My Life - Autism's An Important Part

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.

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.

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.

What I've Tried To Do Is Combine Both My Personal Experiences With Scientific Research. I Like To Cross The Divide Between The Personal World And The Scientific World.

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.