Autism or hyperlexia?

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Hi friends. My son, a little over one year ago, was diagnosed with autism. He was completely non verbal at the time and lacking social interaction. He had selective eye contact, meaning that he would give eye contact to the people he chose to. This was april 2016. Since then, he attended preschool and nursery in the UK and i started noticing differences. In September2016 he started nursery and obviously he started phonetics. Since he did that, he discovered a massive interest in letters and numbers, and his language finally appeared. He's now nearly 4 and a half and, although being very far from the communication skills of an NT 4 and a half year old (his brother is just 2 and is starting to put words into sentences and to use grammar. My eldest instead has a spoken vocabulary of 10 words) his language has improved. I noticed that he started using language because of his interest in letters, numbers and phonetics. He obsessively watches youtube videos about letters, numbers, phonetics, colours and thomas. I heard him echolalia what the narrator says in some videos, and he learned the moves and the words of some songs like the finger family. A couple of days ago, he started typing on a computer keyboard and could write perfectly, without being prompted or taught, yellow, green, red and blue. With some help he could write pink and orange. He would also read them after he wrote them. He also wrote "colrs" (colors i guess). I know that some of the video he watches are about colours and that the video says the colour, shows it in a fun way and writes the name of the colour.

My question is... I was reading about hyperlexia and my son seem to me to be fitting the diagnosis of hyperlexia perfectly. I read also that sometimes cases of hperlexia are wrongly diagnosed as ASD and that those are the cases of the kids who apparently "were cured" from autism. Now... I spent a long time (over a year) trying to come to terms to the fact that my son has autism and that it's not an illness and that he will never be cured and he will always need help. As you may imagine, it's really hard for me having to accept the fact that my son will never have a life that i consider "normal". I know he has SPD, and that is undeniable. But... What's the difference at 4 years of age between a child with hyperlexia and spd and one who's autistic? I mean... Am i a complete fool starting to get a hope that maybe he may have been misdiagnosed and he's hyperlectic and SPD? That he may be able to "outgrow" it?

A very distressed and confused mum still in denial

My son is both autistic and hyperlexic. There is very little information or research comparatively speaking on hyperlexia. The description of hyperlexia usually includes social deficits so I am not even sure of how often it exists without ASD. In other words is it a sub category of autism or a co-morbid or something else? I have no idea. I don't know, if in practical terms it matters very much because autism is an umbrella term for the symptoms and not a specific diagnosis of one specific thing. It likely includes people with many different conditions.

So while the label "hyperlexia" sounds less scary and ominous, I suppose than autism, I don't know if there is any difference in practical terms. Some autistic children have milder social and/or communication deficits than others. Some have less problems with sensory issues and rigidity than others. You already have a ton of variance within the category itself.

The only practical difference in knowing your child is hyperlexic (regardless of whether you want to consider it wholly different from autism or not) is that often times (I have found) there are strategies you can use that go outside the box of what is considered evidence-based that you have to fight to get. Honestly, I think that this is true for all autistic kids in that you need to find out what specifically works for your kid, because again there are likely multiple conditions under the autistic umbrellas and each kid is unique.

When we were in public school, we had a heck of a time getting them to include text on the visual reminders they made for him because the conventional wisdom is that autistic children will not focus on words when they are upset. For my son, words are comforting, and he can read them when he is upset. You can even write him little notes (with or without pictures--b/c even though he likes the pictures--when time is an issue b/c of meltdowns words alone are better than a picture by itself, bc he has trouble interpreting pictures by themselves) and they help calm him down if you catch it early.

The other issue is that I do not know how much in the way of services (if you need any) you can get with just a hyperlexic label.

Edited to add: I have not seen enough information about hyperlexic kids being misdiagnosed and/or people thinking they were "cured" autistic kids. A lot of autistic people develop enough coping skills, so that on the outside they present as NT but actually are autistic. Many mild case of autism are missed because can they present as neurotypical on the outside and are functional enough. (Remember it is a spectrum) I would not assume all of these people who later present as neurotypical, are not still having issues. Some people hide their issues really well although inside it is very draining to do so.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 15 Jun 2017, 8:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Speech is one of the first social skills humans learn. So it would make sense that, even among autistic children, other recognizable characteristics might be delayed (or minimized) for some time while speech behaviors appear in relative abundance. In other words, as my diagnosticians described in my written assessment, autistic individuals usually display characteristics "beginning early in childhood, increasing as social demands grow, and continuing into adulthood."

Or, it might just be hyperlexia.

Have you seen any other autistic behaviors?

Yes he does have other behaviours but grom what i have read these behaviours can be also seen in hyperlectic children, that's what made me wonder. He's generally calm, he only has meltdowns when he goes to the hairdresser, and not with all hairdressers. He learned to wave and say hi when you tell him to say hello to someone and he also briefly gives them eye contact. His biggest problems are his small spoken vocabulary and his SPD which affects him quite a lot in behaviour and in very selective eating. And of course his apparent lack of social interaction; he will play alongside other kids (not every kid!) but not WITH them. However, he does show affection towards his brother and tries to help me when his brother misbehaves.

There sounds like enough of the overlapping traits of autism to me that I don't think you should try to get the autism diagnosis changed. If what you are asking is about prognosis --ie. you are hoping that if your son is hyperlexic and not autistic that his speech will improve faster, i don't think there is evidence that hyperlexia changes that. Autistic people without hyperlexia are also capable of this kind of development.

If you are mainly looking for hopeful information, i can tell you that my son is much more verbose than he once was. When he was in pre-k, his speech was economized as if it cost him something per letter, and now he cannot stop talking about his special interests and other things. I don't think this has any correlation with his hyperlexia. i think it is just a function of the un-even development of speech development. Non hyperlexic autistic kids often will learn to understand a good deal of speech before they are ready to roll it out as speech on their own. It is possible early reading helps with this, but I do not know if there are studies that bear it out or not.

Autistiv kids, in general, tend to start off with echolalia first and then move on to original speech. When my son's speech development started to gear up I could tell my son's database was very large and he had delayed echolalia meaning he could pull out phrases from his database that I knew were stored there months ago. (They were often from datable instances of conversation)

Strangers would not necessarily know it was echolalia because he mostly did a great job of plug-and-play from the database. (Not that he was talking to strangers) I could tell when his speech was original when there was more of a delay in his response (because he was formulating his own from scratch) and when the grammar was not as perfect and the sentences less complex.

In reality I am just looking for someone to give me some examples of children who were 4 with very little language (as I said, my son has around 9 to 10 words plus numbers and alphabet...) and then like yours can't be shut up later on. Kids who managed to finish college and maybe get a job of better quality than wiping tables in a cafe (I have seen some people with learning disabilities or even DS doing these kind of jobs, but no more than this... and if he can't speak it will be difficult for him to find a job!) and maybe managed to have a family of their own.

A speech and language therapist told me on Monday that "children like my son in the 70/80% of cases stay non verbal", which really crashed my world after seeing all this development speech wise in a matter of months (from October 2016 to now). Someone on another board, looking at a video of my son typing at the computer, pointed out that my son could have hyperlexia and I went on to read about it again, as I had read some information about it in the past the first time he displayed interest with letters and numbers. What I read triggered my interest, so I just wanted to know if there was any difference that others could point out in their kids between autistic kids and hyperlectic kids. What I read had given me a little bit of hope that all these people were wrong and that maybe my child could have a "normal" life. Until I and my husband will be around, exactly like you and every mum and dad in this board, we will be my son's best advocates. But when we won't be there any longer... it scares me the thought he will be alone. His little brother will be there for him, I know that, but he may want to have a life elsewhere and it's a huge burden to give to a simbling.

Sorry I'm just a mum in great denial. It's over a year that I got this diagnosis and I'm keeping on fighting it and not accepting that my son will never have a normal life. I can't come to terms with it. I really can't. Every time that I see some progress, or some positives, I always get a bit of hope, just to get my hopes crashed again by some expert who's seen him for the first time.

I'm also very scared about the fact that we're moving to a different country, and all the help he had after his diagnosis in the UK is lost now and we will need to start everything all over again in a country that my husband was born in but he now knows very little about after 10 years in the UK and I have no idea about. I'm doing my best, I have enrolled him to a good mainstream school with an ASD hub and a sensory room, and as soon as I get there I will look for a private SALT who can look after him. But since I read that an intensive course of SALT could be key for hyperlectic kids, I wanted to get clear in my mind if he definitely displayed traits of it or not.

I'm all over the place and hopeless I know

You mean "one of the first social skills neurotypical humans learn," right?

Because that was not the case of, say, Helen Keller. And that was not the case of either of my two children.

Plenty of people are like that. Neither of my children truly talked before age 4. Now they talk non-stop. Look up also Jacob Barnett, who lost speech at age 2, and now is about to finish his PhD in theoretical physics at the best physics school in the world, at age 17~18.


That's an outdated piece of information. See for instance: https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/many-nonverbal-children-autism-overcome-severe-language-delays
The researchers found that, in fact, most of these children did go on to acquire language skills. Nearly half (47 percent) became fluent speakers. Over two-thirds (70 percent) could speak in simple phrases.

Please, decide for yourself who has more credibility: (a) people that can cite references and provide sources of information, and (b) people just talk with their mouths.


Wow, so scary... anything with an -ia ending scares the heck out of me. Ha ha. Nope, the word that actually pops up in my mind is a sincere "congratulations!"


Don't do that. Your son needs no advocates. He needs you to draw pictures and write down sentences for him. Don't follow the horrible example of the parents of Owen Suskind. They ruined their son's development by talking and not drawing. I really couldn't stand watching that movie... so upsetting. See, the boy was drawing pictures. The parents were sitting on the couch talking. I don't know why people don't see anything wrong with that picture. It drove me nuts to watch all that.


Sorry to be so direct and blunt, but: use your hands, not your mouth. If you need a reminder, cut a piece of packaging tape and place it over your mouth. See, it's really easy to know what to do to communicate with your son, as long as you let go your desire to talk.

Since you seem to be in the UK, get TOMY's Megasketcher http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005LWJ6. That'll be your main communication tool with your son.


Check out my postings here on WrongPlanet (only some 200 messages here, not hard to read them all.) It beats anything else you'll find out there. Actually you don't even need to read all of them, only the last 25 messages would give you all you'll ever need to know about autism.

I also have a son who is both autistic and hyperlexic.

At age 4, I'm sure he had a bit more vocabulary than your son but almost none of it was functional.  Basically he could label a few things but not communicate basic needs and wants.

Now at 6 I'd say he is pretty much fluent in English but he still struggles with processing complex language and is behind socially.  Advanced reading and visual skills are a huge advantage for him.  At school he sometimes struggles to understand verbal instructions but when written or pictorial instructions are provided he usually does well.  Drawing pictures and modeling also helps compensate for the language processing challenges.

Early on we used a lot of picture flashcards and also drawing to help him build vocabulary.  We also focused on learning things he wanted to learn.  He loved car makes and models so we got pictures of cars and emblems and wrote the words to help him learn.  I think the first attempt at a sentence he had was something like "pap (grandpa) car ford."  After that there was a lot of work on pronouns and verb tenses.

My strong opinion is that anyone expressing to you that a 4 yo with some minimal language skills and strong pre-reading skills is likely to be non-verbal later in life doesn't have a clue what he/she is talking about.

You aren't hopeless. The honest truth is no one can give you an accurate prognosis. I am a worrier by nature, but honestly the best thing I have done, is to put most of that aside. Being functional in a neurotypical world is not all about speech and it is not exclusive to speech. The suggestions given by others about using his strengths and interests to teach him, is effective for any child, but especially for kids on the spectrum. At that age, I also used pictures (with captions) a lot, as well as floor play. I would encourage a lot of different things, but concentrate mainly on what he showed interest in, and tabled anything he wasn't for when he was receptive.

Autistic development is completely different from neurotypical development, so I ignored all the milestones for NT kids, and just worked on what was appropriate for him. Is it all going to work out in the end, where he is independent, functioning and happy? (Don't forget the happy part because that is important, too) I have no idea. We are clearly going to find different pathways for him. He is not good with life-skills, and it may take him more time and maturity before doing a lot of things his similarly aged peers will be doing. I have no way to know how it will turn out in the end.

Hopefully, the country you are moving to, will give you a lot of different options. Flexibility is very important, and if they have rigid ideas about how your son should be educated, you will need options. I have had to homeschool my child, here in the US, because the school district was rigid and would not/could not do the job that needed to be done. Some school districts are very supportive, but it is very spotty.

Edited for grammar:

This is great to know, thanks!



I do hope you're the one who is right in this!



You misunderstood me. I wasn't scared about the possibility of him having hyperlexia. I read about it after that lady pointed it out, and I was actually relieved because it gave me some hope.



Excuse me, but you misunderstood me again. What I meant with being my son's best advocate is that I will always be there for him, to defend him from people/situations, to work my hardest for providing the best for him, for explaining things to him in a way that he can understand. Why has this given you any idea that I would be sitting there talking if my son is drawing?

In second instance, my son doesn't draw. he does look at pictures which his preschool teachers and the SALT use to communicate first7Then and things to do to him, but he doesn't draw. he much rather count or watch videos on youtube, or sing songs. I have developed my way of interacting with him by singing the songs he likes in bits and let him fill up the gaps, like "daddy finger daddy finger ...." and point at him and he would say "where are you?" and then I would say "here I am" and he could continue, "here I am how do you do?" and so on. I look at him and try to use what he loves as a way to communicate with him.



I have one of those but he's more interested in asking me to write his name, or numbers, or other letters, on it and spell them out than to draw actuall pictures on it.



I will. It's really interesting to me to learn more about the way autistic people think x.

Hi there. First of all, thanks for your answer. I really appreciate any suggestions and help!

This is what I too am doing. I am using his interest with the tablet and with the songs to try and develop his speech and communication, and taking turns. I'm singing songs with him and try to increase slowly the number of words he says in the interaction. We started with only one word he added on and now with the finger family song we're having a lot... he's also singing the song all by himself. Of course he would say "da her, da her, yayo...? he am he am, hodydo" rather than "daddy finger daddy finger where are you? here I am here I am how do you do?", but it's close enough to me. I would cherish his contribution and give him a positive reinforcement (well done! yes) and then say it in the correct way. He is getting better at it. His words in the songs are becoming more recognisable. He also tried blowing on his candles at his fourth birthday (first time ever!) and he's learning to blow soap bubbles, another thing he really loves but until recently wasn't able to do.



yes, I don't forget the happy part. My son is always described as a happy and sweet little boy. His support treacher in the UK was actually crying on his last day because she said she will miss him as he was following her everywhere and she was looking after him the most. Some kids in his class cried when the teacher said that he weas leaving, another thing that made me sad in a way, but also made me understand that they did like him. He would never hurt a fly. Even when his brother is very rough with him, he just cries or is very gentle in pushing him away or such. he has a very kind heart.



This is one of my biggest fears. I read very uncomplimentary articles about Ireland and autism, and my husband is always sceptical about his country, which doesn't help my confidence in their system. I hope he will be happy. All I could do was trying to find the best kind of school based on the information I had. We would like to avoid him going to a specialistic asd school if possible, as we would like him to mix even with normal kids. So this mainsteream school with an ASD hub sounded the best bet. I have no idea how the school system works there and whether it will have a bad effect on him or not. I dread the thought of him regressing because we moved. But we had to, as you must go where your work is. I don't think I would be able to homeschool him. Sadly my husband doesn't appear to be in the "secure and long career" type, so I will probably need to return to work very soon to have a second wage available in case he loses his job. I'm trying to hold on to my time off work as long as I can, to try and help his development, but eventually I will need to give in...

Sounds similar to mine. Although he can say "drink" (or "ink" as he says), "pizza" ("izza") "yoghurt" ("yoht"). He says "hi" when he waves at people, and if you ask him what colour is something he will reply.



Sounds similar to what I'm doing with songs and his tablet!



Thank you. You put into words exactly my thought.

Also. with regard to him wanting you to do the drawing, rather than him doing it, I would not worry about that (if you were) because using people as tools as a thing autistic kids do. My son would do drawing and writing but he had me cut out alphabet shapes and numbers out of construction for a few hours a day. (his scissor skills were very behind)

If he has fine motor skill issues, if it is uncomfortable for him to write, which you may not immediately know, or is just a perfectionist (another common autistic trait) he may prefer the quality of your output to his own, and sometimes it takes a bit for them to gain confidence in doing things they are not instantly good at.

You can find on YouTube plenty of parents starting to teach their children to read from 3 months on. Sure, most of the results are dubious at that age. But, knowing alphabet by 9 months and reading words and sentences by 18 months should be considered normal and perfectly acceptable nowadays. The point is, because most people have this wrong idea that autistic children must follow the neurotypical path, that is, learn to talk before they learn to read, they don't teach their children to read first. And with that, the parents actually have ruined their children's development and set the children up for failure, permanently. We have to learn to develop our children from what they are good at.


Because *most* parents can't draw. That's an undisputed fact. Google for it. Adults just can't draw. I have even seen research studies on why adults can't draw. It's truly sad: adults just can't re-acquire the skills they had when they were kindergartners. From my personal observation, only 1 out of 50 adults can draw stick figures, without hesitation. Most adults behave like deer in headlights: they freeze at the mere thought of having to draw pictures.


Erh? I started to draw pictures for my children when they were 2 years old. They both had weak muscle tone, and could not properly hold pen until 4~5 years old. I insist on drawing because children need to watch the elbow motion of their parents. I can't stress this point enough. It's the elbow motion what builds bonding and comfort. Without the children watching the elbow motion of the parents, how are they supposed to develop trust and positive feeling towards drawing?

See, when my children were non-verbal, I removed all their bad feelings, each day, by drawing pictures and talking to them at bedtime. When they grew older, sometimes I had to talk to them about important issues. They might have tears in their eyes, but as soon as I picked up the magnetic drawing board, they always wanted to watch what I had to draw, even with all the tears in their eyes. Then I realized, OMG, it was all coming from my elbow. The trust, coziness, bonding, was all coming from the elbow.

I never taught my children to draw. They picked up drawing skills on their own. They always had a positive feeling towards drawing. My son was super-hyperactive. See, he attends a mainstream school. What we did at the beginning of the year was to provide a stack of sketchbooks to the classroom teacher. So, whenever my son got bored, he could always draw pictures (elevators, car washes, etc.)

As soon as the children can start to draw pictures, they will be developing deep thinking skills, even if they are completely non-verbal. Humans develop deep thinking skills because of "outer feedback loop." For neurotypical children, that's easy because they can hear what they say. For non-verbal children, they instead must be able to produce their own manual output to close the manual-visual loop. Deep thinking skills is what separates humans from animals.

I just shake my head at today's technology gadgets. Sure, schools are providing assistive speech devices. Teachers/therapists also use flashcards, pictures, etc. I mean, how come people are so blind? Children grow up without seeing the elbow motion of the parents/teachers/therapists: how do you expect them to feel positive about drawing pictures themselves? How do you expect them to feel positive about writing down words and sentences? Adults are just so, so, so blind. No wonder most of the autistic children turn into comatose adults.


YouTube was a big help to my children as well. Between age 3 and 4, DieselDucy contributed 80% to my son's vocabulary, and I contributed about 20%. The contribution from preschool and ABA therapists was negligible. Check out DieselDucy on YouTube, and see if your son likes elevators, too. The majority of autistic children (more than half, I would say) actually like to ride on elevators. Not just boys, I have also encountered a girl that likes elevator rides and plays with elevator models.


Singing is always good. It's sensory development. BUT, drawing and writing *for* your son is much more important. You want to get him feel positive about drawing and writing, so later on he can produce his own manual output. That's what will help him develop his brain later on.


Sigh... you don't get it. But hang in there. Read my past postings. I just don't understand how parents can ever deal with their children's tantrum issues, without a magnetic drawing board. My conclusion after all these years is that I am the one and only one parent in the world that knows how to remove bad feelings from autistic children. No wonder my children are always happy everyday, while other parents have to complain how hard it is to raise autistic children. I don't find it hard, at all. I find it fun. And my children have always been darlings to their teachers and therapists.

I forgot to add:

We did not move to another country, but we did go through a move with my son while he about your son's age and I can give you some advice. I don't know how practical it will be for you because we did not move far and so some of these things may be difficult for you to implement without substantial adaptation.

At the time, he was co-sleeping and we used the changes we had to go through to add some changes we wanted to go through. So we made a really big deal about how he was going to get his own big boy room, that was HIS. I camped out on his floor the first few nights, because he was used to me being with him. We had a (very big) play yard he never liked that we re-purposed as a hexagonal tent. He loves shapes and he seemed to not care any more at prior attempts to use it as a play yard becasue it had been when he was very little.

We visited the new house a lot while it was being built (like every weekend) Obviousl,y if you are moving where someone already lives and far away this will not work, but you can maybe take pictures of the new residence--especially his sleeping area, and show it to him frequently to help him adjust ahead of time. Take note of everything in the are a that applies to special interests and let him know how much fun it will be. With us, it was local appliance, computer and cellphone stores and a park with ducks that we would drive him to while we were scoping out the construction.