A Life With Autism: Summit Hill Junior High Student Expresses Himself Through His Art

Last week, we wrote about Mokena teen Alex Joss, whose art was recently featured as part of a larger children's show in Frankfort. The Joss family—Jay, Laurel, Alex, 13, and Tyler, 9—let us meet with Alex for a quick snapshot of their lives.

Alex Joss is a bright and happy 13-year-old, enthused about his life.

The Summit Hill Junior High School seventh-grader speaks rapidly about his teachers, about things and people he's seen. He talks about when a babysitter broke a plate. He talks about the Halloween decorations he made for the house. His room is decorated in numbers and in drawings he’s done.

Alex Joss has autism.

"When he was 1, he was talking," his mother Laurel Joss said. "And then he stopped talking."

READ: Art Helps Mokena Teen Handle Autism

The family, who moved to Mokena from Tinley Park while Laurel was pregnant, took Alex to speech therapists, hoping that would provide the key. The diagnosis soon determined otherwise.

"It was tough, definitely," Laurel Joss said.

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects social and communication skills. It's a spectrum, with sufferers ranging from very high functioning to completely non-communicative.

And somewhere on that spectrum is Alex. Alex communicates with the world, although his mother describes his way of speaking as "idiosyncratic." He gets overwhelmed in social situations, at which point he often falls back on drawing as a way of calming himself.

Alex has been drawing identifiable figures since he was 2. Some of his art was recently in a children’s art show at Monkey Mind Art Studio & Gallery in Frankfort.

In addition to drawing people and things in his life and re-creating book covers, Alex writes and illustrates his own books. One example is Brenda's Trip to the Hospital, which his parents think might be named after one of his aides when he was younger.

When Alex was 2, his parents gave him a Magna Doodle to play with. He not only would draw identifiable figures, but would draw something and then re-create it upside down, Alex's father Jay Joss said.

Children draw, but their illustrations of the oven aren't in three-point perspective. Their replicas of the Little Critter book covers don't match the distinctive handwriting font author Mercer Mayer uses.

Jay Joss talks proudly about the details Alex adds in his drawing and sculpting, down to adding eyelashes on clay penguins.

"He's real, real good with clay and Play-Doh," Jay Joss said.

Jay and Laurel give Alex some free reign over the house, Jay said. Alex hung the pictures in many of the halls and did the Halloween decorations.

"(There was) a kitty pumpkin where I colored the ears black," Alex said.

Other times, Alex's art is a surprise. His parents will find he has converted a toy workbench into a replica of the kitchen stove or that he has decorated his room and the hallway with the numbers from one to 100.

The Josses sometimes find Alex has rearranged the pantry, or even the furniture.

"He just has an idea in his mind of what he likes things to look like," Laurel Joss said.

"It usually looks nice, but then we can't find anything," she added, laughing.