Hyperlexia
Day 25 of a 30-day series originally published for Facebook April 2021
Hyperlexia is a phenomenon where a child has a fascination with letters and an advanced ability to read, despite having delays in their ability to speak. It's considered a learning disorder and common enough in Autistics that Hyperlexia Type 2 is specifically for Hyperlexics on the Autism Spectrum.
Kids with Hyperlexia have excellent auditory and visual memories and are able to memorize things with little to no effort. Despite being able to repeat entire books or conversations, they still need major supports to develop the language they can actually manipulate and create original speech from. A kinder with hyperlexia may be able to read on a 7th-grade level, but that does not transfer over to their speech once they set the book down.
The first time we noticed M had a connection with letters was when he was 9 months old and obsessed with "The Letter E" song on Sesame Street. It didn't stop with the letter E, he was intense about all of the letter songs on Sesame Street. Next was the summer before H went to PK. I had some flashcards out and was trying to teach H his letters so he would be ready. At this point, M was 2 and a half, and he started answering before H could! He really didn't have more than 20 words or so, so instead of saying the letter he would point to it, and make the sound. We figured out he knew all the upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make and he definitely didn't get that from us. After that came the memorization of books. LOTS of books. He wasn't able to have a conversation with us using language that he created on his own, but he communicated using "echolalia" (we talked about this phenomena early on) based on his memorized text.
We have now reached the point where although memorizing books, commercials, movies, etc.. is still fun, and something M still relies very heavily on to communicate through, he is reading on his own now and we can see that is quickly becoming a new favorite obsession... and as a fellow bibliophile, I'm thrilled. There are many aspects of Autism that require hard work and support, but there are also many other aspects that are complicated, fascinating, admirable, and beautiful, and I do consider hyperlexia to be one of those things.
