Communication: the key to social integration | Meritxell Molina |TEDxValladolid

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but was independently organized.

Silence and imperfections in communication sink millions of people into absolute isolation. Meritxell shares in this brave, impressive and inspiring talk how after her difficult personal experiences during her childhood and adolescence she decided to dedicate her life to finding the solution to multiple problems of communication. She focuses mainly in autism, using the latest technology to offer a solution of social integration for millions of isolated people.

Meritxell is a teacher and a social innovator. She just graduated in education and she is passionate about technology and psychology. She dedicates her life to social entrepreneurship in order to make technology help people with disabilities to finally achieve their inclusion. She is the founder and president of AANTEA, an association dedicated to creating projects and programs for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the founder of PictoConnection, and a collaborator in Inny.cat in Barcelona.

Before I start, I would like you to look

at the following picture and think,
for a second,

what you would do

if you met a person

with a similar reaction.

A person with an attack of anger, fury,

or with a strange behavior.

But, what if this person
wasn't a stranger?

What if this person was a brother,

a friend, or a grandfather?

Would you react in the same way?

There are more than 11,5 million people
in the world

that due to a pathology, a disorder

or because of an accident,
they're not able to communicate.

They cannot tell
the people they love the most

what they think,

what they feel, what they want
each and every time.

This incapacity generates
such frustration,

that these people react in this way,

with attacks of fury, anger,
or the total opposite,

with the most absolute isolation.

And the rest of us who do not suffer
from this

we neglect them, we cut them off

either consciously or unconsciously.

But we do it.

We reject them.

Without realizing
that the key to social relations

is communication.

This is what distinguishes us
from other animals.

It's our capacity to communicate,

to be social beings.

To communicate is very difficult.

Tell me about it!

Not only is it important what we say

but how we say it.

And it's in this "how" of communication

where the problem lies.

It's because we focus on that.

We focus on the shout of rage,

on the punch in the wall,

on the young person who skips classes.

And it is these imperfections
in our social relationships

what lead them to absolute isolation.

Today I would like
to introduce you to someone.

It's my uncle. His name is Paco.
Paco suffers from schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a pretty serious
mental disorder,

which is characterized

by imagining and seeing things
that really don't exist.

Paco even invents things
which have never happened.

Moreover, due to the strong medications

he has been losing his ability to speak
little by little

and this made it really difficult
to communicate with him.

An example of this is one
of his many ways.

Every day, twice a day,

and at the same time,
he goes to the bathroom

and starts to play with water.

At first we accepted it as another ritual.

But the problem was when
he got out of the bathroom.

Some days he would go out
extremely happy

but some others he got very angry.

He would yell at us,
try to hit us or push us.

Until the situation got unbearable.

We tried to communicate with Paco
in a million ways,

but Paco doesn't speak,

he doesn't write nor he reads.

Until one day it occurred to me to draw.

"Draw what?", you might say.

Well, I started drawing all the items
that were around Paco.

The items in the bathroom

or the items that were in the kitchen

to make him tell me

which ones made him angry.

Even though it doesn't seem true,
thanks to that exchange of pictures,

Paco told us what was going on.

And what was going on was amazing.

Every time he walked into the bathroom,

he entered into another reality.

He imagined he was
in the middle of the Civil War

and that as he played
with his fingers and his hands,

he imagined he rose
in ranks in the legion.

He started as corporal and rose
until becoming a general.

The problem was when we interrupted him,
of course.

The game would be over.

Ever since that day,
we never interrupted him again.

And we really spared ourselves
two daily disputes.

Thanks to this homemade
and improvised solution,

we managed to solve a problem

in a very concrete situation.

But without realizing
this would be the first

contribution to a solution

that would help thousands of people
around the world.

And why do I live with Paco?

For you to understand why,

and especially to understand why

I am here today, I'll tell you my story.

When I was 5 my parents split up

and my mother took me with her
away from my brother.

After having many men
in and out of her life

and after her evident lack of interest
in being a mother,

she returned me like a package.

At least I was back with my brother.

But the happiness was short lived.

Around the age of 8 or 9,
I was sexually assaulted

by someone very close.

My fear, my innocence, my frustration,

made me isolate from everything.

I wasn't capable of telling anyone
what had happened to me.

Not even to my brother,
whom I loved the most.

I remained silent,

much like Paco did.

Nine years went by,
it'd been 9 long years of silence

until I was 17 and I became capable

of telling my brother what had happened.

And because of this I would like
to dedicate this talk to him.

I would like to dedicate the talk to him

for returning back to me,

but most of all for not judging me.

He was the key that opened the door
to my communication.

He was the key to end all the agony

that I bore inside.

But these two experiences made me realize

that there are many people in the world

with the same problem as Paco and I.

So I set myself out to help them.

When I started studying special education

and the teaching practices,

I met many children

with cerebral palsy, with autism,
it didn't matter.

They had the same problem: communication.

Then, I suddenly remembered
the situation I had with Paco,

the exchange of pictures,

so I set myself to transform
this situation into a tool;

a tool that would be really useful,

that would let them communicate

at any moment

and with anyone.

We started with a prototype

based on pictograms

distinguishing the different contexts

where the child could play or work

And within each of these contexts,

all the elements that they would need

to communicate.

Obviously, we tried it first with Paco

and it was a success.

But even so, he wasn't fully satisfied.

He looked at drawings, at pictograms

that made him feel like a child.

And he wasn't a child.

Then we realized that if we wanted
the tool to be really functional,

we had to make it
totally customized.

It should have the places he visited,

the people he knew,

the food he ate.

After that, he felt really
comfortable with it.

We carried out an investigation

with more than 150 children
in the Valencian Community.

And we kept in touch
with professionals and parents.

But out of this investigation,

what I would like to share with you

is the contact
that I had with these families.

"My child doesn't love me.

I haven't been a good mother."

This is what María told me.

María is the mother

of a 5 year-old child with autism
who had never spoken.

María is fed up with looking for ways

to be able to reach her child

and know what's going on,

what he wants at any time.

But she can't.

"If at least he would look me
in the eyes," she told me.

But María wasn't the only one
that moved me.

"My child will always be useless."

Imagine the frustration a parent has

to say that his child,

his child will always be useless.

Javier is the father of a child
with cerebral palsy

who doesn't walk, doesn't talk

and, moreover,
he has a visual impairment.

Javier is fed up with looking for tools
in technology

to be able to make his son
communicate with him.

But he tells me,

"It's just that there's none
that would adapt,

there is no technology adjusted

to what happens to my son."

And Javier is right.

If we go to any application store

and write, let's say,

"Applications for people with autism,"

there are thousands.

And all of them say
they serve the same purpose.

But there are more than 67 million people

in the world with autism.

Really. Is this same static application

going to help them in the same way?

I don't think so.

And here's where the evolution
of our tool started.

At this point it didn't only matter to us

the pathology the child had,

if they had paralysis,
autism, and which level.

What mattered to us were many more things.

It mattered to us if they
had epilepsy or not.

If they had a mental delay,

the level of language they had.

If we were working on a tool
for communication

we had to know every one of the details:

what was their level of learning.

If we really wanted
to create a unique tool

which would adjust to every single person.

With all these data,

our machine autogenerates

the best tool for each person,

taking into account each detail.

It autogenerates different
panels of communication

that evolve

according to the evolution of the user.

This is connected to a platform

where it not only stores
all this information

but it also stores all the materials,

all the pictures,

the audios, the videos.

In this way, they are available
for any user

that wants to enter the platform

which makes this customization

much more simple, making it much easier

to make this tool unique.

A very simple example: a father

who goes to a zoo one day

and takes pictures of different animals
with his tablet

This material goes automatically

to the platform and it's available

for maybe a teacher who would like to make

the same trip the following week.

Not only can he give an idea
of the activity to the child,

but also the child will be able
to communicate that day

with his friends and his teacher

without any kind of problem.

All of this is thanks to the use
of artificial intelligence

which allows the machine

to learn from the child.

And also thanks to the use of "big data"

which allows the storage and analysis

of a large quantity of data
in an efficient way.

Javier's son still cannot walk or talk

but now he has a tool that adapts
to his visual impairment

and allows him to communicate
with his father.

Maria's child is still
not able to talk either

and he rarely looks into the eyes

but now he can tell his mother

that he wants cookies and not juice;

that he wants to go
to the park, not the pool

or that he's angry
because he has a stomachache.

In the world we meet many,

many people, and we don't know

why they behave in a strange way;

they behave in a way that is beyond

our normal standards.

I would like to ask you,
if this happens to you,

don't abandon them, don't shun them.

The same way my brother was my key,

and I in turn was the key for Paco,

each and every one of you

can be the key for someone.

The key to communication.

The key to social integration.

Surely you all know him.

He's one of the greatest minds
known in history.

But surely you don't know

that Einstein couldn't speak
until the age of 4,

and he couldn't write
until the age of 7.

In fact, many of his teachers

defined him as useless,

but his mother never gave up on him.

When I was assaulted,

and I started to behave
in a strange way,

my teachers, including my family,

thought I would never achieve anything.

Now with 22 years I've graduated,

I'm doing my master's
in neuropsychology,

I've founded an association
for people with autism,

and I work every day to make
people like Javier's son,

Maria's son, or Paco,
able to communicate.

There are many Einsteins in the world,

plenty of yet undiscovered Einsteins.

It's in our hands not to lose
any more of them.

Thank you.

(Applause)