Anyone else hyperlexic?

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I'm not sure, I never thought about it until I read this question.

I don't really remember when I learned to read - just that when I entered first grade I was surprized that the other kids seriously had to learn it. I was being told that they would teach us to write but I never concluded that it really meant that other kids my age were looking upon letters and didn't understand any of them.
I also remember thinking in pictures and letters. When I use my 'inner voice' (like, when I have a monologe) it's all written out in my mind and when I try to remember a word I can move around letters in my mind until they look like the word I was looking for. I just have to read it then....
And I was definitely writing (extremely childish) stories in kindergarten and understood books written for children in kindergarten and elementary school (probably up to fourth grade) and was able to read, but not fully understand, adult novels. I have never not been able to read a word.

Has anyone of you ever had problems to say the words you were reading out loud? Especially throughout the first three years of school I would, whenever I was asked to read something to the class, (quietely) read the correct words, but say something absolutely different.

I know i was reading by the age of 5, and before that I was trying to read...I tried writing when I was 5 to and wasn't very good at drawing the letters. Me and my sister who was 4 at the time even made a book with cardboard, paper, tape and markers impossible to read but it was fun for us I guess.

I am however terrible at math.

I read signs and billboards when I was three.

I could read some cursive then too.

It's a definite possibility. I don't remember being taught to read. According to my Mum, she taught me how to sound out words and then that was it. I was reading all sorts of books by torchlight under my blankets when I was supposed to be sleeping. Went to school reading at level of a high school student. Always been terrible at Mathematics though, not for lack of trying. It's just like it's all in a different language, I can just manage the basics. But strangely enough was better at Advanced Mathematics (Calculus, algebra, trigonometry, etc) than I was at the General level.

I have trouble with some books. But I think that's because I have a hard time concentrating and not because the material is beyond me.

My mother got me a bunch of word-reading books when I was two, and that was when I started reading words. I started writing words as soon as I could hold a pencil, which was around age three.

But my reading comprehension was bad until I started to speak and use language for communication, and that was at age eight. But my reading comprehension improved quickly, and I was in the high 90s percentiles by age eleven.

So I had the defining hyperlexic traits of precocious self-taught word-reading and poor reading comprehension.

I was reading at 3yrs, without any huge influence by my parents. They read to me, like other parents, but weren't pushy. They think I mainly taught myself. My Mum was told by our health visitor that I was really smart and going to school would be good for me. So, my Mum found a private school that took kids from 3yrs (a year earlier than any others). At 5yrs, I was taking a broadsheet newspaper to school (which is quite laughable).

However, I don't read books and have only read about 10 novels in my lifetime. I've always had difficulty with reading on demand, so I've never developed a love of books. I hated this thing we did at school, where you had to read a card with a story on it and answer questions, within 30 mins (I think). I could read a passage (with my eyes) and not take in a thing (with my brain). I never finished any of them and was stuck at the lower levels for this, every year of primary school. Yet, I was top of the class for everything else (or close to it), including reading out loud. My teachers were totally puzzled by this, but never spoke to my parents or asked anyone to take a look at me. It caused me an awful lot of distress and I'm worried my daughter has inherited this (although she's not hyperlexic).

But, I can read well and have a good comprehension (well I do these days anyway). I've never really understood my difficulties, other than having concentration problems.

Coincidentally, Hyperlexian is just one of 3 female mods who say they have hyperlexia (and there's not that many of us).

I don't think I'm hyperlexic (a speech therapist taught my phonics at 4 1/2...but I was ready to taught, had to be taught, and never a problem with reading comprehension), but I really relate to this, because I have trouble focusing on books. I couldn't read a book from beginning to end until I went on ADHD meds. I still have trouble with that to this day. Yet, I enjoy reading, and was an advanced reader in school.

I can't remember if I taught myself to read at an early age....I did, however, memorize my favorite books very fast and could quote them from memory, and I was overjoyed when we finally started to learn how to read in first grade. I learned how very fast.

As a young child, I also liked to use big words when smaller words would work just as well. I think some kids thought that was weird, but I think adults were impressed by it. When I was a senior in high school, I got a paper back from being graded, and a word I'd used in the assignment had been circled and the teacher wrote beside it, "I'm surprised you know that word!" I appreciated the compliment, but at the time, I was under the impression that it was a word lots of people my age were familiar with.

I don't know if I'm hyperlexic or not but I have a high reading ability. In middle school I tested at the college level. I don't remember reading very young but I've always been a good reader.

I'm not, but my brother fits the type 3 description perfectly. He taught himself to read, and appeared really weird and Autistic-like when he was little(or so people have told me, I'm two years younger than him). Now he's normal in social interaction and stuff, just smart and ADHD.

I'm another story, almost the reverse. I appeared normal as a really young child, except I was hyperverbal. My parents thought I was dyslexic because I didn't really learn to read until I was five. I struggled somewhat with reading until I was seven. Then I totally took off and put all my effort into reading. This was spring of 2006, I think. By the time I went back to school after summer, I could read very well, and words on paper went instantly into thoughts. At some unidentified point, it got to where my thoughts are all in visual form, like written down in a book, in my mind.

Two and a half years ago, I was diagnosed as NVLD.

I self-identify as mentally interesting.

Hyperlexic? More like dyslexic. Somehow I taught myself the phonetics of words, can read way better now than as a kid but still misread words sometimes.

I was reading by the time I was about three years old. I remember coming home from the library after a day at kindergarden, sitting in the living room reading out loud till my mum finished preparing snacks. I've also been an incredible speed reader all my life, teachers would quiz me endlessly on the minutiae of various novels, unable to believe that I could have finished them in a single class period. Oddly enough, I had never heard of hyperlexia before this thread, but further research has caused me to see it lining up with my childhood and the way I read.

Yes. I taught myself to read at 2 (really), I began writing my own (long) stories at 4, and had a college reading level (tested) at 5. My teachers didn't know what to do with me, so they just gave me a box of books to read...that was my English education throughout my entire K-12 experience! Ahh small towns...

I don't remember what age I learned the alphabet at but I taught myself to read when I was three. started kindergarten at four and the teacher had me read the rest of the class books for story time. in first grade they put me in the fourth grade reading class where I read little house on the prairie at 5 and was top of the class. I always had books with me and wound up reading all the children's and young adult books that interested me in the library by sixth grade, so I moved on to adult novels. a blessing and a curse, since I focused so much on reading, my math and science performances have always been pretty abysmal

I could write a coherent text when I was two, the places I liked to write on were the blank pages at the beginning of a book, newspapers and walls. For the most part, what I wrote was descriptions of actions I was observing around me, something I really really liked doing was adding the date to what I wrote.
As for reading, I wasn't very interest in that until I was 5-6 years old. I liked much better going through illustrated books or even magazines, and make up stories in my mind.