Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin

feet until somebody held her hands and had her run her fingers down her legs and along the sides of her feet and along her shoes. Doing this enabled her to learn what the right and left shoe looked like. She had to feel them before she could see them. Her method of learning was similar to that of a blind man whose vision was restored when he was an adult. In his essay “ To See and Not to See, ” Dr. Oliver Sacks described how this man had to touch things in order to see them with his eyes. For objects like houses, which were too big to be touched all over, he touched a model, which enabled him to see the real thing.
    Touching can also be used to teach words. Therese Joliffe reported that she learned reading by feeling letters. Margaret Eastham describes in her book Silent Words how she taught her nonverbal son to read by having him feel sandpaper letters. Many totally nonverbal children with autism touch and smell things. Some constantly tap everything. They may be doing this to figure out where the boundaries are in their environment, like a blind person tapping with a cane. Their eyes and ears function, but they are not able to process incoming visual and auditory information.
    I was always able to determine where my body ended and where the outside world began, but some people with autism have severe body boundary problems. If they cannot see their legs, then they do not know where they are. Jim Sinclair, a young man with autism, reports not being able to find his body. Donna Williams describes a fractured perception of her body in which she could perceive only one part at a time. Similar fracturing occurred when she looked at things around her. She could only look at one small part of an object at a time. Donna tapped rhythmically and sometimes slapped herself to determine where her body boundaries were. When her senses became overloaded with painful stimuli, she bit herself, not realizing that she was biting her own body.
    Overly sensitive skin can also be a big problem. Washing my hair and dressing to go to church were two things I hated as a child. A lot of kids hate Sunday clothes and taking baths. But shampooing actually hurt my scalp. It was as if the fingers rubbing my head had sewing thimbles on them. Scratchy petticoats were like sandpaper scraping away at raw nerve endings. In fact, I couldn't tolerate changes in clothing altogether. When I got accustomed to pants, I could not bear the feeling of bare legs when I wore a skirt. After I became accustomed to wearing shorts in the summer, I couldn't tolerate long pants. Most people adapt in several minutes, but it still takes me at least two weeks to adapt. New underwear is a scratchy horror. I wear my bras until they are falling apart, and new ones require no fewer than ten washings to make them comfortable. Even today I prefer to wear them inside out, because the stitching often feels like pins pricking my skin. Parents can avoid many problems with sensory-induced tantrums simply by dressing kids in soft clothes that cover most of their body
    Auditory Problems
    When I was little, loud noises were also a problem, often feeling like a dentist's drill hitting a nerve. They actually caused pain. I was scared to death of balloons popping, because the sound was like an explosion in my ear. Minor noises that most people can tune out drove me to distraction. When I was in college, my roommate's hair dryer sounded like a jet plane taking off. Some of the sounds that are most disturbing to autistic children are the high-pitched, shrill noises made by electrical drills, blenders, saws, and vacuum cleaners. Echoes in school gymnasiums and bathrooms are difficult for people with autism to tolerate. The kinds of sounds that are disturbing vary from person to person. A sound that caused me pain may be pleasurable to another child. One autistic child may love the vacuum cleaner, and another will fear it. Some are attracted to the sound of flowing, splashing water and will spend