Generally between 18 and 24 months of age, hyperlexic children demonstrate their ability to identify letters and numbers. Quite often by three years of age, they see letters grouped as words and begin to read them. It does not matter in what context the words appear: the child will recognise them whether typed or handwritten, upper case or lower case. Very likely, the hyperlexic child’s speech has not developed normally at this point in time, and he or she is reading words or phrases before mastering spoken language used by other children of the same age.
This is not a skill that is taught. The reading simply begins one day and does not stop. The recognition of words progresses to sounding out printed words – without phonetic instruction. The child learns to “decode” words. Some hyperlexic children achieve a very fluent level of instant, visual decoding and seldom mispronounce even difficult words. Other children continue to recognise words by size or shape, or use a combination of phonetic decoding and sight recognition.
I relied on self-directed reading from early on in my career to try understanding of how children learned to read, but I never received any formal pedagogical instruction.
As I related in a previous blog post Goodnight Moon was a favourite of Big Bob’s from birth. As a three-year-old, he and a pre-walking Ms May would be in the family room with me as I sorted fabrics or wool. He often paged through picture books on the floor or a low table while I half-squinted in his direction, and recited their texts. One day I stumbled on And two little kittens / and a pair of mittens / and a quiet old lady whispering Hush. Big Bob raised his head and stared at me, looked back at the page, and then back at me. I remember wondering if he was reading the words and then dismissing it as nonsense. He was still waiting. And two little kittens / and a pair of mittens / and a little toyhouse / and a young mouse.
During 1997, Big Bob experienced his first year of schooling We were all fortunate that his diagnosis guided us to excellent educators who understood his strengths and worked with them. He would read the fine print (‘For Teachers’) on the bottom of worksheets and do as it said. It was one of those fine women who recommended Reading Too Soon.
When I left Kids’ Own Publishing in 2022, they gave me this superb tribute created by Bern Emmerichs which documents my weakness for game shows : and it’s a shared pleasure with adult Big Bob: and he’s a gun on Wordle. I like to think that Margaret Wise Brown contributed just a little to his extensive vocabulary.
Back to picture books, in 1998.
40 Years of Picture Books 