RE: Kids w/ Classic Autism, PDD-NOS & Speech Delays

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The way I explain it is that for dyslexia, you can verbally communicate fine but cannot read. Hyperlexia is the opposite - you can read easily but verbal communication is hard.

My son still has trouble with some names. He still thinks his mom's name is his name and his name is Mommy.

Aw.. that sounds like Ethan. He's standing next to me right now saying "Hi Ethan! Hi Ethan! Hi Ethan!" Over and over, he'll only stop if I say "Hi Ethan" back or get him to say "Hi Mommy" and follow it up with a "Hi Ethan" ... I don't think he really thinks my name is Ethan, but he's just saying what he wants me to say. If your son sees a picture of his Mom and still identifies her as Mom, it's probably the same. Now he's asking for "shapes and colors", that could be any number of things. Got to go figure out what he wants now.

True, he can identify Mom correctly in a picture.

I think this page http://www.autismkey.com/hyperlexia/ sums it up the best. My son has every single symptom listed. I always considered myself somewhat dyslexic, but I guess I'm really hyperlexic too but not to the extreme, I could read early too ... or is it possible to be a bit of both? Sometimes when I'm writing I scramble or sometimes even omit whole words or sentences that I thought I wrote, I have to read and reread anything I write or it might be full of typos or not make any sense.

Hi guys,
You are both correct. The verbal communication is what you need to work on. Starts with echolalia - just repeating what we parents say, but they learn to apply the words/sentences to the correct context with time.

two rules of thumb.

- display pictures/or context with words/sentences. i.e. bird is flying or moon is rising - get your child to look out the window and watch as you describe. They get it fairly quickly.

- when they ask something using wrong sentence correct them at each opportunity.

One warning - We made one mistake in that we never corrected use of I vs you...

We used to say "you go get your milk" so she learned it as "you get"...if you don't correct it it becomes imprinted. Now she comes up to us and say "can you go to the park" when she really meant to say "Can I". We correct her now but she still uses "can you". Lots of work to get her to change. The earlier you can imprint the correct usage the better.

Good point. My son is about 50/50 with this sort of thing, I always try to correct him but it's mentally exhausting.

If he wants to go to the playground I think he usually bypasses the whole I/you bit by saying "Lets go to the playground, FOLLOW ME!" (and then he tries to drag us out the door regardless of if it's midnight or pouring rain).

Oh yeah, and as for a certain other thread that has popped up recently, don't be too hard on yourself - most of the people commenting there haven't got a clue.

I think it's a sensitive issue. I do feel empathy for the kids on this forum who perceive they were abused. I would hate for my own child to feel that way. I know for our family we only smack (if ever) once a week. Yelling maybe once every 3-4 days.

The critical thing is it's always a last resort and done immediately as the incident occurs.

My daughter sometimes uses "we" to indicate we all go. She still prefers using her first name rather than "I".

I actually had to go to the resource room for extra help with reading when I was in the first grade. Within maybe six months I was in the top-level reading group.

Last night I showed him a picture of himself and he said, "It's music."

Not sure where that came from but he absolutely loves music, singing, ect.

Yeah looks like the comments are all coming from 14-year-olds...

Amazingly, my son actually does use pronouns correctly. I was expecting he'd mix them up but he doesn't seem to be doing that. This is why I started the "suddenly talking" thread a couple of weeks ago.

Nothing much to add, except heres a video I took a few days ago that might amuse you, the tiny figure down the bottom of the slope is my son running around flapping his hands

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpw62oLL8js[/youtube]

Nice, reminds me that I need to make more videos of my kids!