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Reading, counting, and writing since young

As a hyperlexic child, our son loved everything about letters and numbers. Different letters and numbers fascinated him. He loves to read and brings his books everywhere.

At the age of 1-1/2 years old, he started to sound out the letters and phonics but could not really communicate or speak to us. He loves to sit down with his books and sounds out the letters and in no time, he was reading. By the time he was 2 years old, he could read one letter words and started to read books with short sentences. His two favorite songs at that time were the alphabet song and the Arabic alphabet song.

Books and reading made him happy but the meaning of it and how to really construct sentences, he was still clueless about it. Sometimes he cried, sometimes he banged his head and only afterwards we found out that he couldn’t understand what he was reading. We sat and read with him and show things but still he could not communicate with us. Finally, therapies helped. Read about it in The magic of therapies.

As he learned to read by himself, he also started counting and soon we showed him on the difference between additions and subtraction as early as 2 years old. He got the concept and soon was crazy about it and was so happy doing it also!

As books made our hyperlexic son happy, when he was sad and at an earlier age, he suffered a lot from bronchitis and was frequently hospitalized, books made him happy and much better. Whenever it was difficult for the Dr or nurses to treat him, we would show books or read to him. This apparently made hospitalization easier for our son as his comfort zone books are always surrounding him, especially in an unfamiliar place.

Our son at the age of 1-1/2 years sick from bronchitis but happy when he saw books with letters and numbers.

In uneasy or unfamiliar situations, books are the most helpful for any hyperlexic child. The main thing is to get their Interest

Do not discourage your child from reading, playing with letters and numbers. As per below link, it states 7 reasons why you should not do so and what we as a parent should do if we see the obsessions build up.

As soon as our son learned to count and do simple maths, our son started to write all these numbers by gripping the whole pencil (Please see Occupational Therapy). It was amazing seeing him at work and to see him happy and not banging his head or crying because he doesn’t understand what he is doing. He finally found something he could understand and connect and made him proud and happy every single day.
Our son at the age of 1-1/2 years sick from bronchitis but happy when he saw books with letters and numbers.

We support him by encouraging him to write more and practice holding his pens and pencils and crayons (Have a look in the Occupational Therapy section about different diameters of pens/pencils). In therapy, his therapists uses his maths and reading ability to help him understand the world. We do the same to him, so he could understand about his surroundings. His teachers in his school also utilizes his fondness of reading and maths to his advantage and soon at 3 years old, he was already doing all the multiplications and divisions with more than 2 or 3 digits.

His hunger for learning do tire us but we try to support him as much as we could. The Director of Autism for a hospital we went to for his diagnosis and treatments, have advised us to support his interests as if he does not get to learn more or explore more, he can be depressed and regress. It eventually happened when we came back to Malaysia and he went to a school that would not acknowledge he could read, write and do maths as a primary student, they still forced him to learn the A, B, C’s and to learn the numbers. He got bored and started acting up in school and it saddens me that every time during my lunch break to see him at a corner with no friends and sometimes not eating (refer to I don’t want to eat). When I pointed out to the teachers and principal that our son was reading, they simply brushed it off and said, that is what a 4 years old do, they like to see the pictures in books as they are colorful. After only 2 weeks, depression was real, and we had to stop him from school after a teacher accused him of faking of having a stomachache. It seems he had a stomachache because he was so bored and stressed and could not stimulate his brain (plus he was always sitting in the ‘W’ position; refer to ‘W’ sitting). After school, our depressed son throws tantrums and cries and shouts and acts out, to the extend that he had a toilet accident in the living room as he could not control his frustration. We learned it the hard way, with the price of a depressed child that regressed from everything. If you have a hyperlexic child that enjoys to learn, do look for signs when they become bored and perhaps discuss with the school or institute but be aware, not all the places can accommodate your gifted child.

Gifted people of all ages have unique traits that may make them vulnerable to depression. They tend to be highly sensitive, intense, empathic, passionate, idealistic, and likely to analyze things more thoroughly than most people. When they notice injustice, mistreatment of others, poverty, and abuse of power in the world, they can feel hopeless and alone and wonder why those around them appear to be less concerned about these things (Jackson PS, Moyle VF, Piechowski MM. Emotional life and psychotherapy of the gifted in light of Dabrowski’s theory. In: Shavinina LV, ed. International Handbook on Giftedness. Dordrecht: Springer; 2009. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6162-2_20). That is why our son was having a big meltdown and was depressed as he thinks that there is injustice as he can’t learn more and feels mistreated.

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