Brilliant’ people left to languish

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‘Brilliant’ people left to languish
Published: April 04, 2008 7:28 AM

0 Comments Kids who should be headed for engineering school, end up coddled as handicapped too often.

“A lot of people with mild autism and mild Asperger’s (syndrome) are very brilliant,” said Temple Grandin, who has been sharing her unique, insider’s perspective on the condition for about 20 years.

“The very social didn’t build the first stone tools.”

The autism spectrum is large and extremely variant, Grandin said on Thursday at a dual diagnosis conference held at the Capri Centre. Albert Einstein would be labeled autistic were he born today, along with many other “geeks or nerds.”

Grandin said one in 150 children is born with some level of autism or Asperger’s.

She spent the morning talking about how parents and educators can help children with mild forms of autism succeed, and the afternoon discussing medication and treatment for all forms of autism.

Grandin, like Einstein, had no speech until she was nearly four years old. But, with the right support, she used her advanced visual-thinking skills to become an expert in designing livestock handling facilities, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a best-selling author. (She will also be speaking at a livestock conference in Red Deer today.)

“I’m very concerned that people aren’t getting the education they need,” Grandin said. “We aren’t thinking enough about what people are going to do when they grow up.”

That education emphasizes autistic children’s strengths while teaching them basic work skills, such as being on time, taking turns and listening to orders. “They’ll be very good at one kind of thing, and very bad at something else,” she said.

She identifies three specialized thinking patterns for autistic people: visual thinkers, music and math thinkers and verbal logic thinkers. Each type of thinker has their strengths, but they need someone to recognize and nurture their talents.

Grandin credits her parents with teaching her social rules and work skills.

“I think every Asperger’s kid should do a paper route,” she said, or learn to mow lawns. When she was 13, her mother got her sewing regularly for a nearby seamstress.

Creativity is needed to problem-solve around difficulties those with mild autism have with skills such as multi-tasking and interviewing. And discipline should never involved taking away a privilege that is connected to the child’s unique skill set, she said.

She warns that some parents today are getting locked into categories, and kids who should be headed for engineering school, end up being coddled as handicapped.

“Nothing is the worst thing you can do.”

Contact Heather Schultz at [email protected]

I definitely think that people with AS should be brought up and encouraged to feel that they can be successful and get along in life. One of the reasons I am glad I was diagnosed in adulthood is that I did not need to grow up with the messages "you have a disability"