When I was young I knew a boy, Jack, who could ski better after three lessons than I could after three years. Sometimes, whilst Jack was getting in a lot of ski practice, I stayed at the top of the slope and got to work – my kind of work. I refinished the ski-tow house. I installed knotty-pine boards and stained them; I added white trim; and I made a nice sign showing the insignia of my school. I took an ugly plywood shack, and, because of who I am, I made it into a thing of grace – a grace that my physical movements, also because of who I am, would never be able to match.
That experience was an early lesson in how I can play to my strengths. I didn't think of myself as a ‘picture thinker’ then of course, but I knew that drawing was what I could do best. And so I did it. I took what nature gave me, and I nurtured the heck out of it.
Would it have benefited me to be forced to keep on skiing? No. Today, the focus on deficits is so intense and so automatic that people lose sight of the strengths. We see this in particular with children with autism. Recently I spoke to the director of a school for autistic children, and she mentioned that the school tries to match a student’s strengths with an internship or employment opportunity in their neighborhood. But when I asked her how they identified the strengths, she immediately started talking about how they helped students overcome social deficits. If even the experts can't stop thinking about what's ‘wrong’ or lacking instead of a child’s strengths, how can anyone expect the families who are dealing with autism on a daily basis to think any differently?
As a child with autism, what helped me be successful was playing to my strengths. Of course, I needed to develop some key life skills: when I was three, I had no language, so my speech teacher slowly enunciated words to make it easier to hear the hard consonant sounds, and get language started. I learned turn taking and patience by playing lots of board games. But it was the support I got to develop my natural ability at art which was key: I was good at it, and both my mother and my teachers encouraged me to develop my skills. Eventually, my art ability became the basis of my work designing livestock facilities.
I believe that educators need to emphasise building up the strengths of autistic children into skills that can form the basis of a career. But how can we identify strengths?
In my book, The Autistic Brain, I discuss different thinking types. Children and adults on the high end of the autism spectrum often have uneven skills. They are good at one thing and bad at something else. I am a photo realistic, visual thinker and all my thoughts come in pictures. There are three common thinking types, and this is one of them. Algebra was impossible for me, but visual thinkers are usually good at art, industrial design, fashion design, graphic arts, architecture, and traditional crafts.
Secondly, pattern mathematical thinkers think in patterns. Many of these students have problems with reading, but this kind of mind is good at computer programming, engineering, music, physics, and maths.
The third type is the word thinker. This is a child who knows all the verbal facts about their favourite things. They are good in careers where knowledge of facts would be required.
These distinctions are often not recognized in schools. I had a wonderful high-school science teacher, Mr. Carlock. He identified my strengths – mechanics and engineering – and helped me explore them. He ran the model rocket club, which I loved. He got me interested in all sorts of electronics experiments. But in one crucial respect, his thinking probably held me back. When he saw that I couldn't do algebra – just could not do it – he redoubled his efforts to make me learn it. I'm sure he thought that he was helping me by pushing me harder, but my brain doesn't work in the abstract, symbolic way that solving x requires. My engineering talent should have been a clue. Engineering isn't abstract; it's concrete. It's about shapes. It's about angles. It's about geometry. But the standard curriculum says algebra comes before geometry - so I had to master that first. Mr. Carlock, like a lot of educators, was stuck in a curriculum rut and didn't realize it.
When I tell this story I find many people who've had similar experiences. Instead of ignoring deficits, parents and educators have to accommodate them. To help children succeed, work on building their strengths. Look at what a child is able to do instead of looking at deficits. My mother motivated me by making sure that I got real recognition when I did a good job – like when she framed a watercolour of a beach that I'd painted.
When I look back on where autism was sixty years ago - when my autistic brain was creating great anxiety in Mother, curiosity in doctors, and a challenge to my nanny and teachers - I know that trying to imagine where we'll be sixty years from now is a fool's errand. But I have confidence that whatever the thinking about autism is, it will incorporate a need to consider it brain by brain, DNA strand by DNA strand, trait by trait, strength by strength, and most important of all, individual by individual.
The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin is published by Rider this month.