't Changed. I Can Think Back To When I Was In High School, This Is 40 Years Ago, I Could Name Kids In My High School Class And College Class That, Today, Would Be Diagnosed As Aspergers.

I Think That Autistic Brains Tend To Be Specialized Brains. Autistic People Tend To Be Less Social. It Takes A Ton Of Processor Space In The Brain To Have All The Social Circuits. I Mean After All, The First Stone Spear Was Not Designed By The Totally Social People.

All Animals And People Have The Same Core Emotion Systems In The Brain.

Steve Jobs Was Probably Mildly On The Autistic Spectrum. Basically, You've Probably Known People Who Were Geeky And Socially Awkward But Very Smart. When Does Geeks And Nerds Become Autism? That's A Gray Area. Half The People In Silicon Valley Probably Have Autism.

I'm A Visual Thinker, Not A Language-based Thinker. My Brain Is Like Google Images.

Autism's A Very Big Spectrum. At One End Of The Spectrum, Einstein Would Probably Be Labeled Autistic, Steve Jobs, Half Of Silicon Valley, You Know, Van Gogh. And At The Other End Of The Spectrum, You Got Much More Severe Handicaps Where They Never Learn To Speak.

I Am Much Less Autistic Now, Compared To When I Was Young. I Remember Some Behaviors Like Picking Carpet Fuzz And Watching Spinning Plates For Hours. I Didn't Want To Be Touched. I Couldn't Shut Out Background Noise. I Didn't Talk Until I Was About 4 Years Old. I Screamed. I Hummed. But As I Grew Up, I Improved.

Spinning Plates

Background Noise

I'm Seeing Too Many Smart Kind Of Socially Awkward Kids, A Lot Milder Than I Was, Not Getting Employment Because They're Not Learning Job Skills.

I Know A Number Of Autistic Adults That Are Doing Extremely Well On Prozac.

I'd Rather See A Kid Get Fixated On Something They Can Turn Into A Career.

One Of The Ways To Reduce That Barking Would Be To Have Volunteers Come In Especially For Hte For The Dogs And Take Each Dog Out For 45 Minutes Each Day And Spend Quality Time With The Person - That Would Help Reduce The Stress And In Fact, One Of My Students Did A Study On That.

I Like To Figure Things Out And Solve Problems.

I Can Remember The Frustration Of Not Being Able To Talk. I Knew What I Wanted To Say, But I Could Not Get The Words Out, So I Would Just Scream.

I've Got A Lot Of People That Are Really Good At Taming Animals And Working With Animals; And They Can't Explain How They Do. They Just Get A Feeling From The Animal.

If You Get A Little Kitty And He's Down On The Bottom, And He's Laying On His Chest, You Know Tucked Up Underneath, Then That Cat Is Not Relaxed.

To Understand Animal Thinking You've Got To Get Away From A Language.

I Don’t Want My Thoughts To Die With Me, I Want To Have Done Something. I’m Not Interested In Power, Or Piles Of Money. I Want To Leave Something Behind. I Want To Make A Positive Contribution - Know That My Life Has Meaning.

Children Between The Ages Of Five To Ten Years Are Even More Variable. They Are Going To Vary From Very High Functioning, Capable Of Doing Normal School Work, To Nonverbal Who Have All Kinds Of Neurological Problems.

I Believe That The Place Where An Animal Dies Is A Sacred One. There Is A Need To Bring Ritual Into The Conventional Slaughter Plants And Use As A Means To Shape People's Behavior. It Would Help Prevent People From Becoming Numbed, Callous, Or Cruel. The Ritual Could Be Something Very Simple, Such As A Moment Of Silence. In Addition To Developing Better Designs And Making Equipment To Insure The Humane Treatments Of All Animals, That Would Be My Contribution.

People On The Autism Spectrum Don't Think The Same Way You Do. In My Life, People Who Made A Difference Were Those Who Didn't See Labels, Who Believed In Building On What Was There. These Were People Who Didn't Try To Drag Me Into Their World, But Came Into Mine Instead.

A Cat Can Be Social, But A Dog, We've Bred This Hyper Social Animal That's Really Truly Different And Will Do Stuff For Us Just To Please Us With Praise And Stroking.

There Is A Small Segment Of People With Autism That Have Savant Skills, Where They Can Memorize Entire Maps Of Whole Entire City. They Can Do Calendar Calculations. And This Is Similar To Some Of The Skills That Animals Have.

Curiosity Is The Other Side Of Caution.

People Need To Learn How To Work, Learn How To Support Themselves. I Think It's Just Fine To Be Eccentric.

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Henrique Capriles Radonski

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