Is this hyperlexia?

[lucysnowe]

Hi

Am wondering if DS (4) may have some hyperlexia aspects. He is obsessed with numbers and letters and sounds out things as part of his conversation (eg: Y-e-s- Yes m-u-m mum:) ). He is also reading fairly well, maybe ORT yellow. He loves nursery rhymes and knows hundreds. He is also a bit inflexible with them and other things at pre-school and there have been issues with his behaviour which leads me to suggest he may have ASD (his sister is also being assessed).

I guess I am wondering if this is just an ASD obsession or something else, and if hyperlexia what I should be doing at this stage?

I suppose you won't know until you get your kids assessed for ASD, which would be the priority. Very little seems to be known about hyperlexia, and an ASD diagnosis won't say that either. But the sooner you know about your child's weak areas, communication or whatever, then the more you can help.

My child is hyperlexic, though no one has diagnosed this. Knew alphabet and numbers before talking, still doesn't have conversations, has autism, and that is where I'm helping and concentrating on.

Thanks Banana.

Yes... assessment seems to the thing here. Am meeting pre-school teacher to discuss his behaviour - will see what they say...

The main thing is to concentrate on conprehension!

Hyperlexic children are usually great de coders but dont understand what they are reading!

Dd3 has a dx of hyperlexia, given by an indie EP! It has hindered her nore than helped as she has got older because she has now gone beyond her ability to de code multisyllabic words and she is still decoding as she reads which makes her reading slow!

She does not de code for meaning but can pass reading assessments using her own methodical strategy! Until she comes to inference etc!

DS rote learnt whole words early but couldn't decode unfamiliar words until later than his peers. He used his amazing memory to 'collect' nouns from age 2. He could memorise whole books. For him it was more about being able to memorise long strings of info rather than being able to 'read' and his understanding is a long way behind.

my advice would be to let him get on with it in his own time, but to use your time with him to concentrate more on play and social interaction / copying you. DS play skills were far behind his peers and he didn't copy others without being taught to - being able to learn observationally rather than by rote is key to stopping a wide gap opening up between him and peers. DS only learnt what he was interested in or when directly taught - other kids absorb so much without even trying.

DS at 9 still loves letters and numbers and any patterns. I think the repetition and sameness is comforting to him. We've had stages of learning nursery rhymes, lamppost numbers, door numbers, gates, certain songs sung an exact way, times tables (up to 30). He can tell me when someone changes their gate or repaints their door. Other kids like dates or car regs. For my DS i think its more of a memory skill and repetitive behaviour than an advanced reading ability. For me its a lot of useless info which stops him learning more functional skills

You have to watch teachers though they are easily fooled into thinking your child is a much more advanced reader than they are - DS was accelerated onto books way beyond his understanding

Thanks all. Yes I am not sure if his understanding is always the same as his reading. He is also very very observant with certain things (pre-school teachers' clothes!!) I don't want him to be pushed too far at school but if we could avoid too much Biff and Chip that would be a bonus certainly social aspects need looking at - we are inviting some little friends over now which may help.