Time Change

As usual, last week’s time change from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time adversely affected Alex a bit. When he was younger, he often had trouble adjusting his sleep for a few days when the clocks changed. Now, his sleep patterns don’t seem to vary, but some subtle mood changes suggest that his circadian rhythms have been disturbed by the one-hour difference. Although he knows how to change every clock in the house and enjoys turning them ahead or back an hour as needed, he requires a few days to adjust. This past week, he has been disgruntled at times, muttering his concerns. Since he is usually good-natured and congenial, this change in personality indicates that something has disrupted his system. Whenever he is in a grouchy mood, we take the advice given in Kenny Rogers’ country song “The Gambler”: “Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” To explain, sometimes we reassure Alex that his fears are unfounded, or we distract him by talking about something other than his obsessions, or we just ignore him, or occasionally, we get out of his way because he’s likely to have a meltdown.

Currently, Alex seems to have three primary preoccupations. First, he’s very concerned about when his doctor will retire. Since she has been his doctor for more than a dozen years and has been very good to him, he has a bond with her that he worries will end soon. He knows that she’s about the same age as my parents, both of whom are retired, and he assumes that she will also retire shortly, even though she has indicated that she has no imminent plans to do so. Despite our telling Alex repeatedly that she’s not planning to retire yet, he still frets about her and keeps asking when she will retire. I think Ed was finally able to ease Alex’s anxiety about that issue a few days ago when he told Alex that after his doctor retires, he can go to the same doctor Ed does. Of course, Alex wanted to know right away how old Ed’s doctor was; I guess he wasn’t too eager to go to someone else who might be planning to retire shortly. This interest in ages has also affected his current reading material as he has been researching child development. He has been selecting books from the library about babies, then preschoolers, followed by elementary-aged children, and now he is reading books about adolescents. I’m not certain how much understanding Alex has of his own development as a child because of his delays, and I wonder if he’s trying to recapture those days that may have been confusing to him. In addition, whenever he sees children on television, in books, or out in public, he asks us how old we think they are. As I had mentioned in my earlier blog “Rating,” Alex needs to quantify everybody by statistics, age being one of the most important to him. With the holiday season approaching and all the commercials and ads for toys depicting children, we hope that Alex overcomes this current obsession with little kids and how old they might be.

Besides potential retirements and little kids, Alex has current concerns about his memory. Even though he seems to have a photographic memory and has memorized many sequences of numbers, such as dozens of prime numbers and hundreds of digits of pi, he worries that he will forget something. Again, I suspect that he’s trying to remember his childhood. Fortunately, looking at photographs of himself at younger ages seems to soothe his anxiety. Another issue that he has recently raised is that he is certain that he erased data he had stored on his graphing calculator and worries that he’ll never be able to regain those lost numbers. Despite our reassurances, the thought of losing information makes Alex extremely agitated and upset. In addition, he worries that his memory isn’t what it once was, much as an elderly person might; however, Alex isn’t even nineteen yet. He has repeatedly asked us if he has a good memory, and we have been able to give him several examples—including the pi digits—that prove his memory is not just good, but phenomenal. The other day, he decided to take a new approach to this question, comparing himself to his two-year-old cousin and asking if he had a better memory than Casey. He worries that Casey won’t remember his early childhood because Alex can’t remember much about his own life before the age of four. I suppose he thought that comparing himself to his little cousin would be an easy way to make sure that he has the better memory. Plus, he likes that he knows exactly how old Casey is, which comforts him. Now, if he starts asking when Casey will retire, then we’ll have another issue on our hands…

“Yet God has made everything beautiful in its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

Psychological Assessment

As we have watched Alex deep in thought over the years, Ed and I have often wondered what was going on in his mind. We were treated to a glimpse of his thought processes last week when we took him to a psychologist for testing. In the process of determining Alex’s eligibility for disability benefits, Social Security required that we take him to a psychologist to have his autism evaluated. This wasn’t a real surprise since Alex’s last complete evaluation was at age four when he was originally diagnosed with autism. Because we didn’t disagree with that diagnosis, we never pursued having him re-tested. A few years ago, we did take him to a psychiatrist, hoping to find help for his aggressive outbursts. However, this experience was basically a waste of two hundred dollars and an hour of time. Halfway into the appointment, after I had explained Alex and how autism affected him, the psychiatrist turned to me and said candidly, “Frankly, Mrs. Byrne, I think you know more about autism than I do.” Needless to say, we did not take him back to that doctor. In anticipation of last week’s appointment with the psychologist, I felt some trepidation, not knowing how this session would go, but Alex was excited, seeing this experience as a new adventure.

After asking Ed and me several questions about Alex’s strengths and weaknesses, the psychologist began to ask Alex questions to assess his abilities. Before the appointment, Ed and I had agreed that we would not come to Alex’s rescue by answering for him or prompting him to respond. We wanted him to represent himself accurately. However, we found it hard not to help him because, as Ed commented to me, we always want Alex to shine. Nonetheless, Alex was good natured and pleasant and answered the questions as well as he could. At times he had to twist his hair, or scratch his belly, or look around the room before he could give his response, but he was engaged in the process and was conscientious about doing the best he could. For one of the tests, the psychologist asked him to tell how two words were related. For example, he said apple and banana, to which Alex answered, “Fruits.” When asked about desk and chair, Alex knew to say, “Furniture,” and when given inch and mile, he said, “Measurements.” The next example was a bit trickier. He was asked how a poem and a statue are alike. I racked my brain, trying to think of a good answer, and found out later that Ed wasn’t certain what the definitive answer was, either. Alex thought carefully for a minute and then said, “Structures.” I thought that was a pretty good answer, and the psychologist seemed to find it interesting, too. Later, when given various real-life scenarios, such as what to do if you noticed a fire in a crowded theater or found a stamped and addressed envelope on the street, he was clueless as to how to respond. I’m not sure whether this is a language issue for him or a problem-solving weakness, but at least he didn’t become frustrated.

In another test, Alex was asked to explain the old saying, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.” Like many children with autism, Alex tends to be literal and doesn’t really understand figurative expressions. He began to laugh, though, and I suspect it was because he doesn’t drink milk due to his allergy to dairy products. Spilled milk doesn’t occur in his world. He then asked the doctor what the saying meant. The doctor explained it to Alex, turned to us, and commented, “He has a really great smile.” Next, he asked Alex to guess what time it was without looking at a clock, and Alex said that it was about 12:16. The exact time was 12:09, so his estimate was fairly accurate. To test Alex’s memory, he told him three objects to remember over time: a clock, an iron, and a table. Ed and I knew that he would remember the clock because he loves clocks. Several minutes later when asked what the three objects were, he remembered the clock and table but thought the third one was a desk, which had been mentioned in the association test. Since Alex doesn’t use an iron, and I rarely use one around him, I doubt it had significance for him. Later Ed told me that he couldn’t remember any of the objects, so Alex did better than he did. Another test of his memory involved repeating back strings of random numbers. Ed and I knew that he would do well at this activity because he has memorized hundreds of digits of pi, and we weren’t surprised that he completed this task easily. The doctor, however, seemed impressed that Alex not only could repeat the numbers in the correct order, but he could also recite them in reverse order. After we had also mentioned that Alex’s strengths lie in math, computers, and keyboarding, the psychologist suggested that with those skills, along with his memory and attention to detail, someday he might make a good computer systems analyst. We were pleased that he could see potential in Alex and not just the weaknesses. Moreover, we found this glimpse into Alex’s mind enlightening and uplifting because he did even better than we had expected. By stepping back and allowing him to be himself, Ed and I enjoyed watching Alex shine—all by himself, demonstrating the gifts God has given him.

“A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and makes them sure.” Proverbs 16:9

Storing

Alex not only likes letters, words, and numbers, but he is blessed with an uncanny ability to store them in his mind. Every afternoon when he and I watch the game show Jeopardy together, I am treated to a glimpse of how gifted his memory is, as he reveals how much he has learned in a variety of subjects. I am often amazed that he knows things I would not expect him to know, including pop culture. Moreover, I have accumulated a gold mine of useless information in my memory over the years, and yet he knows things I don’t, such as remembering all of the U.S. Presidents in the order they served. When I ask him how he knows certain trivia, he can tell me specifically where he learned the detail by citing the title of a reference book or the website where he read it. Sometimes he can even inform me of the year when he learned the fact. He explains to me that he can see it in his mind.

Since he much prefers reading nonfiction to fiction, Alex has learned a great deal from reading textbooks, almanacs, encyclopedias, and dictionaries for fun. From the time he was little, he has usually taken at least one book to bed with him, holding it the way most children cuddle beloved stuffed animals. We can easily identify his best-loved books: from sleeping with them, the pages are often bent or curled. At times I almost wonder if he has learned things by osmosis as he slept. All of this reading, coupled with his excellent memory, made him a careful proofreader who catches mistakes in books that editors have missed. In addition, he possesses outstanding spelling skills because he can see in his mind the way words should be spelled. This ability to remember the order of letters has also enabled him to develop proficient keyboarding skills because he knows exactly where all the letters are on the computer keyboard and never needs to look at them as he types.

Along with all the reading he has done, Alex’s love of math has inspired him to study numerical concepts and patterns and then to commit them to memory. He has a fascination for prime numbers and has memorized the first 350 primes. Similarly, he has enthusiastically researched the concept of pi and then committed the first 1433 digits [“exactly, not approximately,” according to Alex] to memory, spouting them off the way most teenagers would repeat lyrics to their favorite songs. He greatly admires those people whose names he has found on the Internet who have memorized more pi digits than he has. Aside from these more academic studies, Alex also uses his ability to store numbers for more practical purposes. Using a phone book and the Internet, he has memorized area codes and zip codes for the U.S. and can usually accurately identify the state when given the code number. We put this to the test when unknown numbers come up on our caller ID and when mailing letters and bills at the post office. Even more helpful is that he remembers everyone’s age and birthday in our family, saving me from having to look up that information in my birthday calendar book. Somehow, I like to think that Alex’s gift for storing and retrieving numbers and patterns is a combination of Ed’s mathematical strengths and my organizational skills. Alex has taken that blend and made it his own, enjoying watching the numbers as they go by in his mind.

“I remember the days of old. I ponder all your great works and think about what you have done.” Psalm 143:5