Hyperlexia

[Stephanie]

Got a new book called "When Babies Read" about Hyperlexia in Aspergers and HFA's - fantastic!!! Everything makes sense to me now. I thought it was a bit weird that my 20 month old could recite the alphabet backwards, read and write from an early age ... this book has made it all so clear and has great tips on how to access imagination, role play and abstract concepts.

 

Has anyone had hyperlexia actually recognised in their child in this country?? It seems like people here do not use it as a diagnosis, I am not saying that my child isn't HFA because I think he is, but I think he has hyperlexia running along side. Not classic hyperlexia either, now he communicates better, he understands what he is reading and has lost a lot of his classic autistic traits (flapping, obsessions, finishing a task, routines etc).

 

Does anyone know if this subject is being looked at over here, or why it doesn't exist.

 

It's hard because I know he has it, yet no one else seems interested or able to steer him into the direction he needs in terms of development.

[florrie]

Some of the so called experts dealing with asds that I have seen didn't even know what hyperlexia was, which is very frustrating because I think it does need to be recognised properly so that appropriate interventions can be used if necessary. I think it is up to us who understand it to insist on this, and hopefully get better recognition and appropriate intervention for it ,there appears to very little recognition or understanding of it in this country, well that has been my experience of it unless anyone knows better or had different experiences, i suspect there may be a growing awareness with some child professionals with asds.

 

There is also some diagreement among professional and experts in the US about whether it is an asd or not it is considered a savant splinter skill running alongside asd. I have the asd traits and have had assessments including ados which put me on spectrum so my feeling is that hyperlexia is an asd, but of course it all depends on what people think hyperlexia is it is not simply being able to read early it is more complex than that, it is usually with very little comprehension to what you have read, and the difficultie with abstract concepts which is not always obvious to others which is why it gets missed.

[denise2]

Our son knew his alphabet in both phonic and name by 18 months old and he was reading at the age of 2. We asked our health visitor for help and we were told " If you don't stop teaching him you will have to pay for a private school as he won't fit in to mainstream". We weren't teaching him.

 

All the way along we were blamed for being pushy parents so we eventually kept it to ourselves. Our son was eventually diagnosed AS just after his 9th birthday and it all fell into place. he is 11 now and home educated and couldn't be happier.

[Lucas]

I could not read at all until one day when I was eight I just started reading at an adult level. It was never really fussed over because I was refusing to read out loud, but the only way I could read out loud was to remember a sentence then repeat it otherwise I'd have to be doing awkward multi-tasking. So the impression was that I was a slow reader and it was only when a non-idiot teacher asked me a few questions about the story when I had got through a book very fast that they decided to apply the 'send him to the library for the rest of the day' method.

 

I guess the teacher knew that explaining this to a bunch of box-ticking pond-life would be futile as they had already decided my reading must be impaired if I can't read out loud in real-time. I can read text very fast but comprehension suffers if I rush too much. I consider myself to be Hyperlexic.

[krystaltps]

It's a bit of a coincidence.... my 7-year-old is going through the diagnosis for AS at the moment. He's just finished with his assessments with the ed psych, who discovered Callum has a reading age of nearly 10. He was quite confused, because Callum's spelling and writing were both at about 7 1/2, the ed psych couldn't think why the strands would be so separated. I wonder....... it would make sense I suppose.

[Lucas]

People don't just make demands of me, everything in the enviroment is making demands of me, books or signs too.

 

Books make simple demands though, there is no human element to complicate things. If a task require reading, instructions for example, I can read and follow and if I read again what I am told by written word does not change each and every time.

 

Writing and spelling though have a strong human element, you're being asked to meet the demands of other people who often do not make what they want clear or change their mind about it constantly. They want you to 'feel' what they want you to do, not think. This is utterly alien. All original writing will have a small bit of idiosyncracy tailored to the writor but allowences are not always made. When having to write fictitious short stories at school, my stories were always awful but the grammer and spelling were perfect- not just to me, but perfect according to the most Autistic way it can be imagined.

 

I wrote stories and the narrative had perfect grammar, but people in the stories did not speak with perfect grammar(I knew from experience because I was often confused by what people said, that real people do not ever speak with correct grammar). English teachers would often penalise me for marks because fictitious people in the story did not have good grammar, but realistically they were not meant to. This is one case of how the person asking for something does not make their request specific enough from the Autistic point of view.

 

An Autistic child will always win Simon Says, if there is more than one, it will go on forever unless they mis-hear. I would always argue during games of Simon Says, the person running the game were never specific enough. If they should say "Keep going" while we were jumping on the spot, I would immediately stop before having to explain that Simon didn't say keep going when I'm sent off.

 

I wasn't able to complete a course in effective youth work two years back for the same reason. We were given a lot to read, which I of course read very quickly, but there was a lot to write too. I had at max after eight months, about five pages of written work whilst everyone else had piles. The course paper we had telling us what units there were and how to complete them was trying to be as inclusive as possible: broadening the criteria for success so far that the langauge was not specific enough for me to even begin to understand. I had written so little because I had no idea what I was being asked to write. By being overly inclusive, this course was effectively excluding me.

[Ohforaquietlife]

Thank you Lucas for that really interesting insight.

 

My 8 year old son is also hyperlexic and I am just discovering ways to communicate with him using the written word. He can use very little meaningful verbal language at this stage. Your post has given me some things to think about and some answers as to why although he seems able to understand exactly what we want him to do when we write things down, he is finding it difficult - but not impossible -to reply in writing to us. The fact that you as a hyperlexic yourself have progressed to the point that you can express yourself so eloquently gives me great hope for my son for the future.

 

Thanks

 

ohf!

[Stephanie]

Yeah and me Lucas, thanks!

 

Whilst on this thread ... I would love to hear of any stories, about why people think their kids are hyperlexic and the things they have achieved.