Transcriber: Monika Szczerba
Reviewer: Rysia Wand Four years ago I was speaking
with a girl named Sarah. Sarah said to me,
"Chris, I have Asperger syndrome. I guess having Asperger's means
there are things I can't do." I believe we need to rethink
the autism spectrum. I educate children on their rights and that says we work with children,
their teachers and parents. I've delivered workshops
in about 140 schools. I say how autism
is a spectrum of behaviors. On one hand, it can cause children to experience
social difficulties, anxiety, obsessive traits and disruptive habits. But on the other hand,
it provides children with incredible gifts in memory,
focus, detail, and visual perception. No two children experience
this spectrum in the same way. I met children who might be non-verbal, children who were genius innovators
and in a galaxy all on their own, or children like Sarah,
who have a mild form of autism, commonly referred to as Asperger syndrome. So when Sarah says to me, "Having Aperger's means
there are things I can't do." I thought, hang on. We don't have this label
for children to say "I can't". We have it for children to say "I can". What lead to that rethink was an earlier meeting
I had with a mom named Lisa. Lisa had been talking to me
about her disruptive child. Imagine if, simply because your child doesn't know
how to socialize with other children, the world outcasts your son
or daughter as "the weird one". People start to whisper
about you as a parent. You're called the bad parent. People start to ban you
from children's play-dates because your child is just too hard work. Enough eyebrows get raised
about your child that you're referred
to child psychiatrists, where your child is placed
in the fishbowl for seven months as all the experts stare
at the strange ways that he or she moves. That was Lisa's life. She told me how the experts called her up
and invited her to a meeting, where they sat her down, as said this, "Lisa, we're sorry to say that everything that you find
fascinating about your child is actually a problem. Everything that you thought
you were doing right about your parenting, you're actually doing wrong. Your child has high-functioning autism. That means your child can function, but there's lot of things
your child can't do. Your child will be withdrawn,
socially inept, obsessive, and have anxiety. It's highly likely
that your child will get worse, so we recommend that you involve
this service in your life constantly." I believe we need a rethink, because Lisa is my mother. And I am that child
on the autism spectrum. I am living and breathing her rethink. What my mom did for me
when I was growing up was she wielded
this quiet magic around me. She worked in a background
to set up a network of people, of just family and friends
that always helped me say "I can" when I found myself
facing an insurmountable challenge. They were the people that always worked on my gifts
and helped me control my difficulties. She used my label
"high-functioning autism" to alert my primary and secondary teachers of a type of learning environment
that would most enable me. And with me, every film she made me watch,
every book she made me read, had this "I can" enforced to it. My childhood was full of stories
of children that have overcome adversity. This was no dream for mom.
I certainly was no picnic. I asked her recently
just how bad did this get. That's a very dangerous question
to ask your mom. (Laughter) She said, "Well, Chris,
there was your finger-painting." And I thought, what was so different
about my finger-painting? And she said, "Oh, Chris. You did
finger painting with your own feces. (Gasps) And I thought, "Whoa."
I had that reaction. I was like, "How did you survive me?!" Because the thing she never let me do was
she never let me opt out of things. I never wanted to be social as a child, and she just refused to let me
use autism as an excuse. I would pay down on her
by throwing these tantrums, and it weren't just
typical child tantrums, it would involve the whole household. One of them was so bad that simply to avoid
throwing me through the window, she picked up my school bag,
and threw it across my bedroom, and it managed to go
through my bedroom wall. And I shut up after that one. (Laughter) When my family reached
their exhaustion threshold, I would be sent to the refuge
of my grandparents. And my grandparents
had this wonderful impact on me. My grandmother researched exercises
that would help me with my anxiety, and I still use those exercises today. My grandfather knew that I would have a panic attack
at the thought of playing social sports like football and cricket
with other children, and so he worked on my motor skills. He taught me sports in private and even though he was
permanently in a wheelchair, he used his mind and his humor to enable me to feel
confident in my own skin. At school, it would've been safe
to call me "nine going on ninety". My brother, Steven, read Aladdin,
and I read encyclopedias. I had this fascination with plotting
the different royal families of Europe. I managed to do it
from the 14th to 19th century. (Laughter) I had distilled it down into this incredibly visual
and detailed chart. When my grade 2 teacher,
Miss Tey, set an assignment, I matched this chart up to her because I just felt I have found
a new way of seeing the last millennium. No wonder we had
so many revolutions and conflicts; these families are way too connected,
small community completely out of touch. (Laughter) (Applause) When I took it up to Miss Tey she said, "Oh goodness, Chris,
doesn't this chart look interesting? But darling, our assignment is on winter." (Laughter) "Would you mind drawing
what winter looks like?" And I thought, I've just done a PhD
on the whole last millennium, and you want me to draw clouds and rain? (Laughter) That happened a lot to me at nine. I would also tell stories
about family trees that were broken. When I was ten years old, and I was watching a midday movie
at my grandparents house, the film "Gone With the Wind" came on, and I couldn't cope with the fact that the daughter of the two
main characters, Bonnie, had died in that horrible
horse riding accident. I thought, "What do you mean,
the family tree's come to an end? There's no sequel? At ten, I'm going to have to
continue that work. And so I actually published
a sequel to "Gone With the Wind". I even threw in a sex scene, because that's what my autism
in visual perception could do with sex ed. (Laughter) Raising me was also entertaining. I was very lucky at school to have the advantage
of making some great loyal friends. At primary school,
my friend, Erin could tell that my brain just absorbed
every minor detail in class. She would help me to focus on classwork,
because I often wouldn't get good marks because I'd trail off into minor things. She helped me focus. When I was a teenager, it was my friend, Tim,
that helped me pick up social cues so that I was less vulnerable to bullying. Because, unfortunately, in Australia, 80% of secondary students
with Asperger Syndrome are targeted in schoolyard bullying. When school was over,
and I lost the safety net of my routine, because people on the spectrum
love their routine, my friend, Alana, helped me focus
on getting uni right, on dealing with my anxiety, and looking at campaigning, volunteering and children's advocacy
as a new focus for me. One of my teachers
was an extraordinary woman named Christine Horvath who met me at 13
and could immediately tell that I just had this different mind,
that I moved differently, and that I had a way with words
and memory and creativity. What she did was she set up platforms
for me to tell stories. I moved from the kid
that no one really knew how to take to the respected story-teller
in the schoolyard. And I've just been following
that pathway ever since. When I think about this network
that my mom started, I know what she saw,
when those experts sat her down. When they said that I couldn't do things, she just chose to say, "But he can." When they said I would struggle, she chose to think of strengths. When they said that this would be ugly, she chose to say
that this could also be beautiful. There is another way
of putting her rethink. My friend and I agree that men
are form Mars, women are from Venus, and autistic people are from Pluto. (Laughter) We go to this next slide. My brother on the left, Steven,
the boys' boy; he's definitely from Mars. My sister Marian in the middle,
she's from Venus. And the boy on the right,
with his socks pulled up (Laughter) with his shirt tucked in, his top buttoned-up, and a combover
without one hair out of place, he is from Pluto. (Laughter) I look at it now and I'm like,
"I was just ahead of my time." (Laughter) I'm basically dawning
the eight year old hipster. (Laughter) I mean, I basically paved the way. But if we actually entertain
this thought for a second, Pluto in our Solar System
has this fundamentally unique orbit. It moves in a different way. And it is the same for children
on the autism spectrum. Our orbit or our mind
just moves differently. That doesn't mean
there are things we can't do. Hell, we can do most things,
we can even throw in a little extra. Our mind can move
like lightening on certain subjects. Language, spelling, and words
were what did it for me. But our mind, our orbit,
can sometimes take longer to adapt in the area of social skills. But it does adapt. I can't tell you how confusing
my literal mind found sarcasm as a kid. Let's just say it could take
a joke a long way. I realised that when Sarah said to me, "I guess that having Asperger's means
that there are things I can't do" that she is in an environment where people stare at her different orbit
and point at it as a deficit. Whereas I came from an environment where my brave mother removed my disorder by creating an environment
free of this stigma that would inhibit me. Twenty years have passed
since I was diagnosed. Experts no longer
talk to parents like that, health innovations have come a long way, but in my work I see this stigma
holding kids back all the time and it's going to require all of us
to do something about it. Because we all are going to work
with people on this spectrum. One in 88 children in USA are diagnosed
as being on the autism spectrum. And these children can bring
extraordinary value to your life. Here is Leonardo da Vinci. Author Michael Gelb
has researched da Vinci's life, looked at the way he gathered notes, at his visual perception,
his detail and focus, and concluded that this man
was far advanced on the autism spectrum. Look at the value he gave us.
The Renaissance. The lesson from da Vinci's life is not that every child
on the autism spectrum is going to be exactly like him. Because they can't be. You know, it's a very broad spectrum. The lesson is, though, that this man had a network
of people around him that worked on his gifts
and helped him control his difficulties. That network, his "I can" network, started when his father,
Piero, took his son's paintings to a painter friend named Verrocchio
and said, "Look at what my son is doing!" And Verrocchio looked at these paintings and instead of pointing a finger
at a different orbit, said, "Bring me into that orbit." Now, consider this. Do you think that if da Vinci
was born today, he would be able to do now
what he did then? I worry that our tendency to mock kids,
to label, to hold them back, is stifling the da Vincis of today. So this is where we can all play a role. We all have a role
in a child's "I can" network. If you are a child or young person
on this spectrum, hear me: never let a label limit
what you're capable of. Use this spectrum
to create your own label. If you are a parent or a grandparent,
know your child is special. They're just leading a focused life. Be confident with the quiet magic
you can wield to bring out their gifts. Or raise a child who is a loyal friend
to one of these children. And if you're a teacher,
create those platforms that make these children socially visible
and respected in the schoolyard. And I promise you, when you find you role
in a kid's "I can" network, there nothing like the sight of watching one of these children
transform their orbit from a place of frustration,
failure, and shame, into a place of confidence. You watch them move from the prison of self-doubt
to the freedom of self-belief. And to my mom who's here today:
thank you for that freedom. (Applause)
