James acts oddly

I had a phone call from the Welfare Officer at James' school. I had been expecting it. After all, it was only a matter of time.

"We are very concerned about James' odd behaviour," she said.

"Oh really?" I answered innocently. "What's he been doing?"

"The Headteacher found him in the playgroup yesterday walking round a dustbin," she said. "Just walking round and round. He was making himself really dizzy. A whole crowd of boys had gathered to watch him. The Head was concerned that a fight might break out, so she went out to ask him what he was doing. He answered that he was trying to set a new world record for walking around a dustbin. She took him into her office and had Stern Words with him. It contravenes Health and Safety you know."

That Health and Safety legislation must be really comprehensive. It was hard to think of a suitable answer. I did my best however.

I explained that James was a benign schizotype, which means that he has a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia. I explained that, when his brain is overloaded with tiredness, stress, noise or excitement he loses "situational awareness" and enters a sort of dream state. If he has lost the plot enough to be trying to lose consciousness then he is presumably very worried about something. The Head then giving him a telling off could make him hallucinate, forget where he is or imagine that she is a demon or a bowl of tulips. Far better, in my opinion, to sit him down somewhere quiet, give him a glass of water and then calmly and quietly ask him what is the matter.

I regretted not having mentioned James' weird tendencies before to the school, but explained that I am fed up of teachers, support staff and even doctors thinking that I have delusional tendencies. It tends to work out better if people realise that James is odd, and then come to me for help puzzling him out.

His last teacher at Primary School understood him very well. She used to send him on imaginary errands around the school at about 2pm, which woke him up a bit. She realised that otherwise he started seeing fairies and ghosts at around 2:30. Even so she didn't get it right every time. She didn't realise that, once his brain overloaded, he lost the power of speech and so couldn't tell her he was losing his grip on reality. When he was compelled to go to a school disco he ended up crouched in the boys' toilets with his eyes screwed shut and his fingers in his ears. His teacher had no idea that anything was wrong at the time and afterwards he felt too ashamed to tell her.

Despite my lack of faith (we schizotypes are mildly paranoid) the Welfare Officer at Big School showed a great deal of concern. She would like to get James recognised as requiring extra support (I think it means extra funding for the Welfare Office) and so suggested that they refer him to a psychologist. I answered that if they could find a psychologist that was up to speed with schizotypy I would eat James' shorts, but I would be very happy to be proved wrong. Even if he can't get on the Officially Odd list, it would help him a lot if his teachers could be educated in ways to deal with an overloading schizotype. They don't get training in dealing with hallucinating students.