Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

SN children

Here are some suggested organisations that offer expert advice on special needs.

Flip

1 2 3

Original poster

ASD and obsession with Letters and words

57 replies

mumof2terrors · 26/04/2011 19:56

Hi there

Just wanted to know if anyone had any thoughts....My DS is 30 months old not dx as yet but am pretty sure he has asd. Thing is he seems obsessed with letters and numbers he literally breaks his neck looking at the asda or tesco signs as we drive past. He loves books and could spend all day looking at his picture book.

We are starting his ABA program mid May and was wondering if anyone else had a DC with these issues and what came out of it? could he be teaching himself to read?

any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated

OP posts:

Marne · 27/04/2011 13:32

Thanks Ellen, She's changed so much sinse then but still loves her letters and numbers , she's doing great in MS school and her speach is improving each day, watching that video makes me realise how far she has come.

asdx2 · 27/04/2011 13:37

Aww Marne she is such a sweetie. Magnetic letters were the love of ds's life too at that age. We used to have "word of the day" where he'd get up and create a word over and over throughout the day. They were all random and sometimes we couldn't work out where he'd picked them up because he didn't need to copy them they'd just appear.It is a great skill to have though ds learned to speak through reading and he still communicates better by email and writing than he does through speech (when he chooses to speak)

Marne · 27/04/2011 13:45

Thanks asdx2, her favorite thing at the moment is 'scrabble', she spends hours spelling words and linking them together, we have to take it everywhere with us , she also loves typing on the PC and window shopping on Amazon . Thank you for telling me about Hyperlexia, i mentioned it to her paed last week, she said she doesn't know enough to diagnose it but its highly likely she has it, the school are now reading up about it.

asdx2 · 27/04/2011 13:56

Hopefully she'll use her skills for good too. Ds used to write some terrible insults in his books at school about his teachers and it was difficult to explain that the child who couldn't string three words together could write perfect sentences with really awful and personal comments about them. I'm sure some must have been neurotic about personal hygiene and their appearance after ds's efforts It stopped in yr4 when a teacher he actually liked told him that if he rubbed it out he'd pretend he'd not seen it and he stopped just like that whereas he took not a blind bit of notice of any consequences that came about for years previously.

woofie · 27/04/2011 18:49

Marne, she is very sweet.

Ds is allowed to play scrabble on my phone if he gets 10 marbles for good behaviour... He looves it, especially the fact that each letter has a numerical value which can be multiplied by landing on a certain square... It seems it's all about systemising or learning a finite set of rules. Mind you I like a game of scrabble after a day at work and kids' bedtime when I'm too knackered to interact with anyone

colditz · 27/04/2011 18:51

Ds1 was like this, it actually really helped with his speech therapy as the therapist could assign the sounds to the letters (he was 3) and he oculd 'see' it then.

he still loves numbers.

woofie · 27/04/2011 18:51

Ps sorry asdx2, didn't mean to make light of your ds's messages to his teachers- it must have been v upsetting for you. It was just the hyphen that killed me...

colditz · 27/04/2011 18:58

With the counting - if you can wangle it into a 'story' for their heads, it helps wiyth the appearance of imaginative play - Ds1 now plays at a similar level to his 5 year old brother, just not as well as his peers.

If his peers were all 4 and 5, rather than 7 and 8, he would probably be ok, socially!

asdx2 · 27/04/2011 19:01

Oh don't worry in private I used to smile too. I was amazed at his astuteness a lot of the time because he barely gave the teachers a passing glance but he picked out every flaw and highlighted them.
I'm sure they thought he was writing what he had heard but I can honestly say I had never mentioned his insults. I mean the poof comment floored me as it's not a term he had heard at our house (although he did read dictionaries so it might have come from there) even if Mr S was a little effeminate I couldn't believe he'd wrote that one.
Mind you his AR contribution caused a few red faces when he wrote to the question what don't you like? Mrs S because her breath stinks

asdx2 · 27/04/2011 19:15

Oh and bald was one of his interests which was great when walking round and he'd point at every bald head and say at the top of his voice "BALD b-a-l-d not b-o-l-d cos that means brave" My embarrassment was only topped when walking in the park and he spotted a bald headed man sunbathing, he made a run for it grabbed his head and licked it all over I don't know how I've survived so far tbh.

EllenJane1 · 27/04/2011 19:44

asdx2, you have to laugh or you'd cry, but after your last pearl, fair to say I was crying with laughter! [cgrin] As I said before, delightful and fascinating!

Marne · 27/04/2011 19:48

lol at your DS asdx2, you must have been so embarrassed.

asdx2 · 27/04/2011 19:53

EllenJane I think that's the first time anyone has used the term delightful about ds tbh so thank you

Agnesdipesto · 27/04/2011 22:31

Yes DS knew alphabet, numbers, phonic sounds and how to correctly write each letter from vtech machines of his brothers by age 2. The first word he wrote was vtech!

We also do ABA. To be honest we find letters and numbers a distraction to learning as he is obsessed with them and don't particularly use them as part of ABA. Things like magnetic letters and books are used as reinforcers (rewards). However our ABA does not (at this stage) include any academic skills it is all about social skills, play skills, behaviour, speech and 'learning to learn' skills eg paying attention, observational learning, responding to instructions. DS is 4.5 now.

We do use written words a prompts to teach new skills at times so it is useful from that perspective.

He has not taught himself to read as he rote learns rather than decodes words - he can read many words eg that he has seen on flashcards but can't read new words. I think he sees the word as a picture and stores it away in his mental database which is different than other children who can do the phonic / decoding thing.

I am rather dreading reception as there will be letters and numbers everywhere even hanging from the ceiling and its going to be a major distraction and also he is going to want to put them all in order.

asdx2 · 27/04/2011 22:40

It was awful when ds started nursery too in fact the SSSEN teacher advised the nursery to remove as many as was feasibly possible which they did along with the clock as the time was another of his interests. Ds would find words and letters anywhere though so they were never wholly successful. He'd read instructions to games, fire exit instructions, the recipe from the tea towel in the nursery kitchen whatever they covered he'd just hunt them out anywhere.He was so successful that they couldn't use them as rewards because he'd get his fix regardless.

Ninx · 27/04/2011 22:43

asdx2 that is hilarious and scary at the same time. I dread to think if my DS were hyperlexic

He does sound delightful though I have to agree

EllenJane1 · 27/04/2011 22:58

My DS3 was a see and say type of reader at 2.6, not a phonic decoder, which is useful for the bloody annoying English language as it's not very phonic. But it does make reading new words difficult if they don't have a variety of tools, phonics, working out from context, sound of first letter, picture etc.

By 3.6 my DS3 could also decode and read pretty fluently all his age appropriate picture books. I can remember taking him to Birdland in Bourton on the Water at 3.6ish and people being astonished that he could read all the places on the 'You are here' map, including Flamingo Lake.

He doesn't have a DX, unlike his DB, but fair to say I have my suspicions.

asdx2 · 27/04/2011 23:04

Ds was pre phonics in schools so he never had to sit through the phonics sessions and he just memorised everything.

Dd could read fluently before school too again by memorising every word she saw. Then she started nursery and was taught phonics so she memorised those as well So she has a very comprehensive phonics knowledge but doesn't use it because she has instant recall if she memorises spellings anyway.

EllenJane1 · 28/04/2011 00:03

Yeah, jolly phonics at school was a bit of a waste of time! None of my DSs like handwriting, though, so any early advantage soon faded.

woofie · 28/04/2011 01:00

My ds did do phonic decoding from when he started to read aged 2. I wad a bit concerned that he'd find Jolly Phonics boring in reception as he'd figured it out for himself, but of course repetition is no problem and he's loving it.

Rillyrillygoodlooking · 28/04/2011 06:23

woofie, as bullet234 suggests, we have been encorporating numbers into imaginative play - which I find hard as I have lost all my childhood imagination regarding play!
DS has a set of numbers, which I have pretended to put to bed as they are quite tired. Another set of numbers are in a little chinese takeaway tray, so that becomes their bus. So, number 3 drives the bus and number 4 and 8 get on the bus to go up the mountain (which is the kitchen counter).
So they take on characters. It hasn't been my great idea, we have a set of books called the numberlies which DS loves and each number from 1 to 10 has a story about them and there are things to count etc.

Marne · 28/04/2011 10:33

Dd2 has missed out phonics at school (just started reading and writing) so the school don't force her to join in whith the phonics.

I find it anoying when we go out as she reads everything (road signs, shop logo's, instructions, menu's ect..), she loves the 'numberjacks', 'super why' and the 'alpha blocks' on the tv and the games on the PC, she's now managed to hack into my e-bay and you tube accounts and have caught her on mn a few times .

asdx2 · 28/04/2011 12:07

Marne dd's whole school do phonics for twenty minutes a day so up to yr6. DD goes too (the whole school is streamed into groups of six or eight) her group is the high ability y3/4 group so some are older. Dd learns all the rules but doesn't use them because she just memorises whatever she needs to know.

EllenJane1 · 28/04/2011 14:05

Gosh, asdx2, is that a MS school?

asdx2 · 28/04/2011 14:58

Yes mainstream, lots and lots of staff because lots and lots of funding was put in as it's a new school in an area of high deprivation. It is very high tech and has a HT that OFSTED call inspirational (I'd say he's pretty good myself especially for SEN) Most classes have at least 3 TA's as well as all the staff that are there for specific areas so streaming and banding happen routinely and it's flexible passing between bands is common.
Extra staff employed specifically for numeracy and literacy mean that three classes will be split into five or six sets for numeracy and literacy.
Around here people know it's the school that will be the school so it opened with 70 empty places and within the year people were having to go to appeal because it's now over subscribed.It's not our local school we travel to get there but of course the statement would give dd priority anyway.
The HT welcomes SEN there is a huge percentage of SEN with a vast range of disabilities including PMLD, OFSTED said SEN support is outstanding and they were excited to see how the school would develop in time for the next inspection as it had only been open a year and amalgamated three schools.
I feel that it is definitely the right school for dd she is happy and thriving there.

Flip

1 2 3