Any parents of hyperlexic kids here?

kcisthebombdotcom

Dd loves to bring me her magnadoodle and have me draw her letters. I'll write words and she reads some too. I'm not sure if I should be indulging this behavior too much. Reading is kind of a stimming thing for her--she will do it when she gets overstimulated. Not too sure how to handle this--any insight?

typeset

Yup. That plus his echolalia lead me to suspect he had autism. I consider him type II since he has a firm Dx, but we'll see what he's like around four or five. We actively discourage it, especially once I read the decoding is not necessarily linked to comprehension. We try to find books without text (Mark Pett's The Boy and the Airplane is a good one) or have him tell the story along with us by examining pictures for clues and asking loads of wh- questions ("How does the girl feel? Why does she feel that way? What happened first, second, last?"). Others embrace it as a gift. Priscilla Gilman's writings about her son were helpful early on.

Micelle78

Ok, so I am one of those embracers!

My son has a speech delay and is almost 3.5yo as well as some echolalia and sensory avoidance with food, and non-cotton clothing and sensory seeking that appears to the untrained eye as little boy stuff (jumping on the couch over and over, headstands, somersaults, running and crashing into the couch, wanting to be wrestled all the time--like everyday).  He has been in speech for over a year and OT for 6 months.

Ok, so for me, I noticed a language explosion the last two months.  He is building sentences--like legit sentences and not just the ones we have practiced--like he sounds like a NT 2ish year old finally!  Yesterday he said "I hurt my hand.  Kiss it mommy"  

WHHAAATTT??? I seriously can't believe it. This is just one of many examples lately.

This explosion has totally coincided with him getting glasses this past August and finding out he is very farsided (this explained him running into edges of counters and door jams occasionally.)  I have read that a delay in language can be caused by vision issues.  This is not his total reason for a delay, but as his eye dr told me-- it certainly doesn't help him. 

Anyway, he has ALWAYS-- like since a few weeks before he turned 2, been fascinated by letters and numbers.  First it was capital letters and then he figured out the lowercase-- pretty much on his own.  (crazy memory) Then by a bit past three he was making letter sounds.  I came home the other day and he started reading random words.  I have seen him move his lips like he is sounding words out and then looks up at me and says the word.  He also calls out words at the store---drink, eggs, one, family (family friendly register) and countless others. I believe him to be hyperlexic Type 3.  We have never had him diagnosed.

Now I say that I embrace this because of two reasons.  1) They are going to read at some point and really, did you teach him?  Hyperlexics teach themselves a lot.  That is part of the mystery of it and most have a significant speech delay according to the definition. I have been doing a lot of reading on this condition lately-- so weird its a thread topic.

2) Here is my actual reason.  He is talking a lot more.  He sits with me and reads a book.  Points to the pictures.  He is super calm and enjoys telling me what the book says and that he knows whats in the pictures. He is so proud of himself. This to me is one more way to reach him.  We have plenty of issues with communication and I feel that we are communicating better because he and I are sharing a language even if not the conventional way.  Should he be able to talk before he reads.?.----Well sure and I wish that was the case.  I spend so much time trying to help him learn to understand language and this I feel this is a gift because it makes it that much easier.  I know he doesn't understand a lot of the "when" or "why" questions (or maybe he does and his lack of language keeps him from telling me). 

This last week I started to write it down.  I told him first dinner and then Kindle (he loves kindle).  I wrote a picture and words.  He read the words and looked and commented on my drawing.  So for me, this is a win.  We all have a journey with our kids and maybe some kids read as a stim, but its not the case for us.  Sorry for the book LOL

typeset

I confess we do play phonics games in the car when he gets bored. I also have a YouTube channel full of cringeworthy ASD-flag-laden videos of my wee babe showing off his superpowers. The neuro who did his initial Dx uses them with her students. 

kcisthebombdotcom

@auntie actually language delays go hand in hand with hyperlexia. By definiton, hyperlexia is a precocious reading ability accompanied with difficulties with acquiring language and social skills. @typeset my neurodevelopmental pedi isn't sure if were looking at type II or III yet or ADHD and/or ASD or nothing diagnosable. Lol. We got the "your child is one of the most fascinating cases I've ever seen in all my years of practice" line which is never what you want to hear. I signed a waiver to have her ADOS used for medical research. @micelle78 my neurodevelopmental pedi leans towards it being a gift as well since it gives you a means to teach language and social skills (though I have no idea how reading teaches social skills). Thanksgiving was tough though--she was grabbing my nephews magnadoodle to play that game vs socializing with the other kids so that kind of sucks. It's just tough to give up such a motivating back and forth play activity that works on motor skills (she will draw the letters than give it back to me to draw the next letter then read the word I wrote when its all spelled out). Ack.

lite-bright

My DD1 with ASD could read the alphabet, upper and lower case, before she could even pronounce them properly. I have a video of her at 20 months going through an alphabet book and identifying every letter. And when she got to "mem" (M), she looked at me and said, "mem -- Mama!" When we turned her car seat around at 23 months, she would "read" the railroad crossing signs (R/R) every time we passed. At around that age, she would look at the "thank you" written on the handlebar of the shopping cart and identify each letter, even though from her perspective they were upside down and backwards. However, she was also speech-delayed. Her word "explosion" at 18-ish months was all the letters of the alphabet, not words for communication. 

I think you have to be careful with any kind of stim. There were times we indulged her -- like letting her read books as long as she wanted on the potty while PTing -- and times that we basically said, "no, we're going to do something else right now" so that we could work on engagement better.  

She is in kindergarten now, and in a first grade reading group (stays with her own class for comprehension work) because her decoding skills are so strong. Honestly, now it's a confidence booster for her, because she gets a lot of positive feedback on her skills and she really sees reading as something she does well. And as long as she's doing plenty of other things -- drawing, playing with her sister, playing games with us, etc. -- we haven't restricted her access to books. I do sometimes hide certain ones that she latches onto after awhile, to encourage her to pick new ones and get her out of being "stuck." 

kcisthebombdotcom

-auntie- said:

KC_13 said:

@auntie actually language delays go hand in hand with hyperlexia. By definiton, hyperlexia is a precocious reading ability accompanied with difficulties with acquiring language and social skills. 

This is not exactly what I am seeing. Nor is it how DS's teams describe it. In fact, DS's pedi and psychologist were gobsmacked that he is dyslexic because the expected hyperlexic given his early speech/Asperger presentation. DH and I really had to fight to get it recognized because DS was able to fake it so well.

Granted, my perspective is a lot different than yours. I would say most of the hyperlexics I know have pretty awesome speech- sure glitches in pronoun use and pragmatics, but most bright kids with ASD are pretty verbal and many will actually "play" with language.

I also know a lot of kids who have reading disabilities. Not just kids with dyslexia, but also hyperlexic kids who have comprehension that ranges from not recognizing inference (like understanding it's winter in a book, for reading about the snow and early sunset) to not be able to process written words into meaning (a bit like me reading Spanish, my pronunciation is good but my ability to parse the meaning is way rusty). DS had a classmate at his reading school who was ridiculous in his ability to decode. I was at a science museum watching him read the descriptions of the exhibits flawlessly, but relying on the dyslexics to interpret and explain what he'd read. Hyperlexia looks different in older kids, especially in the context of a literature based curriculum. 

Maybe it's different because you got a diagnosis at school age but my neurodevelopmental pedi said many hyperlexic toddlers present with delayed language and social skills. Most go onto a asd dx but kids with type III essentially outgrow their autistic characteristics. If you're only seeing the school age hyperlexic kids with aspergers you've only gotten a small sample size.

kcisthebombdotcom

https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/hyperlexia https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/professional/savant-syndrome/resources/articles/hyperlexia-reading-precociousness-or-savant-skill/