WEBVTT

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Okay.

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Forgot to take the lens cap off.

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Yes.

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Here\'s that Ruffin.

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It\'s November the 4th of 1991.

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He\'s playing in his crib.

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We\'ve been trying to use the video camera but
we couldn\'t figure out why it didn\'t work.

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Then we figured out the
batteries weren\'t charged.

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So last night I charged up the battery.

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And lo and behold it works.
Lo and behold it works.

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Didn\'t it?
Yes it does.

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You laugh at that old camera.

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Want to say night-night?

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My name is Box Bot.

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I\'m a robot working here at the
Contextual Robotics Institute.

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May I ask what is your name?

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Ruffin.

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- I just pulled it off the dock.
- I\'m sorry but I didn\'t hear you.

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What is your name?

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Ruffin.

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So I just pulled it off the dock and so the rest
of the services aren\'t necessarily running.

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- But I just wanted to show you-
- Good afternoon, may name is Box Bot.

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I\'m a robot working here at the
Contextual Robotics Institute.

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May I ask what is your name?

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My name is Ruffin White.

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I\'m a graduate researcher at UC San Diego.

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I study robotics.

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Today we\'re touring around my robotics lab.

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Oh good. There\'s no one here
so we won\'t disturb anyone.

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Here\'s the Fetch Robotics platform.

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This is their research platform and
they\'re a logistics robotics company.

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They target warehouse development.

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We\'re participating in the
Robo-Cup competition.

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Sort of a worldwide university competition on how
you can develop robots for home assisted tasks.

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Kind of geared to assisted living
or tending to the elderly.

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I don\'t know if someone
left it charged or not.

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Nope.

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In the area of social robots when you have general
robots that are meant to improve your mental health.

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Kind of an interesting domain.

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But the cat is kind of adorable.

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I had lots of pets when I was young.

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You have to be a little careful honey.

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My name is Mary Jane White.

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I am a retired lawyer and Ruffin\'s mom.

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It won\'t be long.

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You\'ll be walking and running.

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Yes.

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Then how will I keep up with you?

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I was too young to remember most of her
activity but a single parent raising me,

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sometimes that would get stressful for her.

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But I like to think that whenever she got too
stressed that I was there to comfort her.

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At about two and a half, they did notice that gross motor and fine motor
development was running ahead of his social and language development,

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maybe by 6 months.

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My mother was enough disturbed about his babbling in his
crib, that she made a recording in April of those noises.

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And then I made a video tape in May.

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And I wanted the neurologist to see that film because I
didn\'t think Ruffin would behave that way in a new place.

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Cut out.

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Cut out.

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Cut out.

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Cut out.

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My neurologist placed Ruffin in the place where
he thought he found him on the spectrum.

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But it was very clear.

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The word he gave me was Autism.

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And I was given to understand that
Ruffin would probably not speak.

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It was likely that he would
never finish school.

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It was likely he would never work
productively outside of a sheltered workshop.

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And that he would probably never be likely to
marry and he would not be aware that I loved him.

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That was really pretty grim.

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Say hi. Say hi to your grandma.

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Can you say, \"Hi grandma?\"

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Say, \"Hi grandma.\"

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Can you do that?

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Oh you look so sick.

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The neurologist had told me that if I had
as much as 5 million dollars to invest

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for Ruffin\'s lifetime care that I should
do that right now while he was three.

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You don\'t like mommy having the camera?

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What\'ve you got?

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What\'ve you got?

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Thank you.

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He was diagnosed July 12th, 1994.

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And our first workshop was
November 4th and 5th.

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So we were pretty quick
moving into treatment.

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Evelyn Kung came out from Doreen
Granpeesheh\'s group CARD.

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I think she arrived just ahead of
a sleet storm to our little town

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which is about 4,000-5,000
people at the time.

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She was pretty brave to come.

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Okay now, is there a technique, since you did that
and many children do that, what\'s the physical-

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- Manipulation?
- Manipulation.

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I take it and I basically just pull it.

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Usually, you can just pull it without anything and
then I just put it away until they calm down.

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Like I\'ll hide it until they can\'t see it.

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And if they start getting too,
riled, I make them sit good.

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I go back to just-
Move the chair and just sit.

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Move the chair until they just
sit until they calm down.

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So ABA is Applied Behavioral Analysis.

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Basically when a child comes
in and starts ABA

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it\'s based on a series
of consequences

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So the idea is that if a child does something and
you want it to be done more or again you reward it.

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And if you don\'t want the child to engage in a behavior
again, you basically do not reward it and it will go away.

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Touch B.

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No. Try again. Touch B.

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Good boy.

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Sit good. Come on sit nicely.

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Thank you, nice sitting.

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Touch B.

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B.

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Wow!

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I do recall being planted
in front of the table.

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About half a foot tall
or something like that.

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All this kind of yellow and red plastic.

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And then being presented with a host of visual cards and
they all have different actions or people or objects.

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And then I would be asked to state what the verb
was or what the noun that the card represented.

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I also had photos of family members or faces
that I would try to recollect the names.

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It would be Donna sitting in front
of the table being very patient.

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I had a short temper, short attention span.

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I would get very tired quickly.

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Very repetitive and it would be almost
every day I would have to do this.

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Good sitting.

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Mommy!

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Mommy come here!

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Good sitting.

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Mommy come here!

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Mom!

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[Cheering]

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I was able to watch that without being too upset with him
or for him because I had had the opportunity to read

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Dorothy Beavers\' book it\'s called
Autism Nightmare Without End.

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It\'s a very salutary story that puts you into appropriate panic that
this is what\'s going to happen to your child without treatment.

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It is not a pretty picture.

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Good talking. Say bite.

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Bite.

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Good talking. Say earrings.

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Earrings.

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Good talking.
Look at me Ruffin.

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Good.

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What was interesting about Ruffin\'s case is that it\'s a town of
4,000-5,000 so who do you have to choose from to be the therapists

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and it basically became all
of Mary Jane\'s neighbors.

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Touch the chipmunk.

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Good.

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Touch the chipmunk.

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Good job.

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Even though it might have been frustrating
at the time it was beneficial.

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I think everyone who is subject to this kind of
difficulty should readily have access to this treatment.

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Say \"Hi Mom\"

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Hi Mom.

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Say, \"I\'m going to work now.\"

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I\'m going to work now.

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Good job. Okay let\'s work.

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Touch small.

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Small.

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Oh good job.

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Touch large.

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- Large.
- No.

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Touch large.

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Large.

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Oh good working.

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Touch medium.

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Medium.

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Very good.

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ABA access is still very limited so using the resources
that you have and there\'s a lot of kids who have been

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able to go all the way and become fully independent
human beings by running their own programs.

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And I think that\'s encouraging instead of
just depending on professionals to do it all.

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Ruffin\'s a little seed.

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Okay be a little seed.

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What happens?

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You poked out.

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Then what happens next?

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Show us you growing.

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Wow.

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Here he comes up!

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Oh look he\'s grown tall!

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I had a camera pointed at me for a
long time when I was recovering.

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I feel like I think my entire
recovery is pretty well documented.

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How do you think you have changed since you stopped
having therapy with Donna and Evelyn and the others?

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I think after that I was cruising nicely
with everyone else in my classes.

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I was pretty normal.

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Didn\'t have any disadvantages besides spelling but in 5th grade they
dropped spelling then I was just at home doing the spelling thing

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where I can just right
click with a computer.

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The funny thing is I still have a bit of stage fright, public speaking that
can be kind of nerve-racking when you\'re talking to a whole swath of people.

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Hello, my name is Ruffin and this
is my good colleague Gianluca

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and today we\'re going to give you a quick
overview of the current developments in SROS.

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Alright.

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To try and get over that I\'ve tried to put myself
in the position where I had to give large talks.

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I think same with everything,
practice makes perfect.

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Thank you very much.

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I mean it\'s a proof that the kind of things that we expected
of the treatment are achievable and they worked in this case.

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I know from representing many
families of children with Autism

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that it does not always work.

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We were very lucky.

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So you can call it whatever you want.

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If you don\'t want to call it
recovery, don\'t call it recovery

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but you\'re basically teaching a person to be
independent and do the things what they want to do.

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That is recovery.

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I enjoy a lot of solitude just to think.

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A lot of those times I take those times to reflect on daily
life or challenges or some kind of research problem.

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And definitely those long walks
along the cliffside or the beach

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really help in giving me time to
thoroughly think about a given subject.

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But it also gives me time
to zone out, turn off.

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This is a kid who wrote out a check for his
undergraduate student loan balance the day he graduated

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because he was able to work for Cummins Engines and
Texas Instruments and Carnegie Mellon as a roboticist.

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I am very happy.

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I\'d like to thank my mother for

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all the time and energy and resources and years of her life she
investing in my recovery and after all the follow-through.

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I think that\'s a big component of someone\'s recovery, not just
the initial treatment, catching the diagnosis at an early age

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but also investing full time in the rearing of
a child to help them sustain a normal life.

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I got the feeling that I wasn\'t only working
and studying to advance my own quality of life

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but also help her through my independence
that would help her as well.

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She raised me in her house, I hope to take
care of her in mine when the time comes.

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There\'s a beautiful little book.

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It\'s called Goodnight Moon.

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And it was never a story I was able to read to him
because he wouldn\'t attend to it long enough.

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But I think it will be our story.

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It will.

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How much of yourself are you
still when you\'re one year old?

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A very small amount.

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Maybe you have the same favorite food groups but
certainly your personality has changed since then

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but definitely your experiences have a
substantial impact on who you are right now.

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You\'ll have to let me preview
it first because

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I\'m sure I\'ll probably catch myself saying
something technically inaccurate.