Recently, I gave three keynote speeches. One in Pennsylvania, one in Texas, and the other in Maine. Virtually! Close enough. Even when I saw people through the video cameras, I felt well cultured at each of these keynote events, and I’m so excited to share what I observed and shared at these events. 

I was privileged to speak at three different locations. 

• Pennsylvania - Inside the University’s Theater Room 
• Texas - Room that had a beautiful backdrop of homemade fabrics
• Maine - Quiet office environment with sunlight coming through the windows

That’s not counting the adorable accents on all three events. The only thing missing is that I would have loved to travel to each location and meet everyone in person. It makes me so happy to spend a few days in each state to explore and experience the different cultures right here in the United States. After my speaking engagements I enjoy celebrating afterwards. 

Speaking of celebrations, that topic was...

Hi Everybody! 

When folks ask me how I think, I say I think in patterns.

Little known secret, I have always been so fascinated with patterns. What kind of patterns? Any kind of pattern of course! You see them in clothing, in houses, in food, in business practices and so on.

It all started back in kindergarten when I was given a book that was all about patterns. For example, I remember the pattern that goes “shirt, pants, pants, pants, SHIRT, pants, pants, pants, shirt” then it asks what comes after “shirt”? It was an easy simple exercise in understanding patterns and I really enjoyed those activity books involving them. The answer was “pants” in case you were wondering. As I’m typing this, I began to realize that I am more into jeans than I am with shorts or long johns.

Speaking of pants, just recently I have found a brand of jeans with my name on it which is “Tyler”. I didn’t hesitate to buy a pair because I needed new jeans anyway. This...

I don’t fear anything. Well, maybe with the exception of dinosaurs, those creatures scare me. Okay, fine, I’m not entirely made of stone and I do fear a lot of things, and it’s the right kind of fear. Though the rumors were confirmed to be true that when I was younger I did not fear many things even if they were extremely dangerous. Like crossing a street with a lot of traffic, walking outside my house in the middle of the night, making my way to a swimming pool without anyone knowing, being around people that were a bad influence on me, and being in sports that would make me sore and bleed. Fear was never a priority for me back then. It felt like it was just an illusion for a long time until I learned from my teachers and parents that having healthy fears were for my protection. The kind of protection that allows me to keep doing activities and literally stay alive.

I know how important it is to fear certain things that will protect you and keep you going....

It’s an exciting world! Go out and explore it! Not talking about virtual worlds in the video games, because that would be far too easy; I love a good challenge, and I challenge you to get out of your comfort zone and discover the world.

• Locations
• Foods
• People
• Activities
• Games
• Events
• Movies
• Shows

The list goes on. Are you missing out on any of them? Depends on how you look at it. You could be missing out on something so horrible that you may feel so joyful to not have to suffer through the experience. And that is okay.

But you will never know unless you try.

The worst experience, or one of them, was going out to the drag races. Those chaotic events are full of cars so loud they rival thunder! I have talked about the experience on an earlier blog so I’ll keep it small and simple. Dad wanted to challenge me, I didn’t know what was going on, I experienced all of the chaos, the jetskis didn’t sound as loud after the events. Feel free to read the full story...

Thank the teachers with me.

I would not be where I am in AutismWorks without the help of my teachers. They gave so much to help their students. Every teacher is different and that same goes for the students too when learning; Teaching differently and learning differently from each other. Here are ten things that have helped me the most from elementary to high school.

• Extremely patient

Admittingly, I was not an easy student in the classroom. Standing on top of desks, making a mess, having an attitude, etcetera, etcetera; Lots of patience coming from the teachers. The thing that became the game changer was that most of the things I have done were unintentional and didn’t know I was not supposed to do what I was doing. I really did want to improve and to learn.

• Wouldn’t let any of my improper behavior slide

“He’s just being himself, he doesn’t know better” is one of the worst things I have heard; The teachers I have...

The Real Reason Why I Look At The Reflection

It is a strange habit that I find myself doing for as long as I can remember. I just thought about this recently when I was on my lunch break and it got me thinking long and hard about it. I find myself looking at myself in the mirror almost every day; Not just mirrors, windows, lake water, and anything else where I can see myself.

I promise you, this is not a “you are so full of yourself, Tyler'' moment; trust me, I have heard of that reply from a good friend of mine several times. I laughed it off. It’s not really funny though I do not think. Oh no, most of the time as much as I do not want to look at the reflection, I just could not resist and this is why.

• Having a conversation with myself.

I get lonesome really easily ya know. I sort of figured if there was anyone I could talk to, it would be him, the boy in the reflection. How I talk to him doesn’t come from talking with the mouth, no it does not; we...

Don’t follow my example.

That’s my advice when it comes to this example. All kidding aside, I have explained why so many times in my two books that it became extremely exhausting. However, I’ll try my best to see what I would have done differently.

Never have been a huge fan of the bullying stuff; and I do not speak for everyone but I can very well imagine a large majority of people do not want to be bullied. Same with people who would want to talk about it; I know I am one of those people. But I’ll still share.

It is not an easy topic to talk about really. Always feel like I have to be extra careful on what to say in providing advice. I will do my best. The first thing I would do when being bullied is to not say anything and avoid eye contact; Avoiding eye contact gives bullies some extra unneeded attention and it is best to avoid them the best you can.

It's not fun being around them, and after such a terrible experience, it is always important to tell...

Let’s get this over and done with.

I’ve talked a lot about what causes a meltdown, but for this blog post, I’ll talk about what it felt like to have one. I don’t have them today, though I do get mad easily at times; not gonna lie. Mostly over the stupidest of things and for the fun of it to use that energy to get stuff done by letting off all that steam.

The vast majority of children with autism do not want to have a meltdown, same with everyone else that does not have autism. No one wants these things to happen. Here is why.

When a person doesn’t keep it together as hard as they try, eventually, the brain starts to explode! I like to think of a meltdown as a ticking time bomb. I know the old saying that relates to having a short fuse in the topic of temper; I know I get that way when I’m starving. Meltdowns are a lot like having a fuse and the length varies on everyone. Keeping a meltdown from happening is like putting out the fuse however way...

This was my most challenging speaking engagement yet! No one has asked me to speak at a school graduation ceremony until recently; Other speaking engagements I have done were about giving information relating to autism, but this was a GRADUATION speech I had to give, and that was scary! Before I took my seat on the front row, I said: “I want my mom.” My dad was with me, but it was just one of those feelings, ya know.

I think the main reason why I was so terrified, in this particular event, was because it reminded me of the time I graduated high school in 2013, not too long ago. That does not feel very long ago to me, maybe because I know how important graduation is. So we practiced hard on getting the outline right before going up on stage to make the best impression on all of those graduates since it can only be done once. 

Before graduation, Dad and I had the privilege to check out the school . Gateway Academy. Out of all of the schools I have been in, this one...