What they don't tell you!
This is my collection of things that seem to be common among our amazing hyperlexic kids, that the official/academic sources don't tell you. I'm hoping that including this stuff helps, both in putting your mind at rest - 'no you're not alone', and also in showing some of the things that truly make our kids amazing!
The downs (not including the obvious social/emotional ASD related difficulties):
- Late toilet training
- Difficulties with eating/sensory issues with food
- Serious sleep problems
These are NORMAL! Yes, they are difficult, but these things all seem to be quite common among HL children, and they do get there, just in their own time.
The ups (and they outweigh the downs), aside from the obvious reading and spelling abilities:
- Amazing memory abilities, both auditory and visual
- Musical talent
- Precocious interest in the solar system
- Geographical interest and memory
- An innate/intuitive ability with technology i.e. mobiles, tablets, computers
- Linguistic abilities with multiple languages
- Numerical abilities
- Sense of humour - for example, my son delights in deliberately misspelling his siblings names to wind them up!
- Puzzle solving abilities
- Understanding of shapes and patterns
- Imagination/creativity - ok, so they may not play in the same way as other kids, but it's still amazing! It's all related to letters and words, but my son takes letters for rides in cars, he sees letters in the clouds, he turns his storage boxes into game shows etc. etc. ....
- .... and following on from the point above - an obsession with game shows is also normal!
This is by no means exhaustive, but I hope you can see that the positives outweigh the negatives. There is not a day goes by, that my son doesn't make me smile, and makes me feel proud of the amazing, unique little person he is.
