Dr. Temple Grandin
Dr. Temple Grandin is most likely the most famous autistic individual ever. She has overcome great obstacles from the time she was born and still works hard today to fit into the world. She is extremely intelligent and has a PhD in Animal Science. If it wasn’t for the support of her family and a few teachers, her success may have never happened due to her disability.
Heredity and Environment
Occasionally, a person’s developing psychology can be explained thru inherited genes or traits from parents or other relatives. Autism has shown some signs of heredity when both sides of a child’s family have autism in their history. However, in Temple Grandin’s case, there was not a known history of autism. There has been some speculation that autism is more likely to occur when the child’s parents are highly intelligent in the fields of math and science. Temple’s father was a real estate agent and her mother was a singer, and English Major from Harvard. While environmental factors have not been ruled out as a cause or contributing factor for autism, Temple, herself, has not decided if she believes there are environmental factors that contributed to her autism. However, she does believe that adding Omega 3 and special diets like gluten free can help some people or children with autism.
Family and Social Support When Temple was a young toddler, her mother was concerned about her development and took her to a doctor. The doctor told Temple’s Mother that she had brain damage and should be institutionalized. Temple’s Father agreed with the doctor; however, her mother refused that option. Instead, she spent hours working with Temple with flash cards, hired a full time nanny to play and interact with her, and also sent her to private schools at an early age with daily speech therapy. Temple often speaks that her earliest educators did a good