Temple Grandin urges parents and educators to expose autistic children to a range of experiences

one of the nation's leading authorities on autism is out with a new book offering advice on working with young people with autism one in 54 children is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in this country 1 in 54 and of those between 24 and 40 percent are considered to be non-verbal well jamie wax went to colorado to meet with the book's author temple grandin who was once told she would never be able to speak jamie good morning good morning tony that's right as you'll see she did learn to speak write teach and so much more temple grandin has a phd is a university professor and is considered an expert in many more than one fields i met with her at the temple grandin equine center in colorado state university where she told me it's important to expose those on the spectrum to the world i always make sure i'm introduced as temple grand and professor of animal science i think that's important that i have a real job temple grandin has split her life between understanding animals and helping explain autism you consider autism a gift in the milder forms it can give you some real advantages but in the milder forms you get a brain that's more thinking rather than a brain that's more social emotional being social emotional eats up a ton of processor space in the brain my name is temple grandin as the hbo film about her details her brain works differently she thinks in pictures can you bring everything you've seen to your mind sure even if it were an everyday object like say shoes i see all shoes i've worn my mothers and other people i've met and you have three pairs one is a new heel you know she's in newspaper ads and tv ads [Music] it's a feature of her autism that has helped her understand animal behavior my work with cattle the first thing i did was to get down in the chutes to see what cattle were seeing as i noticed that cattle would you know slime stop and refuse to move through a chute and i noticed that maybe there's a coat on the fence a piece of chain hanging down and other people didn't notice those things at the time you discovered all of these things you were having trouble relating to other human beings but you related well to animals why do you think that well i think it related to animals because they don't think in words they think in pictures you've seen a lot of breakthroughs with autistic people in these animals absolutely i've had parents tell me that their kid did their first words on a horse wow and this would be mostly younger children the 74 year old is the co-author of 11 books on autism her latest navigating autism nine mindsets for helping kids on the spectrum encourages seeing autistic children as more than just their diagnosis it's a very interesting approach to break this down into mindsets where did that come from well it came from the idea of not having them locked into the label let's look at other medical conditions that are commonly associated with autism you take them into the regular doctor and say well he's just pitching a fit because he has autism well maybe he's having behavior problems because his stomach hurts and that needs to be treated it's interesting to me because as the parent of an autistic child in many ways i feel like my daughter is born in the best time in history to have autism well when i was a child the individuals with autism either had no speech delay or maybe a very slight speech delay they would usually get out and get jobs and and do stuff kids like me i was really severe looking at age three and what was usually done with kids like me in the 50s is put us in an institution today things are so much better there's just no comparison but where we're falling down is with the older fully verbal kid making that transition from the world of school to the world of work grandin says schools are not putting enough emphasis on hands-on training vocations where autistic children can excel students get interested in things they get exposed to and so you should expose them to his broader well i'm a big fan of exposing them to many things and people ask me all the time what would you do if you could change the schools i want to put all the hands-on classes back in art sewing cooking woodworking theater music there's a lot of kids that are kind of different that aren't getting exposed to the things that they could turn into a career i had a girl in my class last semester who had never used a ruler they just don't have any idea where anything comes from do you think the pandemic in going virtual made that even worse well it certainly didn't help at any but i also learned that having a good online class is a lot more work than than in person class because you have to do the discussion boards and to do those well it's a ton of work i have to ask you and i i i'm gonna try not to get emotional about it but um you are the person who allowed me to see it to see inside my child's mind well good and to help her what does it mean to you that i'm one of millions of people well it really means a lot to me when someone says that my book or something i said helped help the parent understand their kid and that's what i like to hear i should have known i was sunk as soon as i said i'm going to try not to get emotional but uh really she has been such a revelation for myself millions of other people connected to the autism spectrum and one of my very best friends andy murlis who produced this piece who also is the father of an autistic daughter and her book navigating autism is out and on sale now and is really a great resource wow who was the person that helped her because she grew up in a time like she said where you could be taken to an institution her mother uh her mother she would have been taken from her family and never have seen her mother again and her mother would not allow that to happen in fact to the peril of her parents marriage she disagreed so much with uh with what her father wanted to do it's a it's an incredible story of advocacy before we even know what the spectrum was you said um during the commercial break that temple feels like we are leaning on technology a little bit too much when it comes to kids yeah she thinks she thinks autistic is like video games and screens are are very dangerous for autistic kids right now and and using that as a sort of babysitter which i think a lot of parents are guilty of sometimes uh is is very bad for kids on the spectrum yeah babysitter press play we call it my hustle that's right i understand the story well done yeah jamie thank you story well done thanks so much and uh if you want to hear more of jamie's conversation with temple grandin you can on today's cbs mornings podcast next we'll take a look back at all that mattered this week we'll be right back [Music]

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 247,313

Keywords: video, cbs, news, temple grandin, parents, educators, expose, autistic children, autism, children, range, experiences, book

Id: mycMFcrJ3po

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021