Hyperlexia

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I didn't skip any grades "for my amazing ability" to actually stand reading. I remember wanting to keep reading and reading and reading and learning and learning and learning, but after 4th grade, it died down. I still read, but definitely not as much as I used to. I remember my mom told me when I was 5 that she was fascinated that I could read words on a restaurant menu that she couldn't pronounce when she was ten. But I was never called "Hyperlexic" most likely for the fact my parents never really thought it was odd. I believe I am hypergraphic, seeing as how I can only truly express how I feel by writing it down. That's what made me want to be a writer. It just seemed much easier.

It's funny, what I remember thinking in school on the occasions in which we had to read aloud was that it seemed that almost every other kid in class was utterly brain-dead. All the way through high school.
In ordinary classes, mind you.
George stands up to read aloud... "Romeo.... oh...Romeo...whiffer...wherefore...art thooo... Romeo."
It drove me absolutely insane, having to sit there and listen to these mouthbreathers mangle whatever they were tasked with "reading" at the time.

Me too! I know EXACTLY what this feels like!

I was reading French and English at 4 years of age, and memorized my first poem around that time (memorizing words is one of my "things"...). I was not labelled "hyperlexic", although I DO remember seeing people react to my advanced ability with what I now know is surprise.

I was also fascinated by the numbered encyclopediae, all lined up so neatly... I was counting them at around 2 years old. And that began my life-long love affair with that particular set, which I now own (can you believe my parents wanted to get RID of them??? )

Hyperlexia is one of my AS traits.

I thought I was precocious for having learned how to read at age 4; but it turns out a lot of us learned earlier! I don't actually remember not knowing how to read; and I have memories from before age 4; so I imagine I could probably do simple words before I actually started reading books.

When I mean I don't remember not knowing how to read, I mean I don't remember not knowing what words were for, and how to translate them into ideas. Translating them into speech was harder than reading them in the first place; and of course it took me a while to get the knack of reading, and to memorize how all the different ideas looked on paper.

I would read a word and understand what it meant, though I mightn't know how to pronounce it--I still mispronounce words I've only read, not heard; and there are many of them, because most people's speaking vocabularies seem to contain many fewer words than their writing vocabularies. I imagine most Americans could communicate perfectly in non-technical settings with 200 words or less, filling the rest of their meaning in by the use of nonverbal communication. Aspies do not have this advantage.

I do not think I have separate speaking and writing vocabularies; any word I use in writing, I use equally in speech. In fact, the two processes are similar, mentally. I am "writing" what I say in my head, in order to translate from ideas to speech more easily. Naturally, this results in a rather formal speaking style; I sound as though I am reading aloud. I do not speak in a monotone; my tone-of-voice and tempo serve as punctuation, so that they are correct but formal.

It takes more effort for me to speak "normally" or "casually" than it does for me to speak in the same style my professors use for lectures.

When it comes to comprehension, I can read anything, but books that are too hard for me--at this point, that would be graduate-level or higher, especially in a field I haven't studied; or in German at the college level or higher--will seem boring. Being able to understand much of the technical terminology, and to intuit the meanings of the words I do not know through the use of etymology, I could read these books, but it would be painfully slow. But I do not have the attention span or the motivation to do so--thus, I see them as "boring".

In the past, I might have been a six-year-old seeing a 6th-grade-level book as "boring", or a 6th grader seeing a college text as "boring". At those ages, I would have been perfectly capable of reading and understanding books at those levels; but to do so would have taken too much effort for my ADD brain to manage. Every once in a while, a special interest would trigger the reading of such books despite the effort required. This is what is so frustrating about being an Aspie: You know you are capable of amazing things; but to get your brain to focus on them, and not on whatever it's stuck on at the moment, can be very hard.

According to my parents, I began reading at age 2. I do recall being the only student in Kindergarten that could read. I was an unruly kid, however, so my reading job died eventually.



Doesn't run in the family (my brother could not read until the Second grade)