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Ever wondered how one's mindset shapes their success? Join us as we explore this theme with the remarkable Dr. Temple Grandin, an autism advocate who turned her diagnosis into a testament of resilience. She shares her journey from a non-verbal childhood to becoming a professor at Colorado State University and a celebrated author. Listen in to this riveting conversation and learn about her fervent advocacy for people with disabilities, her views on the value of different thinking styles, and her firm belief in hands-on skills in both education and industry.
In today’s tech-driven world, practical skills are often overlooked. However, they carry immense value, not just in education, but also in industry. This episode highlights the importance of practical skills, the impact of mentorship, and the crucial role of social skills. We discuss the influence of Dr. Grandin's mother, and William Carlock, Temple's grade school science teacher her early educators, who, from an early age, challenged and inspired her. We also examine the impact of technology on practical skills, and Dr. Grandin's views on transitioning young adults with autism into independence.
Our thoughtful conversation goes on to embrace the importance of exposure to a variety of activities for young adults with autism. We delve into the pressing need for policymakers to understand the practical side of things, and we finish off with a profound discussion on social responsibilities. Hear Dr. Grandin's insights on social skills in autism, the significance of responsibility, and the changing dynamics of teaching manners in schools. Don't miss out on this enlightening episode with Dr. Grandin, it promises to provide you with a fresh perspective on success, resilience, and the power of the human mind.
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So today's interview is with someone very interesting. Many people have heard of Dr Temple Grandin. She is a fascinating person to speak with, but I got to admit I was a little bit intimidated. I've never interviewed someone before that had a movie made about their life. But she's a very practical and approachable person who's not caught up in fame at all.
Speaker 2:She kind of cuts through the bull war.
Speaker 1:She does really Okay.
Speaker 2:She doesn't have a lot of there's not a lot of access fluff. We did get to meet with her when she was visiting here in Michigan and that was a wonderful opportunity to actually see her in person and she is a delight. I just adore her.
Speaker 1:You know she can be direct. She can be like you said. There's not a lot of small talk involved in that, but there's also not it's not because there's a big ego behind it. She's just a very approachable person who wants to make the world better for people with disabilities.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that other people will understand. Yeah, and she sees the value in everybody, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it's just a very fascinating talk. I wish I could have talked with her for a longer period of time, but I know that she's a busy person. I'm thankful for the 45 minutes she gave me Exactly, so I'm excited.
Speaker 2:So let's hear this fabulous interview.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's do that. I temple grand and was born in Boston, massachusetts. Temple's achievements are remarkable because she was an autistic child. At age two she had no speech and all signs of severe autism. Fortunately, her mother defied the advice of the doctors and kept her out of an institution. Many hours of speech therapy and intensive teaching enabled Temple to learn speech. As a teenager, life was hard, with constant teasing. Mentoring by her high school science teacher and her aunt on her ranch in Arizona motivated Temple to study and pursue a career as a scientist and livestock equipment designer. Dr Grandin obtained her BA at Franklin Pierce College in 1970. In 1974, she was employed as a livestock editor for the Arizona Farmer Ranchmen and also worked for the coral industries on equipment design. In 1975, she earned her Master of Science in Animal Science at Arizona State University for her work on the behavior of cattle and different squeeze shoots. Dr Grandin was awarded her PhD in Animal Science from the University of Illinois in 1989 and is currently a professor at Colorado State University. She has done extensive work on the design of handling facilities. Half the cattle in the US and Canada are handled in equipment she has designed for meat plants. Other professional activities include developing animal welfare guidelines for the meat industry and consulting with McDonald's, wendy's International, burger King and other companies on animal welfare, following her PhD research on the effective environmental enrichment on the behavior of pigs. She has published several hundred industry publications, book chapters and technical papers on animal handling, plus 45 referred journal articles in addition to seven books. She is currently a professor of animal science at the Colorado State University, where she continues her research while teaching courses on livestock handling and facility design. Her book Animals and Translation was a New York Times bestseller and her book Lifestock Handling at Transport now has a third edition, which was published in 2007. Other popular books authored by Dr Grandin are Thinking and Pictures. Emergence, labeled Autistic Animals Make Us Human. Improving Animal Welfare a practical approach. And the Way I See it. Dr Grandin's most recent book is titled Visual Thinking. She has received numerous awards, including the Meritorious Achievement Award from the Livestock Conservation Institute, named a distinguished alumni at Franklin Pierce College and received an honorary doctorate from McKill University, university of Illinois and Duke University. She has also won prestigious industry awards, including the Richard L Knowlton Award for Meat Marketing and Technology Magazine and the Industry Advancement Award from the American Meat Institute and the Beef Top 40 Industry Leaders and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cattleman's Beef Association. Hbo premiered a movie aptly titled Temple Grandin in 2010 about Temple's early life and career with the livestock industry. The movie has won seven Emmy Awards. Dr Grandin is a past member of the board of directors of the Autism Society of America. She lectures to parents and teachers throughout the US on her experiences with autism. Articles and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, people Magazine, time Magazine, national Public Radio 2020, the View and the BBC. She was also honored in Time Magazine's 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Dr Grandin now resides in Fort Collins, colorado. Dr Grandin, welcome to Navigating Life as we know. It Great to be here.
Speaker 3:So who is your main audience? I kind of always like to know, because I can kind of, you know, customize my remarks.
Speaker 1:That's an excellent question. To begin with, our podcast audience primarily is families, including parents, siblings, care providers and young adults with disabilities many disabilities, but the predominant one, of course, is autism. Other people have autism and Down syndrome or autism, and it seems like it's come as a package deal sometimes. Most of our audience is interested in transitioning to independence. Many of them, many of these people with autism, are still living at home with mom and dad.
Speaker 3:That is our audience for the most part, okay, many parents of younger kids.
Speaker 1:There are some School age and moms and dads are thinking about what are the next steps they're planning ahead, so they do listen to this also. To prepare myself for this interview, I watched the HBO movie about your life and I'm reading visual thinking right now and animals make us human, and I was very happy to see that many of your books are on audiblecom.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I'm, just about all my books are available on audible and I'm finding now, in the last seven or eight years, the audible books are almost a third of the sales. Now, really, yeah, it's real, that's just to get from them. You know, when I get the statements from a publisher, you know, 15 years ago that would not have been the case. And there's quite a few ebooks, but there's more audible books than there is ebooks. Well, lots of physical books.
Speaker 1:When they have a lot of windshield time. I don't want to listen to radio stations, I listen to audio books. It's just a great way.
Speaker 3:A lot of people are doing that and I have people asking all the time is visual thinking available on audio? Yes, it is.
Speaker 1:So that's the research I did. I also looked on your website, which has a lot of material about what you do and your history, and also listen to the TED Talk that followed the movie release and that movie Yep it's still available.
Speaker 3:Yep still available on some of the different streaming services on Amazon's got it.
Speaker 1:There's so much interesting stuff to talk about. What I wanted to do is maybe categorize it in three areas that I think will speak to our audience in particular. The first one is life in a world is not designed for different label brains, and I think that was put forth in the movie quite well. You had a lot of things that you had to push back against, especially when you were working in the cattle industry male dominated and think that they knew everything and you had to innovate, and it was difficult because of just the environment you were in, a woman and autistic. That's a challenge right there.
Speaker 3:Well, being a woman in the cattle industry in the 70s was a much bigger barrier than autism, and where I had most of the problems was with middle management, with the foreman. That's where almost all my problems were. There were good people that owned the feed yards, that were good and hired me. You know I had some good mentors in the industry. The other thing I did is I made myself very good at what I did, and when I would sell jobs, I would sell off my drawings, my photographs of completed projects and also articles I'd written in cattle magazines. I learned how to sell my work rather than myself.
Speaker 1:Well, you certainly convinced them. I saw that in the movie where it's the guys in the field that said, nah, we do it this way.
Speaker 3:Oh the arms of the higher management was good, and then most of my problems. It was middle management. It was the foreman's. I got along a lot better with the people that actually handled the cattle, you know, and I look back at all of the problems and guess I did have bull testicles put on my vehicle. Oh and that was done by the foreman.
Speaker 1:Geez, yeah, I'm amazed that you put up with all that, but you were very determined to move forward.
Speaker 3:Well, another thing I did is I recognized doors to opportunity. There's a scene in the HBO movie where I go up to the editor of the farm arrangement magazine. That was our state farm magazine. I got it's cart because I knew if I wrote for that magazine that would really help my career. It also enabled me to get into meetings for free and advance my career, and I wrote good articles for that magazine. Again, I got respected for my work when I covered the Arizona cattle feeder's meeting. I covered it accurately and I summarized the speeches accurately.
Speaker 1:You approved your worth, and that's what you have to do.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what I did. I learned how to how to sell my work.
Speaker 1:And the second part I wanted to cover the three is the value of newer diversity. I find that fascinating, because we are all wired differently. Thank God that we are, because if we were all the same we'd get nowhere.
Speaker 3:I'm an extreme visual thinker and that made me good at understanding animals, because an animal doesn't live in a verbal world, it lives in a sensory based world. It made me good at design work and in my book, visual Thinking, I discuss how we need the visual thinkers to fix mechanical devices. I have a chapter in there on disasters and when I read about the Fukushima nuclear power plant I just couldn't believe it that they failed to put watertight doors on it to protect the electric emergency cooling pump. Can't design a nuclear reactor, but electric pumps don't run on water.
Speaker 1:That would be, you would think, intuitive, especially if you're on the coast like that and they've had tsunamis in the past, to have that in a place where it's susceptible to water. I would think that Common Sense would teach that.
Speaker 3:I think Common Sense is visual thinking. I'm going to let us think of a simple example. I was on an airplane and the person next to me had a laptop. The plane's up in the air on the tray table and he puts a cup of water on his laptop. Oh my gosh, you know what I mean. While we're flying. I was very, very careful. I was scared to death. I bumped him accidentally. The plane hit one bump. That water would have gone on that laptop and ruined it.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:There was no way I would put a little plastic cup of water on a laptop while flying on a plane. I did not see that risk.
Speaker 1:That's incredible, but it happens all the time, oh I saw him do it.
Speaker 3:Within the last year I saw him do it.
Speaker 1:Let's just hope the guy that put the water glass on the computer is not an engineer designing nuclear power plants. Dr Grandin, the third thing I'd like your comments on is what moms and dads should be doing in other people to help prepare young adults for transitions in life.
Speaker 3:I think one of the biggest problems is not working on preparing the transition to independence early enough. You need to have a slow transition from the world of school to the world of work and I see a lot of parents the fully verbal, autistic kids that are doing well in school, not doing anything to get the child learning life skills like shopping. They have a difficult time letting go. You know it needs to start with chores for little kids and maybe around 11 years old to replace the paper routes that no longer exist A volunteer job where they're doing a volunteer job for somebody else who's not family, on a schedule, learning how to work and then, as soon as they're legal, getting some jobs. And we need to make sure we avoid the rapid mullet tasking like McDonald's takeout window. That needs to be avoided. But we need to get these kids working before they graduate my school. That's what we need to do. But I want to emphasize it's never too late to start, but let's do it gradually and that's what we need to be doing. Visual thinkers like me are often very good at mechanical things and when I was out in the beef plants supervising installation of equipment I designed, I'm going to guess that about 20% of the people that I worked with some of them that owned big metal working shops were either autistic, dyslexic or ADHD undiagnosed and the problem is those people are retiring and they're not getting replaced, like who's going to fix elevators? Check out the elevator repair. People's age the next time you see them.
Speaker 1:Most of the programs that are being cut that involved hands-on skills for the sake of budgets, because they're not considered to be essential, are essential Well actually some schools, including our school system, is starting to put it back in.
Speaker 3:But then I went to job fair for kids that were different just recently and special ed teacher told me well they don't let the autistic kids take shop. Well, I can tell you, when I was out in the field the autistic kids owned the shop.
Speaker 1:That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3:I think we well, you see educators and don't have any. You know, contact with industry, but we've got a gigantic skill shortage. There's all kinds of specialized equipment we do not make, such as poultry processing equipment, such as state-of-the-art electronic chip making equipment, and this is all discussed in my book, visual thinking. I'm very concerned about skill loss. Well, what's happening is, is there a lot of people I worked with. They owned from small shops to big shops, started out with maybe a single welding class, or they started out working on cars and they had their own businesses that's where autistic people often do best of their own business and some of them had many patents and the equipment that they've made is still being used around the world. But the problem is they're not getting replaced.
Speaker 1:It's hard to turn that around, but it's got to happen. Part of the movie talked about Dr Karlach's mentorship for you and the pressure he made on you and your mother did some amazing things too. Your mother was told to put you in an institution, like many people were back in the day.
Speaker 3:Well, that was kind of standard practice in the 50s. Fortunately I got into a very good early educational program by age two and a half where you know very you know some more of the kind of programs they have today, with an emphasis on speech, learning, how to wait and take turns. There's a lot of emphasis on turn taking at games and the skills like getting dressed, eating with utensils just basic skills.
Speaker 1:And your mother did that over and over again.
Speaker 3:She put you in different situations and told you what the social rules are and some of this was you know you're, my generation was 50s upbringing, where where manners and social skills were taught in a much more structured way than they are today, and that's another reason why some of these granddads come up to me all the time and they find out they're autistic when the kids get diagnosed and they have been able to keep decent jobs like engineering, pharmacists, accounting.
Speaker 1:And Dr Karlach could see the light come on, and the actress that played your part when they got to that optical illusion. It was something you could, could wrap your mind around and you could, you could work on.
Speaker 3:I think you call that lighting the smarts, which is well, the thing is is that you know and I worked with people when I was out in construction that the taught teacher had turned the student around.
Speaker 1:And the amazing thing, of course, that Dr Karlach was not actually an accredited teacher, but he was a doer. He was a doer, he he knew the scientific method and he saw that inquisitiveness in your mind and he gave you the opportunity.
Speaker 3:Well, this is where good teachers make such a difference. I had some excellent teachers and I also had an excellent teacher in graduate school to help me get into animal science. He was the introductory animal science teacher, philip Stiles. You know there were some really good people that mentored me and and this is just so important, and what makes what's made my life be worthwhile is I've had an interesting career, and career is what makes my life fun, interesting, worthwhile.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I noticed you mentioned several times that you were a desire to be purposeful, to do something that makes a difference in the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you want to do something that's purposeful. You know, and I think right now I'd like to see kids that are different get into good careers where they can do something that, whatever they do to, that's purposeful and those good things.
Speaker 1:I think we're wired to do that as human beings that we're supposed to live in in relationship to others, and we bring value to the equation and they bring value to us. But that means respecting the way that we think differently.
Speaker 3:You know I've done a lot of talks to big corporations from the steel company, pharmaceutical company, banks, travel companies, computer companies and I've told them the bosses, that the first thing you've got to do is understand. People think differently and they bring different skills in the visual thinkers like me. We need to be involved in things like risk analysis. We need to be involved in things like the interface design. Let's go back to the two steves on the iPhone. Steve Jobs wanted he was an artist on the original computer that he made, he wanted it to be simple and easy to use. And Steve Wozniak was the computer person. You know he'd want five expansion slots and Steve Jobs just wanted it to be simple. So one was an artist, the other was a you know more mathematical computer techie. The two working together created the first, the Macintosh, those early computers, but also the iPhone, with an easy to use interface that was made by an artist. This is why you need both kinds of minds.
Speaker 1:You had said at 1.2, engineering minds need art minds and that's a classic example there with Wozniak and Jobs. And it's a success because the people that are fans of Apple and many of them are artists themselves like the simplicity of it.
Speaker 3:Well, you see what it made it simple. You see, some of the interfaces on some things are too complicated. I remember when Google first came out and the reason it became popular is because you did not have to learn anything. You just had this plain white box that said Google. And then it also said I'm feeling lucky. Originally it would give you just one hit, but there was nothing to learn.
Speaker 1:And now I just changed smartphones. Man, I tell you, it's not something you just do overnight. I have all kinds of things I have to reconnect with different apps. It's getting a little bit more complex, more than I like. How come you changed smartphones? The phone that I had went to my son with disabilities. We have an app on there that can help him. He needed a smartphone, and so I just decided to give him mine and get a new one. But you can't buy the one I had because it's outdated. Now they want to sell you a new phone. So they've upgraded things and they made it more complex. It's taking me a while.
Speaker 3:Well, I think, sometimes too complex. You see, the visual thinker wants to take some of the complexity off of it.
Speaker 1:Oh, by the way, I took your visual spatial identifier test that you had in visual thing, I had 14 yes and 4 no, so I guess I'm more on the visual side, which makes sense, because I'd rather see a graph than read about it.
Speaker 3:Oh, I would too. I like pie charts when I'm looking at okay, I was just looking at a thing today about different kinds of pets Dogs, cats, fish, you know stuff like that what was popular and looking at that on a pie chart, I just did. You know it was just on a website this morning. Looking at that, I'd like seeing it as a pie chart.
Speaker 1:It gives you perspective, and I think that's what's hard to get perspective when you're just reading numbers and words on a page. And when it comes to corporations, a flow chart makes sense to me. Now I know who is where and what seat and how it all works, but it's hard to read about that, like the IKEA test you mentioned. Yeah, I look at the picture. I don't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just. It's easier for me to grasp that.
Speaker 3:I totally Business leaders is realizing that different types of thinking exist, then you can start looking at how the different kinds of minds can work together, because the people I worked with that invented, you know, mechanical equipment, you know. Eventually they got to get a more of a verbal thinker, just run the business part of the business. In one of the cases it was his wife ran the business part of the business, or they have to hire somebody to run the business part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing when you start doing something outside of your skill set or what your mind is most likely to gravitate toward, that's where people run into trouble and I think it's just a matter A good business leader would be able to see that you build on strengths. Unfortunately, you know, going through school, I wrote down here and noted. It seemed to me that the old type of education, the way it was handled, is very much like the shoots for the cattle. You know, it was prod the kids through this program having do what you think that's important for them, and there was no sense of discovery, a lot of big believer in having kids exposed to lots of different things and I get asked all the time what would I do to fix your school?
Speaker 3:Let's put all the hands on classes back in. Actually, some places are starting to do this, including our school district, but there's still a lot of resistance about having a kid go into a high end skills trade. And I was on a zoom call just recently with a high school animal science class and it had a girl come up to me at the end. They had to walk up to the computer to ask questions. She says my guidance counselor says I shouldn't take a full tech class and there's tons of jobs there. And the thing that a lot of verbal thinkers don't understand is a different kind of thought. You know, now I'm seeing the picture on mine of that cup of water on the laptop on a plane. There's no way I'd put a cup of water on a laptop when a plane is flying.
Speaker 1:It's the same kind of logic that puts the pumps under water, pumps on the water, with no water tight doors.
Speaker 3:I mean I can just feel that plane hitting the top and that can be the end of that laptop when the water spills out.
Speaker 1:Right and like the likelihood is very high in an airplane.
Speaker 3:It's totally high. All you have to do is hit one little bump and that water is going to get spilled. I can't believe that they did that. I was scared I'd move and knock it over like bump is arm or something. So I stayed really still because I didn't want to be responsible for spilling water on a laptop. That's something I would have never have done.
Speaker 1:So it does make sense to have people doing the things that they're most attracted to. That they're you know what?
Speaker 3:I'm one thing I found in the food processing plant is that my kind of mind, the mechanical mind, did all the mechanical equipment. Those were the people working in the shop and patenting mechanical equipment, and then the more mathematical degree engineers that do borders, refrigeration, snow loading power and water requirements. So in order to get the entire factory you've got to have both kinds of minds. Now we've got the mathematical minds, but the visual thinkers that know how to make the mechanical things Well, there are visual thinkers are probably playing video games in the basement.
Speaker 1:Where over in Europe they're in the shop building the stuff one of the things I was listening to, that I think that you did talk on how everything was made in Denmark.
Speaker 3:Right now for poultry and pork tossing equipment. That's all coming out of Holland and and the state of the art electronic chip making machine also comes out of Holland, even though it's based on physics research that was done in a university in the United States.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully, if you said your school district started to change that around that other.
Speaker 3:You know they are starting to change it around. I was in Michigan I just within the last year. They're starting to change it around. But then there's a lot of Resistance against it. Because this is starting to change it around a guidance counselors telling a student not to take Votek classes. I gave a talk to a gifted group just a few weeks ago and a lot of the parents so they don't want the kids going to Votek. They sort of look at it like a lesser form of intelligence. I can tell you it's a different form of intelligence. I was out on these projects big, complicated factors that people have to figure out how to put together it's. It's a very different intelligence than than verbal thinking. I think it's a very different concept than verbal thinking and that's where the Some of the value can come in, because the verbal thinker might think of a great concept, but somebody's got to put legs on that dream or else it's gonna go well. Well then you have to figure out the certain situations or maybe that concept doesn't work. I've been involved in some disability discussions in corporations, like a travel website, for example, and they're talking a lot of broad concepts, and there was a blind person on that committee and we got to discussing about specific problems to make the airport more inclusive and he said that he had trouble finding gates. So my mind just I'm imagining this date finder app and as he's walking through the airport, the gates announced their numbers to him. That's very doable. Yeah, that's very doable. Yeah it's very, very doable with transponder technology. No breakthrough technology there we can figure out how to do it. So the airport does not do any maintenance on the thing, it just works. But you see, that's something specific, it's not abstract, it's not a broad concept, it's something specific that would help blind people. See, that's kind of how my mind works.
Speaker 1:That's a brilliant idea and it's be very easy to implement, actually.
Speaker 3:Oh no, it'd be easy to implement. There's various different transponder technologies. You could use it to figure out, and I'm not a programmer, but I would check out the transponder technologies and See which platform to use it. Like to use an off-the-shelf platform, cut down on the development costs. Then, once you get that figured out, I'd go to the computer guys and go okay, let's figure out how to do this. So that's a visual thinker. I know what I wanted to do. I want this to be very simple. The blind person turns on the app and, okay, if he's in a simple rotunda area, um, it will tell him which way to go, like for a, a concourse, b concourse, c concourse. Once he goes down a concourse See, I'm visualizing this it will start naming off the gates 850, 851, 852, wow, like that. You see, I'm just seeing it. I'm and. And one of the reasons why I think about airport stuff is to spend so much time there that I mean, I know how the concourse is laid out. A lot of airports Okay. Once he gets into a concourse, the gates are all the same letter.
Speaker 1:Well, that's. It's a great example.
Speaker 3:Well, that's, it's something. It's something specific and it's something specific that would work. And he said that was the single thing that he had the most trouble with at the airports. And then I just saw him now with his phone, pull the phone out, you know, get the app On and then the gates just start announcing themselves and if he's in a decision area when he can, he has to go to the a concourse of the b concourse. It will tell him A concourse is on the left, the b concourse is on the right, you know, and we'll tell him how to enter a concourse.
Speaker 1:That would be immensely helpful. If something, it's totally yeah, to do that in all airports would make it a lot easier for people.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah the other thing is I want to make something airport doesn't have to maintain. Now in my mind I'm seeing the old calculator. I had to have a little solar panel and it would just work with my desk light. I can put that on my transponders, so the airport doesn't have to do any maintenance, and I just run off a full solar panel that I get battery, so it would still work.
Speaker 1:I listened to your ted talk and you had mentioned at the end something which is amazing because I had thoughts very similar to it. You said of all autism were magically removed from the earth, men would be socially Engaged around a fire Outside of a cave, and my first thought when I was reading through your book was this something very similar. I thought we'd we'd still be in caves and just drawing pictures on the inside, we wouldn't be doing anything. But you mentioned there was a guy in the back Making the first stone spear and he was one of the first autistic people because he was thinking practically and specifically about Making something different. And and so much of what we enjoy in society today comes from what a friend of mine calls the outliers, those people that aren't the typical Individual but they see something different because they have a different perspective.
Speaker 3:Well, I told, I told the you know they do a lot of talks of some of the disability Come in these At corporations. I said the first thing, after all, is these different kinds of thinkers exist and you need the skills. You need them. I talked to still company. You need these skills to keep the mill operating.
Speaker 1:I think it would be very, very wise for industry to be able to project what the needs are going to be for skilled trades Like you're talking about. We have a reduction, of people are growing older and they're going to work for only so long.
Speaker 3:You take um, you know people will blightfully say everything should be controlled by computers. Well, the thing is, an elevator, for example, is a mechanical device controlled by a computer. It is still a mechanical device. You know, I'm at the airport and I remember seeing four people ripping an escalator all apart at the airport. Well, you look at the conveyor chain that's in that escalator go looks like something out of meatback. It is strictly mechanical. And you know, remember this was within the last year. Three out of four of them are older. Who's going to fix these things? I've been on some very, very questionable elevators recently that had not been serviced. That's scary one that was skipping floors at a major hotel within the last six months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that doesn't build a lot of confidence, can you're being held by a cable going up and down? If industry was to partner with education and and start getting those trades taught in schools, well I think industry's starting to do that already.
Speaker 3:I think industry's already starting to do that. You know, like michigan's estate has a lot of manufacturing. I was just recently there. I heard about a person that got a job working in a fiberglass tank factory and within six months he worked on repairing every machine in the factory. And that's an example of going in the back door. That's where you know a lot of these people have to get in. You get a job on the floor, then you learn the different jobs. Next thing you know you're fixing equipment. Another young man that I had lunch with got a job as a laborer in a marble cutting factory that makes those countertops. Then he learned how to service the computerized saws. Now he's traveling all around the country fixing computerized marble cutting equipment. That was another example of back door. Well, the other thing I think the problem is we've got students today growing up totally removed from the world, the practical like. I had a problem. My class had never used a tape measure and I talked to a shop teacher just a week ago and he was telling me that they have to spend two days now teaching students how to measure, because they've never measured anything. They did not have to do that before and I'm concerned if we're going to have policymakers making policy about practical things. Looked so totally removed from the world of practical things.
Speaker 1:It doesn't take much to walk into an old building and see some of the um, the sculpture work, the, the handcrafted work that was so prominent, you know, 100 years ago, 75 years ago, and those skills trade that's lost.
Speaker 3:People don't do that I don't know when. They're building some apartments right here and I want to throw up every time I drive by that construction site. I got prefabricated, pre built panels as all cheap wood stuff. They kind of putting it up like Lincoln logs and they're just going to be cheap garbage, those apartments and the skills are lost.
Speaker 1:You saw the prefab, everything else.
Speaker 3:I've never seen a building apart from buildings this way before, something new that it's under construction right now, probably because it saves money, but it's not really well they just they come in giant stacks where an entire wall is is put up with a crane and they have columns and they like. Looks like they're made out of too much force clustered, but it's all. It's all like prefabricated wood and they had to took them a while to build the elevator shafts. Those have to be made out of concrete.
Speaker 1:You know, no matter how advanced we get, like you had said, there's always a mechanical aspect. There's uh, behind some of the new technology, there's still things that have to be done.
Speaker 3:You take a 3d printer, for example. That is still a mechanical device controlled by a computer. 3d printers are mechanical devices. The printer itself is not a computer, it's controlled by a computer. And when I remember, when I was working on the book and talking about, you learn my wonderful verbal co-author who straightens out my writing and makes it really smooth. And when I first told her about the, the, the mechanical device controlled by computer, she didn't understand that until she got onto youtube and started looking at videos of 3d printers. Then she got fascinated by them and after looking at a whole bunch of videos of 3d printers, then she understood what I meant by a mechanical device controlled by a computer.
Speaker 1:My grandson is an engineering student at University of Illinois and he's got a 3d printer and he just is really proud to show me how that thing works.
Speaker 3:and it's, you're right, it's pure mechanics, I mean oh, it's pure mechanical, driven by the kind of fiddly and fiddly mechanics Like those kind of little hobby printers. They fiddly little, you know glue gun like thing.
Speaker 1:They can get clogged up and and we're going to see more and more of those and it's going to require Maintenance, it's going to require skills.
Speaker 3:Well, I was up to some dairies last fall that had robotic milking systems. Where the cow goes in when she wants to, you get smelt. And some of the dairy people had improved the gates on the on the robotic milkers. So the mechanical parts and the milking machine company actually adopted their improvements and one dairy producer goes. I stop at the computers, that's somebody else's job. I don't touch that, I just work on the mechanical parts of the equipment.
Speaker 1:Well, and, and that's that's great. That's where the skill set is, that's where the interest is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right and see, but this is where you need the different kinds of minds. You need the person to work on the computer, because the computer supports is not very good at designing the mechanical parts of the machine.
Speaker 1:Getting back to education, it was Dr Karolak that gave you the challenge for the the room, the perspective. And. I don't know that, that we're getting that in schools where teachers are Actually looking at individual students and seeing what the strengths are and trying to play to the strengths.
Speaker 3:Well, the only way you can tell where the strengths are and I get asked this question all the time Is the students have to be exposed to enough different things where they can show the. I was very good at art as a child and that was always encouraged. My art ability was always encouraged and I was encouraged to use lots of different media in my art.
Speaker 1:Your mother was big on that, wasn't she?
Speaker 3:Oh yes, she was very big on that. My mother's very, very artistic and, uh, other kids might be good at math. Well then, it should be moves to head in my art and not just to give them baby names. But how are you going to find out that the child's going to manage to be exposed to it? Or new solicitments? I was exposed to new solicitments. That was not very good, but I got exposed to it. We're not going to pick up this flute that I never figured out how to play and play it just and take off with it. It starts out with exposure. Kids have to be exposed to different things. You can see where they're good at something. And then parents asking about two year olds. I go no, they need to be a little, usually a little bit older than two. I'm going to guess this really starts to show up around five, six, seven, eight years old.
Speaker 1:I bet the younger age is just learning about socialization. You know maybe share something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think two year olds you can tell.
Speaker 1:What I love about what you wrote is that's where interaction and social skills develop, because young people five and up they're doing things that are interesting to them with other people that it was interesting to, so they're being able to form relationships and it helps support social.
Speaker 3:Well, the other thing where autistic people get friends is friends who shared interests. And when I was in high school, bullied and bullied and bullied. Where I had friends was horses, model rockets and electronics.
Speaker 1:Yep, kids could be very cruel, and it's when you have something in common, an interest in common, it's easier to build a bridge. Yeah, friends who shared interests. Today we have a number of young adults who have grown up. A lot of the things that people that are in their 20s and 30s even and younger than that have gone through is something called person centered planning, where it's focusing on the individual's interests and skills and helping expose them, like you have said, to other people in the community that are interested in the same type of skills. So it's being done. How effectively I'm not sure yet, but more and more of these individuals with autism and other disabilities are encouraged to be exploring things that are of interest to them and, of course, in some of them they're going to find out that they were interested. But maybe it's not a good fit, because that's how we learn, but you don't know until you try stuff Exactly.
Speaker 3:So I'm a big believer exposing kids to all kinds of different things and kind of see what they gravitate to, and I think the other thing is we need to get kids back to their real things. You know I'm not just being a lead eye that says I'm anti technology, but I'm not seeing these kids that are getting addicted to screams going anywhere into a good career. If they were going into fabulous careers I would not be criticizing it.
Speaker 1:I think in one of the things I read, you talked about somebody who was making Minecraft. They made blocks.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, that was a mom that I was at a meeting in Chicago quite a long time ago. She went to the Lumb yard and she had a two foot force cut up. Then she had the kids sand them and paint them in the Minecraft colors for Minecraft blocks in the driveway and her kid became the hit of the mackerel. And that's not expensive, that's not difficult to do. I it's another thing I got to thinking about saving all your Amazon boxes and they have sizing codes. You could make giant Minecraft blocks, but these are things where there's a lot of stuff you can do. Is not expensive stuff to do?
Speaker 1:Not expensive, just just creative, creative thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they had the kids sand them and paint them. They didn't have to have some, they had to get cut up. On our side Kids did not do that. But then once the two by four pieces were tied up and they had different sizes of them, and then the kids sanded them and painted them and used them.
Speaker 1:And it reminded me very much of when I was growing up and the same era that you were, that kids were outside playing, doing things, making games, making all kind of stuff out of scrap lumber, but hands on.
Speaker 3:That's what we did as kids and I've got a book now called calling all minds. It's called calling all minds and it's my childhood projects little parachutes and kites. And we've got kids today that have never made a paper airplane. They've never made a paper snowflake when I get a book signing for that book. About five years ago I was kind of horrified to find out that maybe 20 or 30% of kids in suburb of Denver had never made a paper airplane.
Speaker 1:That's kind of hard to fathom.
Speaker 3:And I'm worried when we have people that have no contact with practical things going to grow up, make policy about practical things, things like power plants and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does get scary when you put it into a bigger context. That reminds me of in the movie Dr Carlock had a plane with a rubber band that you wind up and you rip the wings off. Made into a helicopter. That was an example of being creative with something physical.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually did that, and they made one mistake in the movie. They left the landing gear on it. Oh but when I did it the landing gear was off and the other problem we've got today now is that the airplane is really cheap compared to the ones we had in the 50s and the smaller propeller, less powerful rubber band. I finally did make one for calling all minds and I got it to work, but I had to cut a lot of stuff off of it.
Speaker 1:Calling all minds is another book I've got to get done.
Speaker 3:Calling all minds. That's my kids project and then I'm going to call it outdoor scientists. There's a lot more emphasis with looking at things outside, like you know, picking out a can of the goose or something like that, and watching their behavior. We need to be doing that. We were doing a COVID lockdown. We were sitting in the gazebo and I'm with my students and outside in the gazebo really carefully and watching a squirrel bury a nut and he test the hole. See, it was big enough. Then he put the nut in his mouth so nobody else could steal it. Then he digs some more, Then he got the hole deep enough and then he buried the nut. We just sat there and watched that.
Speaker 1:You know, when it comes to transitioning young adults into more independence and getting jobs too, there's a lot of people that could and should be working that aren't.
Speaker 3:Well, we've got to teach work skills. They've got to learn how to do a job outside the home where somebody else is the boss. It could be a church volunteer job, it could be volunteering at a nursing home, volunteering at a farmers market, but we need to start that around 11. This idea of walking somebody else's dog where somebody outside the home was a boss, that needs to start around 11 to replace the paper routes and then, as soon as their legal age gets real jobs, you know, set things up. They're not learning working skills.
Speaker 1:Dr Grandin, on your web page you have written A parent with a diagnosed autistic child might be reluctant to teach practical social skills that are outside the child's comfort zone. However, it's been my experience that almost all growth happens outside of our comfort zones.
Speaker 3:What you have to do is just stretch them slightly, give new choices and stretch them. Don't chuck them into the McDonald's takeout window, that's chuck them in the deep end of the pool. Don't do that, but stretch them just outside the comfort zone. You know, you start a quieter kind of a job.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how, when they're pursuing something of interest like my son is in a wheelchair, he can stand up. Though We've noticed that if there's something he wants on a shelf, occasionally we might not be in the room we notice he's gotten it because he managed to get over to the cabinet or to the countertop, get himself up in his chair, stretch up, get it and sit back in the chair. We didn't see it happen, but we saw the object in his hand. Why? Because he was motivated.
Speaker 3:He was motivated. That's right. You see, we have to start looking at what they can do. What I want to do is I want to see what people can do. Another thing that a lot of autistics need is another support at work. That's really important is support for bad working memory. Any task that involves remembering a sequence, like closing out the cash drawer at Walmart. I need to write down a pilot checklist. I need to write down, or let's say, my tasks I'm going to do that day are changing. Two electrician apprentice jobs were lost because the person okay, they have, each day they have to install different stuff, you know, like light fixtures, switches, wiring and if the person had just been allowed, let the boss give them time to write down a checklist of the things to install each day, they would not have lost the job. But if the boss just goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the autistic person, and a lot of people that think differently, cannot remember the sequence, and I'm one of them. I would need to write down what light fixtures, what things, you want to install each day. That would take a couple of minutes to do that.
Speaker 1:But then you have a list to go off of. It makes all the sense in the world.
Speaker 3:I have a list and and I would need to make that list and not rely on verbal memory I cannot remember verbal sequence that's another support that a lot of people are going to need. The other thing is we'll talk about very fake stuff, like we don't have enough accommodations. Well, let's get specific. Making a list of the steps or the list of the tasks, that's a simple accommodation. Avoiding the high speed, multitasking jobs like the McDonald's take out window, that's. These are places where jobs have failed. So those are two very simple accommodations that could make them successful. Some people need sensory breaks. Another guy lost a job because during the holidays he couldn't stand the sound of one particular song, and nobody bothers to find out what the problem was they could have taken that song off the playlist. That would have been simple. That's not hard to do. Or, if you can't get off the playlist, let him turn it off, or something for that song.
Speaker 1:Or have some sound canceling earphones available for those particular moments. Well, that's right, you know they let's.
Speaker 3:but you see one of the problems with a lot of the Okay advocates as they talk about accommodations in the abstract. Yeah what I have found about talking about accommodations is I'm finding over and over and over again the specific stuff that comes up the need for the checklist and avoiding the extremely rapid multitasking jobs that has come up over and over and over again. Now, when I do design work, there is no multitasking, there's no working memory issue. I'm pulling everything off of long-term memory. Doing design work or the person that does computer programming, that's not affected by working memory issues. But basically I need an external working memory. That is the list.
Speaker 1:Dr Grandin, I know you have a busy schedule and I want to thank you for taking some time to speak with us today.
Speaker 3:Well, it's been really really great, but it's been absolutely wonderful talking to you. Thank you very much, have a nice day. Wonderful to talk to you.
Speaker 2:Hi, this is Kiri and this is the Chat Cafe portion of our podcast, and I'm here today with Steve. Hello, hey, everybody, grab your coffee. We're going to chat about this interview that we just had with Temple Grandin and kind of break it down and talk a little bit about it.
Speaker 1:Are you ready Just to be truthful about it? We have glasses of wine, so if you want wine, it's fine you can do that too.
Speaker 2:If it works for you, it works for me.
Speaker 1:We're not using a chat brewery, we're talking Chat Cafe.
Speaker 2:Whatever, whatever, yep.
Speaker 1:More than just coffee goes in a cup right, it's OK.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it might be coffee, it could be. I really love this. I love Temple Grandin so much. I admire her. I admire everything she's done. I love how she is such a visual thinker and she's very practical, very practical. It was curious to me that she said being a woman was a bigger challenge than her autism. I'm like wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at that time it was the 70s, and that would have been more difficult because she was out there doing things.
Speaker 2:And a very male.
Speaker 1:Mechanical things which she should be teaching school, or typing or something like that in an office or being a secretary. She was very hands on and I just really admired her approach to things. She is a person who sees what needs to be done and comes up with a solution. I like where she said that people that are a talky people see things conceptually and she sees them physically as being something that needs to be done specifically about it rather than talking about a problem.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right, she just rolls her sleeves up and finds a way to get it done On the specific need.
Speaker 2:I love that, I love that. And then she sees the risk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, there's a risk in not taking risks and I think that's one thing she pointed out several times in the conversation where children need to be exposed to many different things. Yes, yes, because they're not going to be interested in everything, but they might be interested in something that, if they're not exposed to it, they won't even know what to pursue.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's been our philosophy with Liam. We take him out and we have engaged him in all manner of activities in the community to see what's going to work, what's not, what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:He has a way of letting us know he doesn't learn something. Yes, he does it might not be with words, but he certainly uses language in a different fashion. But I think what's cool about the era that Temple grew up in and the fact that she had a fabulous mom. You know and I will say this for anybody listening here See the movie Temple Grandin. You can get it on Amazon and I think there's a couple other places too. If you just Google Temple Grandin, it'll say where do you want to watch it and it'll show you where it is Exactly. It's really a good movie.
Speaker 2:It is worth it. It's worth it.
Speaker 1:But she had a very supportive mom and she had a couple of teachers that really cared about her and spoke her language, rather than trying to get her to speak their language. Yes, and I love how she made her own opportunities when she got a job after college. She got a position writing for the Arizona Farmer and Ranchers magazine. Why? Because she got respectability from that. She did good articles, she did it well and then people knew who she was and she was accurate.
Speaker 2:She was accurate, yes. She was very accurate in her articles and her summaries. And the magazine or the was it a magazine? Yeah, ok, they really liked that aspect of it and that gave her the gravitas that she needed to then get into some of these other areas to work in the cattle industry or the animal industry. I thought it was interesting that she talked about working on transition early, so that you can work gradually on the transition. I've been saying that for how old is Liam?
Speaker 1:He'll be 35 in a week.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. I've been talking about that for 35 years.
Speaker 1:You know we're in Michigan and of course you can stay in school till age 26 in Michigan if you have disabilities to qualify it. But the transition is supposed to start around 14 or 15, where they're seeing the things in the world and maybe sampling some things, or when you get old enough to have maybe a part-time job as part of the school experience. And we remember we used to, you used to ask what happens when he gets to be 26 and you get this blank look from a teacher.
Speaker 2:Well then, community mental health takes over. Yeah, we don't do that. How do we?
Speaker 1:do that. How do we navigate this? We fall off the cliff and we hope somebody catches us on the way down right.
Speaker 2:So Temple had some excellent ideas at age 11. Start getting them out there. In the community we used to have paper routes. Do you remember paper routes? Oh, I had one. I did too Well, I took over my brothers because my brothers had the paper route, but then they got lazy and didn't want to do it. So I did it and I got paid and I was really good at it. We need to go back to these sorts of things where the kids, when they're 11, I thought that was excellent at 11, let's start getting them out there, even if it's just a little volunteer thing. Then they can learn. Walking somebody else's dog, you're doing something for somebody else, you're outside of your family, you're outside of your own little world.
Speaker 1:You're learning responsibility and accountability, and what I think that's interesting is not just that kids with disabilities aren't doing these things at 11. I don't think any kids are doing these things at 11 where you and I, born 1,000 years ago, we made our own entertainment, we had jobs, we had things to do, we were accountable, even to the neighbors. I remember we used to pull weeds for a neighbor and cut lawns, things like that and if you didn't do it on Tuesday when they expected it, you lost your job. Oh, you got told about it. Yeah, but there was something that you felt a sense of responsibility to do at task. That's why she says walk someone else's dog, not yours. Because we also know the parent-child situation that when you say go walk the dog, they say yeah, OK later, but if it's a neighbor, it's going to pay them to walk the dog, they're going to be there, right, Right, they're more accountable and more responsible with someone outside the family, exactly. Yep, yeah. And then what else here? Social skills are not taught today the way they were before. Oh my god.
Speaker 2:Do you remember having manners in school? Yes, we talked about manners. Yeah, we did. We also used to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Oops, I said it out loud.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it used to be that you learned to open a door for somebody or say yes, thank you, please, and thank you. And I remember even.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, yes ma'am.
Speaker 1:When I was in grade school, they actually had dancing class.
Speaker 2:Ballroom dancing. Yes, or we learned waltz and foxtrot Shake everything on the floor dancing.
Speaker 1:And I know this is really ancient here, but the young man had to walk over to a woman and say may. I give you some punch, and then bring her some punch, and then they'd say may I have this dance? And you had to ask. And for some of us that are scared of females when you're like seven or eight years old, that was really hard to do, you know. But you didn't die, but we learned.
Speaker 3:And you didn't die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't die. I just came close to it but I didn't. But really we're not teaching social skills the way we should, but it's important, especially for our kids that might have some social deficits because of autism or other disabilities that they learn that they are something of value and a relationship and they should be able to talk to other people and do things the right way instead of running over somebody else's feelings. In other words, just be conscious of the fact that there are social mores. So many other things. I put down notes here In terms of a lot of it was about preparation. She said start early and make it gradual. I had said in one part that getting outside of your comfort zone as you only, at least you ever learn anything really, because you have to adapt with an environment that maybe you're not familiar with Well any great athlete, they're not going to get there if they just always do what they've always done. They've got to push a little bit more.
Speaker 2:They've got to push harder, they've got to stretch more. They've got to try that thing that maybe they're not very good at right now, but that doesn't mean they're never going to be good at it. You have to attempt it Again. It's exposure to different things, it's encouraging and the follow through, and I think we have missed some of that of late. We don't always have all of that.
Speaker 1:But I do think that the gradual is make sense. She did say don't take someone with autism and throw them at the fast food drive-through of McDonald's because, it's too hectic and it's too much and the tasks are too varied. So start with something small and then celebrate the growth as they go along. Make it a continual thing and start early and I think that's excellent attitude and continue to look at what they can do and encourage them to take that a little bit further.
Speaker 2:And I love the right of list of what sequence you want. Actually, that is a most excellent skill in any job. If you are in a meeting and they're talking about the things that they're going to be doing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you're writing your notes and you're saying, ok, they want to achieve this goal. In order for me to assist them achieving this goal, I need to do A, b and C. Ok, fine, I have those written down. Now I'm going to do those and that'll help our team get to that goal.
Speaker 1:And in the process of writing those things down, sometimes, when you're visualizing it and putting it on paper, you might say, well, a, b, c and then D would be added to that or something else to make the process work better, because you're actually looking at the process, but the idea of doing it. Yeah, I mean she admitted there's things that she would have to have a list for, because memorizing, because somebody tells you something, do this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I don't know that I'd be able to remember which item was 3 and which item was 4, unless it's quite obvious. But there's a reason for an order and having it written down is the best way to go about it and maybe if you do that repeatedly, you don't need the list after a while, but you should start out with it.
Speaker 2:No, I think you always should do the list. Well, when she called it like a pilot's checklist.
Speaker 1:OK, right, it's a checklist.
Speaker 2:And everybody can do that, no matter what your job.
Speaker 1:I had a couple of pilots that were clients of mine years ago and we talked about what they do and thank god they do that. They check off every little thing on the list because item 4, if it's not done, could crash the plane. So I really love the fact that they were sticklers for detail and maybe that is something that has to be done. If the consequence of not doing one of those steps is severe, you better make sure you've got it done in that right order.
Speaker 2:And in that instance I want somebody who's autistic, who's going to make sure it's freaking done every time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Specificity of the visual thinker and knowing what has to be done to make this work is very critical, and I love how she said and the mission she is saying to industry when she's out talking to business people you need both thinkers Like Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs either. One of them couldn't have developed the iPhone and the Apple computer independently. Independently, yes, but together they came up with a product.
Speaker 2:A phenomenal product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, still one of the best companies in the world. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So very cool, very cool. We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Never Getting Life as we know it.
Speaker 1:And I would suggest again that you watch the movie and the book that she just recently wrote was Got it written down here yes, calling all minds OK. And there's the things that she used to do as a child in terms of discovery. And if you do have a child that is autistic, that might be under the age of nine or 10. And you want to see what Temple Grandin did, because it's a great example of success for somebody who worked on her strengths and created a great career. Yes, no matter how severe autism might be, it's important to know that that kind of playing and that kind of building of relationships and discovery and stretching it's important and stretching. Yes, just not a lot, but just a little bit beyond the comfort zone.
Speaker 2:Well, I know, and I just to bring up a point in regards to that in the movie she talks about how she liked horses and she liked to draw horses and her mom said, ok, that's really good, let's just draw just the head of the horse now, right, ok, now we're stretching, ok, we're not just drawing the whole horse. Now we're going to focus in on and we're really going to zoom in on this. You know, this is something she could do, so now let's stretch it.
Speaker 1:Which was stretching again. Yeah, it's a matter of taking a look at it from a different perspective. Right, and what's something she loved to do, but then moving a little beyond what she's been doing Exactly.
Speaker 2:So find something they like, work with it and then stretch.
Speaker 1:Anyway, thank you very much for joining us today. I do hope that you see the movie, read the book. She's a fascinating individual and she has a lot of value to bring to our lives. So thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 4:Steven Carey have been your hosts. My name is Alex and I'm the producer of EnLoki. Daniela handles all of our social media and general communications, and Holly is our website guru and mistress of the blog. Thanks for tuning into our podcast and please like, follow, subscribe and share our podcast to help us grow. You're the best. This has been a production of Envision Media Group LLC.
