Dr Temple Grandin: Focus on strengths rather than deficits in children with autism

Autism advocate and animal specialist Temple Grandin tells Helen O’Callaghan it is important to focus on strengths rather than deficits in children with autism

WHEN Temple Grandin says you must train children on the autistic spectrum just as you’d train someone who doesn’t know how to behave in a foreign country, she knows what she’s talking about.

Being diagnosed with autism herself, Grandin didn’t speak until she was four — she has described her early childhood experience as “groping her way from the far side of darkness”. But there were shining lights in this darkness, especially her mother, who got her “really good education and treatment” when Grandin was little more than a toddler.