Giving shape to intricate models helps autistic man shape his thoughts
The Autism News | English
Keeping busy: alec MacKenzie builds a paper model at his home in Guelph, Ont., recently. MacKenzie will spend hours meticulously gluing together intricate model ships and trucks and trains, but when he’s finished he just tosses them in the trash. To Alec, building paper models is all about the process, not the product.
By The Daily Gleaner
GUELPH, Ont. – He throws them in the garbage. Alec MacKenzie will spend hours – days, even – meticulously gluing together intricate model ships and trucks and trains, but when he’s finished he just tosses them unceremoniously in the trash.
“That’s gone now,” he murmurs as he hurls aside the paper model of the Apollo 11 lunar lander that he spent all morning assembling.
To Alec, building paper models is all about the process, not the product. The finished product is meaningless.
The process – the satisfying slice of scissors through paper, the funny feeling of dried glue on his fingertips – brings Alec a kind of elusive pleasure that no other activity can.
Giving shape to paper models helps give shape to his thoughts.
Turning two-dimensional pieces of paper into three-dimensional creations – it unveils another dimension in Alec, too.
Because of his autism, 24-year-old Alec struggles with some things most people take for granted, like the simple back-and-forth of everyday communication.
But Alec is a genius at building paper models – and creating imaginary worlds for his vehicles to explore.
“He’s amazing,” says Lee Puddephatt, a support worker at the Community Living house in Guelph where Alec has spent the past year. “He makes them without any instructions. The instructions are in his head, I guess. He’s so smart.”
Every model requires Alec to cut out dozens of pieces of paper, discern how the pieces fit together and assemble them with precise folds and minuscule dabs of glue. No one quite understands how he does it.
“It’s unbelievable,” says his mother, Jennifer MacKenzie. “He can look at the plans, with all the flaps and pieces, and just figure out how it all goes together.”
Every weekend, Alec heads to the Guelph Public Library to surf the Internet for blueprints of paper models. He clicks through page after page of them until he finds ones that strike his fancy – lately it’s been spacecraft and container ships – then prints them off, takes them home and starts cutting.
His trips to the library are among the many gradual but crucial steps Alec is making toward total independence, a goal he and his parents have aspired to his whole life.
The Community Living house in Guelph, which Alec shares with one other full-time occupant and support staff, is an intermediate step between living with his parents and going it alone.
Autism is essentially a communicative disorder, which in Alec’s relatively mild case manifests itself in strained conversation and an inclination toward fantasy.
He always attended public schools, and his best teachers knew how to reach out to him (his kindergarten principal would pretend to be Captain Hook to Alec’s Peter Pan, and they would re-enact scenes from Alec’s favourite movie).
He often retreats into fantasy worlds, imagining himself piloting an Apollo lunar module or steering a boat into the eye of The Perfect Storm. He and his imaginary friends – “My lads,” he calls them – have wild adventures and try to thwart a “no-good kidnapper” called McLeach.
Alec can recite encyclopedic knowledge of nautical terminology and space travel (and once even corrected a New York City guide’s factual error during a boat tour around the Statue of Liberty).
Though he has always been fascinated with ships and trains, only in the past year or so has he begun building paper models. He builds more of them when he’s feeling stressed – a kind of “self-soothing” technique, as his mother puts it.
“Alec finds it easiest to communicate through something else, and the models are one way,” she says. “He likes to connect with people as much as anyone else does, but he just has to work harder. He does engage people in conversation. He has a limited repertoire, but he sure knows how to use it.”
His fingers encrusted with glue, Alec roots through a box to find a paper model of a rocket ship. He had thrown it away, but his support workers salvaged it and dozens more intricate models.
“Thank you for visiting the Kennedy Space Center,” he says, extending his arm for a long, hearty handshake.
“Thanks for coming over,” he says.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, we’ve got a launch happening soon so I have to get to mission control. Wish me luck.”
Source: http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/liveit/article/710707
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Teresa Gilbert Moriarty at 2:16pm June 29
WOW…Alec is astoundingly awesome! I have a hard time assembling a cardboard box with rudimentary instructions. You are amazing Alec!!!
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Geoffery Beeson at 10:06pm June 29
My son REALLY enjoys playing with paper. Mainly Wrinkling them up and making shapes with them…Usually very abstract and occasionally draws on his creations. Any one else have a Paper Holic? We have to hide all the paper or he will go through it all.