Anecdotes about Alexandra

 

Learning to read and write before speaking

Alex could read and write before she learned to speak. And she taught herself!  Here is the story.

 

When she was five she couldn’t speak, at least, she never spoke. One day I came into the kitchen. Julia was standing in the middle of the kitchen as if frozen. She was looking at Alex. Alex was kneeling in front of the fridge. Julia took my arm and pointed. Alex was moving the magnetic letters on the fridge door left behind by her sister Timea from three years before. We watched Alex make three words: cat, horse, monkey. She had never spoken these or any other words. Suddenly, she saw us and she jumped up and laughed and ran into the sitting room. How could she do this? We asked everyone in contact with Alex, "Have you shown Alex the written word?" They all replied, "Why should I when she can’t speak?"

 

How could she do it? This is our hypothesis: Alex loved her animal cards. They are well illustrated in a naturalistic style. At the bottom of each picture there is the name of the animal in a non serif bold typeface printed in black. Alex loved lining her animal cards neatly on the floor and then scooping them up to line them again somewhere else. She studied the cards. She must have begun to realise that there was a black shape at the bottom of each picture (the word). She must have realised that each black shape was different and she must have assumed that each "belonged" to its animal. She must have noticed at some later point that each black shape was made of small black shapes (letters). And at some later point she must have realised that some of these small shapes were to be found belonging to several different animals. Then, one day, in the kitchen, she must have realised that the shapes on the fridge door (magnetic letters) were essentially the same as the small black shapes on her pictures except that they were differently designed, three dimensional and in colour.

 

She made that small next step into writing, which was such a giant leap for her and in which she achieved in a matter or two years, by herself, what mankind had taken a million years to develop: decoding and encoding written symbols.

 

Timi’s party and not belonging

When Timea, Alexandra’s sister, was nine, she had a party. The kitchen was full of girls. Alexandra came downstairs. She wanted to belong. She had noticed that children often run around and shout and laugh so she ran into the kitchen, bent double, laughing as if out of control and occasionally shouting something unrecognisable. All the girls stopped talking. All animation stopped. For a moment Alex continued to run and scream with laughter and then she realised that it was not the effect she wanted and she ran out of the kitchen and upstairs.

 

Our house is a very long house. I walked through four rooms in the roof of the house until I came to the upper front room. The room was dark. Alex was standing by the window looking down into the street. She was silhouetted by the street light. 

 

"Alex!" I came to her and put my arm around her shoulders. The tree opposite was dripping water into a puddle below, although it was no longer raining. "Its raining, Apa." We could hear the music from the party at the other end of the house.

 

Learning to ski

Julia has been determined to help Alex to find many things that she can do well. So we went skiing in Austria when Alex was eight and found a Hungarian ski instructor who could speak in English. Alex had a wonderful sense of balance from the beginning. The only time she fell down was when she threw herself in the snow in order to stop. She was so flexible that she could sit on her skiis and stand up whenever she felt like it. And she could lie backwards on her skiis and go underneath the gate for the lift without showing her ticket.

 

But of course we had to teach the essentials of control and above all of stopping safely. In skiing the first technique for learning to stop is to make a V with the skis. One afternoon during that first skiing holiday there was a blizzard of driving snow. It was cold, and dark and our eyes were full or our goggles were covered. But Alex was descending. In front of her, the teacher going backwards, Julia and Timi on one side and me on the other. We were all begging her, "Make a V!  Make a V!" shouting into the blizzard of snow. Suddenly, Alex shouted back, "No! Make a G!" "A G?" we all shouted, beating our helmets in despair. "Yes, a G! Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.  When the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away!"

 

Now she can ski on the upper black slopes with Timi. She whoops with joy as she sweeps down the mountain.

 

Swimming

Of course, we wanted Alex to learn to swim. It is not only for self esteem and for pleasure but also a necessary life skill. Our favourite place was a spa baths on the Danube. The moment we arrived word went around and all the old men shrank with their wizened backs to the side of the pools. Any unwitting senior citizen away from the side and making his slow way across the pool could suddenly be leapt on from behind by an extremely strong Alexandra. Around his neck would go her arms and she would shout with triumph, "Let’s play bubbles!" And under would go the aged fellow. She was irresistible. 

 

Julia and I had seconds to rescue the aged citizen and to carry out revival techniques. Now Alexandra can swim a 25 metre length of the pool under water. She can swim in rough seas and thinks nothing of disappearing and coming up again. With that power she could close down an old people home but, fortunately, she is much more gentle and considerate these days.

 

Air travel

The first time we went by air, about five years ago, Alex cried continuously before we even got on the plane; her voice piercing and echoing in the waiting lounge at the airport. Those grown ups, nervous of travelling themselves or with only a tentative bond with their own identity became nervous and began to mutter and scowl about her. On the plane the only relief from her crying was when we let her crawl and slither under the seat in front and then go several rows in front of us before the steward hauled her out. She then found she could vault down the aisle swinging on the seat tops.

 

Now she stands in line at the gate, shows her ticket, finds her seat, sits down, buckles in and reads her book.

 

Calender game

Alexandra can give you the day for any date you give her. We have experimented as far ahead as 2050 and as far back as 1948.  If she is concentrating it takes her two seconds. We have no idea how she does it. I could do it but I would need half a day and a lot of paper. The strange thing is that she is not particularly good at adding and cant take away or multiply.

 

A few weeks ago we were invited to the house in Buda, of a retired Hungarian diplomat. He is an exceedingly intelligent man and rightfully confident in his ability to think things through and sort them out. We told him about Alexandra’s ability and he immediately gave Alex his date of birth happening to know the day of the week on which he was born: "1948 October 19," he said, with a slight smile. "Tuesday." said Alex walking past and holding her little dog under her arm. I don’t know how to describe our friends face. "Was it Tuesday?" I asked. "Yes." He replied weakly.

 

 

Written by Andrew Wright and Julia Dudas in September 2009 (Alex will be 13 in November).