Different not Less

Those are the words that rang throughout the new Temple Grandin movie currently playing on HBO. It is On Demand, if you have it, until May I believe. I will watch it again and again. I will show it to my 10 year old. Maybe even to Daniel if I can get him to watch part of it. That would be interesting. I have had the pleasure of meeting Temple Grandin once and watching her speak twice. For those of you who read me who do not have children on the spectrum I'll briefly explain, but I recommend you somehow watch the movie. If you are near me, come over we'll watch it together. But only if you don't mind me crying at odd times. I don't think the movie is sad at all, but it continuously moved me in ways that surprised me.

Temple is a woman with autism, obviously. Not Aspergers, autism. She is in her 60's now which puts her at a time growing up when no one really knew about autism. This makes her story even more powerful. They show Temple's mother (who I have also seen speak) being told it was mom's fault that her 4 year old wasn't speaking and wasn't bonding to other children. She is a very strong and smart woman but the fact that they all rose above this still amazes me. Temple now tours the world talking about her autism and because of her autism can tell you things about her childhood and the way her mind works that is FASCINATING. I have always been interested in her because she is so similar to Daniel. There are certainly areas that are different, but through the movie there were times when Todd and I would both start chuckling at the smallest thing because it was DANIEL. Or I would say what Temple would do next because I knew what Daniel would do. I can't wait to watch it again and again.

Todd and I both met Temple years ago. I'll guess 6 or 7 years ago. She was speaking in Ann Arbor and we drove over to see Temple in the morning and her mother in the afternoon. It was an amazing combination. The child's perspective in the am, the mother in the pm. We were sitting at a large round table as you are at most of these events. We were in the front. After Temple finished it was lunch time and she sat at our table since there was room available. Besides Todd and I everyone else at our table were "professionals". They all immediately started asking her questions. All at once. I remember thinking, what is wrong with you people? You know she has autism right? I use the sentence "I have met her" loosely, because she was sitting next to Todd and when all of the questions started she turned toward him to block out the clutter bombarding her and said, "what do you do for a living?" He answered, "I'm an engineer." Then everyone else was gone for her at that lunch. She talked to Todd the whole time. While everyone else made the mistake of overwhelming her sensory system, Todd was a life line. He was an engineer, she could talk about that. And they did. It makes me smile just thinking about it. No one else was very happy, but really, it was there fault!

Back to the movie. I thought Claire Danes did a wonderful job portraying Temple. The few times I've seen her, her accent, her movements were all there. When Temple would come across something that was upsetting to her or would set her off (seemingly for "no reason" to an outsider), they would flash to the pictures she was seeing in her mind as a way of explanation. It was really well done.

Temple has her Ph.d in Animal Science. She has designed over half of the systems used for cattle in slaughter houses in North America. While this seems an unlikely topic for a movie, I found it very interesting. She loves animals and is completely in tune to them, which they show throughout the movie. It is partially that love that inspires her find a more humane way for them to be slaughtered. Her rationale is they are here, they will be food and we should respect them for it. She does yet she also has the disconnect of the cattles final outcome. Her respect of animals reminds me so much of Daniel. There is a scene where she walks into a horse stall, the horse is going crazy, rearing up and very dangerous. Temple walks up to it and calms it down. She walks into cattle and sees how they move. She lays in the middle of the cattle looking toward the sky like Daniel does laying on the trampoline or sidewalk staring at the sky. She brings calmness to the animals and they return the favor. I have seen Daniel do the same thing with animals. He has no fear, just calm understanding. Lucky for Temple she spent summers at her aunt's farm and this helped her tremendously. Watch the movie!

Most of all, when Temple speaks of the things her mother did for her that changed the course of her life, (not institutionalizing her as recommended, for one) my heart pulled. She knew that had her mom listened to the Dr's her world would have been totally different, but she had never expressed that to her mom. Instead she has a doctorate and helps people all over the world with her public speaking and her books. I had an experience last week talking to a mother for my job that showed me with a few changes in fate how different Daniel's life could be. I am working as an advocate and this woman's story tore me apart. I felt like her son and mine were so similar and yet the point he was at in comparison to Daniel's was very difficult for me to hear. I cried when I hung up the phone. I cried for the mom, who was at a loss of what to do, and frustrated with her school system. I cried for the son, who is being cheated from his potential. I cried for our systems that are still in place in 2010. Temple, born August 1947 (the same year as my parents) somehow overcame that, but we still have some of the same crap going on today. There are still some schools who don't know how to handle the children who are different. Different not less. The children aren't incapable. You just have to take the time to understand them. Figure out what makes them tick. People did that for Temple. Her mom, her aunt and a teacher and mentor. We have given Daniel these opportunities and he has many many people in the schools that know what he can do. It was hard for me to see the similarities and the differences. I guess that was why the movie was emotional for me. I could see the differences but also the similarities with Temple and Daniel. It gave me hope. It also tore me up. But the message that our kids are Different not less, is the most important thing to draw from it. Please watch it and give me your feedback.

Visual Memory

A few posts ago I replayed the story of Daniel's "Secret Ability" of reciting a poem backwards. I have told many others this story including a few speech paths that I know. I was pleased (for some strange reason) to hear the amazement in their response and after a lot of spouting of reasons for this, they all come back to the same thing. "We don't know anything about the brain." (In that we know some, but there is so much that we don't know.)

I have always found Daniel's brain fascinating. Maybe it's because I love puzzles and am obsessed with them. I play Scrabble, Word Twist, and Scramble, obsessively on Facebook. I'll pick up any Suduku I see laying around, as well as a cross word. I like figuring things out. Maybe, besides the fact that Daniel is, ya know, my flesh and blood, that is one of the reasons I'm always trying to "figure him out". Will I ever? Probably not completely. Whenever you figure something out with him he throws out something new for you to wrestle around with for a while.



For that reason I've been watching the visual memory thing closer since the backwards poem moment. Here are some findings. First the cable guy was here yesterday (wait that has been every day for 3 days in a row and approximately the 1 millionth time since September, it is officially my part time job, waiting for the cable guy) Anyway, when he was "fixing" the internet everything got moved around. Upon Daniel's getting home from school, he unpacks his backpack and spreads it all over the family room floor (just to make me nuts) makes his snack, get's his water, goes to the basement and goes online. He ran upstairs and said, "mom, the internet explorer icon is GONE!"

"Gone?"I said.

"yes, it's missing", replies Daniel.



First, this is amazing communication. Eight months ago he would have just started screaming in the basement, followed by me running down to see if someone was stabbing him with a butcher knife from the sound of his panic! So I was proud of his calm observation. I was panicked inside thinking what did the cable guy do now? When I looked at the screen I pointed it out, "see Daniel, it's over here". "Oh thank you mom!!" he says happily. This also shows his rigidness that he couldn't just look over the screen and find it. It wasn't where it was supposed to be for goodness sake!!! So I stood there for a minute to see what he would do. He moved the internet explorer icon back to where it should be, then he proceeded to move every other icon on the page back where they should be. All 49 of them. I counted. Seven rows of seven, and if my 3rd grade math is serving me well, that's an array demonstrating 49. Does he use all these icons? Um no. I don't even know what 75% of them are for, but he knew where each one belonged! Interesting.

The other "memory" example that came up relates to Zachary built a fort in our basement with his friend this weekend. He invited Daniel in on Sunday night. I sort of made a big deal about Zachary being kind enough to share this wonderful fort. Daniel thought this was awesome. The funny thing is Zachary would usually kill to have Daniel interact with him. This realization just seems to be dawning on Daniel. He is communicating much more. So they spent about 40 minutes in the fort. It was stocked with flashlights, pillows and books. One of the books was "I Spy Christmas" They were reading through this book and finding things. I was smiling to myself thinking that Daniel knows where EVERYTHING in that book is. This gave me a flashback. Danie was 3, we were driving to preschool. He was upset, crying (ok screaming) ya know, the usual ride to preschool in those days. I'm hugely pregnant. Nightmare. I'm trying to calm him. I said, "let's sing a song". He said, "no, I Spy Christmas", and started reciting the riddles. I looked in the rear view mirror and he was not only reciting the riddles but pointing into the air at where the things were on "the page". There was no page in front of him because THERE WAS NO BOOK IN FRONT OF HIM. But he could obviously see the book like it was. So he was pointing to where they were on it. This freaked me out at the time, because well, he was 3 and at the time he hadn't yet been labeled as autistic.



My final example is of Christmas. Everyone has, of course, been asking Daniel what he got for Christmas. He would sort of sit there unsure of what to say and then say "bunny slippers". Which he did get by the way. As shown here. But he couldn't come up with anything else. This

was sort of bothering me because he got AWESOME things, an electric train set, a Wii, as I mentioned, it goes on and on. I'll guess we had 15 to 20 things on the list. So before school yesterday I sat down with him and we wrote it all down. I sent it to school to share with his para and his circle of friends group with the social worker. It was a cheat sheet so to speak, so he wouldn't sit there in group and say he only got bunny slippers! Last night he had another social group with a speech pathologist. So I realized on the way, I should have brought another list. So I just said. "Daniel when you talk about Christmas, what will you say?" Then he said, "I got an electric train set, a Wii. . . .. etc etc. The list we wrote out that morning. IN ORDER. Weird. I mean we know it is "helpful for him to have visual strategies". But this seems a little beyond that don't ya think?


So what do you think? Photographic memory? Have you ever read Temple Grandins book, "Thinking in Pictures??". I have, and I've seen her speak at conferences, twice. What are your thoughts internet? (ok I stole that line from another blog I read, dooce.com, but I've giving credit) Let me know. I'd love to figure it out.