Autism Through His Eyes with Lawrence Harris | Beyond Expectations Podcast Ep. 19

In this episode, Michelle Chabolla and Sean Dobson sit down with Lawrence Harris—author, speaker, and entrepreneur—to hear what autism is really like from the inside.

Lawrence shares his journey, the challenges of communication and social connection, and practical advice for parents raising children on the spectrum. His perspective is insightful, inspiring, and full of hope.

Learn more about Lawrence: https://www.lawrencecharris.com

This episode is proudly supported by Gregory’s Special Creations. Visit: http://www.gregorysgifts.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the podcast Beyond Expectations, Parenting Autism. Follow Michelle Shibola's journey of raising a child with autism, the challenges, victories, and rewards. If you're a parent, a caregiver, or simply someone seeking to understand autism on a personal level, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

All right, here we are with Beyond Expectations with Michelle Shabola, Sean Dobson, and we have a very special guest here today, Lawrence Harris. So welcome to the show, Lawrence.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Yes. So first of all, I want to welcome you and thank you for coming on. This is going to be awesome. And um, I'm so glad that you found us. How did you find us? I didn't ask you that. How did you find us?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

So, as part of going on podcasts, I use a service called Speaker Hub where they help us connect with podcast guests. They find the emails for us and they say, hey, you guys contact them. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Very good. Well, that's good to know that people are actually finding us. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Well, you know, obviously, my name's Lawrence, and aside from being a public speaker and author, I really love to go fishing. Like it is an absolute passion of mine. Now, up until the age of 11, I wasn't diagnosed as autistic because I'm a as a kid, I just seemed really hyper. And nobody could identify the signs in me because my family, they know about the two extremes. They know about the person who needs 24-7 support, and they know about like the Sheldon Coopers who have really no social skills, but they're ridiculously smart.

unknown 1:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I fell into a gray area to them. And it wasn't until one of my summer camp counselors noticed that I was like systematically taking apart different items and reassembling them. That she told my mom, hey, you should probably go get them checked for autism because she was trained in how to recognize the signs.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Ah, okay. And you were 11.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, so most of my life I didn't know. So yeah, how old are you down, Lords? Right now I'm 20 years old.

SPEAKER_04 2:28

So what was life like before and after this, this diagnosis, this legal?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Well, before and after originally knowing, it was pretty much the same. I always felt very different from the people around me because when everybody else wanted to go watch Spongebob, I wanted to go watch National Geographic. Like I like I loved that stuff. And my family was naturally really into like sports and things like that, whereas I wanted to go learn about rocket science. And I didn't understand a lot of things like how people interpret what I say, even if that's not what I really meant. I had a lot of trouble making friends, but once I got older, around the age of like 15, 16-ish, I was able to start figuring out, okay, here's how my mind works, here's how I relate to people, and how can I start to better understand the normal communication style so that I'm able to make some friends?

SPEAKER_04 3:46

Interesting. Well, we just met and you're super engaging. And is this a struggle for you? Because you're doing great. I mean, I would I I was I you started out talking about when you were diagnosed with autism. We didn't tell anybody that you were diagnosed with autism, and I think most people would not have noticed. You're doing great. So is this something that creates a lot of effort, or just something that over time you grew into?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Um, over time I grew into it, but also learning how to just do what I need in order to understand. Let me figure out how to explain this. It doesn't take me a lot of effort to do right more like I've learned it over time and learned to not be ashamed of how I need to position my body and my eye contact and all those things. So after I say this, you're going to start noticing it, but I drop my eyeballs. Body language movements with my hands. So I learned to stop trying to hide it, and by not hiding it, it makes me not seem like I have autism.

SPEAKER_04 5:02

Oh, interesting. Interesting. That's that's fascinating. And now you're a public speaker. So tell me about learning to become a public speaker because many people struggle with that.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Oh, that was a journey in and of itself, because it at first public speaking for me started out with just I had all these ideas that I wanted to put out into the world, so I started making TikToks on my phone. And then after that, it turned into I'm gonna start making long YouTube videos, and then from there it turns into, hey, I should probably go like volunteer at a church or something, and just layer by layer it scaled up. That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_04 5:45

So what was so what was like life like I mean, in your mind at 11 or 12 years old, did a gear switched, or did people come in and did you get training and assistance, or you know, or did the parents change something? Like what what all what worked?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Well, for me, at 11, there wasn't really like much changes because up until that point, I had been doing good enough that at least here in Philadelphia, we kind of run on a system of giving support to the people who need it most, which makes sense, like when you look at it on let's give support to the people who need it the most. But it doesn't really help those like me who are able to function, but have significant difficulties unless they get the help themselves or figure out how to do it themselves. So it was a journey, but you know, thanks to the internet, I was able to find information that was able to help me.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

That's fantastic. Well, I guess you know that that's why Michelle's doing the show, right? Is to get more information out there from a parent's perspective, from a child's perspective. And so we certainly appreciate you being here with us. So, but this is just fascinating. So tell us more. We kind of dove right into this, but you're in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yeah, have you been there your whole life? Tell us about your family, your background.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Oh, I've lived here my whole life, but thanks to being a public speaker, I occasionally get to travel outside of it, and I get put into these drastically different environments for three to four days at a time. And how does that go? Um, sometimes it goes really smooth and well, other times it can be physically draining on my body to do because I'm used to a very consistent and structured daily routine. I know pretty much down to the minute what I'm going to be doing between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. So when I travel somewhere, I have to uproot my whole daily routine and all the structure I've built around it and all the ways that I've made my life less over-stimulating and have to adapt overnight.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

So the less awesome, right? It's exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

It's exhausting, but thankfully, a lot of the places that I speak at, if I let them know, they'll make reasonable accommodation for me. Oh, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

That's really good. Tell Sean about the earbuds. That's what's interesting about the train ride with your earbuds.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

So for me, one of the things that I found to be very overstimulating is when I'm in a public place and multiple people talk at once, it's not like having five conversations happening in different places. To me, it sounds like a giant blender of sounds. So I wear these like little noise-canceling earbuds. They're not even specifically designed for autism, they're called skull candy sesh eetos. They're meant for working out and going to the gym. But one of the futures they have is adjustable noise cancellation. So I can adjust how much I want it to block out sound. So when I'm somewhere like a train, or even when I'm on a stage giving a speech, I'll have these things in. So when students are in the crowd talking, I don't hear that.

SPEAKER_04 9:36

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

So it doesn't interrupt.

SPEAKER_04 9:40

I heard I heard autism explained once. Um, and I wonder if you guys think this is true. It was explained as like, imagine that if we're walking down a sidewalk, or it like you like in your in your area, or in your scenario, you're in a room and there's people talking around you. That by like for most people, they're able to just focus on what they want to focus on, and all the rest of the information is lost. Like we filter out most of the information that we see um and are exposed to because it's just not relevant for you. So your brain is always trying to find the piece that's relevant and promote it. And with autism, the way they explain to me is that that ability to prioritize isn't there, and so all the information that you're interacting with comes in at the same priority, and that's that's kind of why it's overwhelming is that your ability to filter things out, or or maybe you could say it another way. You say you can say it's a skill to be able to absorb more information than the average person. Yeah, right now, all of a sudden, if you're in that situation to where there's you're at a restaurant, there's a table over here, a table over here, a table over there. For a lot of people, they're only hearing the conversation at the table. For some with autism, they're hearing with equal priority all of the conversations. Does that sound right to you?

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah, it's it's really interesting too, because that's how I experience it in general. But when it's something that I'm actually deeply interested in, the world does not exist anymore.

SPEAKER_04 11:05

Oh, interesting. Hyper focus.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

If I'm giving a speech, the only thing on my mind is that speech. Like it is the only thing that exists to me. And I will be so deeply immersed in that one single thing that if a car crashed happened down like down the street, and it like slammed and everything was going crazy, and there's fire trucks. I don't know. Like, so I'm only in this, and that's a skill in how it allows you to be really good at a specific thing, but it also can be challenging to like manage daily life because there's so many moving parts, and that's fascinating, right?

SPEAKER_04 11:58

It's it's like it just feels like it's it's like the filtering mechanism is either on or off. There's nothing in between. And Michelle, didn't you tell me one point that that you had with Gregory living on his own, that you worried that like if the house was on fire, that he might be so engrossed in something that he might not even know.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he would keep watching the Discovery Channel or National Geographic and not get out of the house. I mean, I mean, I know that's extreme, but I know I know from experience that if something is chaotic going on in the background and he's honed in, like you were talking about on something, he doesn't he doesn't respond.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, this is something that like my mom had mentioned that to me too, where she'd been worried about that, because I'll be traveling and I'm like up 700 miles away by myself. By your family. Oh yeah. So unless I'm around somebody who came to travel with me, or I'm around the person who like you know brought me out there to speak, I'm there by myself. So she's been concerned about that, but I've reassured her multiple times that I'm able to make it, I'm able to get from point A to point B safely. I can come back in one piece.

SPEAKER_04 13:16

Um that's that's a big that's a big thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah, one thing you mentioned earlier about people with autism taking in more information is I can't remember where I learned this, but it's called neuropruning. So when babies are born, that brain is just like mush, it's just a bunch of wires all over the place. And over time, your brain gets rid of the wires in there that it doesn't use and it strengthens what you do use. With people with autism, our brains still do it, but significantly less than people who aren't autistic. So our brain actually like on a sensory level takes in more information, and because of that, sounds, textures, colors, even thoughts themselves are processed at a stronger emotional depth because the brain is taking in so much. Now, sometimes that can look like being disconnected from the world because you're taking in so much that it kind of causes you to emotionally shut down at times, but other times you're a lot more expressive because you're taking in so much and you're trying to turn the way that your brain works into actual communicatable information. That's the only way I can really explain it.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Is that stemming? Is that what stemming would be, Lawrence? Like when Gregory's repeating a movie over and over by himself, is that what's happening?

SPEAKER_01 15:09

That's a part of it because your body's trying to relax itself and get to a point where things feel normal. But when you like, I'll use the example of music. So your average song has a bunch of instruments in it, it has different melodies, it has different rhythms, different pitches of the artist's voice, the meaning behind the lyrics. There are so many things going on in a song, and our brains process that to a depth where it's as if we can have this entire imaginary world that's going on in our head, and we can't explain, we can't really explain it, but we have to kind of figure out a way to relax our body. So that looks like tapping, rocking around in a chair. For me, I play with my own hair all the time.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

So and you said you walked on your you tell me you walked on your tiptoes when you were little, and Gregory, I remember Sean majorly walked on his tiptoes.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, yeah, because I don't like the feeling of floors, it feels weird to me. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah, so yeah, how fun to talk to you. I could talk to you for like days.

SPEAKER_04 16:38

Well, that's that's kind of what I was thinking, Michelle. Is it's like for the parent out there that has a young child that's just been diagnosed with autism, and maybe that child can't speak, it's almost like Lawrence is there.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

He's there to learn what's going on.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

Yeah, learn what's going on inside that brain. So if you think back now with the development that you've had and the success you've had, I'd love to sort of steer you down a path of advice for parents. So now knowing what you know now at 20, thinking about you know, at your earliest memories, right? What was going on and what helped, what could have helped more. And if you were a if you were a parent today and in the situation of having a young child diagnosed with autism, like what is the what are then maybe the pillars of advice you'd have for parents?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Well, okay, so I'm going to assume for this that let's say the child is completely non-speaking, and your only way of understanding their inner experience is through facial reactions, sounds that they make, and physical body language. So one big thing is understanding how they feel with certain clothing. So a lot of people with autism, they really, really cannot stand certain fabric textures because it feels like wearing a shirt or a coat or hoodie made of poison ivy, and they will go to extreme lengths to get that thing off of them.

unknown 18:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

So if your kid can't communicate, but you see that every time when you try to get them to wear a certain piece of clothing, they have these strong reactions to it. It's most likely the actual fabric. So assuming that you have access to like a thrift store or some way of getting cheap clothing, get different types of fabric and just observe which ones do they actually keep on. Because it's rarely about like the color of it, it's most often the actual fabric.

SPEAKER_04 18:47

What about if it's too tight or too loose?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Oh, yeah, that too. You know, you can like notice patterns, and then once you like notice the pattern, you can see, okay, they really like this shirt. Why? There's something about it. Is it the fabric? Like you mentioned, is it how tight it is or how loose it is? And now you know, next time you go clothing shopping, what they'll actually wear instead of spending their money on stuff that they want. Another thing, too, is when it comes to those patterns, notice how they respond to certain stimulus and situations. So even to this day, I really don't like parties. Because, like I mentioned, you have all these people in a tight crowded space talking loudly, and my family, nothing against them, but they love cranking that music loud. So when I'm at family parties, I am like somewhere off in the corner or very distant, just not engaged with people. And I'll come over and speak for like a few minutes and then I'm gone, and then I come back, and I just do this over and over, and my family can never understand why, even as a child, I would do that until I figured out the pattern and I realized, oh, that's why. So I learned how to better communicate my own needs. Now, if your child is unable to communicate that, but you notice that they really enjoy being in a in quiet places, or maybe they really enjoy loud music. Like there's some people who they love that, they love like training that music loud. You can start to notice, like, what do they actually seem to enjoy? Now, when it comes to things like stimming, sometimes that could look like the person is hitting themselves or thing that is actually harming them. So finding things that they might be able to do that are a lot less self-harming. For my little brother, whenever he gets upset, he used to hit himself in the head until we notice that he needs something to like do with his hands. And for some reason, I don't know if he figured this out on his own or not. He isn't able to he can speak sign language.

SPEAKER_04 21:22

So, Lawrence, you have a brother, you have a brother that's also diagnosed with autism? Yeah, I have two. Two brothers, two young brothers, little brothers, older brothers, both of them are my little brothers. Little brothers? So what's it what's it like to be the person that's helping develop them and and and teach them?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

It's pretty interesting because all of us, we seem to be like I just I sometimes describe autism like ice cream. They're different flavors of it.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

That's a good description that's really yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

I have like the the hyper talkative kind where like I really love. Talking my other brother, he's come pretty much completely non-verbal unless he decides to talk to you. Like he can if he wants to, but he often just doesn't feel like it.

unknown 22:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

He'll he can speak sign language though. And with that, he'll communicate to you as much as you as much as he feels like telling you. And then my like youngest brother, he's he's verbal. He just has trouble with making certain sounds. So my family got him into speech therapy because you know, thanks to me and my other brother, they're able to recognize the signs early on. So it's pretty fun to see how my one of my brothers, who he's 13, he went from hitting himself to now he just plays with rags and like folds clothing, and that relaxes him. Then my other brother, who's the youngest, he just likes to like he'll start running back and forth inside of rooms or trying to climb things.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

How old is he?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

He is four.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

He's little, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

He's he's young.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

Yeah, well, they're super lucky to have you as a big brother. That's gonna make that's gonna improve their life quite a bit. Have you um so help me, Michelle, with all of the the lingo? So the the the different type of occupational therapist that we've talked about, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:37

So yeah, have you ever done any talk of that, any OT when you were young? Well, if you didn't get diagnosed till you were 11. So I have a question besides the therapy is do you never had an IEP in school or you did that later? I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

So how did you handle classrooms and learning and all that? You just you somewhat struggled, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Yeah, very much, especially when it came to math, because the way that I do math does not make sense if you wrote it out. And when I was in sixth grade, one of the requirements for us to like pass on test was being able to get the right answer using the format that they told us to use. Yeah, new math, they called it new math when you were in sixth grade, right? Not even just that, but being able to write out how you got that answer.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

Show your work. Show your work, show your work.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

So even if I got the right answer, if I had to show my work, it wouldn't make sense. Because I don't think in linear thoughts, I think in these webs of different things. So trying to show my work meant that I wouldn't be able to get the right answer because I can't explain how I think in show your work format.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Well, like taking that right, like taking intelligent IQ tests. Did they ever make you do any type of testing to see what your IQ was?

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Um, when I was younger, I used to take them like just because I was curious. And according to the most recent one I did, it was like 182, which shocked me because I'm like, I don't I didn't think it would be that. But with school, because I didn't have an IEP and I didn't necessarily like I never tried to get one to because I got by through school by doing enough to pass. I was really good at English and like those types of classes, one I really cared about, but when it came to math, I just did enough to pass. And my teachers realized that he will do the work, he will show up to class and he won't disturb anyone. We just need to let him take a nap every now and then. So I was able to say to my teachers, hey, here's what I need in order to not like get super overwhelmed by this class. And they they understood.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Wow. So no occupational therapy, no speech therapy in school, no therapies.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

I had like general therapy for like different mental health things, but that helped a lot because one of the things that my therapist suggested was journaling. If your child's able to like write out their thoughts or journal, great method, because people with autism, our brains process the world completely different. So having the ability to get your thoughts out and start to kind of understand yourself more, it makes it a lot easier to explain how you process things to people who don't process the same way as you do. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 27:38

Yeah, but it's very insightful, right? You have to you have to imagine how how other people process information, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah, and it's interesting too because the pattern recognition that you get through autism makes us have to realize that everyone processes every single thing slightly differently, and it's I best describe it as you're constantly scanning the world and you're seeing all these little intricate details all at once. That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

That's a lot to process, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 28:22

Well, is that is that where kind of the the fatigue comes from?

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Yeah, that's a big part of it because your brain is trying to figure out everything all at once, like what a conversation actually means, and how the way people communicate, at least me, I'm very direct with the things I say. Whereas like if I want to I'll use a great example for some reason, dating was the first thing that popped into my head. So you meet that's complicated for everybody, yeah. It is, it's very complicated, but when you're as direct as I am, it makes it make it even wilder. Like, I would meet somebody and then the same day say, like, hey, just so you're aware, my intentions are to get to know you and take you on a date. And some people they were like, Whoa, you're moving fast. To me, I'm like, if I were you, I would want to know why did this guy want my number? Right, like are you trying to become my friend? Or you be like curious about my outfit? Are you like, what is it? Where's this going? Where's this going? Or he tells you where it's going. Where's the direction of this? Another thing, too, is how it can get really fatiguing to try and make friends, especially as children, because your interest can be so like deeply, you're so invested in what you care about, that sometimes you start to not want to talk about what other people want to talk about, right? And you don't mean it in a way of like being self-obsessed, you just care so much about this thing, and you think if I care so much about this and it's so cool to me, it'll probably be cool to that other person too. But they don't want to hear what you want to talk about. So, from your perspective, you think that they're rejecting you as a person when in actuality they just don't want to hear about natural geographic. As children, you don't understand that. So, a lot of people with autism, they have like co co-habitated, I think that's the word for it, mental health conditions, because of as a child, you don't really have a typical experience, and that makes it hard to make friends, and that leads to social isolation, feeling like people don't want to be around you, and it can get really bad very fast.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

So, what's your advice? Well, in the show, with your advice to a parent, because that is a big topic, Lawrence, of friends. Of uh, I happen to be, we have a Facebook group with Beyond Expectations, and someone mentioned friend their child didn't have friends. You should see the thread. So you're you touched on it. So, one good advice you have a four-year-old brother and a 13-year-old brother. Yeah. What are you teaching them, or how are you teaching them to you don't want to tell them to just go get friends, but be a friend and and try to be friends. What are you what are you telling them? What's your best advice?

SPEAKER_01 32:02

So, for my two brothers, thankfully, both of them have like they're in like special education programs, where one of them, he goes like a school that is specifically designed for helping with that. My youngest brother, at four years old, you still all kids are kind of like able to relate to each other on a base level of I like SpongeBob. I like SpongeBob too. As you get older, that's where it gets more complex because now people have like their own interest and they all like kind of splinter off.

SPEAKER_04 32:41

But but when you said before, I mean that's fascinating. You you said before though, that it can get bad quickly and becomes isolating. Is that if I understood you correctly, is that like not so much a problem for a four or five-year-old, but a 10-year-old?

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yeah, it becomes a problem farther up because at four years old, you don't really have any. Oh, my little brother, he's like obsessed with Spongebob and Mario. But four-year-olds, they don't really have the even four-year-olds who aren't autistic, they don't have the social development of their brain yet. So they don't necessarily feel that same isolation as a 10-year-old does. I see. And to someone who's dealing with fat, here's here's the advice I have, right? Now, I'm gonna touch on that from multiple angles because that's a very big, very diverse subject. Let's assume that your child does not have, like, let's go in order of like working our way up. Let's assume your child does not have access to like a special education program. Let's also assume that they have either completely nonverbal and significant trouble communicating their emotions. So they can't speak sign language, they're not able to write out their thoughts and emotions. I would say for someone in that position, one of the best things you could do is socialize more with your child. Like, I know and that can be difficult because job, you're working a lot, then you have like other own responsibilities, other children you have to tend to. But to the best of your degree, socialize with them and see if you can get them services for that. Because it's it's really hard for them too, because their ability to socialize can be heavily that's heavily compromised by not being able to communicate as much.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Now for a social worker would come in, Sean.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

I would think, yeah, right. Yeah, because in my head, I'm also thinking about like, well, Lawrence, you know, what if I live in like the middle of nowhere? Like people who will might be listening to this and they live in, I don't know. Texas. A town with like a thousand people, right? Right in a small town, it's just not depth of resources, right? Like a small town that does not have resources, right? Right, someone in that situation, like I'll be honest, if someone's situation is like we don't have social workers in our town, we live in the middle of nowhere, the schools do not have special education programs, right? So, someone in that specific of a situation, I'll be honest, I don't have an answer to that right now. Because if all resources are not available, then it really will come down to trying to learn the best you can about your child. Yeah. Now, to someone in like the middle bracket, where your child has signif your child's able to communicate, even if they have challenges with it, and they just have a hard time relating to other students and other kids. Right. If you can get them to understand like the thing they're really interested in, such as like, I don't know, art, painting, music, collecting a certain item, Pokemon cards, suggest to them that they join like an Aver Swell Club or some kind of program about that thing. Because they'll naturally be able to make friends through their shared interest, and over time they'll find people who can understand them. That's the greatest thing. You would be shocked at how people who are into like a very niche subject, they tend to also be autistic.

SPEAKER_04 37:04

Like if somebody is I was gonna ask you that. Is is it beneficial to try to find for your child another child with autism? And will they will they is that just a dumb question?

SPEAKER_01 37:16

It's a great question. Like it's a great question. The interesting thing is that when children have when children with autism have friends, there's a very high chance that friend also is autistic. We're kind of like we I don't know how to explain it in a way that makes sense. It's like we meet each other and we just know. You just know that like we just know. It's like a radar that goes off.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

We're like, especially if you have especially if you have the same interest. I can totally see that, right?

SPEAKER_04 37:52

Yeah, but we really haven't talked about that, Michelle. Of like of like if you if you have a child that's desired with autism, is the advice from you guys go find other parents in the similar situation, and and and those kids will hopefully find a way to support each other or grow with each other.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Yeah, I think I want to think I think more of his his advice of finding someone that has an interest like theirs. Don't you want because autism can be on so many different levels, and I just I don't think I would do that, but it's a great idea, like if somebody was, you know, Gregory collects you know, crystals, maybe there's a crystal club, or he's really into albums. So get him into you know a group where people collect albums, and then they have it's not so much about neurodiversity as it is giving them that crowd that they're gonna be able to relate to. We just did an episode that hasn't aired yet on well, it will at this point special interest in hyperfixation, and that's great. Yeah, so that would come out next week, and yeah, so it's or this will be past tense, but anyway, it will have worked.

SPEAKER_04 38:58

You are amazing. You are amazing.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

I'm so glad that you found this. This has been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04 39:05

I feel like you're I feel like you are the the keyhole into a whole fascinating world.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Yeah, and I want you to definitely stay in touch with you for sure.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

This is this is that just gave me like another realization about this point, too. How people with autism, we we don't all think the same way. It's not like we have a hive mind, it's more like we have unique different types of minds, and when we find somebody who has a similar interest, over time we're able to build connections with them easier through that shared interest. But it's not a perfect 100% solution, right? It's something that happens over time, and naturally, children, regardless of where they are on the spectrum, given enough social opportunity, we start to see like a pattern over time. Like, okay, this is working, this isn't working. Let me tweak this a little bit, let me tweak that a little bit, and we get better at it because for me, even though I never really had significant trouble with communicating in general, I had trouble with communicating the way that I experienced things. Like, when I was in first grade, I genuinely like cried over the idea of how numbers work. Like, I know how silly this is going to sound. Imagine if like numbers were groups of people, and like you have the number one, and everybody thinks that like you know, you're number one and you're so great and so fantastic, but that probably really lonely because you're by yourself, and I feel like empathetic towards numbers. That's a great concept though, it's true, yeah. Or like how we can see a bird or a tree, and we don't see a bird or a tree, we see like the history of that thing, and how you're looking at this beautiful creation of nature, and you start like like experiences such as certain paintings or songs or music or physical places, we have these really strong internal experiences that can be hard to communicate because it's so vivid to us. Wow. Now, if your child is like very high on the spectrum where they're just like their main challenge is just social interactions, that's the group that has like the easiest, but I wouldn't say easy, but it's the solution of like have them start with very small things. Like, say I like your shoes to a stranger, and then every day you do this. This is what I mainly did. I would just compliment random things about people and say, like, oh, I like your shoe. And they say, Thank you, thank you, have a good day, and I would leave the conversation there, and like little by little by little by little, I figured out how to introduce myself to somebody in a way that wasn't like overwhelming to the other person because there's it's to me overwhelming to do this because there's so many tiny details of meeting people, like how close am I? How loud is my voice? What did I say? Like, what were the words? What would my what was the speed I said? And it can kind of cause us to get like withdrawn because we don't want to go through all the effort of doing that. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 43:16

Very simple. They're being so aware. It's just it's just really heightened, heightened awareness of all of this, all of these details.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

That we take that.

SPEAKER_04 43:24

That puts it into great perspective of why it's fatiguing and why you need to you know allow withdrawal from it.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Yeah, that's why a lot of people with autism, they get in, they tend to get into like very like um a lot of self-soothing. On the surface, it looks like it could just be stemming, it can be body language things, it could be they're not very outgoing and social, but you know, without proper support, it can get into things like addiction because they're trying to quiet a mind that is taking in so much of reality, and they don't have an outlet to explain that. So for me, I do it through journaling. Like, I I have books upon books upon books of journals filled front to back of my own thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

That's fascinating. Yeah, that's so will we make it into the journal, Lawrence? Um what you say? Will we will we make it into the journal?

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Oh yeah, I write down everything that like special. Like I wrote five pages one time about how I was fishing and nothing at all happened. But like, and when I say nothing at all happened, I mean like nobody came over and talked to me. There was nothing of particular note, except the beauty that nothing happened, like being just purely in the moment, not listening to any music, not watching anything, just it is me and this lake. The wind wasn't even blowing, nothing was happening, but it was so peaceful, and it's like I meet so many diverse people through not only going on podcasts but giving speeches, and I get to see so many different perspectives of life through people whilst also sharing my own, and the best I can describe it is life becomes very beautiful when you learn how to process it.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

That's awesome. I I I want to listen and come to one of your speeches. We'll definitely put your information on the podcast so people can go to your thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 46:05

That's been fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

So great meeting you, it's been awesome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

I I enjoy it too. I love meeting Link.