Or is my hyperlexic 3 year old actually neither ….

My daughter is hyperlexic, she was sight reading very competently at 2. At 6 had a reading age of 10, I suspected ND and at 4 years she absolutely presented as Autistic. As time goes on, I'm not sure what to think.

My son had a 1-1 arranged by his speech therapist for pre school. He was there I think about two weeks before she started as it all wasn't quite sorted by the time he started. He didn't have much awareness of danger but it was mainly due to his communication issues.

People picking apart the OP's comment about EHCP for 1:1 - I would strongly suspect that either:

• the nursery don't fully understand the scope of EHCPs and the level of support that children typically get. This isn't completely unreasonable, because many nursery's initiate the needs assessments but never see the final EHCP because the child is at school by that time.

• OP misunderstood the nursery explaining. I often tell parents that it should allow their child to receive extra support, and they interpret this as meaning 1:1. It's completely understandable

I've got to say the reasons you've listed here are exactly why my children had EHCPs and 1:1s in nursery. I was really surprised when OP said her nursery were going for it.

Maybe you already have a list or its worth writing a list of all his traits/ symptoms whatever you want to call them and posting here or cross referencing online with autism as I and most people reading your comments aren't seeing this clash that you are so maybe you've missed details.

Your list will be useful for when he has his assessment anyway as they ask a very thorough questionnaire about the child's very early childhood.

He sounds like my nephew.

Nephew now 12. Not remotely autistic just really, really clever. Popular at school, very talented at music, sociable, polite, welll behaved. He is happy, relaxed, does well at and enjoys school & various hobbies.

Still has a very "sensory" side!

I think there must be something big missing in your understanding or description of the situation.

You describe your child as being easy, calm, no metdowns, ahead with reading at age 3.

What would justify 1:1 support?

Do they run off, self harm, have no sense of danger, harm other children regularly, smear faeces, have pica... these are the sorts of things that would perhaps lead to 1:1 support being considered at this age.

There's lots in your posts that indicate possible autism. There's nothing that seems to indicate any sigbificant extra support being needed at this stage.

Your point being?
My son was diagnosed as autistic when he was 3 . That was in the 1990s when far fewer were diagnosed, but children tended to be diagnosed at a younger age, possibly because it was only children with more 'severe' autism who were diagnosed.

@ForWorthyTiger in the nicest possible way, you have a long road ahead if you're going to take it upon yourself to diagnose/not diagnose your own child. I understand that you are concerned and wish to be the best advocate for him, but it seems to me like you can't see the wood from the trees at the moment. Please protect your mental health and the ability to care for your son properly by dealing with what he is presenting with right now.

As it stands, the help of a good speech and language therapist and weekly sessions would be enormously helpful.

He is displaying significant communication and developmental issues and while you don't believe he ticks an ASD box, it's important to remember that so many ND's can co-exist with others, that your child is only three, and that oftentimes, difficulties can only become apparent as their world becomes more challenging. I have no doubt that a diagnosis will come but rather than all this focus on hyperlexia, you need to prioritise what will help him and address his needs currently. Speech and language therapy would be a good start.

I am 99.9% sure my son is hyperlexic. He's 7 now, and in primary 3. (We are in Scotland)

He's been able to read, solve puzzles etc since age 2. He also had a speech delay and seen a speech & language therapist.

We entertained the Autisim route - but his S&L therapist said there wasn't "enough" to encourage a diagnosis as far as she was concerned, and if we wanted to pursue a diagnosis we'd have to go down the paediatric route. After much thought, we declined.

DS is in mainstream school, and is excelling in both literacy and numeracy. He has friends, albeit not the most popular boy in the class. In all honesty, I still don't know if my son is autistic or not. But I don't feel a diagnosis would make a blind bit of difference.

We're very lucky. His mainstream school is extremely supportive of all his little quirks and niches.

Hyperlexia is not well recognised like dyslexia so I understand your furstrations.

I don't really have an end to this response but just wanted to share with you the similarities

Yes. I think I'm missing something important here. Your child sounds like he is doing fine and you sound hyper focussed on if this is ASD or ADHD. I don't really understand your worries, other than you could try and put your focus elsewhere and see how this plays out.

Could your DC just be quite intelligent in a way destined to probably do well in English. That could be a good thing? Differences in development and strengths and skills are normal and good and healthy.

The way that the OP's child is learning is most likely causing the speech delay. Gestalt learning is prevalent in hyperlexic children. They don't learn word by word, they learn blocks of words, a whole sentence, a whole group of animals etc. It takes much longer for their brains to organise and use the word. When they do use the words, sometimes for hyperlexics (not all) they are just repeating memorised content vs understanding the meaning of the word, so the process can be very slow, and presents as a speech delay.

Hmm, I'd say the opposite. The 'can't do' list is not really consequential stuff for a 3 year old.

Ease back and let him be himself. The only thing I'm really concerned by is nursery suggesting ECHP in preparation. I've never heard of this happening so soon,

Neurodivergence is treated as a deficiency, accommodations are made to allow the ND person to be more 'normal' and therefore be included. As ND people, we are much more than a deficiency, many have skills way beyond the average person, but no, this will not be taken into account. No-one will be interested until such point as your child can be useful to others - by which point many ND people are utterly disillusioned.

Honestly, OP, it's very much on you to nurture and develop those skills and try and protect him for the narrative that he is lacking.

@ForWorthyTiger

My DS11 is hyperlexic (according to the educational psychologist) and has learnt to talk gestalt style. He is also an excellent reader but struggled with comprehension. He has ASD and is also a sensory seeker. He didn't talk from ages 2-4 after typical speech development til he was 2.

He has an ehcp and just moved to a special school from mainstream.

It isn’t part of hyperlexia. It can go alongside hyperlexia, but it isn’t part of it. Most hyperlexic kids don’t have any speech problems.

Interesting post. I'm a mum of a recently diagnosed hyperlexic with gestalt learning 2.5 year old boy. He barely spoke until age 2, and when he did his second word was to point at a number and correctly name it. He then knew everything in batches. All the letters, all the numbers, all the animals, all the shapes. He is reading sight words already, and his 5 year old sister can't. It was textbook gestalt but we didn't know what it was at the time. He has had a huge amount of speech growth in the last 3 months, it is so amazing to finally have him learn to communicate. From age 1-2 we thought he was just developing his physical side more than speech, as he ran and jumped and climbed everywhere. It was ADHD/ADD hyperactive in nature and largely uncontrollable. He still struggles with staying seated for meals etc.

What he can't do easily right now though is integrate into his nursery group normally. He walks up to children and doesn't know how to start a conversation or initiate play. He wants to, and tries to, but he just can't get it right and gives up. His diagnosing therapist noted that we need to pull him away from the books and heavily focus him in nursery relationships, play dates, help teach him how to integrate and have "normal" play based relationships with other children, or he will really struggle as he gets older. To yout point though: the therapist also said that he isn't autistic. He doesn't shy away from eye contact, hugs etc. He actively seeks them out. She did say he likely will have some form of spectrum attributes as he is simply wired differently. I don't think this is autism though in his case, and do wonder if hyperlexia (type 3 - i'm aware there are others that do have more ASD influences) is somehow the opposite of dyslexia and both just have differently wired brains. I guess in the realm of toddlers, who knows?

Is not talking properly at 3.5 part of hyperlexia then? Genuine question. I would have thought that was a speech delay.

I understand your concerns for your DS and desire for him to have an education that meets him where he is. But I'm not sure your child is as puzzling as you think he is! "Spikey profile" - strong skills in some areas, deficits/differences in others - is a pretty well recognised thing in autistic people.

From what you've written here, he very much sounds autistic. If he didn't point until over 2, speaks in gestalts, has expressive language ahead of receptive, enjoyed reciting the alphabet at 18 months (repetitive behaviour), seeks out sensory input - you're ticking a lot of boxes. No one with ASD displays every trait. That's what a spectrum disorder means - that individuals with it display traits from a spectrum, not that there's a line from NT to ND that everyone sits on. Not having meltdowns probably means that you and nursery can accommodate his needs, which is great, or that he responds differently to stressful situations (shutting down, for example). Low attention can result from sensory differences, and differences in social motivation associated with autism.

It is actually not uncommon for children to have decoding skills beyond comprehension, especially if they've learnt to read through some form of synthetic phonics (or, in your son's case, they naturally like systems). Good teachers will be checking for reading comprehension - even my reception DS's phonics books have comprehension questions attached.

A good EHCP will be written for an individual child's needs, not with blanket approaches for their diagnosis. A good classroom teacher will engage with parents about how best to help their child, and will understand that all autistic children, are individuals. My DS has never been treated as "the little autistic boy." The best thing you can do is educate yourself on the EHCP process and law (for example, the fact that there are children with higher needs than your son doesn't bar him from specialist school) rather than being concerned about the precise diagnosis.

Hi, I have read OP posts but not the full thread.
I am a longstanding autism specialist.

You are right to think that nobody should be thinking 'i have this autistic child coming into my class so they will be anxious and need pre warning of changes and I will do a visual timetable and write some "social stories" (badly) and that will sort it out'.

However I don't understand outside if that sort of thinking shortcut what it is that you mean by "autism approaches" that don't work. Any intervention should be identified in an outcome (something we would like to be different following a period of intervention) and should be based on an assessment of his needs, whatever they are. Assessment is used there in its widest sense - could be observation, consultation, discussion, testing, all sorts of ways to assess.

I don't really understand why you feel hyperlexia and sensory seeking with gestalt language processing and delayed/atypical interaction and communication is not consistent with autism. The hyperlexia is a symptom - of advanced pattern recognition skills and good visual /auditory rote memory skills - also evidenced in GLP language acquisition. It's very consistent with autism given that he isn't a generally highly able child reading early with comprehension.

The main danger in this sort of presentation is that it can be hard for school staff to get a grasp of his language comprehension and may overestimate his comprehension of speech and vocabulary, especially if technical words are included in some of his gestalts.

It sounds like his primary intervention focus should probably be on shared attention as this is the foundation of classroom/ group based learning - the ability to pay attention to an activity one has not chosen, at a time one has not chosen.

Hyperlexia isn't a disorder, why would it be in the DSM. It's a fancy way of saying advanced skills with reading. There is no need to try and turn it in to a disorder, diagnose children and get them extra help. There are children with very significant delays with their development in desperate need of support that isn't available. There are children with serious mental health issues with their lives at risk waiting years for assessment and support. They need to be the focus. Let's not add more strain on services by trying to turn a strength in to a disorder.

TBH apart from the hyperlexia he sounds like my daughter who I thought had ADHD but is actually autistic.

He won't be treated as "an autistic child" he will be more likely to get appropriate support with a diagnosis.

All the things that I assumed were just weird family quirks; autism. I'm probably autistic too 🤷🏼‍♀️

Autism is more of a buffet than a set menu.

I feel like a bit of an idiot for sticking to "she's not autistic" for so long tbh.

Same! But even though i can remember names (and other details) perfectly if written down, I am really bad at matching names to faces. I hadn't actually connected the hyperlexia in childhood to being good at pattern recognition (which I am good at and is a key part of my job) but it makes sense.

I learnt to read extremely young, and struggled with verbal communication. I think (or the adults thought) it was because I learned to read words on the page before I had learnt to talk properly (because I was reading well before 3). So I would pronounce words the way I thought they should be pronounced based on how they were written if that makes sense. And actually prioritised the way i read words over how I heard them. I was also quite stubborn. I had speech therapy and that basically sorted it out eventually. I would say now, I am a fast reader but I make spelling mistakes/grammatical errors the way a lot of people do. So I didn't grow to be a savant of the written word. I also didn't grow to have issues with verbal communication (and don't have autism).

Your son sounds slightly different because alongside his precocious reading he seems to have other quirks as well - seeing a stick as a letter shape rather than a stick is maybe more than just having issues communicating directly because of hyperlexia. I guess that it would fit the "restricted or repetitive interests" symptom of autism. Just rather than fixating on dinosaurs or types of cars he is fixated on letters to the extent his whole play is centred around the alphabet. The other issues he has "that he cannot follow social routines within the day nor can he fully do age appropriate self care skills. He also cannot express many of his basic needs. Not toilet trained but has some awareness!" don't, as you say relate directly to hyperlexia. They seem like separate issues to that.

So I would keep an open mind for the time being and not write of autism/ADHD. Because hyperlexia doesn't explain the issues you are struggling with/worried about. Of course it might be nothing diagnosable, and he might just be a very individual child. I think the problem is, while the techniques for hyperlexia might help more than those for autism I guess the techniques for hyperlexia won't be designed to help with toilet training/social routines etc. So I would remain open to the possibility it could be autism.

Wrt the stick/ Y thing - I'd consider that a form of order seeking or ordering. He is translating random and randomly shaped objects into the order offered by the 26 alphabet letters.

I'd focus on his speech delay if I were you. Have you ever been offered speech therapy?

What do you mean by "social routines"?
What self care skills can he not accomplish and is he defiant about doing these (throws a tantrum, insists on mummy doing things for him) or just helpless/ doesn't seem to understand how to (for eg. pull up his own trousers)?