On the Road with Autism

I took an incredibly inspiring, one-day clinic at ASF all about autism. I learned about Temple Grandin www.grandin.com, a woman with autism who earned a Ph. D. and designs cattle facilities! With understanding and supportive family and friends she has been able to harness her ability to think and perceive differently to become a leading world expert at designing humane slaughter facilities for animals. Also she has been able to give us more insight into what it feels like to be autistic. We watched a hilarious video at www.ontheroadwithautism.com about two families that packed their autistic kids in a Humvee and go on the road. Normally it is hard to take autistic kids out to do fun things in the world because other people will judge them and the parents for any unusual behavior. But they just decided to do it anyway! Very inspiring. On the side of the Humvee they painted, “Fight Autism, not War!” I think you can get T-shirts with the slogan also. It mostly shows their trip to learn to ski at an adaptive sports center in California. Watch the video to get a taste of life here at ASF.

We also went out on snow and role-played working with autistic kids. I was partnered with Larry, a parent of an autistic racer at ASF, and he helped me to understand the kinds of games he uses to keep his son focused while riding the chairlift and how to break up instructions into bite size pieces. I learned “First-Then” techniques with rewards. When he role-played the student and I had to be the teacher, he made the whole experience seem so realistic.