Box lunches with the same contents were served to hundreds of people attending the 8th Annual Southeastern Autism Symposium because it was functional and affordable.

There were other reasons why organizers chose a chicken menu. Another consideration was because chicken is widely accepted. The choice of box lunches fitting the need of many people was used to make a point about people with autism: The sensory diet of people with autism cannot be satisfied with a one-box-fits-all approach.

The featured speaker on Thursday is one of the world’s leading experts on multi-sensory environments. A multi-sensory environment is a room with equipment designed to change behavior, motivate learning and soothe daily stresses.

Linda Messbauer described her life growing up with autism and a number of adults who intervened in her life. There was a fifth-grade reading teacher who saved her from a torturous school experience. Her grandfather helped her put her father’s camera together after she took it apart.

“I took my father’s camera apart and my grandfather helped me put it back together. It (the camera) became a significant piece of equipment that followed me through my life with photography,” she said.

When she was old enough, Messbauer’s mother took her to her first Brownie meeting. She had a “meltdown” and refused to get out of the car.

“She was trying to get me involved in kinds of activities, so Brownies was the logical next step,” she said.

Instead of trying to confront and engage her, she said one gifted Brownie leader got in the car and sitting next to Messabauer with pipe cleaners and tissues, she began fashioning it into a carnation. During those two or three minutes the Brownie leader talked to the little girl and her mother. The Brownie leader asked Messbauer if she would like to make one of the tissue flowers.

“I was out of the car in a flash and I was hooked,” she said.

Violence was a reaction to her environment she had to overcome. Messbauer had to be alone and if anyone got too close, they got punched.

“If they were bigger than me, I just knocked them down and then sat on them,” she said.

In the sixth grade, she knew she was labeled as a retard by the other kids. She had no friends and didn’t think she wanted any. Another teacher intervened shortly after she took I.Q. tests. She kept hearing her name mentioned and bits of conversation that lead her to believe she was being sent back to the fifth grade. She had a meltdown in the hallway. A teacher asked her what was wrong. The teacher explained to her the reason school administrators were unsure of what to do with her was because she had the highest I.Q. in the school.

“They don’t know what to do with you so you should be very happy,” she said to the audience. “It didn’t make all that much difference to me. The next year, I found photography and that camera I loved so much got used, so much so that I wore that little one out and my father bought me a nice 35 mm camera.

“I started to take photographs and I learned how to develop them in a darkroom,” she said. “I spent the next years right on through graduation in the darkroom because I was so good at photography that they gave me a pass.”

Being alone in the darkroom eliminated the need to hit people.

In the ninth grade, her counselor told her mother in the hallway in front of all the other parents that her daughter was not college material. Get her signed up for some sort of vocational rehab.

“I got angry and my anger turned into the fact that I was going to make it into college no matter how (it was) because I wanted to do what the other kids were doing,” she said.

Messbauer spoke of how she never felt comfortable with her body and that it never seemed to match her head. One never felt like it went with the other.

“In third grade I visualized myself taking my head off and putting it on the desk,” she said. “That’s how I made it through school. Every day I would come in, sit in my chair, unscrew my head and put it on my desk. I had to separate what I was feeling sensory-wise.”

She began understanding she was in control of something in her environment when she could remove her head.

Messbauer did graduate from college. She graduated from New York University with a master's degree in occupational therapy. Since then, she has gained extensive experience working in the field of developmental disabilities. She has worked in early childhood to adult services and has been a private consultant to both public service agencies and private corporations. She began her career in the field of geriatrics about 30 years ago.

In 1992, she established the first multi-sensory environment in the United States for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Multi-sensory environments allow people to change their surroundings and be in control of their environment.

“When you get to the point that you understand you can manipulate the environment, then you are going to hear, and you are going to see and you are going to be able to listen,” she said. “I am telling you, you need to listen.”