Temple Grandin and Margaret M. Scariano, Emergence Labeled Autistic (Novato, CA: Arena Press, 1986).
When Temple Grandin published her first book in 1986, few if any individuals with autism had described their lives in their own words. Grandin’s story was utterly astonishing. Her experiences, as both a child and an adult, illustrated just how challenging it had been for her to understand other human minds and, at the same time, how capable she was of using her exceptional intelligence to do exactly that. When she wrote Emergence, she was already successful in her chosen career as a designer of humane livestock-handling equipment and was completing a PhD in Animal Science. In 1993, Grandin came to wider popular attention when neurologist and author Oliver Sacks profiled her in a New Yorker article, “An Anthropologist on Mars.” The title was a phrase Grandin used to describe how bizarre it felt to her to navigate ordinary social interactions. Grandin’s publications and advocacy helped lay the groundwork for concepts like neurodiversity. Today, she is the best known individual with autism in the United States.
I remember the day I almost killed my mother and younger sister, Jean.
Mother had slid in behind the wheel of the car. Reaching over the back seat, she said, Here’s your hat, Temple. You want to look nice when you see the speech therapist, don’t you?”….
I fingered the painful hat, trying to rub away the walls of the fabric. Humming tunelessly, I massaged the material over and over. Now the hat lay in my lap like an ugly blue blob. I had to get rid of it. I decided to throw it out the window. Mother wouldn’t notice. She was too busy driving. But at a little over three years old, I couldn’t crank my window down. Now the hat felt hot and prickly on my lap. It lay there waiting like a monster. Impulsively I learned forward and tossed it out of Mother’s window.
She yelled. I covered my ears to shut out the hurting sound. She made a grab for my hat. The car swerved. Suddenly we were jolting into the other lane. I leaned back against the seat and enjoyed the jostling….
Mother tried to turn the wheel, but it was too late. I heard the crush of metal and felt a violent jolt as we sideswiped the red tractor-trailer truck and suddenly stopped. I yelled, “Ice. Ice. Ice,” as broken glass showered all over me. I was not scared at all. It was kind of exciting.
The side of the car was bashed in. It was a miracle I hadn’t killed us all. It was also sort of a miracle that I had been able to get the word “ice” out clearly and succinctly. As an autistic child, difficulty in speaking was one of my greatest problems. Although I could understand everything people said, my responses were limited….
Mother, who was only nineteen when I was born, said she remembers me as a normal, healthy newborn with big blue eyes, a mass of downy brown hair, and a dimple in my chin. A quite, “good” baby girl named Temple.
If I could remember those first days and weeks of life, would I have known I was on a fast slide slipping into an abyss of aloneness? Cut off by over-reactions or inconsistent reactions from my five senses? Would I have sensed the alienation I would experience because of brain damage suffered as an unborn child—the brain damage that would become apparent in life when that part of the damaged brain matured?
I was six months old when Mother noticed that I was no longer cuddly and that I stiffened up when she held me. When I was a few months older, Mother tried to gather me into her arms, and I clawed at her like a trapped animal. She has said she didn’t understand my behavior and felt hurt by my hostile actions. She’d seen other babies cuddling and cooing in their mother’s arms. What was she doing wrong? But she figured she was young and inexperienced. Having an autistic child was scary for her because she didn’t know how to respond towards a baby who rejected her. Maybe my seeming rejection was not unusual so she shoved her apprehension aside. After all, my health was good. I was alert, intelligent, and well-coordinated. Since I was the first-born, Mother thought my withdrawal was probably normal, part of maturing and becoming independent.
This withdrawal from touch, so typical of autistic children, was followed in the next few years by standard autistic behaviors: my fixation on spinning objects, my preference to be alone, destructive behavior, temper tantrums, inability to speak, sensitivity to sudden noises, appearance of deafness, and my intense interest in odors….
At age three Mother took me to a neurologist to be examined because I did not act like the little girls next door. I was the first child in a family of four and none of my younger sisters or brothers behaved the way I did.
The EEG and hearing tests were normal. I was measured on the Rimland checklist where a score of +20 indicates classical autism (Kanner’s syndrome). I scored +9…..
But it wasn’t only my lack of speech that concerned Mother. My voice was flat with little inflection and no rhythm. That alone stamped me as different. Coupled with speech difficulty and lack of voice inflection, I was well into adulthood before I could look people in the eye. As a child I remember Mother asking me time and again, “Temple, are you listening to me? Look at me.” Sometimes I wanted to, but couldn’t. Darting eyes—so characteristic of many autistic children—was another symptom of my autistic behavior. There were other telltale signs. I had little interest in other children, preferring my own inner world. I could sit on the beach for hours dribbling sand through my fingers and fashioning miniature mountains. Each particle of sand intrigued me as though I were a scientist looking through a microscope. Other times I scrutinized each line in my finger, following one as if it were a road on a map….
But when I was in the world of people, I was extremely sensitive to noises….
Today, even as an adult while waiting in a busy airport, I find I can block out all outside stimuli and read, but I still find it nearly impossible to screen out the airport background noise and converse on the phone. So it is with autistic children. They have to make a choice of either self-stimulating like spinning, mutilating themselves, or escape into their inner world to screen out outside stimuli. Otherwise, they become overwhelmed with many simultaneous stimuli and react with temper tantrums, screaming, or other unacceptable behavior. Self-stimulating behaviors help calm an over aroused central nervous system….