Dr. Mary Temple Grandin has a PhD in animal science from the University of Illinois and has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the US and other countries. She is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She is also THE ultimate autism spokesperson as she herself is on the autism spectrum. She is one of the first individuals on the spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience. She has written several books and gives lectures and conferences all over the world about autism.

I first discovered Dr. Temple Grandin when I read her book Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism. Reading her book would profoundly change my perception of the autism spectrum disorder as well as the way I saw my child. I read her book around 2009 and for the first time in the autism whirlwind, I was able to mentally relax.  I went from someone who desperately wanted to change him, “save him from his autism” and making him “normal”, to someone who ACCEPTED him as he was: with all his challenges but also with his UNIQUE strenghts. I was finally able to see my child as not someone with a disability but someone with different abilities and talents that needed to be nurtured. And yes, I continued to search for therapies, but the objective shifted from trying to “cure him from his autism” to trying to make him more independent and help him better adapt and function in a society that is not very accepting of differences. Yes he is autistic, and will be autistic for the rest of his life. Let him be a fulfilled autistic individual, one who despite his limitations will thrive by fully developing his character, his abilities and his talents.

It was Dr. Grandin who with the following quote “there needs to be an emphasis on what a child CAN DO instead of what they cannot do” inspired us as a family to shift our focus and energy from working on things that were too difficult and/or impossible for Nicolas to do due to his autism to finding passions for him.  So instead of “getting rid of his autism” our focus as a family became – let’s find something that Nicolas likes, let’s try to encourage him in this direction and see if he sticks with it.  With a lot patience and perseverance from us parents and some wonderful teachers and mentors who have believed in him along the way, Nicolas is now able to play the piano, downhill ski and do long bike rides with his dad.

It is also thanks to Dr. Grandin that I became a passionate advocate for my son before the public school board and the Québec Education Ministry. There is absolutely NOTHING that enrages me more as an autism parent than when someone, specially an “expert” or a teacher, underestimates my child’s intelligence and potential because he doesn’t speak properly and/or has behaviours. I lost count of how many times I had arguments with Nicolas’ teachers/experts/principals in the public school system, how many times I had to tell them to believe in him, to push him to learn, to make him work hard, to hold high expectations of him despite his limited language skills and his behaviours. It was literally an on-going battle that was draining, mentally exhausting but totally worth it. As Dr. Grandin has said it “people with autism can LEARN and SUCCEED when others around them BELIEVE in their abilities and hold high expectations of them”. And yes parents, even if it may not be obvious sometimes ALWAYS hold high expectations for your autistic children because one day they may surprise you !

Finally, it is Dr. Grandin who coined the terms “different not less” and who keeps reminding the world that “it is never too late to expand the mind of a person on the autism spectrum”. And this last quote is one of of the reasons WHY I started this Blog. As our children enter adulthood they need to keep learning, they need to keep evolving. If there are no supports for them for when they finish high school, all the early intervention efforts, all the skills and abilities learned in school and most importantly, THEIR POTENTIAL, is inevitably LOST. So the way  I see it there is no other way but to keep making noise, keep advocating and keep fighting for our children’s future.

THANK YOU again Dr. Temple Grandin for being THE voice for our children, for teaching us about what it is really like to live with autism and for encouraging us to see the potential in our autistic children. Thank you for giving us parents the tools to be the best advocates that we can be. For those of you who want to know more about Dr. Temple Grandin, I encourage you to check her official website https://www.templegrandin.com .