Since this has been bumped, any update on your youngin’ @Spice_Weasel ?
And how’s your arm?
My parents say that I taught myself to read at around 3-4. I’d have to look at my baby book to be more precise. I read all the time, including cereal boxes (before phones), shampoo bottles, etc.
I was in my 40s before I realized that my parents had an IEP for me. I knew that I was in speech therapy due to hearing issues. The hearing issues themselves were cleared up with allergy shots, but 30% hearing loss due to those allergies, at the time I was learning to talk, really did a number on my speech development.
I don’t have a lot of advice about how to teach a child to read, but it seems that seeing other people reading was one of the things that made me want to read. My parents joke that my first words were, “I can do it myself.”
I graduated as a mechanical engineer, and still count things. I think the Count was one of my favorite Sesame Street characters. I did work as a technical writer, but now I focus on information architecture.
I am curious if the daycare can help getting things moving for the IEP. It was the daycare workers who told my parents to get me evaluated, as they noticed that my speech development was not as expected. The pediatrician nevery mentioned anything.
(Okay, now I realize I am very late to this thread. Oops. 
)
YMMV, but I would advise steering a young child away from kid’s books and having him read grown-up stuff like airplane encyclopedias, books about eagles, World Book, Newsweek, etc.
The Sesame Street/Dr. Seuss/kid’s books that I grew up with served no purpose other than to greatly confuse me when little, because it wasn’t at all how people/things talked or behaved in real life.
Thanks for asking.
Well, his teachers think he’s a genius because of his facility with numbers. But he is pretty clearly autistic. There’s not really a good alternative explanation at this point. We have an intake with a psychologist on March 14th and an evaluation by the school district on March 30th. That’s just the beginning I’m afraid. He’ll probably end up with five or six different assessments before this is over, just so we can get him started with services. The insurance company also requires a cognitive evaluation so I guess we will find out roughly where he is intelligence wise.
He recently made a cool phonics connection. Right out of the blue at the dinner table. “T is for tuh tuh twelve! T is for the the thirteen! F is for fuh fuh fourteen!” He went all the way up to 100 and determined that W is for wuh wuh one hundred!" Not so fast, kid! But he gets it, right?
So we are trying to use his numbers obsession as a springboard for learning other things. He has started to do what I can only describe as mixed media representations of numbers. So he shapes his toys into number sequences. He even shapes his numbers into numbers. This is all he does with his free time, but I think it’s pretty creative. And he will use substitutions for his sequences, for example he’ll use a backwards lower case r in place of 1 when he runs out of 1s. So 11, 12, r3, r4 etc. I’m not an expert but I think that’s pretty smart.
His daycare is not really grasping the issues here. Well, one of his caregivers definitely is, as she’s expressed concern about him socially and also with regard to his number obsession, but everyone else is mostly just bowled over by how high he can count. It’s a kind of hands off “self-directed” place so if he decides to go off on his own and play, as he does every day, they aren’t really watching him for social problems. However when we ask, they do say they’ve noticed he’s socially withdrawn, but he’s an only child after all. 
I watch him on the camera every day and he is always playing alone, not even sort of interested in what other kids are doing.
I think it’s also easier to miss because he constantly seeks engagement and reassurance from adults. It’s not reciprocal engagement, it’s more like, “I want you to do this thing for me in exactly the way I want it” but I think the nuance of that can be lost in a roomful of preschoolers. He likes the adult led activities and will copy adults. This is one of his strengths.
He just graduated to preschool so I won’t be surprised if these issues become more obvious to more caregivers. Until recently his rote language and echolalia have masked the pragmatic language deficits but it’s really getting harder to miss. If you meet him and ask him a question, he’s most likely to shout numbers at you or repeat the question. (Shouting numbers is a compliment. It means he’s happy to see you.)
We do have the attention of the school district now, though. I don’t know exactly what they will be able to do, but we’re in the system, we’re on their radar, and we will be meeting them on the 30th.
(My arm gets better and then worse, at the moment it’s better, but I don’t understand how it gets worse when I’m deliberately resting it going on six weeks now.)
FWIW I am also impressed. And also if he does end up with a label of autism it is notable: autistic kids often are hyper specific and poorer at understanding the more abstract bits that he is doing there.
With that, and you’re continuing the advocacy for him that you’ve started, he may end up with many more strengths than weaknesses.
Maybe time to see someone about the arm?
You know, rereading this post made me realize… I would not be at all surprised if your kid is a genius. Like, not just smart, but almost off the scales.
… lol, reading further I see that his instructors are reaching this conclusion as well…
When I read your posts, they sound a lot like the childhood biographies of truly brilliant people. The obsession, the lack of socialization skills (what is going on in his head is more interesting than what’s going on out of it), the ability to catch up seemingly on demand, and, yes, at times a little weirdness.
Now I can only speak from my understanding of your words, you obviously are living the life. But, fuck it: your son sounds fantastic. He is living in a technocratic society where an ability with math and logic can propel one to not just a very nice career, but to the plutocracy. He has the ability to apparently ‘catch up’ on his own will (the language issue mentioned in the OP (where by the time he was tested, he had already caught up), others). He has the ability to just live within his head.
And he has parents who care. 
Many of us here were pretty advanced in our reading skills compared to our peers. Many of us were advanced in math as well. And, yes, many of us (myself included) had genuine problems socializing. But few of us were fortunate enough to come of age at a time when helping neurodivergent (never liked this term) children was the norm, not the exception.
You’re doing great. Your son is going to be a well-adjusted and respected man. And, fuck it, buy the kid a few math textbooks, 1st-5th grade, seem how he takes to them.
He really is. I think he’s going to figure this phonics thing out soon enough. He’s been really interested in letters phonics videos lately.
In the meantime he’s discovered the calculator app on his Grunkle’s phone, and is kinda starting to grok +1 and -1. He seems totally disinterested in the attempts to explain this with objects, but with the calculator he seems to get it. I just bought him a cheap solar calculator to experiment with.
You know, we’re just rolling with it. I don’t want to push him into anything but I can’t even describe to you how happy he was with the calculator app. He played with it for over an hour and then the next morning padded out into my Aunt’s kitchen, looked up at Grunkle and said, “More numbers!” It was also great to see them bond.
(We also took him to a dinosaur museum and he went bonkers over that! He knew right away the bones were dinosaurs which I wasn’t sure would happen since it was his first time seeing them at scale. Just so ya know it’s not all numbers all the time… Just most of the time.)
Your descriptions of what he’s doing right now remind me so much of my older daughter! She was never formally identified as neurodivergent, but she was tested for the “gifted” program in kindergarten, and in our school district that means she got an IEP, which was a godsend for being sure her needs were met. We were lucky enough to have absolutely splendid teachers from pre-K through elementary, and we kept her in public schools throughout.
For us, the most difficult thing was to teach her to accommodate others, to give kids who might not grasp a concept as quickly as she did space to learn it themselves. It helped that she was pretty empathetic.
Your son sounds like he’s doing absolutely fine, and your challenge may be to ensure that teachers don’t try to make him learn their way. It’s great that you’re already started on the often lengthy process of getting special education services. He sure sounds twice-exceptional! As for explaining his behavior to others, I think “we’re working on it” is a splendid phrase for strangers. For my daughter, her behaviors got more socially acceptable once she could express herself reliably to adults and children outside the family. It’s got to be frustrating to be that bright and full of observations but not to be able to make anyone understand.
Every person has their own path, and success can only really be measured by how satisfied someone is in their own life. But my daughter just got her PhD in neuroscience, she’s happily married (to someone who is also neurodivergent), and she"s doing work she loves. I’m not sure I would have predicted that all those years ago when she started biting at the age of 4. I’ll bet your son will be going places no one can even imagine right now.
How wonderful for your daughter. I appreciate the support. It’s a roller coaster for sure. But I was thinking the other day, it’s good he is with us. I grew up with a parent who did not understand my own neurodiversity (ADHD) and just took it out on me. I excelled academically and was teacher’s pet and was a girl so I did not fit the stereotype. But at home I really struggled with processing when I was told to do something, paying attention while learning the task, and executing the task properly. I would get so absorbed in my journaling or reading or writing that it was difficult to get through to me, which was read as obstinance, screwing up on purpose. I might have been the golden child at school, but at home I was a screw up who couldn’t get anything right. I wasn’t diagnosed Innatentive type ADHD until age 34. I still struggle the most in the domestic sphere.
It leaves an impression. I have a new boss who told me the reason she took the job was because of the opportunity to work with me. I have a great reputation, she said. It still blows me away how others perceive me vs my self-concept. Even at work, I know I do good work but I struggle to get my thoughts organized, am frequently overwhelmed, have trouble getting started on tasks and people just don’t see it. I can mask it because when I do finally get to work, I’m incredibly efficient. I can write in just three hours a grant that would take a typical person an entire day. It’s not that the ability to hyperfocus is better than being neurotypical, but it is a nice consolation prize.
I also witnessed spectacularly bad parenting of other neurotypical kids as a child, just people who constantly yelled at and criticized their children for being kids, and I shudder to think what my son would be going through if he was raised by the kind of parent who expected kids to shut up, control their emotions at all times and not inconvenience adults.
I see the same task initiation and processing struggles in Wee Weasel. You can ask him to do something and he won’t respond at all no matter how much you repeat yourself, but thirty seconds or a minute later he will do the thing. I wonder if ADHD might be a piece of this too. But that’s to figure out at a later time.
Make sure they have books to read. Make sure they see you reading books. Don’t do anything that detracts from the enjoyment of reading, add no requirements, don’t try to teach any lessons, don’t place any expectations on him. Just be pleased that he enjoys reading. Based on the start you’ve made there’s nothing much more to do.
Update: He’s reading! He got a new book from the library (I Can Subtract Zero, what else?) and read about 50% of the words in it! He was not happy about the word KNOW. I was like, right, but you don’t pronounce the K. He was not having it. And today at the psychologist’s office he read some of the words on a plaque she had. I think he’s really going to take off with this. He’s been asking a lot how to spell random words. He is somewhat impulsive, meaning he will guess the word based on the first two sounds or in some cases insist that a different word needs to be there than the one that is.
And as of 9pm tonight, I can officially say he’s autistic. The big question with hyperlexia as I understand it is that reading comprehension tends to be lower than the level at which they can decode words. So we might have to work on him understanding what he’s reading. But so far, so good! Teaching him phonics paid off.
Late to the party, but best way to get a kid to read is to make it a topic he actually likes. For instance, I struggled as a kid with reading - except when it came to airplanes and soccer, which I could read just fine.
Tell me to read at age 6 about something I disliked, though, and it was a mighty struggle.
Thank you for the updates!
I believe it was GB Shaw who pointed out that in English, “fish” could be spelled “ghoti”. The “gh” as in “enough”, the “o” as in “women”, the “ti” as in any word with “-tion” like “condition”.
(Does he like these sort of silly jokes?)
I think “a Kn also makes a nnnnn sound” makes more sense, because its a new rule, not just an arbitrary “this word breaks the rules”
FWIW, the issues he has a pretty typical early reader items. Yeah “kn” or “gn” is often just “n” especially starting off a word. They lost their expressed sound along the way. Once upon a time they were expressed sounds. Share that so now he knows.
But this is remains the bigger item.
Yes.
Yes yes yes.
Still try to read to him and to have him explain what he just read. Matching pictures to words or even sentences might be a good game. Number related maybe?
That’s great news! There’s a poem that shows all the ridiculously different sounds English words can make… I’ll see if I can find it.
ETA: Here it is:
Just a happy update: the boy is reading! I don’t think we really did anything to make it happen. We had kind of set it aside beyond reading to him regularly. He’s not perfect at it or anything. He has the tendency to guess the word based on the first two sounds.
But we were making cookies the other day and while reading the recipe, he busted out with: “Two cups quick-cooking oats.” He was able to read many things on the ingredient list and then find the ingredient quantity. (He got super excited when he realized baking involves counting.)
His comprehension seems good. He made up a game where we write something on a pad and he reads it and responds.
Example: Give your dinosaur a hug.
Then he goes and hugs his dinosaur.
Just to make sure it’s not all sight words, I wrote some random words.
He was able to read “window” and “backpack” and read “shirt” as “shit.” Whoops. But that told me he is really trying to sound things out. It was a good guess.
He also took a sudden interest in Fox in Socks and after reading it out, he pointed to the pictures and said, “That’s a chick stack. That’s a brick stack.” Etc.
Pretty cute.
I guess for many kids, just giving them access to books is what does the trick.
It’s amazing how fast the process goes once that switch gets flipped in a kid’s mind! And I really believe that it’s a lot like spoken language acquisition in that they learn a lot by immersion alone.
Now you are going to spend all your spare money on children’s books. Better have a library card!