Temple Grandin on how to raise a successful autistic

Hidden in this article on labels and the damage and good they can do is a useful gem for any parent of an autistic. Yes, encourage obsessions. But also encourage children to stretch in their obsessions. Did Temple's mother notice her daughter's affinity for animals before sending her to the aunt's farm? Maybe- but that week on the farm was the push Temple needed to turn an obsession into a career. I similarly remember my first computer- a TI-99/4A. It had a cartridge slot- but my parents wouldn't buy me any games. I had to loved the computer- but had to learn to program if I was going to have any games. I remember my first three games, very primitive- an adaptation of the infamous Space War (typed in from '99er Magazine! Then modified until I ran out of memory!), a choose-your-own-adventure I came up with on my own about strawberry fields (errors in that program taught me the proper use of if-then-else and variables, especially since I hated typing long words on the 40 key keyboard and I kept misspelling the variable that held the score and wondered why the score wasn't adding up properly), and a plane-vs-tank shoot up similar to Space Invaders (but with only one target that would speed up and slow down at random). Each of these were stored on cassette tapes, and sounded like punk rock music while loading.