I had the habit of referring to the kids in my class as my angels. Even in that altered realm, Alex seemed a bit more otherworldly. Thus, I referred to him as my “Archangel.” At other times “Wild Man” or “Roadrunner” seemed to suffice. When I first met Alex, he climbed on everything and seemed to prefer to walk on tables.
Unlike many of my students who were vape boxes for sale hypersensitive to sensory input, Alex appeared to be hypo-sensitive. He did not appear to feel his body enough. Each morning, he would run up and down the cafeteria. It appeared to me that he needed to do this to feel his body. Most people interpreted his incessant running as hyper-activity. I interpreted it as hypo-activity.
He was on medicine for hyperactivity, which never quite made sense to me. I sensed his hyperactive movements were needed to feed his hypo-active system. Although medicine temporarily appeared to calm him down, it also seemed to exacerbate his movement disturbances. Often, if Alex improved in one motor area, he showed decreased function in another. For example, his fine motor movements would improve-he would be able to copy words and pictures-but at the same time he would get stuck executing accomplished gross motor activities. Sometimes he could not even put on his coat, or feed himself. I remember him getting stuck on the way to the serving line in the cafeteria or on his way to the bathroom. Usually a slight push would get him started again. It reminded me of scenes in the movie “Awakenings.”
Alex often looked up at the sky as if he were seeing things that were invisible to the rest of us. He seemed totally entranced with whatever it was that caught his attention.
Alex was nonverbal. During classroom activities, he was often required to select correct responses from a field of choices.
When doing so, he never looked at the answers; yet, his responses were invariably correct. It appeared as if his spirit was controlling his body from above as his arms awkwardly reached out to select the appropriate card. He was invariably correct. It was phenomenal!
In the fall of 2001, right after 9-11, Alex was going through puberty and seemed to take a turn for the worse. His behavior, which was always intriguing, became astonishing and alarming. Alex had always been a compulsive eater. Now, he refused to take in any nutrition. He would bring a favored snack item to his lips and then push it away. Even more frightening, he refused to drink water. Throughout the day, he would run from the room find a position and face north. Often his arms would be at his sides with his palms outstretched similar to what you see in Christian statues. At other times after finding his preferred spot he would assume Muslim prayer position on the floor, hands at sides and head bowed forward. Of course, he was always facing north.
Facing north became an obsession. If headed north, Alex walked forward. If headed south, he insisted on walking backward. When headed east or west, he walked sideways, so his eyes were always facing north. When we were on our daily walks through the woods, he adjusted his stance to always insure that he was facing north, turning from side to side as he twisted and turned on the meandering trails. I often thought about it, but I never did attach a compass to his head to see how close to north he was able to maintain.
During this time, Alex would jump up from a seated position and land on the narrow back of a typical classroom chair. As frightening as it was to witness, Alex seemed to know the exact fulcrum point and never once did I witness the chair even slightly tipping.
The situation was obviously out of control. His mother and I, fearful of him not taking in enough liquid amongst other things, had him admitted to the county mental health complex for evaluation. His medication was changed and his newly adopted odd behaviors began to slowly subside. Most importantly, he began to drink and eat again.
Alex eventually became very proficient at using PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System). The first time he really seemed to get it, was in February, the second year he was in my class. It finally clicked that if he gave me the picture of the candy heart, he would actually get a candy heart. Soon after that initial realization, he was selecting the correct pictures from a huge field of choices. At the time, I had all my walls covered with strips of Velcro with Mayer-Johnson pictures attached, and I had put them in categories. This way, I would always have the pictures handy for visual cues. It also helped the kids search and recognize categories.
One of my favorite memories of Alex was the day he selected a picture of a stick of butter, a picture of a nut, and a picture of a quarter. I was totally confused, but the picture of the quarter made me think of the vending machine in the teacher’s lounge as he had run in there earlier in the day. I took him to the vending machine to see if this combination of tickets made any sense. Sure enough, there was a package of “Nutter Butter” cookies that he wanted.
