Brooke > Brooke's Quotes

“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.”
― Judy Blume

“My only advice is to stay aware, listen carefully, and yell for help if you need it.”
― Judy Blume

“Your typical Six-year-old is a paradoxical little person, and bipolarity is the name of his game.”
― Louise Bates Ames

“If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.”
― Temple Grandin

“You simply cannot tell other people they are stupid, even if they really are stupid.”
― Temple Grandin, The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's

“I believe there is a reason such as autism, severe manic-depression, and schizophrenia remain in our gene pool even though there is much suffering as a result.”
― Temple Grandin, Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism

“The word “autism” still conveys a fixed and dreadful meaning to most people—they visualize a child mute, rocking, screaming, inaccessible, cut off from human contact. And we almost always speak of autistic children, never of autistic adults, as if such children never grew up, or were somehow mysteriously spirited off the planet, out of society.”
― Temple Grandin, Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“The “experts” mostly never get it right. They assume we are some autistic, retarded stim-machine, not a trapped, thinking person who has a shitty neurological illness. They need to limit our behaviors and stop the impulsive acts, I know. Still, it would be so nice if they realized how intact our minds were.”
― Ido Kedar, Ido in Autismland: Climbing Out of Autism's Silent Prison

“I can’t stop my senses. No one can. But mine overwhelm me. I hear my dog bark like a gunshot. My ears ring and I lose focus on my task. Tiny sounds are like soft buzzes I hear long after they have stopped. My hearing has advantages too. Boring lectures roar into street sounds so I tune them out. I can overhear interesting stories because I hear through walls in other rooms. Whispering is no defense. I have supersonic ears to eavesdrop.”
― Ido Kedar, Ido in Autismland: Climbing Out of Autism's Silent Prison

“The hardest part of autism is the communication challenge. I feel depressed often by my inability to speak. I talk in my mind, but my mind doesn’t talk to my mouth. It’s frustrating even though I can communicate by pointing now. Before I could, it was like a solitary confinement. It was terrible having experts talk to each other about me, and to hear them be wrong in their observations and interpretations, but to not be capable of telling them.”
― Ido Kedar, Ido in Autismland: Climbing Out of Autism's Silent Prison

“Apparently it is okay to drill normalcy into someone, but it is denial to believe that a normal boy lives trapped behind a wildly uncooperative body. These theories cost us dearly.”
― Ido Kedar, Ido in Autismland: Climbing Out of Autism's Silent Prison

“Human beings weren't designed to handle the amount of stress our modern life loads on us, which makes it difficult to hear our natural parenting instincts. It's almost as if we're forced to parent in our spare time, after meeting the demands of work, commuting and household responsibilities.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting