Fishkill — Temple Grandin is autistic. Her brain is missing wires. She thinks in pictures.

Yet for hundreds of people yesterday, she was the picture of hope — hope for their own children and the others locked inside autism, Asperger syndrome and related disorders.

More than 550 people crammed into the big room at the Holiday Inn in Fishkill yesterday. The Mental Health Association in Orange County and the other sponsors of the daylong conference had turned away a couple of hundred more people.

That is the power of Grandin's story. Yesterday, Grandin's mother, Eustacia Cutler, added the power of her own views and experiences as the mother of an autistic child to the message.

Grandin didn't talk until she was 3-and-a-half. She would rip down the wallpaper, smear feces on the wall and throw all her toys into the corner.

Later, she got tossed out of high school for fighting.

Yet she learned to turn anger aside and make sense of the world around her. She earned a doctorate and teaches college. She has written best-selling books on autism and cattle handling, and speaks about both topics around the world.

The autism is still with her. Yesterday, she lined up glasses of water on the table next to the podium. She struggles with abstract concepts and things like the visual cues that stream back and forth in a regular conversation.

"You can't make me into something I am not. I didn't even know people have all these little secret eye signals," she said to laughter.

She leavened the presentation with advice on how to work with affected kids: Get rid of florescent lights, the kids see their flicker; teach them while they do something else; make portfolios for older kids' work — sell their work, not their social skills; don't allow doctors to over-medicate; stress exercise.

Parents asked her for tips about the 9-year-old who can't control anger and the 12-year-old who rewinds an Elmo video tape over and over and over. Build on those interests; grow them, Grandin said.

The message got through.

"I see the possibilities for my son in the future," said the mother of the 12-year-old. "This is about hope. All is not lost."