The Door!

This page has been suspended twice before it's finally released today and I am very glad that I can still remember how the story went..

Autism, is a such popular term that one often hear in daily for two main reasons, to mock a friend who is attached to her/his gadget and thus does not care about the surrounding, and a psychological term of a disorder based on DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder). This page will describe about a movie titled "Temple Grandin" who has Autism as the latter. Temple Grandin was a name of the main character of the film and it was a true story.

Temple was a little girl who was diagnosed as an autistic when she was 4 years old. At that age, she wasn't able to speak. She often distracted by stimulus like voice, touch, light, movement, and asymmetric object. As I ever learned that autistic child is over-sensitive. He/she feels a stimulus more than the normal one, for example when the normal one is okay with 10.000 Hz frequency of voice, the children with autism might hear it twice louder so it hurts them.

Temple also often repeated the word she heard, so her friends labelled her as a 'tape recorder'. Through this film, I learned that parents and teacher cooperation is a pivotal key to deal with autistic child.When Temple's Mom almost gave up, Dr. Carlock the teacher supported Temple's Mom and convinced her that they could face it. Dr. Calrock saw Temple as a unique individual and developed her outstanding ability, that was visualization. He taught Temple by using concrete project and gave her advice by associating it with concrete object. Here is one of Dr. Carlock advice to Temple:

"Temple, think of it as a door. A door that's going to open up onto a whole new world for you; and all you need to do is decide to go through it."

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Since Temple has heard that advice, she imagined a door every time she got afraid. As she finished her study in high school, she was encouraged to continue to college. She worried about friends because her interpersonal skill was very bad and she had to live with a roommate in dormitory, she also hated the French class because her linguistic ability was also poor but she considered every challenge as a door. At college, she met a blind roommate and they became best-friend and realized that they had an disability, whereas they had an outstanding talent, Temple with her outstanding visualization, and her friend with outstanding audio ability.

To handle her emotion and tantrum, Temple designed a strange machine that would coop her body up, she said that it functioned like a hug for normal kid. She was inspired by a machine that was used to comfort the noisy cow in her aunty's farm.

Finally, Temple succeeded to finish her study in college. She was chosen to give the last speech in graduation day. In that day, she sang a song by Carousel:

When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don't be afraid of the dark.

At the end of a storm is a golden sky and a sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind! Walk on through the rain!

Though your dreams be tossed and blown, 

Walk on! Walk on! with hope in your heart, you'll never walk alone!

After the speech, she decided to open the other door in her life, she took her master degree in animal science.

It was not easy for her, there were so many challenges she faced caused of her disability, but at the end she reached all she wanted and here was her reflection of her life:

"Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be. We owe them some respect. I touched the first cow as it was being stunned. In a few seconds, it was gonna be just another beef, but in that moment, it was still an individual. It was calm and it was gone. I become aware of precious life was, and I thought about death and I felt close to God. I don't want my thoughts to die with me. I want to have done something. I know there are a lot of things I can't understand, but I still want my life to have meaning."

It is a great movie, so if you have free time I really recommend you to watch it by yourself. Maybe you will get another interesting thing and could share it with me ;)