Anyone have experience of hyperlexia?

[SinkGirl]

Looks like we are heading down this route with one of our twins. He’s always been obsessed with numbers and letters and recently discovered he can put all numbers and letters in the right order and has memorised some spelling (eg. He has a magnetic whiteboard with magnetic letters and numbers - yesterday I put the digits up1-10 and he spelled all the words next to them). He’s been copying out words for a while but obviously he has memorised some words.

I know that hyperlexia generally means reading / spelling with limited or no understanding. He is autistic and completely non verbal, no attempts at speech at all. They’re 4, by the way. They are both generally delayed across the board other than gross motor so I’m finding it quite incredible that there’s all this information stored in his brain and I have no idea what he knows or doesn’t know. Understanding of spoken words seems to be very limited but impossible to know for sure.

Just wondering if anyone has any experience of helping develop these skills to aid communication / understanding? In a bit of limbo at the moment due to COVID in terms of SALT so any experience / ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you - we do most of those things and he’s good at asking for help when he needs it but it’s generally pulling your hand to what he wants etc. He is making more eye contact recently and sharing emotions more. Until recently I wasn’t sure he understood any spoken words but I now think he does.

At school i had a very advanced reading age and often needed dispensation to be allowed to bring my own books in, or access to the older children library books.. i branched into writing poetry and stories as an adult, and i'm an avid reader of books.

That was exactly me when I was little. I remember saying to my mum after my Nan died that I wish I knew how she had taught me to read so young, but now I’m wondering if maybe she didn’t and I just learnt myself. I’ve always had this weird feeling that I know how to spell things instinctively which can’t possibly be true, but I guess I took a lot in when I was little, more than I realised.

I actually don’t care whether he can talk or not - I do hope he can learn to communicate some way fluently so he can express his thoughts as he’s obviously very bright and there’s a lot going on in his head.

my dd thought all daddies had curly hair at because her daddy did - it's tricky to think how she understands the world, and that she'd first identity a dad by how they looked.

Not helpful sink but the borrow their brain for a day struck a cord. If anyone has any book recommendations for visual learners?

Oh I really would love to do a Freaky Friday with both my twins. Actually that’s even more true for DT2 as they know he’s visually impaired but no one knows what he can see or what things look like to him. I would love to know.

Been thinking about getting some of the first reading books they use in schools but no idea what I’m looking for.

I shouldn’t be surprised really as he spends so much time playing literacy games on an iPad - basically like shape sorters with letters and words though. Today he was playing a game where he has to draw shapes and the word appears first so tomorrow I’ll draw the shapes on his whiteboard and see if he can spell them. Every time I think he won’t be able to do something, he does. It was only a few weeks ago I was surprised he could link a letter to a word, now he’s spelling. Just feel like if I can find the right methods he can learn so much.

My 4 kids all pretty much taught themselves to read using Starfall which I believe is still going. I prefer it over letter land etc. Might be worth showing him?

Thank you, I will look at those.

The difficulty with a lot of systems is they assume speech / fluent understanding of speech, existing understanding of constructing sentences etc since that’s the case for most children learning to read - I’ve lost count of the number of toys / apps we’ve tried that we can’t use because they give spoken instructions.

that's amazing for 4 that you've found that so early. Finding the key to help them learn is the hardest thing.