Dr. Harini Atturu & Udaya Kumar Dintyala talk on “”AI-based eLearning Application Framework to Augment Developmental Needs of Children with Autism”” at International Conference For Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ICAN DUBAI 2023)
Dr. Harini – Dr Harini Atturu after completing her MBBS from renowned Kurnool Medical College moved to the UK in 2005. She worked in NHS UK for nearly 12 years. She completed her Psychiatry training from North Western Deanery. She has rich experience of working in Adult Intellectual Disability services at Rochdale and Sheffield Adult Autism and Neurodevelopmental Services. She has been working in India for the last 6 years. She worked at Rainbow Hospital, Banjara and Butterflies Child Development Center. She has presented in several International Conferences in Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Halifax and National Conferences. She has been the author and co-author for several papers.
Udaya Kumar Dintyala – Udaya Dintyala is the Chairman of CognitiveBotics. Udaya is an experienced technology expert with more than three decades of experience in cloud and AI & business development. He has worked at various MNCs, including AT & T India, where he served as Executive Director and Country Manager. He is also the father of a person with autism.
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An interesting one by Dr harini aturu and UDA Kumar enia and AI based e-learning application framework to augment developmental needs for children with autism Dr harini she’s a product specialist at cognitive botex committed to development of software for providing integrated autism therapies using artificial intelligence to benefit children with autism and their families
She worked at NHS UK for nearly 12 years she completed a psychiatric training at Northwestern dener she has Rich experience working in adult intellectual disability services and neur neurod developmental Services she has been working in India for the last six years and uh udya is the chairman of
Cognitive btics UDA is an experienced technology expert with more than three decades of experience in cloud and AI Business Development he has worked at various mnc’s including AT&T in India where he served as an executive director and Country manager he is also the father of a person with autism let’s
Have both of them on the stage and let’s hear what they have to say thank you all of you are familiar some of you are parents here some of you are therapists here if you see these moments of truth from left to right you can say first diagnosis the whole world falls
Down and going to find therapist intervention mother sacrifices the career all the Stu stuff you know in the process of intervention all the way from 2.5 years to 23 years it’s my son’s Journey which was an inspiration for me to do all these things you resonate with some of these
Moments of Truth as a parents that therapist tells you where is the report you’re not keeping all the reports and at the same time she will not give a a single dollar discount on the therapy so you to earn money at the same time keep all the record
Straight and you also have to develop life skills in the people my son at the age of 16 was running away from the class though he knows language and everything then we have to use probiotics by researching ourselves you to keep all these things in mind and today I want to inform you
He is a near independent he finished his undergrad in Computer Applications you see this young gentleman there can you see him he’s my son RAM and he lives a near independent life there’s a whole lot of sacrifice for my wife and a whole lot of help from therapists doctors Friends Community all of
Them it’s not one single therapy it’s about a holistic view of the whole thing the family coming together music coming together he plays violin he plays keyboard all these things have helped him he’s not a I don’t say bis kid or a mast in all these areas but all these
Things have helped him so today I’m going to talk about three factors the first thing is about how digital technology what is digital technology and what is happening in this area because that’s my area the two darts I’m a father of an artistic kid also a
Digital guy so try to visualize both the things together and how we can help the whole globe at the lowest cost the second area Dr har will talk about what we call from a research angle how Technologies can help the people with Autism the last area is the product demo
They give you the Complete product how the artificial intelligence and advanced technology is enable keeping all these wisdoms like you saw some small small wisdoms nuggets of wisdom coming from previous speaker all these wisdoms you remember but you forget you need a structure anybody in this room have you
Done a degree without a syllabus with a textbook unfortunately for autism there is no textbook do you agree with me there is no textbook the syllabus constantly changes is the parents get confused thoroughly actually so we try to build a structure into the whole scheme of things the parent pain points I’ll be
Very very quick with these things because the fun part is in the later part the tool itself so just want to go through it you know the pain points therapists are not there from a ubiquity standpoint and time and Geographic limitations okay you have to L around your kid
To a therapy center and the kid has to break from the school his academic activi is gone wrong a change the people with Autism don’t like changes when you take him to a new place or a new therapist again it takes time to adjust himself actually tracking the
Progress the therapist says keep every record what you did and the parents have to juggle around their career as well as this piece and remember everything what somebody told you to do it’s a big thing and at the same time tell you one thing even if you do MBA or mbbs or a
Degree in doctorate you have to refer something before you go to the next conference you don’t remember everything here same thing if you teach eye contact to a kid and take him to a birthday party after say six months what are the chances he remember the
Skill just in time reviews a problem so with all these problems in mind we try to solve it these are not the parents problem the the kids problem there is another angle to it that is doctors and therapist problem so as a psychiatrist when I uh was in my
Clinic looking after the patients these people I I work in Hyderabad and it’s a very big city City uh very growing city in South India um and the parents would come from surrounding Villages District towns I have to break the bad news saying I’m sorry your child has autism and that
Itself is devastating to the mother or father or caregiver and I have to say I’m sorry I don’t have medication I don’t have cure so it’s it’s added paint for them and then I say okay I have some therapists in hyab bath but they live somewhere else so it’s like I’m breaking
One bad news after other making them helpless I’m no way giving any hope or doing anything for this mother who is already devastated so what do I say to them now if I see many parents um husband will be working somewhere in the town mother brings the child lives in
The city brings her old grandmother or her mother and starts living a life for those few months or years so the child can start having therapies regularly not just in India we see the same even from our us people say that they are in a long waiting list in UK they’re in a
Long waiting list so the diagnosis is not just the one that’s affecting the child it’s the parents grandparents their social life their Community their happiness their Finance everything everything goes heavy and they have to deal with it so it’s it’s hurting what am I doing there I just have to save
These bad news and send them away and wait for some miracle to happen so we see that as UD garu was saying they’re not there are therapists in Hyderabad but just if you step out there are not very many so we had to think what can we do
Differently so that’s where uh these parents um spoke to me and we came up with all this model so in short the digital Technologies are the way to deliver that scalability that we want to have and at the same time something money cannot buy for example
There is a very rich man okay he has ton of money to buy all the therapist in the globe but he can’t track progress keeping every track of everything he can’t practice at home he can’t create situations like several things in the Life which you’ll talk about so with
Without Much Ado I’ll move forward this these are digital Technologies a kind of a primer so it consider like a artificial intelligence class for you but I’m not going to a class to you I’ll be very very quick so if you see these areas you have artificial intelligence on this
Side and you have augmented reality on this side and big data on this side and then you have chat gpts and Di coming into the way we’ll give a quick primer to you so that you know how we are weaving all these Technologies to be relevant to the autism person okay make
Sense these are digital Technologies artificial intelligence and machine learning everybody knows that is happening and this helps you a simple example like if somebody pays the loan or not okay all of you borrow credit cards and Loan and all the stuff you can use machine learning models to classify
Whether somebody pays loan or not somebody gets a hardack or not uh somebody will be able to do something or not a computer will die or not all these things can be done through machine learning models some of the things by estimating the future data is your raway
Reservation estimation you can do when the reservations will be done whether your ticket weight listed ticket what are the chances it will become good and H back predictions you can do all these things using uh future data which is one of the power of artificial intelligence the Deep learning another
Area in this deep learning models um can you play the video please yeah oh this is a example of spech to text one of the deep learning model one of the thing all of us use CI right the same thing it happens at very low cost and Frankly Speaking we leverage this
Technology to deliver 70 plus languages um mam Maya I think she comes from Tunisia and te in Abu Dhabi and she needs Arabic and some part of French and some part of English and somebody else come from India probably and Malayalam somebody comes from Pakistan they want
Udu or whatever it is so our product leveraging such kind of a Technologies can give you a voice the computer can speak 70 plus languages it can understand 70 plus languages including six accents of English six accents of English and then if you give 30 minutes of your
Voice we can convert we can make the computer speak like a parent actually if it makes sense for the kid actually so we have a h of Technologies that’s where I’m give you an example of deep learning we show you how it is implemented make sense it can digital Technologies help
You to understand the facial emotions in this picture if you see here you can figure out is smiling or sad surprise it is able to figure out what is the kind of emotion what do you do in therapy in therapy you show a picture of a smiling kid and ask him hey
What’s happening here if he shows a smile you Pat him on the back if he he says sad you try again but to do this part would you like to L around your kid all the way somewhere he can do it at home practice what the therapist has taught that way
It augment the therapist efforts so it’s a simple game the family pictures are uploaded and bingo the kids whatever emotion he chooses as a answer is married or rather matched with what happens in Internet on the back end actually so that way we can teach these things this is Gan generate adversarial
Networks is one of the technology of AI where you give 30 minutes of voice we can make computer speak like you we can utilize this technology we use this technology to make it happen then you have Chad GPT Di and Whisper I want to tell a story
Here my son did his engineering in Computer Applications he failed when an exam he came home for holidays he knows he failed exam my person at home who is a housemate he asked hey Ram did you how did you pass your exam he said yeah I passed the exam he
Did fail in fact but he said I passed the exam so this is called deception actually all of his practice you have something in the mind like the way all of you must be thinking what is this guy is talking about in the evening um between the evening Friday evening and
Right now right but at the same time you’re very respectful to me because I’ll feel bad that’s deception autism kids lack the deception actually I was so happy that day that this guy learned deception now how do you learn deception this is higher or highest order function
Actually this happens bhagan or The God has given this way you put small small pieces ultimately it builds okay that’s why we learn a for apple b for boy in when five years old and we do two into two equal to four but suddenly this guy becomes an EIN after
10 12 years working in Harvard and cambridges how it happens this is the way brains works you have to stimulate it constantly so we can use chat GPT D whisper kind of Technologies to build tools to teach them sarcasm and what is a joke and what is deception this is what called higher
Order thinking actually I want to tell you guys augmented reality is another area I can bring in this room I can bring in this room a Jupiter a moon a whale and a jet engine this trap from the way people think and with a buttons that to using a
A $200 Android tablet I can bring it to the room actually using web kind of Technologies imagine how they learn because these guys are experiential Learners right agreed you don’t agree with me how many of you thinking of the bar in the evening now don’t use deceptive thinking
Okay huh are you serious you want to stay here okay cool yeah you should tell others that this fession was great you missed it actually afterwards and I’ll will buy a drink for you in the evening so virtual reality another technology and what is difference virtual reality and augmented reality is
Virtual reality you live in a virtual world augmented reality helps you to connect the real this room with what you want to appear right so which is good for autistic people our research says augmented reality is better for autism people because if you put in virtual world all they’re confused a bit they
Get more confused after getting them out is a difficult task trust me on it that’s why by by thinking too much we use augmented reality as a mode of teaching the people to get used to the things and learn a lot and then haptics sensory integration
Is one area all of us love to do right what is sensor integration a kid with autism suddenly when gets out of the air conditioned car takes his dress out you feel it’s we no they are feeling uncomfortable with the temperature that’s outside sudden changes in the temperature it’s not weade imagine that
You put a fire on my jacket don’t I take it out I feel all are watching I should not take it out the same way the kid feels for a normal temperature you have to sensitize it just the way if how many of you like snakes here nobody you’re
Afraid of snakes right but if I want to make you use to snake I show the snake from 10 ft distance when I bring two feet one day you touch it third day you’ll put it here this sensitization when it has to do it one way is to take them second way
Is to use Technologies like haptics which will simulate pressure temperature all this kind of a stuff we are in the process of building such kind of a tools using Peltier suets and all the stuff so that you get to have sensory integration are we stopping there no we will use more
Technologies to do virtual Labs we’ll see sarcasm we’ll put checklist so that you don’t forget what the previous speaker told that he toxins and all the stuff and the parents can go back to their work and just have to spend 15 minutes to 20 minutes a day
That means if you take a typical therapy session the parent says sorry to office then he drives down 30 minutes then pick up some the kids from the school another 30 minutes go to therapy center and the therapist says oh you came at 2:00 now sit there 15 minutes then calm him down
15 minutes then therapy 30 minutes then bringing back total 3 4 hours gone in this kind of situation you’re doing 15 to 20 minutes can parent pursue her career can therapist get benefited of it because Therapy Center and the therapy is so this way it’s a win-win for everybody and it’s a digital
Democratization of autism therapy I would like to call it so with this I want to pass on to my colleague Dr harini uh to talk about scientific evidence of digital Technologies go ahead so um I wanted to know whether these Technologies work how much work has really gone into it what
The scientific World talks about it um yeah so I looked into a study this is a meta analysis it was published in back in 2014 if you see most of these kind of Technology based have been um in the field from 2000 prior to that there were video based modeling kind of
Systems from 2000 they started uh talking about uh more higher functioning higher Advanced Technologies so in that they looked into Innovative Technology based interventions for autism spectrum and if you see um I should Point like this yeah so they looked into uh the analysis of pre and post studies this is
A system static review and they looked into computer programs VR and Robotics and they found that the results of Technology based training it showed a positive medium effect and the confidence interval was well within the range so what it says his conclusion they said the meta analysis supports for continuing development evaluation and
Clinical usage of Technology based interventions for individuals so it’s it’s a good um evidence base to say that well we are on the right track we don’t have to worry there may be lot of myths but let’s look into this and they looked into it and they said pre and post
Studies they were showing really good um um measure uh results so further I looked into serious games okay uh studying the effects of computer serious games on people with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder and if you look into it um how did I do it no no you want me
Help uh with the with the ah right so if you see the the they looked into 54 studies actually they have taken several then excluded because of the criteria and then the majority of the studies showed that the serious games had a positive impact on people with intellectual disabilities and
Autism spectrum and they went on to say that uh more number of programs should be designed and evaluated using the serious games because wherever um the the thing is these children are very good with computers they pick quickly they learn quickly they get connected to the computers very quickly because uh
It’s it’s not anxiety provoking it’s at their own pace they can take time they can one minute Dr har I want to ask one funny question to you if you have a a very stupid question to ask will you ask your colleague in the office or or will you Google it out
Why because our colleague will feel you stupid actually right Google that’s why in short the computer Le judging autism guys are very sensitive that’s why the way of learning from this is much much bad go ahead ma’am sorry for summarizing so they they suggested that uh CH
Sorry no no the fun games uh are different to educational kind of games which have a intent for training the children so in the technical World they call them a serious games um it’s just to say that they are very serious about it um and moving on sorry so um they suggested adaptable
Behavior skills for children with autism and adaptable behaviors uh intellectual functioning and social skills uh for intellectual disability children those kind of programs can be designed um and they are finding it uh lot benefit from uh from it so then I went and looked what sort of learning would these people
Get connected to and this sued adaptable behavior skills for children with autism and adaptable behaviors uh intellectual functioning and social skills uh for intellectual disability children those kind of programs can be designed um and they are finding promotes constant learning for these people and they went on to recommend that positive engagement
Of teaching approaches for people with ASD for that whatever technology you are going to do please add some sort of game to catch their attention Okay and use their experience so see how this is uh helping the child or how the child is getting connected rather than just
Making some sort of games for typical children rather when you are using some games for them be focused and usability accessibility so all the all these points should be taken care while you’re designing uh these kind of programs okay so now question comes uh from all the therapists oh oh we don’t uh
Recommend anyone to have screen time zero screen time it’s it’s like a blanket rule now when you when you say that blanket rule focused and usability accessibility so all the all these points should be taken care while you’re designing uh these kind of programs okay so now question comes uh from all the
Therapists oh oh we don’t recommend anyone to have screen time zero screen time it’s it’s like a blanket rule now when you when you say that blanket rule you focused and usability accessibility so all the all these points should be taken care while you’re designing uh these kind of programs this uh paper
From Harvard they looked into um the there there are some myths like people watching uh screen time or uh these kind of mobiles the language development is slow they’re not doing so great but the results showed that um there is no such Association or impact and they went on
To say teachers and practitioners can support the quality of interactions children have with the Mobile Media so beautifully they have said it’s like don’t just give it okay when the child is on it let the teacher or parent help them to understand what they are watching rather than just looking at it
And just getting in the whole lot of information so it has to be interactive then it’s going to be more fetching and rather than child son yeah HB and and yeah is is yeah right correct so now it’s anime and it’s anime every day but it is onol is maybe 20
Minutes 30 minutes and then it’s down business and it could be more on the weekends if he needs a longer break but blanket rules do not work I don’t think they work in any situation and I think it’s so easy for therapist and for those on the outside to say this is regressive
This is unhealthy this needs to be removed this needs to be eliminated speak to the young person who’s in that situation why is he using this tool that’s been my experience as a parent and um you know it’s created a mind shift change for me see yeah I totally
Get your world when the therapist says you are doing this which you’re not supposed to then the guilt comes and then you will struggle am I doing right or wrong actually actually I want to say this um in India we have something called Vedas The Vedas everybody cannot understand so
We convert into puranas which are like stories actually right it’s a containing way of learning wether actually or principles of similarly in autism the two-way communication is a problem that means the guy doesn’t respond to when you ask for that’s a problem so when you
Use the content in a nice way to develop that habit of two-way communication that’s the best way to happen in a gamified manner actually so I want to stress here I spend a lot of time with my son in fact I build a visual model for his engineering classes
Because in the class whatever teacher was saying is going over his head in a big university of 23,000 students so I build every subject including Unix and database organizational behavior M 32 videos for him of three hours which he can do it like this and he could learn
Quickly number two I created a sandboxes for each of these environment to practice whether is my friends it’s organization Behavior if it’s Unix and all you build a Unix box so I want to ask you one question to all of you if for example I spend some two hours a day
On a computer learning something very good in artificial intelligence am I bad no but if I use the same two hours every day to play some game which is not going to help me evolve in my life then something wrong but if entertainment of 20 30 minutes it’s okay so I want to
Tell you this say that it’s okay if you’re using for good activity when you’re doing that game he’s playing if he’s relaxing or learning some way it is good addent yes yes absolutely agree with you agree with you perfectly agree with you in fact I’ll tell you anecdotal story in fact
We’ll show the movie ahead of time in our games every time it calls the kid by name okay for example my name is UDA I’m the kid UD look here UD click here UD do that UD do this what happen it forms Association of the name in the kid’s mind there is a
Girl who came from UK she was doing she’s around five six years old her name is Juka yagya she came in covid time and she could not go back from India they were terrified when the authorities in high Commission of London ask her what’s her name she will not answer because
She’s a kid with autism she doesn’t answer name that easily actually all of you know right so when she practiced this game for couple of days for 15 minutes a day but the first time the parents were celebrating every time they asked her name she
Answered and this is a power of one plus 1 is equal 11 one is the computer like judging so she feels comfortable the second thing is the computer is calling her by name every time hey hey yna like that so when you had this one plus one
Suddenly it to become 11 she answered so gamified way is the best way to learn and that’s the way even all of us will be learning and I want to ask you one thing how many of you learned Swimming by looking at a PowerPoint or a YouTube
Video how many have learned cycling by looking at YouTube and a a PowerPoint you have to jump into the pool man you have to get onto the cycle so a kind of a thing you know one step at a time but we figure out a way how we can be done
In a way audio visual verbal um experiential and immersive and measuring the progress is very important let’s go to the next one yeah so just wanted to I wanted to connect uh to the point your son uh was talking earlier the other teenage girl was also saying
Why people talk about detoxing me um from 3 hours to 4 and a half hours you’re making me why the society is not talk from those kind of things I think you took that step ahead uh what your son was going through and what you could
Do a change for your child I appreciate that right so um I went on to see uh the Behavioral Science neuroscience and education um in um these kind of games or this kind of learning how it happens so if you see we we standardly know
Theory of mind so in theory of mind what it is is this these children um what each person thinks they think um it’s not different they think everyone thinks in the same way okay and um that difference what each person thinks or what they might be thinking what we
Predict or they don’t have that kind of mind reading so that’s simple version of theory of mind so they think everyone follows the same written rule and they can’t be different and everyone thinks in the same way so um now same cohens he went on to um give about extreme male
Brain uh the theory of in autism so what it means is empathizing uh it’s a Continuum okay on one side it’s empathizing on other side is systematizing so some people understand what the opposite person’s thoughts feelings are and they behave in such a way to empathize and understand their
Perception so that’s the empathizing side of of the Continuum and when you see the systematizing these children with autism they have to see uh one emotion say anger with frowning with certain way of uh teeth grinding see it see it in a systematic way over and over then they
Learn this is anger whereas the others is empathizing the empathize and say and see that what they might be thinking what they might be feeling oh this person is ang angry and I should do this should not do this here they have to learn in different ways and the functional um MRI studies
They looked into it to see is it different so when you look into that the typical brain it um when the functional MRI scans were done it lit up in the frontal part okay and the amydala so the lyic system how I describe is so this is
Uh limic system okay this is the the brain which comes from animals this is the eye concept and on it how your brain develops and this is for planning and execution this is like um foot shelter clothing sex emotions like any animals this starts from puberty okay and prior
To that is a survival skills that’s where children with uh autism still learn all those things and then go on to learn the eye concept and then go on with this higher execution functionings where they have bit l compared to their peer group okay so here the lindic system has a seat called
Amydala which is the center for emotions so uh when they did functional MRI these areas were lit up in the typical people and these were not and other areas were lit up simply saying that when the same emotion is given or same thing is given they are taking decisions from different
Parts of the brain and these people are taking from different parts of the brain so we have to be mindful that train train them people with Autism are trainable all we have to do is give them the typical people and these were not and other areas were lit up simply
Saying that when the same emotion is given or same thing is given there are educational implications so that’s where we say they need antient inter interventions like you prepare them and uh um help them with the easy transitions pattern based techniques where they have to have certain ways of
Patterns repetitions and re hassles the behavior re hassles they they like to do in certain ways that they’re confident positive reinforcement again it’s not the reward that the positive reinforcement it’s that someone is watching and someone is giving that comfort that comfort that they are getting connected okay they also get
Connected but in a different way and learning characteristics of children with autism uh some are visual Learners some are by modeling some are by um you you know uh singing so each person has a different way of learning yeah a no no these These are from uh uh
Just yeah so why I got this is the tool which I’m going to talk about we are going to map we are giving different modalities in it so each person can get connected because we don’t know which child response to what so when we give that program okay I’ll talk in a minute
Like we have um different modalities audio video modality chatboard modality and games modality so the child as they uh keep playing and moving up task one task two task three we understand say in the 6 months to one year what sort of a child this child uh learning pattern is
So in the future when they’re going to school when they go into college then we can map and say this modality works well so we should have the learning translated or in this modality so audio visual or through a game kind of a one or through speaking so we need to map
That kind of one so we need to understand what is their learning pattern um yeah great I’ll just summarize it we try to map up Artificial Intelligence on the right hand side to the left hand side I’ll quickly go through the machine learning part we apply in ILP creation
Individual learning plan creation ILP assessment that means every kid has a different way of doing things so it’s called individualized learning plan which is the plan and then we use uh sorry then we use deep learning models and machine learning models to teach see and learn that is show visually learning
Uh verbally learning and customized voice tone detection all the stuff which we’ll show you shortly and then we use augmented re learning plan which is the plan and then we use uh sorry then we use deep learning models and machine learning models to teach see and learn that is show visually learning uh
Verbally learn even if they are at high risk we encourage them as a early intervention because some parents are hesitant to get a diagnosis literally scared to see even any uh psychiatrist or pediatrician because they will label their child they will be getting School complaints and everything um but they
Still keep postponing you know one day when the teacher brings them into the school and say you have to do something if not we are going to give TC to this child then they come to me in a forced way and then they start therapies so
Even for such kind of parents what we are doing is it’s not the diagnosis it’s how the child is just like your IEP individualized education program so that education programs starts from for a higher child you know in a school goinging child here even from 2 years um
We will have we have a certain list of questions and we sit with the mother or father caregiver and we check you know do this assessment and uh once the assessment is done the system prompts the top goals which the child should be performing and we have allowed the
Therapist to choose out of those top because still she will be the one who uh understands or knows so in this way the machine itself prompts certain goals BAS based on how the assessment is done but the therapist still have a power to override if she thinks sometimes mother
May overrate the child like oh he does most of the times or that’s okay because she’s seeing only from her side when the child is seen in the diagnostic setup or you know out of the house scenario social um kind of interactions father keeps prompting no no no he doesn’t talk
To my parents he doesn’t say hello to in the functions so there may be some disparity so we still give the choice or um you know to the therapist to say what goals should go okay and the rest of the things as UD garu has explained these goals are based
Bas so what we did is uh it is it was very difficult for us when we were developing okay the therapist comes and thinks okay this child I should work on this and the in a week she will say this is not working maybe I have to change
That day she’s in a good mood she thinks something else and something else so it’s it’s the human brain is very Dynamic but we have to translate this in algorithm which is very difficult so what we did was we went into the Milestones tracker so we know from 0 to
6 6 to 12 12 to 1 um 1 to 2 2 to 3 these kind of years these kind of occupation therapy speech therapy um social behaviors emotional skills social emotional skills and um which one is last cognition all this what we have to develop we made up the milestones and we
Our therapists the team of therapist we went ahead and chose what all the basic skills that are needed okay and we made 227 uh videos of how to train each task we grouped up them into goals so we will give the parent a goal but this small
Tiny tiny tasks of what the child has to practice basically uh we have developed a software where traditional kind of training can go into it or ABA model can go into it so whatever you do by your video modeling or your chatboard games you know the technique what you use the
System is able to assess how many times the child is able to do first time right how many prompts he is needing uh and calculate and based on the percentage of the performance so goal one goal two goal three in each goal again there’ll be task so this child has to go through
AV um audio video chatboard game audio video chatboard game audio video chatboard game and he has to take at least three times to pass to say that yes he has actually passed so the system itself keeps taking him up and that’s how the gold progression happens I know
It’s bit complex um we have a full training um module for therapists and parents uh to get more hands-on experience so in in just we have ILP we have all the tasks there based on what the child is not able to do we give the mapping and we have parent module as
Well pivotal skills training the basic ones how to help the child so first they connected to the child then help the child to get connected to the learning thing and this learning then goes into generalization this is the journey we want to see can you go to the journey itself
Yeah we yeah we will rather than saying we’ll show yeah so we have these steps registration so the parent gets registered and then uh the parent will will register the child uh there will be a consent form we have child Information Form CIF we have ILP assessment and then
Um there will be a relationship manager who will be assigning to a therapist now the therapist she is also trained qualified on our product she will assign goals then comes the fourth point where um now the parent uh will log in help the child uh before they help the child
They should know what are what is the child going to see what video so when we did a pilot study back in 2020 some parents said they wanted to understand what it is basically our tool is to empower the parents so in this process they wanted to understand what is the
Objective of the video what is the prerequisite what is that I should look into this video help my child so that’s the objective video and she prepares herself goes to the play button when the child is very happy in the best mood so she will bring the child and she will
Sit down and help the child okay and goes through the AV Audio Video then the chatboard then the game and then you get a personalized uh graph each day the child’s progress of 10% and 20% mother may not be able to say immediately of the eye contact that has improved from 2
Seconds to 4 seconds or 5 seconds but the graphs and all these things will be able to pick up that minute ones and ba yeah and PostNet jit right I know we’ll make it fast so that we will make it faster because we don’t want people to miss out the beauty of this
One is uh it is connecting the therapist and the parents and an organization and the kid together the let’s play how you teach something your audio video thing skill so this is a story which goes around a middle class family wear the child with father mother teacher and friends let’s
Listen so they will show a small clip stop ask for a question give three answers he is Mr Guru so these are all the techniques that a therapist should be doing and that’s what we are telling the parent as well so now the mother picks up um a
Painting activity because this child is not giving any eye contact so she makes different noises tries to grab the child’s attention and then she starts painting at every point there will be this interactive questions um it’s level three if there are three questions if the child is not able is failing two
Times then we are leveling down to level two so level two again uh it will give two options if the child is not able to do it will level down to level one still child is not able to do then the child will go to level zero where it will be a
Plain video so we are doing research uh in Rainbow hospital and parents have been very interactive with us and they have asked us like can we have a pause button can we go and do the manual which is not uh assessing so now this child uh gets interested in painting So starts looking
At the mother starts painting so it’s a way of getting connected to this child in a playful way and Mr Guru is a character which is like a imagin not imagin he is Mr Guru so who keeps prompting and he will get connected to the child outside
All of you have seen as a parent I’m going to talk right now so it it keeps giving the prompts If the child is not pressing doing anything it goes blinking and when the child does it says good job continue so it’s reinforcing the child
So all this is picked up at the back end the data will be collected and it will score how much this child has passed based on firsttime rights or fails and all this so Mr Guru um we have a parent who has had who took
A tab cleared all the apps and just only this one and now the child has learned whenever the mother holds the tab he’s saying Mr Guru hello my friend he’s starting to express because he’s getting connected with these videos and the mother is also partnering with uh the school teacher so whenever
She goes to the school she’s telling the teacher as soon as my Boy comes in you smile and call his by him by name and then smile so he will smile she’s partnering with the children’s um the boys friends as well whenever you’re playing call the name because every time
We insist call the name and question so you call the name and shoot the question so they are understanding this technique so these are the people who who are living Interiors of India where there’s not many therapies so those people are religiously following they are giving good feedback my child is sitting my
Child is listening so they are very happy with the progress so chatbot so that’s the practic practice mode and that’s the assessment Mode For So in this um the parents came back to us we we are doing research in Rainbow hospital and we conduct at least two to three uh parent session training sessions in a week and uh one of the parent was uh he was the one who was
Saying I want a pause button so I can first explain to my child and then uh when the child is ready I want to press on that start button because initially we didn’t give unless they have used and they have noticed that we were very happy that they were following what we
Have made so it was very beautiful and at the beginning also if you could see there was a play button which was the assessment mode and which was the manual mode okay so whatever the child plays in the assessment mode that will be scored the manual or the practice is just for
Practice initially we gave uh practice after passing 50% but they asked can we have it before because we want to first practice then come back for the assessment because parents didn’t want to lose or didn’t want the child to fail in it so they want to first practice
Make the child practice then come into the assessment mode because only in the assessment mode progression happens s right animation yeah we we wanted to keep as much close as to the uh human uh part but still animation works so we have got these games as
Well so this is a emotion games where the child has to recognize the emotion and has to keep playing is Fant so usually AV video comes whatever is in the AV video the chat board will ask the similar questions and the same theme will be carried into the game so
All three modalities will talk the same content so towards the end it gives scoreboard I gu Now the child gets a tick because child has focused on the tiger for certain seconds the child has to focus at least 5 to 10 seconds before the system can give a tick mark so the animal sounds can prompt them so people liked those kind of animal games whenever it was
There they used to run and come to see that so in that way the eyaz was tracked I just want to say here these are all Technologies it’s a computer vision using deep learning models and it come to the chat B it uses the speech to text
Text to speech in fact we did so much of study to figure out which is the best algorithms to represent human voice much better yesterday I saw some robotic voice it’s it’s not it’s a Garb I can’t understand so we came with models the voice is so perfect and with the flick
Of a button we can change the Lang languages actually it can speak up to 70 plus languages in all these things yeah just pause one second ma H so as soon as uh that game comes the camera opens excellent so what see first we want them to focus on on the inanimate
Or the animal kind of pictures models and then slowly we want to generalize so whenever those kind of games videos are done we give a followup of homebased activity for the parent so this home based activity they give variations how the mother can help like if they have a
Toy the mother says the the the homebased activity they get um a narration saying like for the mothers um when there is a tiger one just say you know the tiger sound so the child can look and get connected so whatever are there in the child’s home environment by
This home based activities we ask the parent to translate see the research says that no matter even if you’re good at computers doing all the puzzles doing all the things un this generalization happens the actual generalization doesn’t happen we knew this in our pilot study and that is where we have come up
With objective videos for the parent homebased videos as well for generalization so the parent should be empowered like what she’s seeing she has to translate it in her daytoday for the child and then only the generalization helps so what she sees that tiger Whenever there is a picture of a tiger
Whenever she’s reading a book getting his attention then slowly he will also say oh so that way he’s also learning so here the main aim is to get his attention in whatever way technology we can use I want to ask you one small quiz to you a prize for you how many times
The kid has um marked right he looked at the animal right how many times in the whole video once or twice or thce how many times the tick Mark has come three the price goes for you the point is the point is if you try to
Do typical therapy can you mark how many time the kid has looked at the contact and draw a graph over a period of Time how his eye contact improved you can never do it here this data will help you how he is improving his eye contact in a gamified
Manner okay if you see the chatbot you saw a small doll in the morning I saw s Sharif excellent speech speech audiologist from uh Dubai she talks about when you teach speech the speech forms along with visualization you show a picture and then speech it sticks better so we do
The same thing so without knowing or with knowing we are following all the principles of all the therapists and the parents and we’ll take away the parents burden off writing down how many times he looked at the screen properly makes sense right yeah you like it no claps he’s not giving claps
Yeah a lot of involvement of the creating also in your research have you come across parents who are getting you know too much of work on yeah seem lot of the no no this is very less work on the parents because once you get the play
Button initially you to sit with it what we have seen maybe you can correct me right after initial session that day is hooked like crazy so in fact you are taking away so much of effort and first of all guilt every parent including me have a guilt that we are not able to
Take time to teach them and a therapist has a guilt that once I send his home I’m not able to have a control on him suddenly I’m solving two problems at one go without stealing a lot of time from his school time okay once I understand once I
Understand how he learns using all the data I can create his education curriculum in the same way so that he continue to learn actually go ahead right so this is not just for parents the therapists can also help help the child in helping say in schools where um
There are inclusion schools and they want to help not every school supporting person is highly qualified to train ot to train speech to train the social emotions so this is a tool for these people that’s what we aim for um schools as well to integrate into their curriculum so they can start teaching
Them early on as well and we know some parents not just sending one hour for the therapy for the rest of the 23 hours they are thinking what can I do so there are some parents who are driven and it’s it’s if you if they start seeing it as a
You know they are learning then it becomes problem if they see that’s enjoying then both of them will have a good time probably initially understanding the system that’s why we are continuously giving them parent training sessions whenever they have they can come back and they can do
Better we are giving them a full module as well so they can get connected right I know so tone detection can you go back to tone detection please yeah so in this what it is a stone detection sometimes children with autism they speak loud they don’t know in which
Area how to speak so in a classroom it has to be soft when grandmother is sleeping it should be in a whisper when they’re in library whisper and when they’re out in the party it is loud so we are giving them scenarios and we are teaching them hi good morning thank you
These kind of common words and the child is is asked to say so it takes the answer and whenever it reaches the soft uh volume the tone then the computer says it’s a good job you did it so they understand Yeah by repetition what how much toning down or toning up they
Should be able to do it I want to tell you uh for several things you have algorithms ready made available on the internet unfortunately did you ever anybody told you to all of you in a party you should speak loud in a funeral position you should whisper and in a class you speak
Softly nobody so that’s why our artificial companies don’t make algorithms for these things so this is a homegrown algorithm from our stable actually so that why we use some algorithm from outside some we invent ourselves so that the 73 million people nobody want to address their needs out
Of the 7.3 billion we have that’s why cogni body is dedicated to develop algorithms this kind of algorithm is not available on the internet to detect what kind of a tone you should speak to so it can detect you can try it out whisper it will tell you whispered actually
Go ahead so yeah can we play it yeah so this is for facial emotion can you stop here I want to tell a story here story is right my son when he was 16 he used to run from the class I asked him why you run from the class now that
Guy looks at me very angrily he moved from a a normal school school to a college kind of a situation I asked him why do you run he say that guy looks at me in Angry way then I go to that guy I say did you look at my son in an angry
Way said regular school the guy say no Uncle I was only be friendly to him so then he figured out he doesn’t understand at 16 what is anger and what is a sad and what is a smile we have to spend close to $200,000 sorry $2,000 to get to a CBT
Therapist to tell him what is anger and what is this thing we told him if it forms a triangle here then it’s anger actually so what will happen here in this game you send a family photos picture of a kid the back in day ey will figure out
It’s a smile or a sad or a surprise and the kid will answer if it matches you’re great it teaches you what I spend $2,000 and multiple visits to the doctor in a small way it teaches you what is this and you can use your family pictures go ahead yeah you can continue
Playing so here we can train the child’s grandmother grandfather kind of a smile sometimes we can keep his own photo as well to say what is the emotion so helping him to understand naming the emotions and all this right next one ah can we start this kinesthetic Learning so we we know that yoga uh our uh Rich heritage there is a lot to learn there’s a lot of science going in so we wanted to use this module so here you can see when the person comes into the position he he he gets a green line when
He’s out of position he’s white so the current scores he has to reach up to 100 uh he whenever he’s in green the scores come up that he’s within the uh correct line and then if you see there is a post time um one second so if you can see
Here the time the child has to maintain up to 10 seconds a count of one 2 3 4 5 so it it a picture so what happens is the other side they have given a pose where the child should see and imitate and the person here it’s actually a
Video the child will stand in front and the points The Joint points will be picked up by the machine of the child so it’s their image now however they move that’s how it moves now when they are in white yeah right right I think that comes at a
Higher level so first we work on the basic ones and then we keep giving basically it’s not like we want to teach them yoga but before they go on to the session we want to give them something something uh you know so that the parent can uh you know get their
Attention come their hyperactivity and then slowly come and do the thing so when when they start doing it it gives a star it says good job so they get a clap they get like a cup and they get one star so we ask them to get five stars so
Per day or you can play more number but we want them to play at least for five so they get the five stars and that helps them then to go on to the other learning so huh yeah in fact in fact we can modulate this we can bias it to make it
Even at the lower level of functionality in that the previous speaker talked about boss pose right all of you have done it right like this boss okay you can make that one happen with this kind of a technology and one more thing I forgot
To tell you in the chat but um in my childhood or anybody from for that matter when you’re learning uh when you say what do you want you say water right when you grown up but when you’re a kid actually of 3 to four years old you call
Water with two three different names does it happen in your culture as well use it something babba something something so in our chatbot we have way of feeding customized words for example instead of water you say w still it says good job because our
Game of the game is not to teach him the speech improve his ability to interact and develop that confidence actually so we have an ability to keep the customized words as well we missed that point we want to tell you that so next comes just you sorry you had a
Question anyone had a question no okay so just in time so this is uh just in time is like a calendar event okay going for a birthday party or going out for a Park you teach the child how to behave and everything but when they are actually going they may forget um so
It’s important like one child uh when they were regularly going to school she remembered that she should not feel jealous she was 11th class uh um um open school child so for her every day in the morning they have to say don’t worry about others it’s okay so that kind of a
Simple training is important so now what we did was when the child has to go for a birthday party um the calendar event will be there so the parent can go click on the uh the event so now it comes up saying that your child has 11 days or 21
Days to practice this so this kind of event comes now we have done this is augmented reality where um it it covers or there is a natural environment and uh the technology goes and uses the real real time uh situation so here we have done for uh uh Park you can play it
Please thank you it make him going to school better so it has a i which is like information when there is a question mark there is a question and when there is a video they can go and play on it so it ask this interactive questions
Good job buy a ticket so next time when the mother takes they will say okay what do you do here you stand in a line we buy a ticket and then what we do we go inside so those steps what mother tries to show and uh do it going to dentist um
Visiting uh um grandmother’s house a birthday party all are in videos should oh no you so they in that they selected naughty child selected room around so this if the system says oh no you should not so it tries to be interactive so how to Comm in there’s a
Video as well so at each point they have made a detailed one so the child knows how to go what to do in a in a systematic way let now they’re going to it there’s a lot to this video they have gone into every detail they have done
Everything so what do you do so they click on the question mark So when you go inside you need a map to understand which way to go what you want to see let’s enter into the park so that’s how it’s all showing and then question can an airport ATM Bank
Hospital so each each part we can make it customized yeah see again what we are showing is at each point what has to be done we it’s again the mother okay what do you do at the entrance what did you see okay what do
You do here what is this where do we see the map uh where is um you know the index so the we it’s important to translate so because we can’t make many models of there may be several parks there may be different ways but they have to understand there are steps in it
As far as we are teaching the steps they should be good and that’s the aim of generalization I want to say have you seen babies day out baby day out yeah what the mother does is show a social story of going to circus or something like that this is a social story which
Is one of the method of teaching artistic kids actually so that they get used to a new environment like a school or a hospital anything like that make sense so if if they only learn for that video it becomes very difficult at the end of the day we want them to
Generalize use the skills the steps and go and use it anywhere by this time you figured out right who is Doctor here and who is a guy who tells the stories because I tell baby’s day she tells signs actually you yeah go to the next slide yeah think you
Can move on oh I I’ll do it sorry yeah so these are some of the parent feedback that the eye contact is improving child is settling they could see some improvement the child is playing uh we didn’t put up all the uh parental feedback um and these are the graphs
What we could see whoever are playing uh you could the more number of hours they are investing into it definitely the parents are happy now how many hours each parent invests or the therapy invest that’s that’s for us can I borrow that yeah thank you these are simple
Graphs we have more complex graphs very nice ones so on the time axis you can see the months on this axis you can see the modalities actually so we have a way to figure out how we learning on social behavioral how we learning on chat Bots
And all the stuff we can completely give you a history of timeline on what day what task he played how many points he got how is his C which modality is learning as a parent don’t you want to know as a therapist don’t you want to
Know the kid is how he learns don’t you want to know which task he’s doing better don’t you want to know which task is like a fish to the water so it can design future career for him once you know how he learns once you know which modality he
Learns once you know which task is fish to the water you can design his future career for him in that way so that he will a everybody out here so that’s the power of the data so that the parent can spend more time in figuring out what to
Do th therapist can do more time to figure out what to do okay right and all of you as a therapist I want to ask you one question do you want to help the community at large for example Maya is there Maya is in Abu Dhabi she want to help
Tunisha she can help with this kind of a tool so this way you democratize the whole place and give power to therapists and parents I’m not saying we conquered everything we take all the inputs from you and we feed it more and more we’ll build more and more things including
Virtual Labs education content so that the kids who have the magic abilities within them they can do significant bring significant value thus anybody from government here to my son is a tax burden had you not had I not spend time with him on my India government probably the government would have paid around
5,000 rupees a month forever in the life but today is a tax burden is not tax burden is a tax asset because we build a the business around it we are helping globally and he’s contributing economy by so many people working with us AI experts doctors and all the stuff so we
All dream have high aspiration for our kids both at the governmental level therapist level and parent level with high aspiration we can make it happen with this kind of a tools which enable you to happen and give him lot of opportunities to explore and make them
Happen in a digital way and it doesn’t take away the power of therapist lot of things can be done by therapist is only enabling tool right so the point I wanted to add was here the therapists um they have a therapist dashboard they log into it they will have all the children
So they can look into it um children who are playing well they will be in green zone some out of the three goals they may not be doing one goal better they will be in Amber and there may be some children who are not so much doing well
They may go into red all the three goals they’re struggling so in the morning they log in and they see okay these parents are doing good I don’t have to worry about the green I have to focus on the red then come to Amber so they there
Is a system built in and now you you have a facility there so you are not spending the same hours physically on all these children rather you will be spending remotely you will be talking to this mother asking what is the problem give some tips how to change ask them
The videos so there is an option for the mother from the other end to upload and you can review and you can make suggestions you can give uh frequently asked questions we have all the list um and other techniques what you think that uh the parent and the child will need
Because sometimes the though the home based activity it says they may not be doing the right way so when you ask the video you can look into it you can make suggestions so what happens is spending say every every week you spend 5 hours with a kid so your spending 20 physical
Hours instead if you are spending less number of hours then you can see more number of children cover more geographic area so you can in go into more Interiors people who are very far who are you know you once you are with this you can have a client in Australia you
Can have a client in Canada so in that way you will be reaching more Geographic areas and be able to you know provide the therapy advise and still look into things I think finally all of us are in box po now right so what do you all think about
This is it happening is it uh I’m not sure what do you think thank you grand grand thanks for that right right thees for hisp living skills and that foreign applications are they have cultural ask question excellent so we we appreciate that Udu has a full 60 languages uh uh you know
He’s ready with everything he can convert into any language you name it he has got it he has got um cesia who can speak you know objective videos and um home based activities for the parents not for the child for the child friend we still having videos um and we are
Also making internationalization where um it can be more connecting to the culture specific and also the scripts some of them we are very mindful so we are having therapists who are culture specific as well for that language say Arabic we are aiming for that translation we are going for Hindi
Translation local languages Telugu Bengali Tamil so we have a cue of all this um so it reaches those people you know um even though uh we have used very simple English language very short sentences some mothers are still struggling so we are um without okay let’s do let’s do the Hindi version telu
Version so yeah and I want to say one thing when we build for Arabic we’ll bring Arabic actors Arabic Customs everything Arabic so that it’s good for them we may use English also but Arabic culture will be there if you go to us it
Will be us if you go to Africa it will be Africa because why we want to do that way is uh autistic kids they have to get inclusion within their cultures that what we do so uh we will we promise you one thing uh last point I want to touch up I
Think you’re done I ask last point when you try to do this kind of a stuff you require money and once we do artificial intelligence based staff the marginal cost of supporting one more kid is very minimal that way we can really democratize autism care actually but in
The process of doing it I’m a father I’m not too rich I’m okay but not too rich and there are people who help along the way and I would like to thank Dr rind garu here he’s a very good investor and he is a global Hospital chairman a multi-millionaire but he came forward
And said he doesn’t have an Autism connection but he said I’ll support you go all the way and and his dream is helping people around the globe I want to say thanks to him he’s a li transplant surgeon thank you sorry guys we kept you awaiting I’m
Sorry about it thanks for listening and interactive questions that’s Hello everyone it’s really nice to be here and we’re going to have Dr temple with us live right now Dr Temple does not need an introduction can you tell I’m one of the biggest fans here but Dr Richard will introduce her no it’s my great pleasure and privilege to introduce Dr Temple grandon
Um Dr grandon is an American academician a behavioral animal behavior as an internationally renowned spokesperson for autism spectrum disorder Dr gron is one of the first autistic people to demonstrate the insights that she has gained from her personal experience of autism she is currently a faculty member with animal sence Sciences in the
College of agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University based on her experience grandon advocate’s early intervention to address autism and support teachers and professionals who can redirect children and adults with um in fruitful decisions and directions she has been an outspoken proponent of animal rights and the neurodiversity movements in 2010 Temple
Grand was listed as one of the 10 most influential people in the world World by time 100 which named her in the heroes category in 2011 she received a double helix medal and has received many honorary degrees from many universities including Miguel Swedish University of agricultural Sciences Carnegie melan Etc
Grandon has been featured on many media programs she was the subject of an Emmy and Golden Globe winning biographical film Templar gandon in 2018 grandon was featured in the document this business of autism which explored autism employment and the success of autism employers she has been written up
In time People magazine discover Forbes and the New York Times she is best known for Designing the hug machine which is a deep pressure Gadget planned to calm extremely sensitive people which are ordinary people with Autism and I know her personally working with her as a colleague to sequence her entire genim
To read the chromosomes from into in and make sense of that as to how they caused her condition and how they continue to influence her life and I’ll never forget the working with her to do that and if you’re interested in what we found out um come to my lecture tomorrow at 11:
Something so I’m introduce um Dr granded well it’s and also a lot of emphasis on skills like getting dressed combing your hair brushing your teeth um eating with you pencils few one little tip with these kids you have to give them time to respond they’re like a phone that’s only
Got one bar of service and slow down when you talk to them and when the grown-ups talked fast it went to Gish can you put the next slide up please now the thing about autism is it goes all the way from Einstein who had no speech until age three to somebody
Has much more severe um um um autism when they become non-verbal but some of the ones that are non-verbal can learn to type independently but a brain can be more social emotional or brain can be more interest in what they do and having an interesting career has been very
Important to me and I’m really happy that I’m a professor I’ve got graduate students and I’ve done a lot of research in animal behavior I have three graduate students that have become University professors I’m very very happy about that so bring can be more social emotional or bring be more interested
Sort of in what they do this is why I think it’s important to get kids out doing interesting things um some of these kids that get addicted to video games um one of the ways to get them off the video games is have them fix motorcycles have them fix cars it’s the
One thing that’s wored they find out that maybe fixing those motorcycles is much more interesting than the video games and that’s something that can turn into a career and it’s a skill that other people want let’s go to the next slide shows a picture of Thomas Ed medon
He would probably be autistic today he dropped out of school now fortunately he had a mentor and he had um a mentor that taught him how to use the telegraph it’s really important for students to get exposed to things I didn’t originally I was not originally
In the cattle industry I got exposed to it as a teenager and I had very good teachers and mentors starting with my mother when I was very young she was always pushing me to do new things she encouraged my ability in art um I had a wonderful
Primary school teacher I had a wonderful science teacher who got me interest in studying with all kinds of interesting projects to do um good teachers are so important let’s go to the next slide there’s Einstein he would probably be in an Autism program today let’s go to the next
Slide put the next slide up please now I’m kind of a NASA fan and I I got five years ago I got a chance to go visit the C visit this launch pad and this was like so much fun and what I learned when I went there is the astronauts uh they
May they had the we call it the right stuff but they were people that had Tourette Syndrome that were dyslexia they were building the Launchpad they were um designing control rooms there were people there at Nasa really smart people that well you know some of them probably were on the autism spectrum
I’ve been to many many NASA sites and if you look at the old um videos of going to the Moon look at the people in that control room I think there was quite a few autistic people there and they were really happy that they got to be
Involved in that project let’s go to the next slide now I’ve got emotions but I get emotional over interesting stuff I do and um voyag just space craft now is 45 years old the scientists are in their 80s now they are still tracking it they’ve managed to keep it going for a
Long time they had to work out of a storefront next to a McDonald’s but they kept it operating with no funds and I can get really into that because it’s so cool what they’re doing they’re still learning from this spacecraft that’s 45 years old let’s go to the next
Slide got past Saturn we can go to the next slide and then you’ve got the um you’ve got the techies down there that keep that antenna going yeah they probably have to do it at three o’clock in the morning I got a chance to sit at the original um U
Mission Control um desk that was really really cool go to the next slide now let’s not get hung up on the labels autism is this big spectrum and the problem with autism is they keep changing the diagnosis originally you know maybe 30 years ago or so you had to
Have speech delay to be labeled autistic and then they added asper syndrome where you could be socially awkward with no speech delay and then in 2013 they merged everything together and you’ve got a spectrum that’s going from Einstein to somebody that may have much more severe problems but I can’t
Emphasize enough on working with the little kids because when I was three I looked very very severe and we can go to the next slide I have grandparents that come up to me all the time and they find out they’re autistic when the kids get diagnosed that just happens all the time
And sometimes adults later in life getting diagnosed helps them with their relationships but I’m concerned that too many fully verbal smart kids on the Spectrum get so hung up on the label the parents get hung up on the label that the kids’s not learning basic skills like shopping learning how to save money
Doing laundry just very very basic things another big problem I’m seeing is not making the transition into the world of work work skills are not the same skills as academic skills we need to start children when they’re 11 years old maybe I’m volunteering at a Fruit Stand or
Something like that where they learn how to work for somebody outside the family on a schedule let’s go to the next slide now that’s me having a real fun time at the Vehicle Assembly Building we’ll show another slide all the cool stuff I got to go do there like go up on
The roof and I wasn’t supposed to that was really cool all right let’s just get back to the getting important stuff in autism let’s talk about some basic issues here sudden surprises scare okay let’s say a child’s going to go to a new school we’ll try to visit it
Maybe before they go there or look at the website um the other thing um that’s difficult for a lot of individuals with autism is multitasking when you rapidly have the multitask but we’ve got to get these kids out doing stuff we’ve just got to
Do that and I was brought up in the 50s and we used the method I call it teachable moments so let’s say I took my drink right here and I stirred it with my finger that’s not that’s bad table Manns now my mother instead of saying no
She would say use the spoon people think it’s disgusting when you put your finger in the cup she would give the instruction in instead of saying no that was my generation a method of teaching social skills and social skills were taught in a much more structured manner
Than they are today we need to limit the screen time the phones and the computers to about an hour a day and we need to get kids out doing things um um today I saw some kids out playing in the playground that’s near my house and
That’s kind of stuff that kids should be doing let’s go to the next slide so there’s the kids are there working with a really young kid and the thing I have found on very young children’s programs some teachers just have the ability to work with these
Little kids now if you’ve got a little kid that’s not talking the worst thing you can do is let them just sit and play with the phone all day that’s the worst thing you can do you need to get an Effective Teacher working with them and I find some teachers have the ability
And some don’t let’s go to the next slide teach in turn taking that was done with me with board games you have to learn how to wait it’s something that’s very important for young autistic children to learn how to wait and we’ll go on to the next slide teachable moments we already
Talked about that you don’t yell and say stop it you give the instruction and the reason why let’s go to the next slide need to limit the video games one of the things that I was not allowed to do when I was in high school was just
Become a recluse in my room I was not a good student I was a terrible student but I still had to attend the classes you know too many of these kids are just getting on the electronics and just staying in their room playing video games all day and they’re not getting
Wonderful jobs in the video game industry and if they were getting wonderful jobs in the video game industry I’d be a lot more positive about it but some young adults again addicted to video games the one thing that was successful in getting them off of it was working on Motors and engines
And they found out that they were more interesting than the video games let’s go to the next slide now my mother would always stretch me to new do new things but she always gave me a choice you know we could go to this store or that store or you could do this
Activity or some other activity always giving choices you can do your homework when you get home from school or you can do your homework after dinner giving some choices and one of the things that helped me being raised in the 50s is um we had sit down dinners and you know the
My sister and my parents would take turns telling about their day unfortunately in some families um that’s not happening and this was part of um part of a getting me up to be a lot more social and and you can learn business social another thing that was done in my
Family is when we were seven or eight years old and it was done with most of the families of my generation is when I was a little kid I had to dress up my good clothes when the parents had a party and I had to serve the snacks I
Had to shake hands with them learn how to talk to them really really good social training let’s go to the next slide let’s talk about sensory issues sensory issues are really real and loud sounds like a school bell or hair dryer or maybe a vacuum cleaner would hurt my
Ears now one of the ways to help a child to tolerate these sounds is to let the child play with the vacuum cleaner where they turn it on they turn the haird dryer on and when the child turns the dreaded noisy thing on they often get to where they can tolerate it better
Because they are controlling it now there’s some kids wearing head phones all the time and the problem is if you wear headphones all the time and that’s on the next slide um The Sound Sensitivity may get worse so what you want to do is have
Them with you you can have them in your backpack so they’re with you that give you control you’ve got them with you but then you try not to wear them because you I’ve heard stories where they were wearing headphones all the time and the child got so sensitive he couldn’t
Tolerate quiet conversation at the dining room table but sensory problems really are real um sensory integration methods can be helpful there’s a paper you can look up online it’s called environmental enrichment is an effective treatment for autism and it’s a method where you stimulate two Senses at the same time U
Maybe touch a a warm coffee cup and then um um smell some aromatherapy so you’re stimulating two senses that the same time the title of the paper is environmental enrichment and effective treatment for autism now let’s say we have a nonverbal older child or adult and problems with maybe
Destructive Behavior are hitting the first thing with somebody who cannot speak is give them a way to communicate not being able to communicate it’s totally frustrated also you have to rule out do they have a painful medical problem that they can’t tell you about that’s the first thing you made to make sure
They don’t have acid reflux I had acid reflux last night because I ate some hot sauce I wish I hadn’t eaten and I I I uh you know my stomach was hurting last night uh but this but sensory overload if they have um um you know a meltdown
Or Outburst in a busy noisy store that is probably sensory overload but we’ve also got to give them a way to communicate that is just super super important um there’s a next slide just shows sensory symptoms are part of the neurobiology of autism now when also a
Little kid they tested me for two things deafness and epilepsy now I could pass the deafness test but the problem is my ability to hear auditory details impaired like if the grown-ups talk fast it was when adults talked fast like that’s what it sounded like because I didn’t hear the the hard consonant
Sounds like if someone said the word cat and they said it fast I would hear a so my speech teacher would say cat or she’d hold up a cup and she’d say cup and she switched back and forth between saying cup and cup because people talk fast than all I
Heard with the vowel sentence stretch out enunciate the um consonants and and sometimes um um hearing would kind of cut in and out like a bad mobile phone uh connection there’s kind of three ways that the brain can have a problem with language I’m not hearing the auditory detail where I’m hearing
Giberish trouble with getting my speech out expressive and then the next slide I talk about eolic short children and eoic children they have good speech and they will recite an entire movie script but the problem is they don’t know what the movie script means that’s the problem so
In life animated what these parents did is they this child had memorized Disney movie and they um picked out phrases in the movie that could be used in real life and then their son started to figure out um that words had meaning so on eate kid you’ve got to teach them
That all this language of yaking out has meaning so there’s kind of three ways the brain can be messed up the next slide talks about attention shifting slowness now if I was a computer I’ve got a very very small um you know I’m an Intel 286 I mean if you’re computer gig
Uh that’s the first chip but I have huge memory attention shifting slowness this is why you have to give the child time to respond respond the next slide shows tension shifting slowness it’s an old Amy Clint slide and look at how they a normal person’s looking at the eyes but
The other more important thing in this slide is look at how many times the normal person looks back and forth compared to the autistic person is trying to lip read tension shifting slowness all right now let’s look at things where this could cause a problem
At work I want to see these kids get employed and I want to avoid the jobs such as rapid multitasking at a McDonald’s takeout window that would be a very bad job another problem is I don’t have any working memory so if um let’s say I have to like shut down the
Cash register at night at a store and then maybe five or six steps I need to write them down I need to write the steps down like a pilot’s checklist long yak yak strings of verbal information do not work with me let me make a pilot’s
Checklist okay and if you don’t want to disclose autism just say to your employer Pilots need a checklist I need one too and for Pilots it’s mandatory in every country in the world Pilots have to use checklist now I’m talked about giving the child uh time to
Respond when I was five years old in school we had a little assignment where we had to name the pictures that began with be is and beautiful so I called the suitcase a bag and the teacher marked it wrong and she didn’t give me time to explain that in our house they weren’t
Suitcases they were bags and that was very very frustrating for me the next slide we’re going to be talking about some visual problems I don’t have visual processing problems but some individuals do and vision might break up similar to a migraine headache or this next slide that shows an image
It’s breaking up uh seeing probably wouldn’t be a primary sense if that’s the way things look like and this may explain why a number of people that do not speak touch and smell things because those senses provide um uh accurate information and we’ll go on to the next
Slide that shows an escalator now in your brain um you have the eyes that work like a camera but then in the back of the brain there’s circuits that assemble the graphics file for shape color motion and texture and if there’s something wrong with those circuits
Print May jiggle on the page when you try to read these kids are often terrified of escalators because they can’t tell how to get on and off of it so you have a child that hates an escalator the chances are he has a visual processing problem and and the
Eye exam may be more or less normal and if you have a child that can’t read um the next slide shows print jiggling on the paper uh try different pale colored papers now this is my children’s project book right here little um you see the light blue P color right there
Try printing um um the the homework and the reading materials on maybe Light tan paper light gray paper all these different colored papers that sometimes really works for some types of Dyslexia just try different colored paper try different colored backgrounds on your computer on your laptop or on the iPad the next
Slide I talk about lighting issues and one of the big ones now is LED lights that flecker and one of the ways that you can determine if LED lights are bad is take pictures of them in slow motion so you want to wave like this because
When you play it back you want to make sure it’s playing back in slow motion and you’re going to find some flat screen TVs that flicker now tablets do not flicker most laptops do not flicker but there’s going to be some flat screen TV um computer monitors that are
Bad and this does not affect all all people with Autism but I’m going to say my 10 or 20% may have a problem with seeing flicker of LED lights or on a TVs and computer monitors so what do you do if you have that problem you go buy a lamp and you
Find an LED light that does not Flicker and you put it next to the desk and they the you can buy cheap ones that don’t flicker but this is something that’s a real problem and when I get asked about designing this U school or home for
People with Autism I want to make sure we have LED lights that do not flicker I just learned from a technical specialist that if a TV flickers it has to do with internet connection um but this is this kind of stuff um needs to be fixed and
You can just test it with slow motion video the next slide just talks about some more severe um sensory issues in noisy environments I am not able to hear because of all the background noise cannot hear um and I also cannot follow very rapid chitchat conversations where people get very
Social chitchatting back and forth very rapidly I get bored with that um and there’s question’s coming up about masking um some of that stuff is just too hard for me to do but you can always do some business social you know shake hands with people there are some
Individuals that need breaks um but sensory problems are real let’s go on to the next Slide the next slide um talks about this environmental enrichment program where you use inexpensive cheap things to stimulate two Senses at the same time you’re always changing the things that you stimulate and it’s an
Adjunct or an add-on to other types of therapy now the next slide shows some really wonderful books for um um that have been written by nonspeaking um autistics now I really like um how can I talk my lips don’t move by Tito I had a
Chance to meet Tito and he came into a library and he was flapping and and everything and I wanted to see um I text him with a really really strange picture that he had never seen before and it had an astronaut in a spacit riding a horse
Out in the desert and I showed that to Tito and he types really fast Apollo 11 on a horse another good book’s Karly Flan’s uh um Arthur fman Carly’s voice then you got the reason I jump the sequel to The reason I jump I like the
Sequel It’s a better book but I’ll give you a little tip about the typing remember the problem with the tension shift okay like on this desktop my keyboard’s way down here but when I type that print appears way up here on the screen here and the keyboard’s down
Below where the video is now many people with Autism cannot make that attention shift and that’s the reason why you want to use a tablet because the virtual keyboard with using that virtual keyboard the writing appears right next to the top of the keyboard or you’re
Going to have to on a laptop put the keyboard on a box and you need to make sure it’s a monitor that does not flickor this is really really important next slide just shows some brain scans and the point I want to get across right there different parts of the brain get
Turned on when you do different things like seeing things hearing words thinking about things and where there’s a problem in autism is in kind of the inter office Communications and what you tend to get is uneven skills like I’m really good at Art and mechanical stuff somebody else might be really good at
Mathematical stuff and we’ll just show some more pretty brain scans um next slide shows oh that’s my skull let’s show the next slide that’s the microb biome you see the little tiny hairs there uh those are axon pales and they form great big uh inter office communication cables
Between different parts of the brain and then I can show you a slide without my ugly skull and that the connect to much prettier when it’s by itself the next slide shows the circuit in the brain for speak what you see now there’s the normal control right there and I’ll show
You mine the next slide that’s my speak what you see and I have all these extra branches for visual thinking but I have less fibers for speech so that might explain why I had trouble getting my speech out but when I had speech therapy it increases the bandwidth on the fibers
That are still left the next slide just shows that and but this is where the therapy made a difference because I had trouble getting my speech out let’s go to the next slide now if I speak what I hear I am definitely not an auditory person I am
Definitely a visual person and we’ll go on to the next slide and I want to talk about the importance of developing strengths that’s an artwork I did when I was about six or seven years old mother always encouraged my ability and art it’s a picture of a wooden uh uh dock or
Deck that was um on by the beach and she always encouraged my um my art and the next slide just shows a picture a young child did it three-dimensional most little kids don’t do that and I would just draw the same horse’s head over and over and over again so mother would
Broaden my skill let’s draw the stable let’s draw the saddle or if you have a child that likes cars let’s read about cars do math with cars draw pictures of different cars in other words broaden that fixation broaden the fixation especially it’s something like cars that can turn
Into a career the next slide just talks about um um the art ability being encouraged uh often we’ll have uneven skills really good at Art I was absolutely terrible at mathematics but then you’re going to have another autistic person that’s good at math and we’ll go to the next slide where it
Shows that the way I think it’s videos in my head or movies in my head I’m what’s called an object visualizer and in my new book visual thinking the hidden Gifts of people who think in pictures patterns and abstractions I discuss three different kinds of thinking that you can have an Autism
Most people are mixtures of the different kinds of thinking but in autism you might get an extreme object visualizer that’s me and the HBO movie shows how I think my kind of mind is good at Art mechanical things photography working with animals absolutely terrible in mathematics and
Then you have the next kind of mind is the visual spatial mathematical mind and the mathematical mind thinks in patterns and then you have people that think in words and it’s important to you know kind of know how the child thinks that just shows Eclipse Shadows um where the eclipse um the
Trees made made little tiny eclip uh eclipses like pinhole camera that happened on our campus I noticed detail I watched a whole bunch of students just walk over that they just didn’t notice it but I notice visual detail the next slide shows to things that can bother
Cattle like seeing a car through the fence seeing a piece of red string seeing a bottle there that might move little things that um people don’t notice also in autism there is a better um there’s some better ability to imp pitch discrimination um there’s been a lot of
Research shows that these sensory things really really are real and the next slide shows one of my cattle handling facilities and one how did I sell my work one of the things I did to sell my work was to show off pictures of things I had designed and one thing I really
Liked in the HBO movie is that it showed my actual projects it also shows how I think in pictures it’s very very accurate on that and I can say that the Geek Side of Me really liked that the next slide shows um a recreation of one
Of my projects in the HBO movie I thought that was just so cool I really really like that the next slide shows starting on my very first project now I had some good mentors in the construction industry on my first project the Swift plant 1974 I criticized some welding and I
Said it look like a birded poooo on it and that was pretty rude and the plant engineer pulled me into his office in private and said I had to apologize for that rude kind of talk he told me what I should do and then another person that helped me was a small contractor
Stealing concrete work contractor who had seen my drawings and seek me out and for 10 years we built projects together and so those are on the construction site some of my early projects and some of the most fun stuff I ever did was working in construction and I worked
With a lot of people that were probably dyslexic ADHD or autistic some of these people owned big companies where they made mechanical equipment they had lots of patents this really put the emphasis on the career this is what’s made life happy for me is having a fulfilling
Career the next slides just show some of my drawings and and when I showed people my drawings they were impressed that’s how I sold jobs okay let’s work on what are we going to do about job interviews well a job interview for me was lay the
Drawings on the table and show off the drawings that’s what I did and they look at my drawings and gow in fact actually today now that everything’s computerized drawings I’m seeing some very bad drawings and um now the next drawing shows a dipping vat system and you can
See on the concrete work I have all the reinforcing rods drawn in there uh four years ago I got a really horrible set of drawings that the engineering firm had done on a computer and they didn’t hadn’t drawn in the reinforcing rods I marked them all and pencil I said
You go back to that engineering firm and and get it done right this is a piece of equipment I developed for the meat industry called the center track restrainer system you can see a lot of complicated steel work there and one of the people I worked on this was autistic
Undiagnosed special ed Department builds the stuff and we need these skills we need to find back doors into jobs you know where you just kind of bypass the interview and get jobs well you know a friend that has a store and maybe they’d be willing to work with the
Kid I think I’m going to stop there you can have the rest of the slides because I’d like to do questions and I’ve already talked about some of the most important stuff but that what you see right there is high-end skilled trades and I I was very interested and I went to
The Steve Jobs theater right before Co shut everything down and the glass walls came from from Italy and Germany and the carbon fiber roof came from Dubai that’s very very high-end skilled phrase that’s something to be proud of all right let’s get some questions going right now hope I’m G to get some
Questions hello hello yes let’s get some questions yeah just a second hi my name is SAA I have a son he is nearly 8 years old and I always have this question because I’m big fan of you and I know you know a lot about autism
And animal behavior so I wanted to ask what’s the connection between visual sensory preference as um my cats and my son they both like similar toys and and uh they have similar visual preference is there any link does your son does your son speak he is speaking but he’s
Not like having any big vocabulary so he has very short vocabulary and has sensory issues what do you have does he have a decent way to communicate even something out like one of these computerized um things they’ll speak or you picture board or something to for him to communicate with
No we never use like visual uh pictures like packs we never use those so we um encouraging him to use more spontaneous speech and uh you know the speech therapist ABA therapist all of them what they recommend we follow that well does he if he can learn to speak then you
Don’t need to use peex but if you have a child that has like three-word vocabulary and he 8 years old we need to give him another way to communicate more easily and that I can remember the frustration when I I couldn’t communicate I remember that U I showed
You that picture of the bicycle in the suitcase and it was so frustrating when the teacher didn’t give me time to explain that our house suitcases were bags mhm and I didn’t understand the concept of the letter B the sound of the letter B uh but he um there’s a point where where
U they need to get get a better way to communicate some language some kids can uh there’s various programs you can get for tablets mhm yeah the thing is he started talking uh just uh before he gets six so it’s really delayed so that’s why is he starting to talk are
You getting more and more language yes yes and more clarity like it takes time like it’s a step by step but we had uh him from severe autism now he is in between low and moderate autism so in the Spectrum if you’re getting progress our parents asked me about different
Programs I said the most important thing is you’re getting progress now if you’re getting progress right now then you’re doing the right thing yes the only problem I’m struggling is his memory and his sensory problems that kind of restrict him to learn more and focus on task and academics and he’s better in
Maths as you say there are few type of visual Learners he is more into mats and numbers rather than alphabets and reading you see because I told said there’s a visual kind of autism that’s me yeah but there’s also a mathematical there are kids that are very mathematical he’s visual in maths but
He’s not very visual in he’s not into reading that much but he’s better in maths like counting in numbers he’s really good with numbers then you maybe maybe you can move him ahead numbers but how is he at things like getting dressed uh bathing these kinds of things he is
Very independent whatever I taught him is very independent good good that that is that’s good learning those skills yeah he is even better than my other children like um TP neurotypical ones so he is more independent than them and he understands routine better than them the
Only problem I have I can’t find uh his special skill he really likes music and he is very athletic he does parkour he does swimming he does cycling good he’s very athletic that’s good and see the problem you got with autism is it’s such a wide spectrum now let’s say you take a
Diagnosis like dyslexia okay there’s problems of breing or ADHD you know you tend to you know uh detention it’s a much narrower diagnosis and this is the problem we’ve got we probably got half of autis kids that have a special skill and there’s going to be some that don’t
Really have a special skill yeah he has autism ADHD and dyslexia all three and erlin syndrome well the erlin syndrome um have you tried the Erin glasses yes I I’m myself I qualified as well I just took the course so I can keep checking on him
Uh yeah we got the glasses the other thing I find that that works Al for people have erlin syndrome I talked about the colored paper yeah we do use you you we do use all of his notebooks are turquoise well like like I’ve got a tan
Shirt on right now and and that would be one of the colors that that light tan like this shirt um some people like that and then other other people they like this U light light blue that’s on my children’s project book yeah yeah yeah that light blue that’s the thing for him
My tie yes it comes him to be the pale colors yeah yeah not not dark blue light blue yeah I changed those but he still have sensory visual sensory problems so is there any connection what about a Sound Sensitivity Sound Sensitivity he has but
I uh kind of um always um give him that opportunity like you said he’s in charge of hair dryer he’s in charge of hand dryer you know when we go to C at the beginning he was very hesitated but then he got used to now he is properly
Sitting like other children so I kind of make him to be prone to that and he’s used to well that’s good that you see you see making him see when the child turns the hair dryer on and off or the vacuum on and off where they control it
Yes that to desensitize some of that yeah but still I’m struggling with his memory and his visual sensory like my cat and him they prefer the same toy you know what I mean like he will kind of keep doing with that playing with that toy even though he has thousand other
Toys uh but his pref how get taking turns at a game he was not good he was having meltdowns he would get angry but I I kind of uh desensitized him with that as well like on the cues of airport um like slowly slowly byward in him
Using ABA techniques and you and you and you don’t have a surprise at the airport you know like you watch videos and and uh I found that one of the things that I got afraid of but made them interesting yeah exactly that uh Sports what what
One parent did about the hand dryers in the bathrooms they went to the websites of all the manufacturers of the hand dryers and then they got interested in how they worked and they collected all the websites of hand dryer manufacturers no seriously this actually helped yeah
Yeah it’s the same with him wherever we start with like even food diet we started with him at the beginning he didn’t like now he loves uh healthy you know clean food he wouldn’t eat rice before he was addicted to all these carbs rice oh yeah it’s bad now he
Wouldn’t eat I get worried that some of these kids with these restrictive diets are going to get the old vitamin deficiency diseases there was a horrible case where a kid Got Scurvy which is Vitamin C deficiency the DI was so restricted maybe we need to get somebody else to
Ask a question I give somebody else a turn yeah yeah sure thank you thank you hi um good morning and nice to meet you you made a point about uh people who don’t speak much uh they’re more on touching and smelling things and I just wanted to know how can that be helped
And how can they be me uh they be helped to speak better well if if you one of read I really recommend that you read Tito’s book how can I talk if my lips don’t move and it is available in an electronic book I checked Amazon recently is available and he talks about
Vision being scrambled also the Japanese boy in the sequel which I think is a better book he talks about being like a broken robot and having problems with controlling his movements and if you have an older child or an adult that’s either non-speaking or very poor speaking I at really recomend these
Books because it gives the inside view of of their issues and I don’t have scramble Vision I see just fine you see this is where autism has uh has all all these variations but some of them um have get scrambled vision and then smell and touch actually work those senses are
Giving accurate information so then they tend to use it since they work so the the wish really recommend I’m really really really recommend those book um they um I can just I’ve got a power PDF here I’ll just hold up that slide again of those books right there if you
Have an older kid or an adult speak um those are those books are going to give you so much Insight they type independently nobody’s holding their wrist or their arm they type completely independently and they describe sensory scrambling now I don’t have this I sound sensitive and then there’s some I had a
Student that had the problem with the print jingling on the page but you see this is where the sensory stuff is so varing this is sensor problems a lot worse than mine is good morning I my question is how to teach taking turns there is a child 8ye
Old he struggles with taking turns he can’t wait and while playing that was the reason why went on a street uh we spent a big part of my therapy was learning how to wait take turns of games yeah how do I teach how do I do it like uh there
Sometimes there’s a video activity happening and there are three kids one after another they can watch their um favorite clip video clip for maybe 5 minutes but he can’t wait for others well let’s let’s do something where it’s shorter than 5 minutes like a a board
Game we played a lot of paroi which a very simple board game where you shake little cups with dice in it and you move little wooden um wooden uh pieces around on the board and and I remember grabbing that cup and mother said you got to wait
For your sister to take her turn and and something where that it’s not 5 minutes let’s do some turn taking thing where it’s you take a turn and part cheesy takes 10 seconds okay so I start with I start with 10 seconds to the first activity should be very uh
Short well but they the thing of the Le my speech teacher that I had years ago this would be like a 1950 she just knew that teaching the kids how to take weight and take turns was super important my therapy had a lot of emphasis on that all right wait in
Line okay you’re at the supermarket and you’ve got to wait in line you can’t cut to the front of the line that’s also turn taking the child is able to wait in queue but only taking turns when there’s a person who is talking to him he finds it difficult in
Q nobody speaking to each other they are facing the other way so he finds it very easy to wait in q but he has okay but when he has to play with other children or he has to watch a video and wait for that time he feels that he’s not given
His um I he’s not having control on his activity I don’t know what is the exact feeling he has well he might try might try different things when we were kids we did a lot of relay races where You’ take turns running and kicking a ball or
Something like that yeah and you know try some different things that involve taking turns now if you’re watching videos uh one thing I’d recommend is the phone be physically passed all right the phone the phone has to be physically pass pass thank you so much the taking
Turns means the phone has to be given to the other person and passed around if you’re doing something on a phone all right I think that’s going to help on the taking turns thank you so much okay let may we get another question hi doctor uh nice to meet you
Today uh in The Last 5 Years uh we hearing uh somebody tell autism causes by TV I want today listen in your opinion caused by what I didn’t hear uh TV TV t television TV is caused by television yeah somebody tell that no no autism not
Cause but if you let a um child spend 10 hours a day watching television that’s not that’s bad and it’ll probably make the autist worse you know we need to be getting them out and doing things no but television does not cause artist thank you nice to meet you I’m elanora I want
To ask you what uh do you think about the connection between language and motor coordination is it important to proove a motor coordination autistic children to improve also language what do you think well there’s some really interesting things that’s happening with horseback riding and I’ve had Parents
Tell me that their kid did their first words on a horse now there’s two there’s three things that happen on a horse first of all riding horses is really fun but the other thing is you have to balance and rhythm you’re doing balancing and Rhythm at the same time
Now occupational therapist and sensory integration might get you on on a swing and do some of the same thing but when you stimulate the vestibular system yeah with balance and Rhythm that can be real helpful another simple thing that might work is you nail a board to the floor
And then you have the person walk what call walk the typo like this along a board that’s nailed to the floor I mean it’s only like that far above the floor um but you do these activities that stimulate the cerebella yeah things like swinging um there’s a paper I worked on
Years ago with Warner King Al the child and they had them on swinging they were working on speech and there’s some good things with the motor and speech and and the thing that’s not known is which kids respond to this you see this is the problem with any these
Sensory things you know works on one kid and another kid it doesn’t work okay I worked on my squeeze machine some kid respond to deep pressure other our kids don’t um this is where their sensory problems are real VAR um but some individuals they do swinging balancing rhythmic activities
That can help on speech for some individuals okay we can use also music for example Rhythm that is very the other thing is there are some individuals that can sing words before they speak them yeah singing is on different brain circuit so they could sing the words rather than speak them sometimes that
Works thank you thank you thank you Dr Grandin for uh wonderfully sharing your insights as uh an autistic person one thing that uh has caught my arm is that uh your parent your mother played a very key role in AB absolutely and then another book um you
Might find helpful got a book called the way I see it that’s um I got a lot of little short um articles in it uh it’s available on Amazon um that might be helpful thank I also have a lot of information my website Temple brandon.com there Temple brandon.com that’s lots of free
Information on that thank you so um I’m a mother of of um triplet boys with autism they are 11 years old all different uh they are all on a different spectrum and uh one is still n Vero and uh my all my sons are really not um academically um gifted and there’s one
Thing you have mentioned that you’re really fortunate and happy that you have a wonderful career now I would like to request if you can share you know one word or a direct to us parents often we find that we want to follow the typical growth you know go to kindergarten go to
Prary go to high school go to university get a job get married all that but our children most of our children with autism don’t really seem to fit there what can you tell us the thing you have uneven skills I’m I’m a big believer in getting children exposed to lots of
Different things and I did all kinds of things when as a child cooking sewing woodworking art music um I was um taught musical instruments and I was terrible at musical instruments but good at Art and mechanical things and so you expose kids to lots of different things then you can
See what they are good at but I know um like you look at this equipment here I’ve worked with people where a single welding class LED to building things like what’s Shan in that picture and then another kid might be mathematics and programming something you have to
Expose them and then you got people with Autism that are not going to be building equipment they’re not going to be doing mathematics and programming on let’s say if a kid that’s good with numbers will then show him show another mathematical stuff here’s some really cool pattern stuff
Right here I been on in one of my science magazines with those patterns they all mathematics behind them Isn’t that cool in a science magazine yeah you know there’s some kids that are going to just um um they may be gifted from that you see this is the
Problem that you really good at one thing sometimes really bad at something else and the people that build the equipment like you see there complicated stuff most of them could not do Algebra It’s All Pure visual thinking but building stuff like that thank you I um I had a chance to go
On a corporate jet the other day on the guy that took one welding class he builds entire beef plants and he just has a memorized in his head a single Welling class he’s building entire beef plants um unfortunately we’re ready he’s not autistic he’s not autistic but I did
Work with several other people uh in metal working that I’m pretty sure we’re we’re out of time now so we’re just going to have one more question I know that we would one more question hello midnight whatever I’m to go to B but I’m really glad that able get up and
Talk to everybody and you fre give the videotape around people there’s more slides in this deck uh you go ahead and give people the whole slide back uh it just wasn’t time for tonight to show up so much uh hello Dr grandon uh thank you so much for the presentation uh my question
Is right now I’m working as a general practitioner but when I was a teenager I had a distant cousin who at that time uh he was 7 years old he has symptoms of um aggressive behavior and at times but uh most of the times he’s a very quiet kid
He won’t interact much and everything but the aggressive behavior is the key Point like it’s almost disruptive and uh later on WE diagnosed he has autism but uh how old how old was he when he’s doing a destructive Behavior Uh at 7 years old and uh because of that his
Whole family also have a history of mental illness like other mental illness it’s uh stigmatizing it’s so traumatizing for all of them especially the boy so how to like deal with aggress autism children with aggressive behavior I had aggressive behavior when I was seven I was penalty for there was no
Television for one night that done for aggressive behavior the other thing you have to look at what is bringing it on is there a problem with frustration with communication or with sensory overload uh communication we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t have a p If the child is nonspeaking then you always
Have to make sure you do not have a hidden painful medical issue like maybe an ear infection urin tra infection acid reflex in their stomach a toothache something that’s hurting that they cannot tell you about I think they he had many he had many I also have problems with things
Like getting agressive when I was a child was worse when I got tied mother had a pretty good sense of when she needed to just say I need to go to my room and like just calm down I but but when I was seven um you I was
Fully horal there consequences for rest no TV for one night and then I threw a big tantrum mother would put me in my room and let me calm down for half an hour and then she say well you know the rule you enjoy the family now but I it’ll be on television
Tonight you know and I understood consequences but I think there’s some individuals where they may not make the connection between the Tantrum they had school and no uh television that night see this is the problem you got autism you got such a big range um okay I think that um that was
Then you’ve got the artistic P see the people that I worked with that had the metal working shop and all the patents designing equipment they would have been more the Asperger type there would have been no speech delay you see this is where that that Asperger type with no
Speech delay now has been merged in with the autism with speech Delight I had speech Delight so I was definitely not the aspir type and the people that work with professionally metal working work would have been the asper typ but they had social issues I’ll never forget one of
The jobs um I had to drag the guy out of the shop because before he got my with the plant Engineer um we’re out of time now thank you very much thank thank you for [Applause] Joining and it’s my honor to introduce Dr Alec Sharma Dr Alex Sharma is the professor and head of the Department of neurosurgery at LTM Medical college and Hospital in Mumbai India he is also the director of neurogen Brain and Spine Institute and kls Institute of anti-aging both in na’vi Mumbai he is
The president of the stem cell Society in India and vice president of the International Association of neuro restorology he has published a 172 scientific papers authored 24 books contributed chapters in 19 textbooks and made over 200 scientific presentations he is a world-renowned Pioneer in the field of cellular therapy for neurological disorders having
Treated more than 12,000 patients from 75 different countries his Landmark accomplishments include the publication of the world’s first scientific paper on the role of cellular therapy in autism he has revolutionized the management of neurodevelopmental disorders with his Innovative combination of cellular and integrative therapies for this he has received several International and national
Awards such as the rose of parilus award from the EMA Oxford 20 2016 the European Award for best practices Brussels 2018 the Barat gur award London 2019 the Newton Universal legendary award Boston 2022 the Sino Phil Asia International Peace award Manila 2023 Etc let’s welcome Dr alak Sharma this is truly
Amazing to be in Dubai to be at this Wonder wonderful International Conference for autism and neurodevelopmental disorders but most important to be able to give a talk immediately after Temple grandon what an honor I had never thought in my life that you know one day I’d be speaking after the legendary temple grandon
Temple you’re just so amazing you’re not you your life your thoughts your work your effort is not just an inspiration to people on the Spectrum to their families but to all of us caretakers researchers and doctors in the field as well uh so I’d like to begin by thank
Thanking Temple for the wonderful and amazing talk that she just gave uh I’m going to speak on a new topic that’s regenerative medicine in autism spectrum disorders when I give a talk I like to begin with this picture this is a picture this is a painting a
Huge painting the size of this entire wall which I found in a hospital in how Taiwan and when I when I enter that hospital I asked them why is this picture here they said this is a picture of Lord Buddha going into the jungle to heal and they said the job of the
Physician is to reach out to people who are in suffering and heal them so that’s what we have to do reach out and help those in need of healing now if you look at the increasing prevailance of autism it is actually unbelievable and incredible that the world has not taken notice of
What’s Happening you look and see in 2004 the incidence was one in 166 in 2023 it has become 1 in 36 at this rate in the next two decades every third child will be have will be on the autism spectrum okay this is something we we as medical professionals need to bring to
The attention of society of people of governments of Administrators and rulers that this is unprecedented and that the facilities to take care of these children do not match up to the increasing incidents there are about 70 million kids on the planet that’s 1% of the world’s population it’s like a huge a
Huge huge percentage of people so the current situation is that you know you have a child who has some symptoms know the parents notice you you go to the doctor therapist get a diagnosis and they say what you can do is therapy you start the therapy and you’re back to
Where you were so what’s new what am I going to be talking in this talk that’s different first the concept of neurodiversity and this is what Temple spoke of okay that we have to see how people on the Spectrum are diverse that they are not less than they are different
That they have uneven talents and skills so the concept of neurodiversity because now there going to be so many people on the planet that you can’t look at them uh in in the way that we’ve been looking at them earlier the other exciting thing and I’m going to highlight that is a
Better understanding of what’s happening with the brain and this is what has changed everything then the whole concept of neuronal regeneration that is possible to regenerate the brain that’s not functioning as well and the concept of of multidisiplinary management and of course the main base of my talk which is
Cellular therapy now what is new is that for the first time in medical history we are now understanding which parts of the brain are functioning differently from neurotypical brains and we’ve done scans we’ve done a lot of research in this area and you can see that list the amigdala the hippocampus the
Parahippocampal gyus the cerebellum the cordate nucleus the misal temporal loes Thalamus Superior and middle temporal poles so we’ve actually identified very clearly which parts of the brain are functioning less we’ve also identified which parts of the brain are functioning more our Focus so far has been on what
These children can’t do what we also need to look at which parts of their brain actually are functioning more than what neurotypical people do and they’re actually Parts in the calcarine Fisher the hesel gyus cortical frontal areas that function more they are hyper metabolic so we need to understand
Understand this as well and our work has been published in a landmark paper among the first of it it’s in published literature in the world Journal of nuclear medicine where we’ve clearly highlighted which parts of the brain work less and which are working more now
What we found here and this is the only thing that we need to give attention to because Temple again keeps talking of early intervention she keeps talking about early intervention and I’m going to show you the scientific base of the need for early intervention and that that is this
If you look at this graphic you you will see that uh you know you will see that the brain metabolism over the years keeps on declining so what you see in light green is how the brains of neurotypical kids the brain metabolism keeps on increasing whereas children on
The spectrum is the light blue you can see it keeps on declining what does this mean it means the earlier we treat the children the early intervention is there the better results because the later you treat them the hyper metabolism is actually increased so the old thinking
Was that once the brain is damaged you cannot regenerate it and the new thinking is it’s possible to regenerate the brain through cellular replacement and repair the other thing that has changed in autism is the concept of multidisiplinary management you know so far what would happen is a person specializes in
Something and then that’s all they would offer so if you’re if you do you know you’re a center that has occupational therapy you focus on occupational therapy you have a center that does speech therapy you focus on that but what is the need is a multidisciplinary management which includes everything all
The things listed and cell therapy which I will talk about is one of them so there is no one Silver Bullet the management of autism will be multidisciplinary so look at that on the left hand side you see a fractured bone and I ask yourself will you give
Rehabilitation to a person with that fractured bone would anybody give physiotherapy on a broken bone now look at the left you go to an orthopedic surgeon you get it fixed don’t you and now you give Rehabilitation but in autism we do exactly the opposite on the
Left hand side the blue area is the hyper metabolic brain we are giving Rehabilitation on a brain that’s not functioning opally and then we are expecting results of a normal brain it won’t happen but through cellular therapy you can you can see on the right hand side the brain has started
Functioning again now if you give Rehabilitation you are bound to get better results so cell therapy is a promising new modality where you use healthy cells to replace damaged cells so that’s the bra damage and you can see that there is recovery so now look and see what are
Stem cells so the word stem comes from the stem of a plant and just like from the stem of a plant you can have leaves fruits uh everything else there are some cells from which all the other cells arise so the way stem cells work is they multiply they convert into other cell
Types they improve the blood supply and they release certain Positive Growth chemicals and because of that they repair they regenerate and they replace damaged tissue cells are of two types you can be autologous when you take from the patient put it back in the patient or donor cells when you take it from
Somebody else there are different types of cells you can get them from the embryo but this is very controversial so we do not use use it you can get them from the umal cord you can get it from the patient itself from the bone and that’s what we use they are called adult
Stem cells and induced Flor poent stem cells are in the research stage so we work with adult stem cells because they are safe they they don’t form tumors they are no rejection they’re easily obtainable and there are no ethical issues there are different ways of injecting stem cells you can inject it
Intra thely into the spinal fluid that’s what we do or intravenously intramuscularly through the nose or directly into the brain how does cellular therapy work we know the main problem in autism is there’s hypop perfusion decrease oxygenation and problems with the immune system and inflammation Cell Therapy Works through both these mechanisms so
Here is a small video showing the three basic steps what we do we do a board marrow aspiration with the needle separate the cells and inject it back the whole process has only two needle Pricks let’s look at a video there you can see with the needle we are
Aspirating bone marrow that takes 15 20 minutes the bone marrow is put into machines uh it separates the cells and once the cells are ready with a very thin needle we injected back just two needle Pricks and we take cells from the child and put it back into the child so
Let’s review what the world literature says so there are total of 33 clinical studies published papers which show a 80% success rate 33 worldwide papers and if you see a review of literature the world’s first scientific paper was published from India it was by us we also published the sixth one the others
Came from China Italy uh America Etc so this is the world’s first paper on Cell Therapy autism which we published in 2014 uh this was our paper and it showed uh 91% of the patients improved the second paper came from China here again they showed an 88% Improvement the third
Paper came from the United States by Dawson again showing 90% Improvement this another paper from the United States by Kimberly atal showing 90% success rate this paper by Martin is from Mexico showing a 95% success rate this paper from Vietnam by tangal which showed a 93% success rate this paper
From Italy which showed a 78% success rate now this is a meta analysis this is a review of 460 patients and at the end in this paper they summarized that cellular therapy is safe and that it improves patients with autism spectrum regardless of what type of cell we use
In this other systemic review by uh jyang Q from China they looked at 325 patients and again they said it is safe and effective so there is enough published worldwide literature to show the effectiveness of cellular therapy now this is our latest paper we had two papers but I’ll I’ll talk about the
Second paper because this was 254 patients we use autologous bone marrow monuclear cells you can see the Improvement in the various symptoms in almost all all the symptoms whether it is social interaction eye contact attention stereotypical Behavior aggressiveness hyperactivity self- injurious behavior um sitting tolerance command following speech communication all these you can
See above is the percentage of of improvement and we are scales called isai and cars and you can see that there was a significant Improvement 94% and 95% in these scales now here’s something interesting the results depended on age so those kids who are less than 5 years
We had a 97% success rate between 5 to 10 it reduced to 94 between 10 to 15 94 again and 15 and above it was 91 so the earlier we intervene the better results we are likely to get here again you can see on cars scale again 98 95 90 91 so
You can see that age affects the outcome now what was the objective proof because one is clinical Improvement so in our study we actually showed objective Improvement so Above This is a pet CD scan where the blue areas are the hypometabolic areas the areas that are functioning less than normal so you can
See above all the blue now this is done on a seens machine below you see 6 months later and you can see the hyper metabolic areas are gone so this is objective proof I’m just showing you one or two scans but we have almost three ,000 such scans before and after that
Show that the brain damage the parts of the brain that are not functioning appropriately in autism they can be repaired and this is proof of that so this is on a seens machine and this is on a GE machine again you can see the cerebellum Blue Area hypo metabolic and Below you
Can see that it has improved so on two different sets of machines Sean machine and General Electric machines both show before and after Improvement we have a total of six scientific Publications in the results of sell therapy in autism and now International books medical books are introducing chapters so in
This book on recent advances and autism there’s a chapter stem cell therapy and autism spectrum disorders and they’ve asked us to write the chapter so we’ve written the chapter for this book now this is data this what I showed you earlier was published this this this
Data of 1,000 patients has been sent for publication but just to give you uh an outcome this is 1,0 patients and again you can see more or less similar symptomatic improvements again the ISA and car scales good Improvement uh individual domains of Isa and uh age-
Wise again you can see the same thing below 5 years 89% Improvement uh above 15 years it dropped to 80% and this is the analysis you can see above the blue BL areas the damage areas and Below after cell therapy you can see that the brain has got activated you can
Again see above and below so complications so we’ve had no major complications there’s been no neurological deterioration no infection however one major concern is that 3% of our patients uh developed increased incidence of epilepsy when they already had epilepsy in the past 10% of the patients get a spinal headache which
Lasts for one or two days immediately after the procedure and there was some nausea vomiting local pain Etc now we’ve published this as a separate paper people normally like to hide their Adverse Events we’ve published a paper saying that Caesars may happen as an adverse event because
There is no treatment which does not have Adverse Events but if you know it you can actually manage it so we’ve published this as well uh now I’ll just show you a couple of videos just uh we have a little time so yeah we have some
Time so I’ll show you a couple of videos there are three patient three set sets of patients from three continents uh this is a child from America father was a cardiologist mother is a nurse and he’s improved so much today this kid is not only completely of the spectrum this
This video is a little old but he’s stopping in school and he’s doing wonderfully well I couldn’t get him to engage with me I couldn’t give get him to give me eye contact over time time he started to lose a lot of vocabulary right around 18
Months to the age of 2 years he just slid backwards he would flap like that and he would walk on his tiptoes look at the wall and be talking to the wall he had problems with eye contact he’d never look you straight in the eye he had problems with his speed
Some research and found out about neurogen the big question that I had in my own mind was what is there to lose and I could not come up with a good answer and I said we have to do It so we started seeing better eye contact definitely a difference in his engagement with us with his sibling his mood he was so much calmer now he’s all about taking his own shower I have to just prompt him to get out but he’ll wash himself and he’ll put his clothes
On saw the pet scan images we just I can’t tell you the word we were just so excited and thrilled the areas that were hypoactive or non active were warm they were there was there was activity there ganes has gone from the third grade fourth month reading level to a
Seventh grade first month raing level in 5 Months and now we have we have mercy over here we went to different doctors we went to different hospitals and when I brought it up they were like oh no no no no no don’t worry it’s because they are boys they’re triplets they were premature I would be walking out and I’m
Like bye and no child is crying no child is weaving back by and by then for sure I knew that they should be doing that children had this behavior of disappearing in fact Eric disappeared three times in the middle of the night the biting the spitting the
Scratching how are we going to stop this Behavior we went to see the neurologist and in 5 minutes he said this children are autistic as parents it was very traumatizing first of all we didn’t understand what autistic means so I decided to really get to read a lot
About autism I remember the first time I read about stem cell I was like wow this is really good we had a lot of questions which we asked and we got very clear answers from Dr shama the day of the stem cell itself came actually I was a bit anxious of
Course but really I didn’t have fear a bit of apprehension anxiety of course has a mother but I knew they’re in good hands we put a needle in this pelvic bone and then we take out the bone marrow which is the fluid inside the bone the pure stem cells once they ready
A thin needle is inserted into into the lower back we inject the stem cells into the cereal spinal fluid it flows all the way up to the brain things that would have taken probably years to be accomplished in my sons in like 8 months time we’ve really been able to come very
Far with water they used to defecate on their clothes but now they can use the toilet we’ve seen a lot of improvement in terms of spitting the Tantrums have reduced sleeping used to be a problem before but at the moment he is taken to his bed it takes a few minutes and he’s
Asleep you see my son’s cycle you try to make them understand what it is to pedal and they couldn’t but after stem cell when we arrived in Kenya the following day and we went out and this guys could cycle I’m going to send you to buy tomato paste okay I’m going to send you to buy what in the shop where is the shop it’s here okay so I’m going to give you money for what for buy tomato lollipop I’m going to wear my shoes that’s right
Parents ask me so do you really think stem cell works and I’m Like I can see changes I can touch I can feel I can smell of course for me St what I’ll do it until my children get well so that’s two stories and uh by the way Ricky’s right here you’re going to see him he’s right here uh we
Are short of time so I won’t talk much about cereal policy but this is our paper it works just as well in cereal policy we’ve got 15 articles chapters and textbooks and uh that’s the brain damage before and cereal policy that’s after you can see the Improvement uh then in intellectual
Disability it works as well we have the world’s first scientific paper we’ve treated more than 12,000 patients from 75 countries total of 106 papers and 16 books and uh I just like to share the views of honorable prime minister la sciti so that is the prime minister of India
SRI Narendra Modi G uh talking in Parliament about stem cells and here is the president of the United States today with the executive order I am about to sign we will will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers doctors and innovators patients and loved ones have hoped for and fought for
These past eight years we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell [Applause] research scientists believe these tiny cells may have the potential to help us understand and possibly cure some of our most devastating diseases and conditions to regenerate a severed spinal cord and
Lift someone from a wheelchair to Spur insulin production and spare a child from a lifetime of needles to treat Parkinson’s cancer heart disease and others that affect millions of Americans and the people who love them there’s no Finish Line in the work of science the race is always with us the Urgent work
Of giving substance to Hope and answering those many bedside prayers of seeking a day when words like terminal and incurable are potentially retired from our vocabulary so my conclusion is that adult stem cell therapy that we use may be considered a safe and effective treatment option for autism cerebral
Policy and intellectual disability it accelerates development reduces disability helps in functional recovery and improves the quality of his life we heard the primary the two biggest democracies in the world are India and America you heard the prime minister of India speak of stem cells you heard the president of America speak about stem
Cells but now I want you to hear somebody more important than that the child you saw in that video he’s right here Ricky Ricky say a few words talk to the thank you thank you say something thank you everyone I I like to say thank you
For thank you for giving me the neurogen stuff which we made this child could not speak this Chine could not go to school today he’s standing in front of you yeah and giving a speech let’s give him a big hand thank you thank you thank you thank you come thank you everybody
Thank you Everybody it is really my privilege to introduce this next speaker when D told me that I was going to be introducing him I said are you sure you want me to introduce him well I’m here so I guess she was sure Dr krie malgrove is an award-winning autistic professional speaker best-selling author
Autism consultant to the HBO series Mrs Fletcher that aired in the fall of 2019 and the latest seasons of Netflix’s Emmy award-winning series love on the Spectrum if you haven’t seen that you really need to watch it it is very very good he started professional professionally speaking 12 years ago via
The National Speakers Association after he fell in love with theer as a child to help with his social and communication skills today he has spoken at over 12200 events during the time including two Tex talks and talks at Google presentations in addition Carrie is CEO and president
Of kfm making a difference a nonprofit organization that host hosts inclusion events and has provided a 100 scholarships for students with autism for college and Counting since 2011 in his spare time which I’m not sure how he has he hosts a Facebook page called Carri autism Journey that now has
218,000 Facebook followers where he does on camera interviews highlighting people impacted by a diagnosis to break down barriers in our community his videos have produced have been produced and have been watched over 35 million times car’s best-selling books defining autism from the heart and autism and falling in
Love I will light it up blue and his latest autistics and autism have reached the Amazon best seller list for special needs parenting Carrie regularly speaks with schools companies government organizations and is always open to discussing potential future collaborations he is based in hobok and New Jersey let’s give him a really big
Applause he’s got a video that’s supposed to be starting is an accom speaker and activist who deved his life to helping others not bad for a guy who completely nonverbal for the first few years of his life but once Carrie magro found his voice he had a lot to say
My parents have always told me I’m special so why am I special and then later on I realized that I’m even more special because I have autism Carrie magro’s childhood was marked with rough Patches he was completely non-verbal at age two and diagnosed with autism at age four I just remember um having
Difficulties trying to explain myself to the world around me when Carrie did speak he struggled to express himself most of my memories were simply just about that kid who wanted to communicate with the world around him but didn’t have the verbal means of actually doing that his mother Suzanne remembers
Watching her son have a hard time adjusting to the outside world he turned to and he was scared of everything he was scared of the water he was scared of the rain but as the years went on Carrie slowly began to find his words when you can’t communicate with the people you
Love the most in this world about even some of your basic needs it gets really really tough so but Lu once I started talking I never stop talking wow this is a tough one today Cindy sh introduces us to an autistic man who’s spreading awareness and understanding throughout the world and
His latest way of educating people about autism is by making Tik Tok Videos received over 4.1 million views on Tik Tok and I just had somebody parents educator family members who just wanted to learn more about autism and they were like keep going keep doing what you’re doing because it’s making a difference in college he started a nonprofit called kfm making a difference which Awards
Autistic students with college scholarships he later earned his Doctorate in Education he’s now a professional speaker on autism and inclusion we’ve gotten inquiries from people from Africa Canada the UK and it it’s just shown me that we’re not alone in this community there are people impacted by autism across the globe he’s
Written four books his latest one is called autistics on autism all proceeds will go to a Scholarship Foundation you are going to find 100 amazing autistic adults stories of how they were able to navigate their adolescence and ultimately succeed in their Journeys he says most publicly funded services and
For autistic children children when they age out of school so that could be late teens he’s fighting to get resources for autistic adults through legislation and has this message for parents never give up on your child never give up on getting them the best quality supports
So they could live their best quality of lives because again it’s a spectrum and it’s really about providing those resources across the lifespan because autistic children will grow up to be autistic adults and we need to be ready for them and he’ll keep promoting awareness any way he canone doing
Today awesome I I I is such a huge honor to be here with all of you uh speaking on a really important topic that is facing so many individuals within our community and honestly today with over 70 million people Worldwide having some form of autism diagnosis it’s really
Important that we do our utmost to do a few few quick things the first one is to realize that autism is just one word trying to describe millions of different stories my dear friend Stuart Duncan has that comment comment and when you meet people with Autism it’s really important
To meet them where they are in their development autism is a very very wide spectrum the last time we were here in Dubai ironically enough was in 2016 and one of the speakers at that conference with me his name is Dr Stephen Shore an airally known public
Speaker who himself as autistic says if you met one autistic person you met just that one autistic person so let’s keep the conversation going on meting each individual where they are in their own development so some housekeeping notes today uh I’m an avid notetaker during all these presentations so typically I’m
The guy sitting in the front row uh taking a photo of every single slide so I don’t miss anything uh so we’re going to be providing you the Powerpoint slide notes from today’s presentation there will be a QR code at the end of today’s presentation you could scan that with
Your phone and my dad still loves a razor cell phone so there will also be a link uh if you don’t have a smartphone as well so you don’t miss any of the notes so during my journey uh I grew up with two laser Focus key interest I grew
Up wanting to be uh the six member of the backst street boys and I also wanted to grow up to be the next Larry Bird uh and with my autism diagnosis I’ve always had Extreme Laser Focus key interest uh and those were two of the big ones uh
Sports helped me with a lot of my fine motor skills growing up with autism in addition to having autism I also have a dual diagnosis of dis graphia it’s really important that when we meet individuals where they are in their own development that we look for comorbities
So if the individual might have a dual diagnosis we are able to diagnose that as early as possible early ear invention truly truly is the key within those first five years getting a diagnosis is really really pivotal so I took my love of sports to get a degree in sport
Management at seenall University uh where I’m based in New Jersey uh before deciding to change career paths I realized that there those with individuals with disabilities make up the largest minority in the United States and often they are one of the most underserved because simply put some individuals in our community have strong
Support needs and might not be able to advocate for themselves so it’s really really important that we do our utmost to try to help one of the most underserved communities in the world today so I decided to change career paths I received a masters in strategic communication so I could
Become one of the first professionally certified speakers who is openly autistic in the United States it’s G me the opportunity to travel the globe in the past 12 years and get the opportunity to speak with so many incredible groups like your own about this topic of autism but then also
Diversity Equity inclusion one of our big big focuses especially in the past few years has really been f focused on corporate and really focused on helping those with autism find meaningful employment and tapping into one of the most untapped Talent pools that employers should consider so really
Quickly today and again this was a journey uh I want you to imagine something really quickly imagine not being able to tell your loved ones that you love them not being able to speak in full sentences until you are 7 years old having sensory challenges to the point
Where you felt like an alien compared to other people being such a picky eater that any time your parents tried to introduce you to a new food it made you cringe this used to be in my life when I was a kid there were so many people who
Told me what I would never be able to do in this life they would also tell me that I would have a photo Jack memory that would be really really great at math and when I I turned 21 my parents would take me a Las Vegas with them and
I would win them $888,000 on the blackjack tables prototypically this was I was considered a Rainman diagnosis I was considered a Sant but I was also considered somebody who had a lot of limitations in his life so what helped get me to where I am today speaking in
Front of all of you was uh over 15 years of Occupational speech and physical therapy there’s no one-size fits all when it comes to our ISM Community one of the first movies I ever got the opportunity to consult on was a movie from Warner Brothers called Joyful Noise
Staring Queen Latifa and Dolly paron based on one of the characters in that film having autism and queen latifa’s character has a great quote in that movie where she says when things don’t fit in a nice pretty box you build a bigger box and that’s what we have to do
For individuals in their autism community and my mom lover of death she’s here with me today uh had the opportunity to really create a bigger box for me and that’s why I’m uh here today I love you Mom uh so thank you and now she’s going to be blushing for the
Next 30 minutes so I am so sorry for that uh so uh but she found what worked for me she found that occupational speech and physical were intrical uh using my key interest of being the six member of the back boys to find music and theater therapy as an intrical way
Of help helping me with my sensory processing challenges also including reward systems and token systems as a way of helping me build on my self motivation especially when I was initially diagnosed with uh autism when I was four years old and then also positive reinforcement practices telling
Our kids what they’re good at at the beginning of each day can really help provide a positive mindset for them in their academics every single day but also their lives as well and then also self- advocacy it’s so important in our society that we teach our kids about their diagnosises at earlier ages
Because I grew up knowing I was special but not knowing what that meant so for years in my life it was just me going to specialized children’s hospitals and finding services and seeing kids lining up blocks uh and lining up their toys and I was always like these individuals
Are special just like me but why am I special and it was so life-changing to learn about my diagnosis so my background today um I would say about 8 % of our annual referrals are in uh speaking with diversity Equity inclusion groups uh employee resource groups about
Tapping into this unta Talent poll some of the things that you should know is that those with autism on average are more likely to stay at Job longer they are more likely to take less time off from work and when we talk about the majority of reasonable accommodations I
Speak to so many companies even globally who say Well Carrie I’m not sure if I could actually hire somebody who’s on the autism spectrum because I think it’s going to affect the bottom line and a lot of people don’t know this the majority of reasonable accommodations cost absolutely nothing and when they do
It’s typically just an onboarding fee of around $500 to ,000 so let’s start changing the conversation I took my love of theater uh when I graduated from college to really just get involved with the entertainment industry I got to meet a wonderful man named Todd graph who uh
Was directing this movie called Joyful Noise and I told him about how theater had an on Me growing up on the autism spectrum and he was like Carrie would you like to be a consultant on this film I didn’t actually know this was a job that people could get paid for and I
Thought it was getting punked at the time uh and I thought it was just like a practical joke that my parents kind of like threw at me from like a family friend uh but within just a few days uh I was working on this Hollywood film with one of the characters having autism
And we’ve now got an opportunity to work on a wide range of films and TV shows today that focus on autism related characters because representation truly truly matters within our community and seeing more individuals with disabilities on the screen today I took my love of trying to support the
Disability Community to start a 501c3 nonprofit organization called kfm making a difference where we provide not only peer mentoring for individuals with developmental disabilities from the ages of 16 to 24 but we also have provideed 130 scholarships for autistic students in pursue of postsecondary Education in
The past nine years and 100% of our uh 100% 100 of our scholarship aboc clints uh actually uh wrote a chapter for our book autistics on autism where 100% of the proceeds from this book that came out last year go directly back to support our nonprofit organization so
Along the way uh one of my mentees when I was just starting off my nonprofit said to me Carrie how do I learn learn more about the autism Community from people who are actually impacted by autism and I didn’t have any resources to share with them really so I thought
To myself why not write a book uh I assumed it would sell 50 copies and be a good Christmas gift for my parents uh when my first book def finding autism from the heart came out focused on self- advocacy but within three days it became an Amazon besteller for special need
Parenting and it continued to give us a platform to discuss autism within our communities writing books about autism and relationships college for uh students with disabilities in addition to how we look at this life after lockdown after covid-19 how we could support individuals with developmental disabilities and one of the most fun
Things I get to do as part of my job is I get to meet local self- Advocates and I get the opportunity to nurture their their self- advocacy uh we got to meet this incredible family uh that I wanted to highlight with all of you today because it’s a unique message
That I hope more people in our community can really relate to so we’re going to play this video and fingers crossed Tech works yeah you have two sisters Rachel both sisters both sisters JJ what do you like to do for fun ch super his personality is amazing he’s
Just he’s so funny he doesn’t even know it like he doesn’t know how funny he is which Mees it better I lovej makes and he us and what is one of your favorite things about your Sister what do you like about me you yeah me you what do you like like how people treat kids different because they’re exactly like us they have feelings too and they have the autis kids don’t have feelings how does it make you feel it makes me really upset for siblings might be watching
This at home what would you like them to know if they may have a brother or sister who’s on the autism SP um celebrate accomplishments encourage them to do the best that they can we have a good a good family yeah everyone’s supportive it’s just
Circle so one of the key messages I hope I could leave you with today is that it takes a village and you have to realize that regardless of where you are in this journey whether you’re an educator here today A therapist a parent or a self- Advocate it’s important to know that
Every single individual in your lives can hopefully become part of this Village to make sure that we’re providing reliable autism resources across the lifespan for our over 70 million individuals who are autistic today so every single place I go to speak I’ve had opportunity to travel the
Globe and get the opportunity to share my story but I realized that many individuals in our local communities didn’t have an opportunity to share and lift their voices so I started a video series as part of my Facebook page car’s autism Journey where we now get to not
Only nurture self advocacy in these young individuals but also give them a platform to hopefully break down barriers and biases within our community we’ve highlighted everyone from a six-month-old with Down syndrome in the Bahamas all the way to to an army veteran with cereal policy who didn’t
Tell uh his platoon that he had cereal policy so he could fight for our country so it was truly truly remarkable the other big note I hope I could leave you with today is that girls with disabilities often fall through the cracks in their society we see this so
Much with so many girls being able to being able to Bear mask different characteristics such as stemming such as known as self-stimulatory Behavior there are some individuals who fall through the cracks because of that we’re going to skip this video and maybe come back
For it if we have a little bit of time but what I will tell you about Rachel story is that Rachel is a truly amazing individual who didn’t get diagnosed until she was a little bit older and it was because of again some so much stigma in our communities is focused on boys
With disabilities now we’re not only talking about autism but we’re talking about ADD ADHD and the neural divers lens that we talk about in our communities in addition to that when we talk about this topic of autism we need more not only government organizations but we also need more travel
Destinations to go about certification I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to collaborate with a group uh called ibcc who do certified autism centers around the country we just spent uh yesterday at Aqua Venture uh at Atlantis and they are certified Autism Center we got to see sensory guides that they had
Uh for different rides which told you how much sensory processing each ride specifically had and it was just so amazing to see the structure there especially to bring families of autistic children to our Parks it was truly amazing thing to say in addition to that when we talk about uh this it’s also
Just great to reduce stigmas one of the great things about certified autism centers is that they train up to 80% of their employees on autism and sensory awareness in the hopes of helping these individuals understand a little bit more about how to approach our community uh
So how I got involved in making the world more inclusive uh my interest in certif certification started with wanting to host more sensory friendly uh meetings in my home state of New Jersy uh for the past 10 years I’ve played an Autism and sensory friendly Santa Claus
Uh where we had the opportunity to meet children with disabilities at their level uh to really truly support them especially from a sensory processing perspective so I decided to join a board called ibccs based in Jacksonville Florida in 2019 to support this community so during my uh work in public
Speaking one of the most interesting experiences I had was when I was speaking at a Fortune 500 company and we were speaking about diversity Equity inclusion and one of the individuals in there asked me if every single person who has autism grows up to be the good
Doctor if anyone has seen the good doctor the good doctor is a show on ABC focused on Dr Shan Murphy a Sant who is on the autism spectrum and that is why we need to make sure people realize that autism is not only in children but there going to be individuals in our
Workplaces that you meet in the future who are also going to have these diagnosises and not every single person you meet will end up fitting in this lens of the Rainman good doctor stereotype so that’s the other big thing we have to realize that autism has no look typically the two most common
Things people say to me when they come up to me for the first time is they say Carrie you have autism but you don’t look like you have autism and then also Carrie you have autism but you look so normal it disability has no look and it’s important that we not only discuss
This because it’s also important about promoting kindness when we talk about our society there going to be people that you meet who you’re only going to see the challenges that may face on the surface you’re not going to know what’s going on in day-to-day lives so one of
My biggest challenges though was sensory related uh I grew up being having a hypers sensitivity when it came to loud noises I would wear earbuds in my ears I would wear sunglasses and many in my classrooms due to fluorescent lights so luckily though I had a not only a great
Occupational therapy team but I also had an in-house occupational therapist who truly truly helped me and this is a global movement that we’re seeing there are more groups that want to go about certifications because they they realize that it’s not only the right thing to do but it also demonstrates High Roi
Because at the end of the day more individuals are likely to buy products from groups that patronize with the disability community and support those with disabilities we were so excited to see that Mesa Arizona became one of the first autism certified cities in the globe and they’ve done a a remarkable
Work not only to provide certified autism centers for first responder groups but also their businesses and travel destinations as well and in addition to that Dubai uh recently announced uh it plant to become the first certified autism destination in the eastern hemisphere give your guys yourselves a round of applause that’s
Really truly truly remarkable and we need more individuals like yourselves championing this cause so we applaud Dubai for taking the necessary steps to make certifications like this possible realizing the importance of the autism Community uh one of my favorite experiences uh I’ve ever had uh was at a certified Autism
Center I a after growing up as somebody who struggled with textural issues and having issues with water on my skin there was always something soothing about uh playing with animals in the water so I got to go to the Discovery Cove in Florida which was a certified
Autism Center and we got the opportunity to swim with dolphins and I have terrible balance issues I can’t ride a bike for the life of me uh and in the water that day I was having some challenges Because the actual the land was very very tough
On my I also have flat feet so that didn’t help this situation so I I was at Discovery Cove and one of the best things that somebody did for me there was just showing me compassion they not only showed me compassion in being able to just hold my hand while I was going
In the water to swim with the dolphins but they asked questions when they were unsure about something I think some of the easiest things that could help our autism Community are some of the things that just make the most common sense in the world continue to ask questions when
You’re uncertain about something and then also presuming competence they presumed competence for me every single minute that I was there at that Park and that’s truly why I love the idea of certifications in our local community in addition to that other things to consider autism in the majority of
Disabilities are lifelong while earlyer infection is the key those first five years are pivotal we need to realize that people don’t cure themselves of having autism we spoke at in uh Egypt a few years ago when we were laying the Pyramids of Giza up blue and I was just
Talking to somebody about this earlier and one of the one of the parents would asked me if exorcisms could cure autism and I was like oh wow that’s uh that’s an interesting perspective I haven’t heard from before uh it just goes to show that the education truly
Needs to be there in more of our local communities because if you don’t have that personal connection and just by a show hands really quickly today how many of you uh know of somebody who’s on the autism spectrum and if you feel comfortable how many of you have a sibling or a family
Member who’s on the autism spectrum okay and if you feel comfortable enough how many self- Advocates are here today yeah we have quite a few it takes a village and using your voice can truly make such an important important change within our community another key message
I hope I can leave you with today is isn’t written down it did not happen documentation is so so important especially when we look in 2023 hearsay is something we really can’t get behind anymore we need to make sure that we’re not only documenting in our workplaces but also for our kids I
Think it’s important for every therapist and educator to have a journal where they can document for their child look at short and long-term goals that they have for the individuals and but also helping the parents understand about their developmental Milestones as well and I truly believe this message right
Here I think schools should truly have a mandatory class that you get credit for where you learn more about people with diagnosises imagine students gting just a little education on autism ADHD Down syndrome dyslexia cereal policy it can make a huge impact on understanding and acceptance I truly believe that in that
Message and that’s why many individuals in our local communities are pivoting our conversations April is also known to many of us as autism awareness month but many individuals in our community are pivoting it to autism awareness and acceptance month realizing that it’s not enough to just be aware about autism but
How can we be inclusive so these are some great ways that we can be inclusive in our education setting today one of the biggest things I say is that finding an individual and understanding what type of learner they are whether they’re a visual learner whether then they’re an
Auditory learner or whether they’re a kinetic learner where they learn by movement and moving around being able to again meet every single individual where they are being concise giving choices also considering visual timers as a way of helping individuals with transitions educate on simming and flapping for example I’ve been simming this entire
Time every single time I’ve moved my hand like this this is a stem and for everyone here in this room every single one of you stem whenever you’ve rocked back and forth in a chair during a long meeting that’s a stem stemming and flapping can look vastly different some are going to be
Arm movements twirling around in circles while some of it is just like me just rubbing my hands and doing this every now and then and for so many individuals if you see that happening don’t stop the stem especially if it’s not injured to them or people in their local community
Uh also in addition to that in our school systems we really need to focus on the parent teacher collaboration but in addition to that we also need to realize that mental health is a true true priority we need to defeat stigmas that see autism as a mental health
Disorder but we do need to realize that some people with Autism have mental health related challenges and comorbidities so connecting on people with on a personal level but also researching social emotional learning as well can be really beneficial also in addition to that consider lesson plans in your schools focus on giving
Individuals positive peer role models to look up to we get the opportunity to speak in a wide range of K through 12 schools where we get the opportunity to discuss for example individuals like Michael Jordan has ADD Magic Johnson has attention deficit disorder and my favorite on this list Dan arroy uh Dan
Akroy grew up with two laser focused key interests he grew up wanting to be uh a Ghost Hunter and he grew up wanting to become a Grime crime Detective and he took those two key passions to co-write a movie in the 1980s called does anyone know what the movie
Is okay sorry karaoke with us later we’ll be outside during the lunch break uh but it’s so true and years later he would sit down with a reporter and he would say that was because of his autism diagnosis was the reason that he was able to come out with that script so
When we look at some people with disabilities realize that some people with disabilities are truly capable of amazing things in addition to that it’s important to rule out as May associated in mental health conditions as humanly possible as well and that was something my parents did for me uh learning about
My diagnosis I didn’t learn about my diagnosis until I was in a social skes class where we were playing disability celebrity Bingo where we were learning about all these individuals and I raised my hand and I asked the teacher so teacher you said all these people some of the most talented and successful
People in the globe are special just like me so why am I special and she said I had to talk to my parents about that so I talked to my parents about it right after school that day and that was the first time they ever told
Me that I had autism and it was life-changing for so many years of not knowing why I was special everything came full circle for the first time and I started understanding why I did I was stemming why I was wearing sunglasses in many of my classrooms and everything
Just came to perfect sense for me so it’s important when we talk about this to have earli conversations so when our children are in school they can understand a little bit more about the accommodations that they may receive also consider having a dialogue with parents that you may know about the
Importance of a child’s diagnosis as well so in addition to that what helped me is we need to emphasize that the key is communication not speech there’s going to be individuals in our community specifically where I’m based in the United States 40% of all autistic people people are either non-speaking or
Non-verbal but one of the stigmas we have is that a lot of people think that they are unintelligent and have a low IQ and that couldn’t be farther from the truth most people on average especially in the United States who are non-verbal have an average to above average IQ so
We need to realize that also the key is communication not speech but just because somebody’s nonverbal does not necessarily mean that they’re unintelligent there’s some great Global tools that you can use to understand how individuals in your communities communicate such as the communication Matrix uh this is a free benchmarking
Tool that helps assess how individuals communicate within our local communities from things like pre-intentional Behavior intentional behavior and then also unconventional and also helping you understand the differences between non-verbal and non-speaking because there’s a lot of stigmas around that nonverbal literally means no noises at all no babbling at a certain amount of
Months a kid is growing up non-speaking could be something completely opposite of that in addition to that importance of peer mentoring uh I truly believe that every school system in our around the globe should have a strong peer mentoring program because it just makes sense it doesn’t affect the bottom line
In our schools typically it just takes an academic advisor 20 to 25 hours every Academic Year to put into place to give kids positive peer role models and not only has been shown to lead to decreases in depression anxiety but also helps from a bullying prevention perspective
As well uh and then social connections can lead to academic success we need to educate our schools about the importance and provide more elective opportunities but also more unified uh classrooms as well helping individuals with and without disabilities be able to interact not only to become more inclusive
Overall but to help them have those social connections because a low awareness can really go a long way uh and then also considering educating uh around Universal designed for learning uh lecture style is truly truly dying in many of our communities so the importance of getting individuals out of
Their seat and engaging with them is really really important hey mama ma how am I doing on time uh nice nice see I put her to work I put her to work guys uh encouraging uh parent involvement can also be and she’ll be blushing for the next 12
Minutes too it’s amazing I love you I love you bum I love you uh encouraging parent involvements uh is really uh key as well uh I did my dissertation I got my Doctorate in Education at New Jersey City University so I could become an Adjunct professor while I continue my
Full-time job uh public speaking and I did a qualitative study focused on the perception of resources for parents of children with autism who are in online communities and what we learned from these semi-structured interviews was the importance of trying to find a village especially for those who have multiple
Jobs for military families who might be traveling a lot being able to find your village online and seeing that a lot of parents have found success using Facebook groups and other methods of Technology as a way of helping them communicate especially around referrals towards different therapies and supports
In their local areas also consider in your schools having alumni organiz ations comprising of individuals with disabilities to educate the school districts about the disability community and what helped them when they were in school again something that doesn’t affect the bottom line and it just makes
A lot of sense and in addition to that creating home safety zones one of the things that we’ve loved about the certified autism centers we’ve seen here in Dubai is that each one of them has a quiet zone or a quiet space and that just helps so many of us regardless if
Somebody has autism and has social and communication challenges or sensory related challenges all of us could use a quiet space every now and then I know I could uh and then also uh considering how we look at visuals especially for non-speaking individuals I definitely recommend especially in local parks that
You know considering advocating with your local governments to look at instituting communication boards as a way of helping individuals who are non-speaking communicate with those who are verbal uh PEX Sports also known as Picture Exchange communication systems are something that has truly been uh very very helpful for many individuals
Within our autism community in addition to that we need more inclusive events in our classrooms and I wanted to share a quick video with all of you so you could get a little sense of one of the things that we’re doing to try to be more inclusive for the world
Sarah of a Kind meeting with Santa the 8-year-old has an Autism and is nonverbal her father brought her to this event because this Santa’s helper understands the challenges of autism firsthand Santa has autism such a special con special the helper is actually 28-year-old Carrie mro diagnosed at 4 his sensory challenges prevented him
From visiting Santa as a child he created this event so others like him don’t miss out this event is more inclusive because we didn’t the likes we we turn down the sound and try to help them as much as we can just great job it just takes his time there’s no rush most
Of the elves and Mrs Claus are occupational therapists and special education teachers the team visited with 181 special needs families including 4-year-old Rusty Marsh is this the first time you’ve seen Santa yes is it yes and was he a nice Santa yes with one in 168 children diagnosed with autism mam hopes
To inspire more sensory friendly events all year round autism doesn’t stop in December it doesn’t stop during Christmas I Santa says this the best Christmas gift the B this is the third year of the event and magna’s Mom is one of those jelly elves so uh the girl in the last us
Slide that said I I want everybody to be happy we’re actually working on a children’s book together right now that uh it’s going to be focus on uh autism and sensory friendly Santa where uh I believe most of the proceeds will go back to our scholarship uh program as
Well so it’s just important overall when we talk about these sensory friendly incl inclusion events it again it just makes sense it gets more people out to our public areas it also can help build attendance especially after covid-19 with covid-19 hesitancy in some of our areas if you
Want to learn more about how you can create a sensory friendly inclusive event I would definitely recommend going to this website called PA autism.org on their website they have a one sheet PDF where you could learn a little bit more about the sensory considerations you could put into place to make this a
Reality in your local area such as being able to turn down bright lights turn down external noises and the other sensory considerations as well also realize that bullying is such a huge epidemic uh across the globe when we were here in 2016 speaking at the autism Around the World Conference we got to
Work with the Dubai Autism Center and one of the key messages that we left with them was that bullying is something that’s not only in schoolage children we see a lot of bullying in the workplaces today as well so we have to realize that this could be a lasting challenge for
Many in our community I didn’t have the social abilities to defend myself in many cases as somebody who didn’t start speaking complete sentences till I was seven and it’s really really important that we educate our kids on the what a friend is what a bully is and how to go
About stopping bullying especially for our ferle students when stopping bullying like happened for me completely I realized what bullies did so I would roleplay different scenarios in my classrooms with my teachers on how to stop a bullying where if somebody said to me Carrie have autism but you’re so
Stupid I would turn around and be like well yeah um you know sometimes I do stupid things thank you so much for bringing that to my attention and that literally would stop the bully from actually because when you don’t give them the power over you we have to
Realize that bullying simply is just that an imbalance of power and when somebody want that bully wants the power over somebody else being able to tell the bully that regardless of what you say you could hate my guts I’m still going to love you anyway it completely stops that situation from happening so
Let’s continue those conversations October is also National bullying prevention month so it has a global perspective on discussing the importance of pivoting from Autism Awareness to autism acceptance there’s also going to be individuals in your community who would prefer to be called an autistic individual versus a person with autism
That’s really really important to understand there’s some individuals especially in autism and de communities who find validation uh in their diagnosises so in addition to that when you look at things like low functioning and high functioning it’s really really important to understand that I could speak in
Front of a room of 300 people like today and be considered quote unquote high functioning but people don’t see the struggles that I’m probably going to have to deal with tomorrow recharging my batteries because of being able to speak hearing the speakers and the loud noises
Going on and during that time I would not be considered quote unquote high functioning so when you think about this consider support needs those who might have high support needs versus low support needs and like so many of our speakers have already mentioned just calling the individual by their name and
Explaining a little bit more about their strengths and Associated challenges so finally the 10 things that really helped me get to where I am today speaking in front of all you the first thing is that we need to make sure that we’re providing positive Ro models that we’re
Focused on the transition period as well our autistic kids will become autistic adults and we need to be right for them I’ve given two TED Talks that are available to check out on YouTube focus on adult autism where we discuss this in more detail uh role playing it just
Helps everyone it helps build a structure not only in terms of mock interviews dating scenarios but also helping build on social skills as well uh serving leadership I had so much mind blindness growing up and I thought it was my way or the highway most of the time and I didn’t understand the
Perspectives of others and getting involved in community service helped open my eyes to some of the hardships that individuals face in our communities I think that our students should have just 10 hours of community service every Academic Year to understand more about the perspectives of others in their Community Learning from other self-
Advocates you obviously got to hear from Dr Temple granon she is phenomenal this morning uh But continuing to promote self- Advocates to give individuals an opportunity to look up to somebody peer mentoring it just makes sense every school should have them uh before covid-19 we were giving staff
Development for 350 Educators in Las Vegas and we asked them how many of you have a strong peer mentoring program in your school and only three out of the 350 raised their hands and I was stunned this doesn’t affect the bottom line and it’s just the right thing to do uh like
Queen latif’s character says create a bigger box so when it comes to therapy you have to meet each individual where they are but I’ve seen positive benefits of cognitive behavioral therapy as a way of helping individuals go towards positive thoughts who might have negative thoughts and challenging behaviors uh self-reflection I think
Again documentation is key for all the Educators in the room but in addition to that it just helps build on self-awareness for individuals especially those who are just learning about their diagnosis physical activity as we more learn more about the brain we’re also re realizing that just 30
Minutes of walking a day has benefits on short-term and long-term retention while also helping with positive endorphins also finding support networks I can is a tremendous tremendous resource I hope all of you go to their website after this presentation today and really gain their resources get their ebook because
They’re truly making a difference and then also writing a Blog because your voice has true true power within our community and it’s upon all of us if I could leave you with any final message is I hope you can be Brave I grew up being the kid who never
Wanted to tell anybody about my autism diagnosis because I was worried how everybody would feel when they heard that I had autism for the first time and now today I go into the companies and they say to me uh Carrie I I want to do professional development on autism and I
Want to have you speak in my conferences but I don’t I’m not brave enough to kind of talk about autism because it’s such a sensitive topic and with the numbers continuing to increase not only where I’m from in the US where it’s 1 in 36 but globally I want every single one of
You in this room to be brave because it’s about our community and it’s about supporting these individuals across the lifespan so I like to say that autism can’t Define me and I Define autism and I can only hope that regardless of any single Journey that any of you have in
This life that you can go out there you can Define your lives and your Journeys in the way that you best see it every single day if you need any help getting started in these conversations please stay in touch thank you all so much for having me here [Applause]
Today yeah so just one um small announcement that we have we would really love to felicitate uh car’s mother and we would like to call upon uh Miss Mercy as she’s as well a parent and uh hand over the award to K’s mother ma’am Please now it’s a true honor to call Dr Nadia Al on stage she’s our chief guest please all of you all a big round of applause for ma’am she’s the founder and director general of census residential and daycare for special needs we would really like to Fel
Felicitate ma’am as since has been the Strategic partner for I [Applause] can next we would uh yeah social media yeah we’ll just do a bit of next we would like to felicitate mina organization as well as they as well are the Strategic partners for I can a big round of applause [Applause] you
Thank you so much and now we would like to Fel felicitate faran Shahid who is from census and uh has been helping us with the entire organization of I [Applause] can so thanks to one and all for helping us putting this show up okay now I would like to invite Dr
Nadia to say a few words yes ma’am good morning everyone and I would like to welcome the International Conference for autism and new developmental disorder I can Dubai 2023 it’s a great honor to be a part of this event and hope we get we come down with this conference with the best
Practice to the region and share knowledge to the latest trend on autism and new uh new uh developmental disorder and really I would like to have uh to take the opportunity to thank you all thank the speakers and the partners of this conference and especially the audience for your partic participation thank you
So much thank [Applause] you so now we will be inaugurating our book treatments for autism um as we did see in the film it was earlier already inaugurated in English but now we are inaugurating it in Arabic language so ma’am would do the Honors So just to give you a brief about this book this book has all the therapies treatments all the information about autism and all kinds of newer age treatments as well in the book you can have a copy online on our website you can request for that as well
As we have uh English books that are available so you can just send us an email on our website just log on to www.connect.com and uh you can just subscribe for the book and you will be uh able to get one thank you so much everyone I would
Really really really be very thankful to all of you thank you so Much