People on the autistic spectrum tend to get fixated on what they think. Temple Grandin More Quotes by Temple Grandin More Quotes From Temple Grandin 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. Temple Grandin autism fire men Sometimes we forget about common sense. Autism is used too much as an excuse for bad behavior. Temple Grandin common-sense autism too-much we raise them for us; that means we owe them some respect. nature is creul but we dont have to be. i wouldnt want to have my guts ripped out by a lion. i'd much rather die in a slaughter house if it were done right. Temple Grandin done house mean And while we are on the subject of medication you always need to look at risk versus benefit. Temple Grandin risk looks needs 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. Temple Grandin birth realizing people 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. Temple Grandin lame autism answers 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. Temple Grandin autism suffering believe My life is basically my work. Temple Grandin life-is There is a tremendous range of children with a PDD label. Temple Grandin range labels children 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. Temple Grandin animal memories thinking I want get people to think about sensory based of thinking. Temple Grandin want people thinking 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. Temple Grandin children years school 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. Temple Grandin teacher children thinking 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. Temple Grandin unique brain animal 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. Temple Grandin heat reform steel 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. Temple Grandin rewards training cat 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. Temple Grandin cat motivation dog 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. Temple Grandin animal memories book 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." Temple Grandin hate real baseball 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. Temple Grandin construction scared elephants