One of the main things you learn when you talk to Temple Grandin is that she lives to create solutions. Whether it’s finding a humane way to walk cattle through a slaughter house or it’s finding a way to engage a child’s individual imagination, she is excited to brainstorm and find a viable path. As soon as Temple Grandin found out that I was an Autism Mom, she wanted to know all about my son. What were his interests? What was I doing to feed his interests? One of the things Temple seems very sure about is that we shouldn’t allow children on the spectrum to just wither away by themselves playing useless games that don’t teach them anything useful. And let’s face it there are lots of those games out there.
Compassion In Action
Have you ever felt like you were alone and no one understood what you were going through? I have to be honest, in the first year after my son was diagnosed with Autism, I felt that way a great deal of the time. For me that feeling of isolation got better over time. I was lucky that some people reached out their hands and showed me that my family’s journey was a group marathon, not a solo sprint. Those helping hands made all the difference and I am forever grateful to them. But if I’m completely honest there are still days, 7 years after we first got that diagnosis, that I marvel at the sometime complete lack of compassion for what my son has gone through, and what so many other families dealing with Autism are going through. “Where is the compassion, where is the perspective taking from people who are supposedly neuro-typical??!!!” I sometimes rage. Those moments leave me feeling powerless and I’ve decided to do something about it.