Hyperlexia and the Radical Concept of Autistic Advantage

reading-kid-1I am many kinds of weird, but the first label I remember is “bookworm.” My parents discovered I was a really easy kid to mind after I could sit up on my own; just put a big book or catalog in the floor and I would sit for hours turning the pages and staring at them.

I learned speech by intense observation and repeating whole adult-sounding paragraphs cribbed from newscasters and TV commercials. I was initially behind my peers in reading, but went through a mental expansion between first and second grades that suddenly landed me in “gifted and talented” special education. They tested my verbal IQ in second grade. After three questions, the lady switched to the adult version of the test which I also blew away. I went from barely grade level at the beginning of first grade to college level reading by fourth grade. Meanwhile, my physical and social development were stunted and I didn’t feel human.

This is a typical tale of a certain type of atypical child – the hyperlexic who becomes academically gifted but socially isolated. Hyperlexia is “a syndrome characterized by a child’s precocious ability to read. It was initially identified by Norman E. Silberberg and Margaret C. Silberberg (1967), who defined it as the precocious ability to read words without prior training in learning to read, typically before the age of 5. They indicated that children with hyperlexia have a significantly higher word-decoding ability than their reading comprehension levels.[1] Children with hyperlexia also present with an intense fascination for written material at a very early age.” – Wikipedia

Most of the sparse material I found on hyperlexia is dedicated to imposing a system of subtypes with the sole purpose of divorcing it from autism. As the hilariously-named Darold Treffert, MD, puts forth in a lengthy article with no scientific merit, there are three subtypes:

Type I: Regular-ass smart kids who begin reading early but whose peers eventually catch up.  “This form of “hyperlexia” is not a disorder; it does not require treatment. These children, usually very bright, go on to have very typical, successful lives.”

Type II: Hyperlexics who exhibit “a savant-like ‘splinter skill’ associated with the autism.”  These are the ones who are in trouble, folks. But, first can I say that there’s no reason to call something autistic kids tend to excel in a splinter skill. It’s just a skill that need not be splintered away from the diseased tree that is the pathological autistic child according to Darold. He concedes, “However, the precocious reading ability can itself be a valuable treatment tool for teaching language and social skills and should not be marginalized or disregarded as unimportant or frivolous.” Then Darold shows his true colors by saying, “Unfortunately, as I will point out, some clinicians and other specialists hold that when precocious reading ability is present, and when coupled with comprehension, language and social difficulties, it is always part of an autistic spectrum disorder. I do not subscribe to that view.”

Type III: Early, obsessive readers who show lots of autistic traits, but then eventually “outgrow” the autistic traits which “fade over time.” The Type III description is too amazing to not include in full:

The hyperlexia is coupled with an intense fascination with letters or numbers. Yet in spite of the intense preoccupation and ability with words, there are, correspondingly, significant problems in understanding verbal language. Comprehension of that which is masterfully read is often poor, and thinking is concrete and literal. There is difficulty with, and paucity of, abstract thinking. There may be some behaviors and symptoms commonly associated with autism spectrum disorders as well including echolalia (repeating rather than initiating conversation), pronoun reversals, intense need to keep routines (obsession with sameness), auditory or other sensory hypersensitivity, specific intense fears, strong auditory & visual memory, and selective listening with the appearance of suspected deafness. In this group of children these latter “autistic” traits and behaviors are only “autistic-like” however, mirroring those seen in autistic disorder itself.

But totally not autistic because “in contrast to those in Autistic Disorder, these ‘autistic-like’ symptoms fade over time as the child ‘outgrows’ his or her ‘autism’ as some parents have described that transition. I call this group Hyperlexia III.” Darold the Great wraps up his theory by telling us exactly why it’s necessary:

The purpose of this posting is to describe these different types of hyperlexia and to point out the necessity for careful differential diagnosis among them because of differing treatment and outcome implications, along with alleviating some of the unnecessary distress and worry in parents when a diagnosis of Autistic Disorder is applied prematurely and in error to some children who read early.

And this is from 2011. But drivel like this is still used to perpetuate fear of having a child with a different neurotype. Here’s an example of a Warrior Mom, PhD, nearly begging for a different diagnosis to be created for her hyperlexic child who is actually autistic.

It’s pretty clear that Type III Hyperlexics are also neurodiverse, but this points out how flawed the analysis of clinical blowhards can be, blatant bias against autism aside. Many avid autistic readers are exactly the ones who used reading as a skill to blend in and overachieve so as to be included in society and win love. We learned how to interact with people by reading fiction and reading has been shown to teach better empathy. Apparent lack of cognitive empathy has long been a poor litmus test for autism and reading can help a kid figure out how regular people interact and what they expect.

I used reading and intelligence to learn to mask autistic traits, but the problems, like anxiety and social confusion, never got addressed.

I think it’s impossible for many people to understand that a medical condition can confer both difficulties AND advantages, that a person can see their autism as both disability AND privilege. It’s part of why the whole thing is so weird: Our cognitive profiles have high peaks and some low valleys which is why it is characterized by some as “spiky.” Hard things are easy; easy things are hard.

So can some kids just be really good at reading and not be autistic? Sure thing! But probably not if there is a genuine “intense fascination with written material from a young age.” And not just the words on the pages, but a deep affinity for books as objects of comfort and refuge. I’m that chick that reads at the bar. My house is infected with random stacks of the things. Just seeing them lined up calms me and I go on vacation to famous bookstores.


I know a young autistic boy who is minimally verbal but talking more every day because he is teaching himself to speak through reading. He loves books and flipping the pages as a stim. He already knows how to read and is only around 4. His favorite word is “books.”

I know an autistic man who takes a textbook full of algorithms to dinner with his wife.


One last myth to explode here: Hyperlexic autistic kids are great at “decoding” words and vocabulary but reading comprehension is poor or non-existent. FALSE

I was reading C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian in early second grade during class. My teacher called me up to her desk and made me read some of it out loud to her, because she wanted to see if I was really that advanced. I was terrified and thought I was in trouble. I managed to stumble through a few paragraphs when she stopped me and asked me if I could summarize what I’d just read. I couldn’t.

I couldn’t because I was trying too hard to to read aloud on the spot to think about what I was reading. I felt pressured and scrutinized (I was), so I couldn’t communicate what I understood anyway. A lot of the words were new (and British), but I was obsessed with knowing how to read everything. I pushed myself to read beyond my ability and my ability quickly caught up. I never understood why teachers and parents would freak out about me reading far above my grade level even when the material was appropriate.

I credit my verbal IQ and obsession with books with my psychological survival as an autistic person. (I credit my physical survival with being middle-class and white.) While autism made other aspects of my existence difficult, reading and learning made me surprisingly resilient and able to think my way out of despair. I would be lost to myself without the ability to read and put my frightening experiences into context, to learn about my phobias, and escape from the angst of being alive.

So just let kids read and don’t call it a damn disorder!



Gender expression on the spectrum







Gender also exists on a spectrum.




My gender diversity is entirely social and expressive in nature.








Sound good?






Thought Experiments for Autism Experts


I spoke in my last post of the recent meeting I had with two neurotypical clinicians teaching a class on the psychology of autism, and how it did not go well. To recap, I had two neurotypical [not autistic] people disagreeing with my perspective as an autistic. To understand why this is so insulting, let’s imagine a demographically different scenario:

You are a black person who has just learned that two white people, who claim to have studied black people extensively, are teaching a class called The Black Experience in America for the first time at your local college – to a bunch of white students no less. You learn that they have not consulted with any black people about what will be taught or considered the perspectives and writings of actual black people. All their knowledge comes from external observations of black people by white people in clinical and institutional settings or from observing black children they have adopted.

You go in and find that they have left out every instance of black achievement, the concerns of black women and black LGBT+ specifically, and have concluded that black people would be better off if they could figure out how to act less black. You try to explain that the only accurate, expert perspective is that put forth by actual black people who have lived in America.

Yet, the white professors insist they are the ones who are closest to the truth of your own situation. They act like you took a dump on their desk for daring to suggest that it’s OK to be black and not be judged as inferior for it.

Not listening to people who are living in the skins or minds or bodies that you study and claim to uplift is useless at best and genocidal at worst.

You explain, calmly, that harms have been done to the black community by institutions and white supremacy and that this needs to be covered in the course material as well. They think that whites are perfectly fair and that racism is a thing of the past. They doubt you, debate your base of researched knowledge, and dismiss your inside observations of the black experience and what the consensus is among African-Americans on key issues. Once again they list their credentials as white experts on black people and question your sanity and intelligence. They insist that black Americans must be misperceiving their own lives and minds.

“But . . . Im black,” you insist, but they continue to teach the class from a white supremacist perspective.

That’s how my conversation felt, because it was the neurodiverse vs. neurotypical/ableist version of the scenario I described. See how messed up that is? [I want to mention that black autistic people do exist, even though they are never included, and the difficulties they face at their intersection are many times worse. Few of us lead single-issue lives.]

It also felt like having a dude mansplain feminism. Absolutely ridiculous.

Much as black people and women are often presumed to be incompetent, even concerning their own perceptions of themselves, autistic people are constantly rebuked, silenced, belittled, and contradicted when we tell others what it’s actually like.

Another parallel: Our white experts on blackness have concluded that blackness is tragic because it can lead to being shot or locked up in jail. Consider this: the  origin of “autism” is ‘from the Greek word “autos,” which means “self.” It describes conditions in which a person is removed from social interaction. In other words, he becomes an “isolated self.”’

Saying that most neurodiverse people have autism or “isolated-self-ism” is like saying black people have “lynch-ism.” We are identified in name by an involuntary consequence of our own oppression and otherization.  The oppressor is linguistically erased. Please note that no one is lynching autistic people or gunning them down like black people; yet autistic people, because of our stigma, are being murdered, are the frequent targets of hate crimes, face discrimination in every imaginable sphere, and we have a bad habit of killing ourselves when we lose hope of human connection. The end consequences of different types of marginalization are often chillingly similar.

But who’s most responsible for this autistic state of being? The autistic person or those who see them as unacceptable? The person who is different or those who have made being different dangerous and lonely? Autism is simply a catch-all term for a wide range of neurological differences that non-autistics find mysterious, confusing, and off-putting. So they actively shut out people with these differences.


Every autistic person has the capacity to enjoy some, even if not much, human interaction. Most of us desperately wish for closeness, relationships, friends, and social communication. We are not inherently isolationist. This is because the majority-rule humans won’t meet us part-way and learn our neuro-culture and language as we have had to learn theirs. The communication gap is as much their fault as ours, but all the blame and onus to change falls squarely on us.

This is where autistics are shaking up the public perceptions of who we are and what we need – and clinicians and other self-appointed institutionally-backed “experts” are refusing to listen to the growing chorus of neurodiverse voices on blogs, in TED Talks, on YouTube channels, in print media, and in public and professional sphere. Much as black people are often presumed to be incompetent, even concerning their own perceptions of themselves, autistic people are constantly rebuked, silenced, belittled, and contradicted when we tell others what it’s actually like.

Clean your fucking house, clinicians! Stop destroying the public perception of us and have the integrity to evaluate the harm you have perpetuated and embrace our neurodiversity-positive perspective.


On Talking Down to People with Asperger’s Syndrome



It didn’t go quite like I’d hoped.













On Being an Unaccompanied Woman





Different Acquire Funny Women Quotes Image Quotes At Hippoquotes
And a confident woman never lacks company.




People feel like a prison after a while.



Isolation can be a death sentence for a woman.

And we can’t fuck around with time machines.






On Gatekeeping and White Savior-ing
















Why I write about upsetting subjects








I’m also playing the hand I was dealt.
