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.
People wouldn’t have become who we are today if we hadn’t coevolved with dogs.
All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.
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.
It is never too late to expand the mind of a person on the autism spectrum.
Sometimes we forget about common sense. Autism is used too much as an excuse for bad behavior.
If I did not have my work, I would not have my life.
My Advice is: You always have to keep persevering.
Autism is an extremely variable disorder.
Us visual thinkers like me, be good at things like industrial design, graphics, art, those kind of jobs.
I can remember being bullied and teased. It was absolutely horrible. I got kicked out of ninth grade for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. It was absolutely terrible.
The people that were socially awkward from my generation, they all had paper routes and that taught them the discipline of work.
People on the autistic spectrum tend to get fixated on what they think.
I’d rather have a kid come up to me and tell me that he loves dinosaurs or he loves airplanes or he likes training dogs or I like Shakespeare. I mean, just something.
One of the big areas I’d like to see a lot more research done on is the sensory problems, and it’s real variable. One kid’s got sound sensitivity; another one can’t tolerate fluorescent lights. I can’t stand scratchy clothes.
I think that the definition of autism is too broad. You got to remember, autism definition is a behavioral profiling.
When I was younger, I didn’t even realize the way I think visually is different.
When kids are really little, they all look the same. No speech, no social relatedness, cannot emphasize enough the importance of early educational intervention.
In fact, there are autism clusters, you know, around some of the big tech centers. You take two socially awkward computer programmers and put them together, that can kind of concentrate the autistic genes.
Autism’s an important part of who I am, but I’m a college professor and an animal scientist first. And I wouldn’t want to change ’cause I like the logical way I think.