HBO is the big winner of the 62nd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards with a total of 25, and original movie “Temple Grandin” surprised many by winning seven of those Emmys. On Sunday’s August 29, the film won five awards in major categories: Best made for TV movie, best directing for a miniseries/movie and acting awards for Claire Danes, Julia Ormond and David Strathairn. But many people at home, however, were wondering who or what is a Temple Grandin?

Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard Grandin and Eustacia Cutler. She was diagnosed with autism in 1950. Having been labeled and diagnosed with brain damage at age two, she was placed in a structured nursery school with what she considers to have been good teachers. Grandin’s mother spoke to a doctor who suggested speech therapy, and she hired a nanny who spent hours playing turn-based games with Grandin and her sister.

At age four, Grandin began talking, and she began making progress. She considers herself lucky to have had supportive mentors from primary school onwards. However, Grandin has said that middle school and high school were the worst parts of her life. She was the “nerdy kid”, the one whom everyone teased. She would be walking down the street and people would say “tape recorder”, because she would repeat things over and over again. Grandin states that “I could laugh about it now, but back then it really hurt.”

After graduating from Hampshire Country School, a boarding school for gifted children in Rindge, New Hampshire, in 1966, Grandin went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Franklin Pierce College (also located in Rindge) in 1970, her master’s degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and her doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.
Grandin was born in 1947, when autism was less well understood than it is today. Although doctors claimed she would never speak or function normally, her mother Eustacia was instrumental in teaching her to speak and socialize till Temple was able to go to school. She was always drawn to animals, believing that her autism helped her see the world through their eyes.

This lead to her interest in animal science, in which she received a doctorate, and her invention of new devices and new slaughterhouse designs for the humane treatment of livestock. She’s become a university professor, is an advocate for understanding autism and has penned several books including “Thinking in Pictures,” “Animals in Translation” and “Animals Make Us Human.”

This film was by far one of the best films I have seen and it brought new light to what the possibilities are for children with Autism. Here is a brief clip of the film.

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