All children in the '50s were taught manners, they were taught to say please and thank you, they were taught not to be rude. And I'm seeing some problems today where somebody's losing a job because they made fun of a fat lady that couldn't fit in the elevator. I mean that was the sort of thing that, when I was eight years old, my mother made it very clear to me that that was not okay to say that kind of stuff.

The animal that I have worked with the most is beef cattle, so that's my favorite animal, but I like all animals.

Sometimes we forget about common sense. Autism is used too much as an excuse for bad behavior.

One thing I'd like to just keep on doing is I want to educate people about animal behavior and about autism. I've been doing autism talks for the last 20 years and there still are people out there that do not want to, they can't recognize that these sensory problems are real. That, for some of these kids when that fire alarm goes off, that really hurts the ears, it's a really real thing.

My mother was always expanding my art skills and getting me to paint different things. You always got to push some. And, I mean, I learned basic things like getting up on time, how to shop - you know, you don't touch things in a store you're not going to buy. These things were taught very young. I don't see today enough of this basic, you know, basic skill teaching.

It's very important for the parents of young autistic children to encourage them to talk, or for those that don't talk, to give them a way of communicating, like a picture board, where they can point to a glass of milk, or a jacket if they're cold, or the bathroom. If they want something, then they need to learn to request that thing.

Sometimes you have to go outside your field of study to find the right people.