Anyone dealing w/ hyperlexia?

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My boy is almost 7 and has been reading since 2, extreme fascination with letters and numbers, low reading comprehension- sound familiar? Looking for parents to share ideas with! Thanks!

I hope you don't mind me replying since I am not a parent, but I was born with hyperlexia. I spoke in complete sentences at barely a year old and I was reading and writing at 3. It was a sign that I had nonverbal learning disability but no one knew about that syndrome when I was young. I'm 40 now.

The good news is, I grew up to be a "verbal genius." I'm above 97% of the population in verbal skills. I've written and published two books.

But, I haven't been able to hold down a job, so I live on disability. I hope you use every intervention you have available (and I know you will) to help your child succeed.

Children are so much luckier these days with all the expanded knowledge and interventions available.

I'm a bit of a paradox. I seem to have both dyslexia (diagnosed) and hyperlexia (verbal IQ ~150). I was reading/writing on a 6th grade level by the time I turned five, yet letters bounce around on the page or appear upside-down to me. It's kind of bizarre. A computer helps, as I can highlight text while I am reading.

Wow, you are quite interesting.

Whitetiger- actually I was rather hoping that an adult hyperlexic would answer! Being a music teacher with special ed experience I could tell early on that my son had some odd behaviors that I was not comfortable with so I had him tested by 20 months old. Should have done it earlier but I was afraid that I was being an over-concerned mother. Now I know better than to ignore my instincts. Kyle went through early intervention starting at 22 months old- which is a few months before we know about his talents with letters and numbers. He also had childhood apraxia of speech, which is a remediable neurological condition that prevents the mouth from interpreting what the brain wants it to say. So he couldn't talk! But when he got his first alphabet puzzle it soon became clear what he was capable of. We should have known at 8 1/2 months old when he would turn the pages of the book we were reading to him at the right time in the story... we just thought it was cute that he could tell by the rhythm of the words. Now I think it was more than that. His articulation is very good now and still has speech/language therapy in school. He has been in inclusion programs since 3 years old. We happen to live in a district that takes special education very seriously- we moved here on purpose- I actually grew up here so I was familiar with what they do. And even better, I was told recently that since he is labeled pdd-nos/hyperlexia/semantic-pragmatic LD, he is eligible for medicaid and any service that we ask for- I'm leaning toward horseback riding therapy, social skills groups, bowling, and sensory/OT therapy in and outside of school hours. So I'm waiting for the intake coordinator to get back from vacation so we can get this thing rolling!

Our big problem at the moment is explosive behavior. If something is too easy, like categorizing words by their beginning blends (pr-, cl-, br-) he doesn't want to do it. Too hard, like reading comprehension, doesn't want to do it. And he goes nuclear if he's not first in line unless their is a pre-determined order in which they stand. Kicking, screaming, throwing chairs. And if someone isn't perfectly behind someone else he'll move them over! I somewhat understand the need to have a straight line- I have ADD w/ anxiety and a bit of OCD- but I'm looking for ways to help him understand that it's just not that important to be first, that first doesn't mean best. And God bless his teachers, they are trying everything under the sun with him, they've been in special ed for a very long time but haven't encountered anyone like my boy before!

If you could give me ANY insight into what he's thinking or feeling I would be so grateful. You are correct in saying that children are fortunate these days to be better understood. I often feel very lucky that he was born when he was and not even 10-15 years ago. So much more is known now about ASD's. My sister is an undiagnosed Aspie (she's 34 now) and my parents and the teachers just didn't know what to do with her at the time. My mom is just now starting to understand only because of my son and the childhood similarities between the two.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you find it hard to hold down a job? Is it organizational skills, or maybe discomfort with social interaction? I just need to know as much as possible for the sake of my son, we are trying to instill a sense of independence even now at only 6 years old to make it easier for him later in life, but I'm ALWAYS concerned that maybe I'm not doing the right things and what could I do better? My husband, thankfully, is right there with me every step of the way, and quite often understands Kyle and what he's thinking better than I do (he has some aspie qualities but is very organized and analytical, the best of both worlds I guess). So I'm not alone in this fight but sometimes I feel like I am- which I know is ridiculous. I guess I'm just being a normal mom.

Please send me the titles of your books, I'd like to look them up in our library! And thank you so very much.

jen

Kaysea, did you have outburst-type problems in school? How do you deal with reading comprehension problems?

Whitetiger I also meant to ask you about reading comp. Kyle is using a comprehension program designed for hyperlexics, can't remember the name, and I guess he's making some progress. I'd be interested to know WHY comprehension is so difficult for him.

Thank you so much everyone!

Hi, I'm finding this post very interesting. I'm really looking forward to some more replies. I think my son has this problem to. I say I think because noone has ever put a name to it before. Last year my son under took a nation wide test he was in grade 3 at the time, one of the tests included reading- the outcome was he can read at a 9th grade level. The school he was in always kept putting him in remedial reading classes. I kept telling them he could read but they wouldn't believe me. He wouldn't read to them and he would wriggle or fall asleep in the remedial reading classes (The books were boring and there was just to much sensory stuff in the room) We didn't find out about his aspergers till the end of 2007 (grade 2).

By the way his first word was said at 5 1/2 months old. He could also point out in books the pictures and the words of anything we were asking for.

Having said all that his comprehension isnt on par with his ability. He forever surprises me by asking what does something mean, it may even be a word that he has used or we have used for years. Eg, he asked me one day in the car "MUM WHAT DOES SIMPLE MEAN?"

I dont get it. Anyone that can shed some light, I would be very greatfull.

cheers aurea

Hi Aurea, go to these sites, they were very helpful to me.

http://westwingpublishing.com/hyperlexi ... ctory.html
http://www.hyperlexia.org/

When my boy spelled his name from blocks at just 2 years old I hopped on the web and got to work researching what the heck I had just witnessed! I sort of diagnosed him myself until I found someone who understood the problem and gave the official dx. There is a lot of arguement over whether or not hyperlexia is a splinter condition of asd or whether it's a stand-alone condition. From what I've found it's most often connected with ASD but occasionally a stand-alone. I just think it's silly to fight over that, let's just figure out how to help these kids!

I'm a former music teacher but I'm thinking about getting a degree in social work so that I can help, specifically, families affected by hyperlexia and other higher functioning asd's. Mostly because it's what I know most about, but more importantly HL is an area of asd that most people don't know about and we've had a tough time finding good strategies to use. I also hope that more people add to this post!

My kindergartner also has this. He was speech delayed and didn't babble at all. He laughed and had eye contact though. At 2 when he started talking - he would choose to say words like "octagon" but wasn't into social language like bye-bye. I found a piece of paper with his name written on it when he was 26 months old and I knew - yikes! at that point. Sitting in a car, he could tell when we went a different route - even though he couldn't talk. We would see his head turn and a frown. He would chase his shadow at age 2-4, and was not at all interested in other kids, but he outgrew those kid of autistic looking traits by about age 5.5.

There are some good books like "Reading too soon" and "When babies read" that have great info about how to help them. With early intervention, my son has become more social and we've learned how to help his sensory issues - especially dealing with noise. He is also a math whiz. What makes this unique is I never taught him to read - this is not like those parents who teach their kids to read young by doing programs, etc.. he just soaked it up himself. He's a systemizer - he loves any patterns, so that's why he was able to pick up on the patterns of the written word. At 14 months - my son could put together floor puzzles amazingly quickly at any angle.

What they need to be taught, (at least in my case) is how to play with others well, and how to discuss what they read and work out their sensory issues. And that should be done at whatever level of comprehension that have - not what they can decode. They use little chapter books in his kindergarten class as a "reward' for behaving, socializing and staying on task at school. And he just loves that.

Well, the former is boring because it's mastered. The latter is boring because it's frustrating.

I was startled in kindergarten to learn that people were not born knowing how to read. I read at a college level at around age six.

I wonder what the 'reading comprehension' material and program is like? I could, and did, read scientific journals a child and understand them, but I also had this Hemingway phase and was rather amazed to read him again as an adult and realise that when I was nine I had no fricking idea what Hemingway was about. I had access to Hemingway's words because I could read very well, but I didn't have access to his meaning because I was nine.



Not knowing how to articulate what 'simple' means by itself isn't the same as failing to comprehend its meaning as part of a complete thought.

I don't know if it's true of everybody who's hyperlexic, but there's a quality of recieving written information in great big chunks rather than constructing it by stringing it together word by word. You may ignore a word and get the correct inform#ation, just as you just ignored the # in there without it messing up your understanding. If the # was laden with meaning and you didn't know what the meaning was, you'd incorrectly comprehend, though. So you might ask, to eliminate or correct for that possibility. Or it may be just a case of knowing the meaning of a word without being able to articulate that meaning. I drew a blank the other day trying to tell someone what 'temerity' means and it's not because I don't know. I looked it up in a dictionary not to learn its meaning but to learn a way to say what it means.

I wonder if the comprehension problem isn't related to the big-chunks phenomenon. If I do the super-hyperlexic 'read a whole page at once by staring at it for about twenty seconds' trick I can't remember what it said at all until about fifteen minutes later, and if it was incoherent, say, a work of sociology, I might have some very funny ideas about what it means and need to read it again the 'proper' way.

i thought for awhile that our daughter was hyperlexic....not so sure anymore. she comprehends some, but not all of what she reads.....mostly in the realm of inferencing, & implied meanings.