What I really want to talk about is hyperlexia. Does anyone else have kids who have been diagnosed with this? I wonder if this might be something that my son may have, as he is now and has been for over a year, obsessed with numbers. He started with numbers and letters, but now all he really likes is numbers.
Does anyone have any experiences with kids who are facinated with numbers? It has been suggested to me that he has an 'unhealthy attachment' to them and I should take away all exposure to them for several weeks and force him to focus is excitement on something else. This sounds crazy to me, as he is learning a lot from our play with the numbers. Has anyone else encountered this sort of advice before and if so, what did you do with it?
I am not an expert, but do have a suggestion based on a similar experience. My dd (now 10 yo) was an unusually early reader - her reading really took off just around her second birthday. So hyperlexia came up. Also, due to the reading and other personality traits, friends raised concerns about autism - in a way that was hard to avoid. As a result, rather than rushing to specialists as our friends suggested (insisted?), we brought it up with our trusted pediatrician at a regular check up. She was able to do some basic screening tests in real time and concluded there was nothing to worry about. Time has borne out her assessment - dd is now a wonderful tween. And while her obsession as a toddler with letters was by any measure extreme (one of her first spoken words was "readabook"), she is now happy, well-adjusted, still loves the written word and is a blazing fast reader. And in her case, the interest in reading turned out to be correlated with giftedness, now confirmed by testing.
So while her fascination was with words, not numbers, I think our strategy could still be applicable for you. If you have a good pediatrician, especially one who knows your child, discussing these concerns with them might be a good first step. Best wishes!
