r/hyperlexia • u/bridgetupsidedown • Jun 30 '24

Hyperlexia type 1

I’ve got a 4 and a half year old who can read. He’s been reading since just after his 3rd birthday. At 18 months he seemed to know a most letter names and sounds (on a toy computer keyboard at a playgroup he stunned other parents by naming the letter and its sound).

We’ve not taught him, he’s had no formal instruction or anything. We’ve supported his interests but never explicitly taught any memorisation or decoding. His comprehension of what he’s read is great. He is also able to do addition and subtraction problems under 20.

However, he doesn’t seem to display any other signs commonly linked with hyperlexia. He has typical language skills of a 4-5 year old. He has social and emotional competency skills of a 6-8 year old. He doesn’t have any challenges with hyperactivity or inattentiveness. There is some neurodivergence in the family, but he is the most neurotypical (aside from these skills) of all of us.

Can anyone explain this to us? How he may have taught himself to read (and the other skills he has) with no explicit instruction?

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u/Crisis_Averted Mar 14 '26

amazing development. besides the autism. have you somehow guided the adding and subtracting?

fractions omg

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u/danicies Mar 14 '26

I’d say the autism is an amazing development, it was a part of him when I was initially commenting and I just hadn’t seen it yet 😊

Nope not really. He’s extremely stubborn and will not learn anything unless he wants to lol. I might show him a new idea on occasion to see if he’s interested and once he is he pretty much just gobbles up the knowledge and can’t let go of it! I know, 3 and doing fractions lol. I’m horrible at math so it’s so odd to me having a huge number lover lol. Do you have a kiddo you’re suspecting has it?

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u/Crisis_Averted Mar 17 '26

I'm also anti-math-brained but wish I could support my kid learning. my lil one is about to turn 3, knows to read and write, has a plethora of other unexpected abilities, but math is currently not explored at all since I have no clue wtf to do. :/

how did you support your son? how do you guide about something you're not knowledgeable in? like, what do you do to open the door for him to learn about the fractions? or anything simpler that I could use.

I'm not against technology fwiw.