Sy Montgomery - Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World

Text copyright 2012 by Sy Montgomery
Foreword copyright 2012 by Temple Grandin

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E-ISBN 978-0-547-73393-7

In Memory of Oliver Carey

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Plato

Throughout my career, I have worked to improve the treatment of farm animals because we owe it to domestic animals to give them a decent life. My work with animals started in high school, when I spent time in a stable taking care of nine horses. At that time, my world revolved around grooming, riding, and showing horses in local shows. Summer trips to my aunt's ranch introduced me to the West and to cattle. As I became more and more interested in cattle, I had increasing concerns about how they were being handled and treated. In the early 1970s, when I started working with livestock, many of the cowboys were really rough with the animals. This motivated me to find better ways of handling cows when they were run through a chute for vaccinations.

Today, half of the cattle in the United States and Canada are handled in systems I have designed for meat-packing plants. Some of my greatest reforms came about through working with McDonald's and other major restaurant chains on animal-welfare audits and meat-plant inspections. Audits and inspections by these large meat buyers forced plant managers to correctly operate the systems I had designed. To ensure that animals are treated calmly and with respect requires both well-designed equipment and managers committed to good practices.

Before I started my career with animals, I was one of those kids who did not fit in with the rest of the crowd. There are many kids like me, with various labels such as autism, Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, dyslexia, or other learning disabilities. What saved me and enabled me to succeed were my love of making things and creating art. In elementary school, my teachers and my mother always encouraged my interest in art. When I grew up, I chose a career designing livestock facilities which allowed me to use my abilities as a visual thinker. Individuals who have been labeled with disabilitiesor even just quirky or nerdy kidsoften have uneven skills. The ones who become successful in life are those who figure out how to use their unique abilities and passions in work they can pursue with other people.

One advantage to growing up in the 1950s was that there were lots of hands-on activities that all of us participated in. In elementary school, I loved anything that could fly, like kites and toy airplanes. I invented a kite shaped like a bird, made from heavy art paper, to fly behind my bike. I experimented with the shape of the wings so it would fly at a steeper angle, and I bent the tips up to increase the lift. Today, when I fly on a jet, I get real satisfaction when I look at the plane's upturned wingtips. The ratio of the area of the upturned winglet to the area of the jet's wing is approximately the same as it was on my bird kites. That was the beginning of my life of inventing and building things. My favorite book when I was a child was about famous inventors.

When I was younger, I learned both design skills and patience from experimenting with paper kites or developing an improved parachute made from old scarves. I spent hours experimenting and then testing my designs. To prevent the strings on my parachute from tangling, I attached them to crossbars made from bent coat hangers and tape. I tried many different designsI learned that it takes a lot of patience and time to figure out the best solutions.

I also had to learn to use my abilities to do work that was useful to other people. During my teen years I built a gate that a driver could open from inside the carthat was shown in the HBO movie about me. Along with caring for horses, I did lots of carpentry work and learned many useful work skills.

Some of my childhood friends were interviewed for this book. My friends and I enjoyed activities in which we had a shared interest, such as art, horseback riding, or electronics. I suggest that all of you get involved with activities that you can do with other students, such as Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, art projects, school plays, band, robotics, computer club, or the school newspaper or webpage. These hands-on activities saved me from the total torture of being bullied and teased. By finding friends who like the same activities that you like, you can avoid the bullies. And these projects taught me practical problem solving and helped prepare me for a professional career. I hope that my story will encourage you to find your own passions and to follow them.

Even as a baby, Temple seemed different.

Every day at school, she dreaded the sound: the loud, deep ring of the school bell. The janitor rang it at the end of each class: CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Most kids were happy to hear it but for Temple Grandin, the ringing of the bell hurt like a dentist's drill hitting a nerve. She covered her ears, but she could still hear it. There was no escape.

For Temple, ordinary sensations could be torture. The grip of a stretchy wool hat pulled over her ears made her head feel like it was caught in a vise. New socks and underwear scratched like sandpaper. Wearing a stiff petticoat beneath her church dress on Sunday felt like needles stabbing her skin. Sometimes it felt as if her senses were on fire.

If a teacher wore strong perfume, Temple couldn't even think. The odor drowned out the meaning of the writing on the blackboard, overwhelmed the sound of the teacher's voice. Human voices themselves made little sense when Temple was small: although some noises were painfully loud, words were terribly unclear. If somebody said, Joe walked to school she heard only, oh ah ool. The adults around her sounded as if they were speaking gibberish. Sometimes the only way she could communicate was to throw a temper tantrum. She would howl her frustration wordlessly, break things, flap her hands, and cry.

Nobodyleast of all Temple herselfunderstood what was wrong.

***

Almost from the start, Temple's mother knew that her first child was different. Most babies love to be cuddled, but Temple would stiffen and pull away from her mother's arms. Most children look with special interest into people's faces, particularly the eyes. Temple wouldn't meet another's gaze. And while most toddlers begin to talk around age two, Temple didn't speak at all.