Temple Grandin Quotes - Page 7

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.

I played around with vegetarianism back in the '70s. One thing, my physiology just got to have animal protein. I get hypoglycemic, I get all light-headed unless I eat animal protein.

If you have a 2-year-old who is non-verbal, don't wait until you get a diagnosis at 4. The child needs one-on-one teaching with an effective teacher now. This can be a grandmother or a teacher or someone from the community. Grandmothers are especially great. There are a lot of grannies around. Go to your church for help.

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.

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.

Autism is an extremely variable disorder.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And while we are on the subject of medication you always need to look at risk versus benefit.

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.

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.

My life is basically my work.

You got barn cats and you want to make them tamed, you need to get them as kittens.

My grandfather was an engineer who invented the automatic pilot for airplanes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can tame feral cats, but you are never gonna get them like a cat that's been socialized at a very young age.

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.