Numbers and Letters-brag? | Autism PDD

He's very social too... but still somewhat awkward with peers... asks them questions about their favorite numbesr and such like and obviously other 4 year olds could care less about numbers

My second child is very much hyperlexic as well... whether or not I think he's diagnosable on the spectrum or not remains to be seen.  He too learned his letters and number VERY young (before 15 months as well).  He's 27 months and spells out words all the time and probably has about 50 site words.  He's FASCINATED by print... loves playing the same games with drawing boards as your son and is also VERY interactive with it.  He has no language delay (no delays at all actually), no sensory issues, but does do some social ignoring so I do have some mild concerns.

Thank you for the kind words.

Where he falls on the spectrum as of his last appt. with the Dev. Ped was "Mild PDD-NOS."  I am hoping that changes to speech and social delays.

He was behind in speech by about .5-1 year receptive and expressive.  He can get very "handsy."  Sometimes when he gets overstimmed he has major meltdowns.  When he has difficulty expressing himself with other kids he pushes and sometimes he will hit Mom (not usually Dad and rarely another kid though he will push).  He is very rigid with his scheduling and can get OCD ritualistic at times.  He is sensory seeking and has problems when his vestibular system is in need of input that he is not getting...he gets very handsy then.  He loves being with people, but too many people will lead to a meltdown...though he got up on a stage the other day and sang, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "Moon, Moon, Moon."  He will make eye contact when he is doing well, but you can tell when he is shutting down.

He has a lot of..."stuff" going on, but it is hard to tell when he is being a three-year old little prick and when it is spectrum stuff.

I hate all the doom and gloom I always see here so I would have liked to have stayed away from this in this thread, but I guess it was bound to come back around eh?  <sigh>.

He is.  That is it!  He is.  He is my beautiful, amazing little star.  He is that which spins the globe and that thing around which all other things must revolve.  He is my everything.

That is where he falls...and where I will catch him. 

I , however, choose to rejoice with those who rejoice, and in your case, Cam, I am so very happy for you with your sweet sons progress! CONGRATS!

I believe you are right to limit the tv time AND the computer. 

Here is some odd info about kids and computers.  Because Cole was such a preemie, he got OT automatically upon his release from the hospital.  One thing I learned over the years from the woman who owned the therapy center was that kids under the age of 4 - particularly when you suspect there MIGHT be fine motor issues - should be prohibited from using the computer.  We didn't start until 5.

Eye movement & focus is a developmental thingie and is considered a fine motor skill.  When they are little, it can be harmful for them to use the computer - imagine!  In a bazillion years I never would have had this idea occur to me, but your hotshot OTs know about this. It can impede the way they read lines of books later on in their education and some other stuff, forget - been a long time.  But you can google it to verify.

Anyway, back to your question.  The first Leapfrog is the Talking Letters factory.  It is a phonics show, includes humor, and singing.  I would start here and stay here for a couple, three months.  Unless he is truly hyperlexic like Shelley's little hotshot (and cute!!!), you need to make sure he has got each step down pat before moving on.  You will have to test him in fun little offhand ways before you know whether he's solid or not.  I'm doing this with Jack right now.

As far as the pace to move ahead, I will say that Cole's speech therapist refuses to allow him to proceed farther in his BOB books (BB ought to be ready within a year for the first set) because he will speed scan the word and sometimes blurt out THAN instead of THEN.  Simple mistake, right?  My inclination was to keep going (some of this was my pride in Cole talking). 

Kim says NO.  He is such a fast little reader that he can glance at clustered letters and interpret them (sight reading)....BUT this can slam the kid in the long run.  Their little eyes need to scan the entire word left to right, and for smart cookies, they want to jump to whole word recognition.  They need to show precision accuracy in left-right sight reading before moving ahead. 

Sight reading of dolch words is important to start at kindergarten age, but needs to be accurate so that their comprehension of the sentences and story is solid. And if a child has even a slight tendency toward dyslexia (or is that lysdexia??), this is even more critical. 

I know it is hard to intentionally slow them down when there are those other autisticky things where they ARE behind.  Ugh - I do know.  Cole got hold of the 2nd and 3rd grade dolch word list I was using to build him "reading stories", and brought them over to read to me.  Big old honking words with funky dipthongs and he was tackling them like drunken turkeys...not much trouble at all.  BUT.  We then went back to precision first grade stuff.

Look, having our boys learn to read 9 months earlier or later is not going to slam their chances of getting accepted into the PhD program at MIT.  At this young age, don't push it even if he wants to.

Its fairly easy to teach a kid to read when they are interested in it and as bright as your little sunbeam is.  However, it is NOT easy to teach them properly.

Please find some stuff to dig up on gifted kids. I'm botching the explanation of this stuff pretty badly.  But because Cole is so ahead of his age at reading and since he has a gifted brother, I've had the teachers and therapists guiding me on this topic.  So far, so good.

Congrats on a GOOD problem for once!  Gosh, do you also have too much income now and is your wife just too gorgeous & kind and is your cooking just too divine and is your house way too clean?  Send over your mojo, dude!  I need some!

I hate all the doom and gloom I always see here so I would have liked to have stayed away from this in this thread, but I guess it was bound to come back around eh?  <sigh>.

He is.  That is it!  He is.  He is my beautiful, amazing little star.  He is that which spins the globe and that thing around which all other things must revolve.  He is my everything.

That is where he falls...and where I will catch him. 

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My son is also considered on the mild side and I just found out earlier this year from his school, he is now 7 and he's been attending school since 3.5 yrs old. I did not mean to bring 'doom and gloom' on this b/c I think this is something to be very pround of but I'm still trying to get everything about Autism and that is why I asked about his dx and I was just thinking back when my son was younger and what red flags he had then, I did not know about Autism when my son was 3, I just thought he had a speech delay. I think your son sounds like he is very smart and you should feel happy and pround of him.Congrats!

Kim says NO.  He is such a fast little reader that he
can glance at clustered letters and interpret them (sight reading)....BUT
this can slam the kid in the long run.  Their little eyes need to scan the
entire word left to right, and for smart cookies, they want to jump to
whole word recognition.  They need to show precision accuracy in left-
right sight reading before moving ahead. 

Cam,

Great for BB!  You have every right to be proud.  It is very early for him to meet those milestones, and as others mentioned, those are kindergarten benchmarks.

One thing I'd like to point out is that the letter recognition and the counting are both what school considers "rote skills" and it is not uncommon for kids with ASD to do very well with this types of skills.  However, for many kids with ASD it is the generalization of these skills that can be more challenging. 

My son learned some very good rote skills early as well, though not as early as BB.  It became clear to me this year in kindergarten, based on some of the testing the school did, that C was ahead of his peers on many rote skills but behind in generalizing.  Just something to keep in mind that as BB learns these great skills, keep working with him to generalize them and apply them in many situations.  For example, if he comes out with 3 + 8 = 11, ask him a story problem (if I have 3 bunnies in the yard, and 8 squirrils come into the yard too, how many animals do I have in the yard, etc.) around the same concept.  My son can spit out the addition problem but struggles when it's presented in "story problem" format. 

Congratulations again!  You have a little smartie-pants on your hands!

My little guys sound like yours.  At two, they were making me write out the numbers to 100, they could place the magnetic letters on the fridge in alphabetical order and knew all the colours, shapes etc.  At 3.5, andrew taught hemself the sign language alphabet using a placemat depicting the hand positions.  They also taught themsleves to write their numbers and letters as I was not always willing to sit for hours and do it for them.  Right now (they just turned 5) they can read and do simple addition and subtraction.  We're very proud of them, too.  The other day we told Andrew we were going to leave the house at 10:00.  At 9:20 he asked what time it was.  When we answered "9:20" he said, "Oh, 40 minutes left".  We were speechless! Nothing wrong with their smarts!

Catharine

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Kristy - you won't believe this, but Cole will not do math problems without significant bargaining UNLESS we do word problems!  He can't add his way out of a wet paper bag, though!

But if the red train is carrying 3 circus elephants, the blue train is carrying 5 hungry lions, and the yellow train is carrying 2 silly clowns, how many spotlights will they need for the circus?  Only 5 - the lions ate all the others.

Sorry! I really don't have anyone get devoured, but if we don't make the math problem interesting, he'd rather swallow live crickets than do math.

Also, Jack has a preK teacher who did her masters thesis on early childhood reading.  Jack cannot name all the letters of the alphabet consistently, but he knows all his phonics and is starting to read.  Odd.  If you ask him, what is this letter he says "ffffffffffffffffffff" instead of Eff.

Today you got me thinking about early reading and spoke with her.  She suggested I get familiar with Project Read.  Don't know if this curriculum applies to gifted or special needs kids, but here is the site.  Am gonna check it out myself.  Happy trails.  Look out for lions.

http://www.projectread.com/

Oh, and thanks Elle!  I simply surround myself with smart people and bother them for help.  Like on this board!

Sorry, I haven't read all the posts. But, my ds knew all his numbers from 0-9 by 20 months, all his upper-case letters at 2 and lower-case letters by 2 1/2. Yet, he is not reading quite yet. He just learned the SOUNDS to the letters this year and is slowly sounding out a few words.

We chose not to focus on him learning these skills, because we thought he could just do it naturally. Although I am glad we chose to just focus on social skills and appropriate behaviors, there is a part of me that wishes we had focused a LITTLE on reading. I am hoping he doesn't have issues now - although they may be related to a visual tracking problem, I don't know.

I also wonder if it is possible to just have a child on the spectrum focuse just a LITTLE on something they are obsessed with...

Anyway, he sounds very smart and you should all be proud!

Sounds precocious to me, Cam - good!

The girls are just now learning to recognize numbers over 20.  They cannot do even the most basic math problem in their heads, though they can figure out the answer if you show them with a visual aid.

As far as letters and numbers, I think they started learning them sometime between 3-4, and had them nailed by the end of preschool (though the still confuse 'b' and 'd' and a couple others).  They are, however, phonetically reading and writing with comprehension, but this wasn't taught - they started doing it on their own starting around age 4.8 or so. 

Since it was never taught, they're learning to read out of order it appears - they can decode simple, phonetic words, but cannot recognize many sight words, and don't know any advanced phonetic decoding rules.

So, the girls are top heavy on letters/reading and comparatively behind in numbers/math.

Cam,

you should be so proud...and yes it is very early...I wish I could get savannah to recognize numbers and letters...Never mind write them...she is still in the scribble stage....at 4

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Thanks lady ;)

I'm not saying that they are perfect looking or that his penmanship is flawless, but they are all there!  I wish amazon would ship those damn leapfrog videos already!

Rigth - sorry to have hijacked your thread, Cam - wasn't intentional.  I had meant that their math skills were behind relative to their reading skills, not that they were behind where they're supposed to be at their age.  Thanks for the tips, though :)

Cam,

you should be so proud...and yes it is very early...I wish I could get savannah to recognize numbers and letters...Never mind write them...she is still in the scribble stage....at 4

Fred - they are NOT behind! Most kindergarteners are not doing basic math problems in their heads! Especially not ones who just turned 5. They do it with visual aids as well. I still added and subtracted on my fingers under the desk when I was 6 and in 2nd grade! Granted, that was over 30 years ago...

I understand you said comparatively behind - but most kids have strengths in some skills and do average in others - that may be the case with your girls and reading and math...

Fred - I agree with Snoopywoman.  Your daughters are not behind in their numbers and math skills.  Kindergarten math is done with manipulatives.  Very few of the kids were able to do math problems in their head.  In first grade, they are taught touch points, which IMO is glorified finger counting. 

Your daughters current acedemic skills appear to be what schools hope students attain by the end of Kindergarten.

Fred,

If you want to realistically see what kids should be doing at what ages, go to Barnes & Noble and look at the workbooks.  They are usually over by the kids books.  Each workbook is about 1/2 inch thick and costs around  - 7.  You should find 2 - 3 different brands of workbooks called Math - Kindergarten Level.  I have one at home and it starts with concepts such as same/different, patterns, etc. and eventually builds to number recognition and counting and finally near the end actual addition.  Now that the boys have finished K, I can objectively say that those workbooks are pretty dead on with the order in which kids are taught the concepts and the actual concpets themselves by grade level.

I'd highly recommend buying the K level books for math and reading.  It will clarify for you greatly what is expected of a typical kindergarder, and also the order in which they typically learn key concepts.  It's an easy way to benchmark where your girls are academically.

Of course you should be happy about this!  My oldest son is considered very smart, and he didn't do these things proficiently until he was 4.  Actually, the skills you listed are Kindergarten goals.

Way to go BB!

Yes, you should be happy about this and yes it is early. It shows that he has some great strenths. My son is 3 1/2 and is reading begining readers and does simple math. He loves to write and writes words frequently. We have used this to his advantage in teaching new language. We use visual (written) prompts with his language and articulation and then he generalizes it.

Good job BB.

I think whether it's related to ASD or not you should still be very proud!!  A smart little guy you have there!

But he does seem to be hitting those milestones early...my 4 DD can count quite high and write 1-10...but is just learning how to write her name...can say her ABC's but not recognize most of the letters...she will be 5 in Nov.  I took her to this playschool class last year and I would say most kids were around her skill level.  I know she isn't advanced, but I definitely never worried that she was behind.

Keep using this to your advantage--buy him as many games, toys, videos etc that teach this type of stuff...to me it seems if he is advanced in some areas that will give his future schools, teachers more time to focus on other areas that he is having problems with.

Unfortunately for Mason he seems to be behind in most areas, so I find myself having to decide what seems more important at the time to work on.  But he does great with numbers so I try to use those as much as I can with him.

Good luck and way to go BB!! 

I think this is a "brag," but...

BB has been objectively assessed as "genius" by various sources, but this one came as a surprise to me.

He has known his ABCs since before age 1.5.  He has known how to count to 20 before age 2 and actually 30 not long after his second birthday.  (This is important for the latter portion of this post).

We have always drawn together.  He likes to sit in my lap with a magna doodle or we stand at an easel and he will request that I draw TONS of animals, "Draw an Elephant Daddy.  Draw a Zebra..."  On and on.  Then he took to drawing them.  Very cool.  Only I would know what they were , but he was doing it.

About a week ago he started asking me to draw letters and numbers.  Each time he would have me draw one he would do so as well!  When he would have trouble with one he would TRACE MINE (Brilliant move) to train his hand to do the same thing!

It gets more interesting...

He has been requesting a "Blue's Clues Numbers" video.  All of a sudden he started breaking out math!  "Eight and Three...Eleven!"  I was floored.  I had to ask DW if I just heard what I heard.

Long story long...He now 1.  Writes his ABCs.  2.  Writes well into the 20s and...COUNTS TO 100!

What is the normal age for this?  I am pretty damn sure he is early on these milestones.  We kind of ruled out Asperger's a while ago because he loves people, he is very social and he has an obvious speech delay.

Thoughts please?  Can I be happy about this?

I just think it shows he is a smart little guy. You've stated good reasons to rule out Aspergers. Of course, kiddos can become obsessed with the letters and numbers. We just try to channel it into other activities or make sure he is interacting with you while participating in these activities.

We have these Leap Frog vidoes and my son loves, loves , loves them. Especially, Talking Words Factory and Math Circus.

Letter Factory

Talking Words Factory

Math Circus

Code Word Caper

Learn to Read--Storybook Factory

We have these Leap Frog vidoes and my son loves, loves , loves them. Especially, Talking Words Factory and Math Circus.

Letter Factory

Talking Words Factory

Math Circus

Code Word Caper

Learn to Read--Storybook Factory

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Going to check Amazon now.  Thank you!

Why...YES I have heard of Hyperlexia.  I tend to be obsessive (

No Significant difficulty in understanding verbal language

No Abnormal social skills, difficulty in socializing and interacting appropriately with people around this issue.

He does not learn expressive language in a peculiar way though he sometimes does echo ro memorize the sentence structure without understanding the meaning (echolalia), reverse pronouns

He always initiates conversations

He has some auditory, but no olfactory and / or tactile sensitivity

No specific, unusual fears

No regression. 

I'm sure you know the rest.

Thanks!

Ah, thank you for the piece I was not taking note of...he is doing this WITH me.  I might also note that often when he finishes writing his ABCs he sings, "Now I now..." and then says with a huge smile on his face...and jumping up and down flapping his hands, "I'm proud!"

He is being social with it and not isolative.  Thanks flip.

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That is a very, very good thing. It's great that he is so proud and shares his excitement with you.

Yippee for little Mr. Smarts!  Wonderful stuff!

Listen, Cole did similar things at similar ages, but he does have conversational problems...so he is PDD NOS, not Aspie.

At 20 months, I heard him in kitchen saying  K    R    A     F    T and thought, how cute!  He is trying to spell KITCHEN (we had just moved in and I had had him help me label the Kitchen boxes a month earlier).  I was wrong.

Cole had pulled out a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese and was reading the letters off the box!  But he didn't start reading until 5 (we didn't press it) so I don't think he's hyperlexic.

I wasn't sure about your last post - does that list describe BB or were you chunking in descriptors of hyperlexia?

Did you know that a good chunk of kids who are PDD NOS have gifted siblings?  The intelligence factor tends to run in families, but for some reason, this cluster of kids on the spectrum are often smartie pants.  Maybe it is their intelligence that helps them overcome some of the more severe autistic traits, and pull them over to the PDD NOS side?

Anyway, the Leapfrog videos would be just wonderful for him, Cam.  He may just be a really smart little kid and it has no link to autism. 

My NT 4 year old could ask complex questions at the age of 2 that would blow you away. Around that time, we took a weekend trip and because of an ongoing sinus infection, I got carsick!  It surprised me, and before DH could completely pull over, I had to hurl out the window.  Charming.

Six months later, we were driving back to the same town for a get-away weeekend.  We were driving in silence after lunch, trying to get nearly 3 year old Jack to take a nap.  He starts giggling to himself and says, "Mommy?  Remember last time we drove to Jackson to go to the zoo, and you vomited out the window?  That was funny!" He was 2 1/2 at the time.

Check out some books on gifte kids from the library - there are HUGE differences in their questioning of authority, HUGE differences in the way you need to discipline, etc from the average kid.  He may be gifted AND on the spectrum...common.

What a nice little side dish!

What a sweet post LeAnne.

BB does the same thing with the spelling.  It is wonderful.  There is a bathmat we put out for his bathtime that has "BATH" spelled out on it.  He loves to look at it and say, "B-A-T-H...BATH!"  Loves to spell.

What are the leapfrog videos like?  Which would you suggest?  I worry about too many videos as he perseverates on these sometimes.  We keep him off of electronic devices (even computers though he loves them) and the vast majority of his toys make no sounds and have no blinking lights...too much of a possibility of a stim.

Sarah is very hyperlexic with letters and numbers..actually one of her savant skills..USE it to teach him language:) We wrote out everything and pair every single skills with the words to match it..she picked it up much faster than just verbally telling her.  She could read almost anything by 3 years old and counted past 200 before we stopped her! The school wanted to move her up a grade because of these skills but socially she was not ready yet.  I think it is a gift and so happy we were able to use it to teach her:) We had written posters, social stories..constantly. Get some flashcards and test him...he may already know a few!
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