Great Throughts Treasury

"A treatment method or an educational method that will work for one child may not work for another child. The one common denominator for all of the young children is that early intervention does work, and it seems to improve the prognosis."

"As you may know, some of the stereotyped behaviors exhibited by autistic children are also found in zoo animals who are raised in a barren environment."

"A sensory diet simply means that at certain intervals, a child may need a break to calm his nervous system down. Sensory problems are on a continuum from mild to severe. Children with more severe sensory problems will need more frequent breaks to calm down an over aroused nervous system. During these breaks, the child can engage in sensory activities that are calming. It is often best to have the breaks at scheduled times to prevent accidentally rewarding a child for throwing a tantrum. If the child gets sensory breaks after he/she behaves badly, he/she may behave badly to obtain more breaks."

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

"Animals like novelty if they can choose to investigate it; they fear novelty if you shove it in their faces."

"At the age of three, Tito Mukhopadhyay was diagnosed with severe autism, but his mother, Soma, refused to accept the conventional wisdom of the time that her son would be unable to interact with the outside world. She read to him, taught him to write in English, and challenged him to write his own stories."

"Animals make us Human."

"Autism is an extremely variable disorder."

"Autism facts: - 1 in 88 U.S. children has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). - 1 in 85 Colorado children is affected by the disorder. - The national estimated prevalence of ASDs increased 78 percent between 2002 and 2008. - ASDs were found to affect almost five times as many boys as girls. - The majority (62 percent) of children with ASDs did not have intellectual disabilities."

"Autism is a neurological disorder. It's not caused by bad parenting. It's caused by, you know, abnormal development in the brain. The emotional circuits in the brain are abnormal. And there also are differences in the white matter, which is the brain's computer cables that hook up the different brain departments."

"Autism is part of who I am."

"But my favorite of Einstein's words on religion is Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. I like this because both science and religion are needed to answer life's great questions."

"Bad things always happen when an animal is over-selected for any single trait. Nature will give you a nasty surprise."

"Autistic children are very difficult to take care of, especially severely autistic ones. When I was 4, I had almost no language; when I was 3, I had none at all."

"Children who are visual thinkers will often be good at drawing, other arts, and building things with building toys such as Legos."

"Computerized medical records will enable statistical analysis to be used to determine which treatments are most effective."

"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."

"Boys who cry can work for Google. Boys who trash computers cannot. I once was at a science conference, and I saw a NASA scientist who had just found out that his project was canceled?a project he?d worked on for years. He was maybe sixty-five years old, and you know what? He was crying. And I thought, Good for him. That?s why he was able to reach retirement age working in a job he loved."

"Children who seek deep pressure by rolling up in blankets or who get under mattresses are the ones most likely to benefit from deep pressure. In small children, deep pressure can be easily applied by rolling a child in heavy mats or getting under bean bag chairs. In many individuals, the squeeze machine or other devices that apply pressure are calming. Deep pressure is most effective when it is applied for 20 minutes and then removed for 20 minutes. Kids that like to swing may benefit from it. Some children may be able to speak more easily while they are doing slow swinging or sitting balancing on an exercise ball. Weighted vests help some children and do not work for others."

"Children in my generation when they were teenagers they had jobs and learned how to work. I cleaned horse stalls," she said. "When I was 8 years old, my mother made me be a party hostess - shake hands, take coats. In the 1950s, social skills were taught in a much more rigid way so kids who were mildly autistic were forced to learn them. It hurts the autistic much more than it does the normal kids to not have these skills formally taught"

"Costs for liability insurance are higher than costs for many procedures. There is a need to reform liability laws to stop out-of-control health care costs."

"Different not less."

"From a scientific standpoint, Aspergers and autism are one syndrome. Aspergers is part of the autism spectrum, not a separate disorder."

"For some individuals with autism, sensory therapies are very beneficial. Autism is highly variable and a sensory therapy that works well for one child may have no effect on another. Some of the most common sensory therapies are the use of deep pressure for calming, slow swinging, heavy work activities, and the brushing method. Sensory therapies performed by an occupational therapist can help some children to be calmer, more attentive and may aid in speech development."

"I am also a believer in an integrated treatment approach to autism."

"I am different, not less."

"Fieldwork is probably always more likely to be holistic than lab work or mathematical modeling because in the field you can?t get away from the whole when a research project starts."

"I am a big believer in early intervention."

"I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain."

"I am much less autistic now, compared to when I was young. I remember some behaviors like picking carpet fuzz and watching spinning plates for hours. I didn't want to be touched. I couldn't shut out background noise. I didn't talk until I was about 4 years old. I screamed. I hummed. But as I grew up, I improved."

"I believe that the place where an animal dies is a sacred one. There is a need to bring ritual into the conventional slaughter plants and use as a means to shape people's behavior. It would help prevent people from becoming numbed, callous, or cruel. The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence. In addition to developing better designs and making equipment to insure the humane treatments of all animals, that would be my contribution."

"I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream."

"I believe there is a reason such as autism, severe manic-depression, and schizophrenia remain in our gene pool even though there is much suffering as a result."

"I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a good teacher."

"I had people in my life who didn't give up on me: my mother, my aunt, my science teacher. I had one-on-one speech therapy. I had a nanny who spent all day playing turn-taking games with me."

"I had problems getting my words out. If people spoke directly to me, I understood what they said. But when the grownups got to yakking really fast by themselves, it just sounded like 'oi oi.' I thought grownups had a separate language. I've now figured out I was not hearing the hard consonant sounds."

"I get satisfaction out of seeing stuff that makes real change in the real world. We need a lot more of that and a lot less abstract stuff."

"I get great satisfaction out of doing clever things with my mind, but I don?t know what it is like to feel rapturous joy."

"I don?t want my thoughts to die with me, I want to have done something. I?m not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution - know that my life has meaning."

"I have been on the same dose of anti-depressants for 15 years, and my nerves still go up and down in cycles; but my nerves are cycling at a lower level than they were before."

"I have been talking and writing about sensory problems for over 20 years, and am still perplexed by many people who do not acknowledge sensory issues and the pain and discomfort they can cause. A person doesn't have to be on the autism spectrum to be affected by sensory issues."

"I know a number of autistic adults that are doing extremely well on Prozac."

"I like the really logical way that I think. I'm totally logical. In fact, it kind of blows my mind how irrational human beings are," she said. "If you totally got rid of autism, you'd have nobody to fix your computer in the future."

"I like to figure things out and solve problems."

"I strongly recommend that students with autism get involved in special interest clubs in some of the areas they naturally excel at. Being with people who share your interests makes socializing easier."

"I obtain great satisfaction out of using my intellect."

"I replaced emotional complexity with visual and intellectual complexity. I questioned everything and looked to logic, science, and intellect for answers."

"I think on the mild end of the spectrum most of its increased detection because I?ve worked with so many folks my age that I know are on the spectrum that are undiagnosed. And I think there?s some mental retardation?what used to be labeled mental retardation? that has gotten labeled autism. But I think there?s some actual severe autism that actually has increased."

"I like to cross the divide between the personal world and the scientific world."

"I think sometimes parents and teachers fail to stretch kids. My mother had a very good sense of how to stretch me just slightly outside my comfort zone. No surprises. You can?t chuck them in the deep end of the pool, that doesn?t work but she kind of just knew, you know, to get me to do things, like serve hors d?oeuvres at my mother?s parties and just bow and shake hands with the guests."