At age two, my son
Steven did not speak at all, could not follow simple directions or
even respond to his name. At 2-1/2, he was naming letters and
numbers, and at 3-1/2, he was spelling television credits using
plastic letters across the family-room floor: "Directed by Michael
McNamara".
So, my husband, Paul, and I labeled every conceivable object around the house. We even labeled ourselves. This was how Steven learned that written words have meaning. He then began to speak and to understand.
We knew that Steven had some sort of communication disorder or auditory processing problem from a very young age. However, we could get no official diagnosis... he didn't seem to quite "fit" any of the categories. We followed our instincts as parents, letting Steven guide us, and developed a set of strategies that worked at home, in the community and at school. Though Steven's progress was remarkable, we felt alone in our journey.
In October 1994 just before Steven was eight, I was sent a clipping from a Chicago area parenting magazine about something called "Hyperlexia". The relative who had sent it attached this note: "Robin, this sounds a lot like Steven, doesn't it?" Wow! Did it ever! I immediately requested information from the American Hyperlexia Association and discovered that there were hundreds of families like ours who were dealing with the unique joys and challenges of raising a hyperlexic child.
In August 1995, Janyce Lastman, Reva Schafer and I founded the Canadian Hyperlexia Association. Our membership list grows monthly and now spans six provinces. To date we have sent out more than 400 information packages to parents and professionals, presented several seminars on hyperlexia and held six support group / board meetings.
Most of our members' stories are similar to mine... they discovered hyperlexia by chance. Initially, our core group did not contain families who found us following professional diagnosis or referral; it is only now that this is changing. In the past two months, we've seen a substantial increase in those referred to us by family doctors, occupational therapists, resource teachers, speech-language pathologists, etc. We take this as a sign that the word is getting out!
We could not have accomplished so much in so short a time without our dedicated core group of active volunteers in the Toronto area. Special thank-you's to Janyce, Reva, Judy & David Gershon, Lynda Beedham, Kathryn Everest and Aviva Spiro for their gifts of time, energy, phone, fax and photocopy support. Thanks also to Rebecca Robertson and the rest of the Vancouver Support Group; we hope to strengthen our bond with you over time.
Special thanks also go to Parentbooks in Toronto for their support through sales of Reading Too Soon, to Johnsview Village Public School, Thornhill for hosting our meetings, and to all the folks in the American Hyperlexia Association for their support, encouragement and information.
Please feel free to forward your personal stories,
photos, suggestions or comments. Some submissions will be edited and
we can't use everything, but we'll do our best! We hope that this
page will become a forum for sharing of parental and professional
ideas and experiences while raising awareness of the syndrome of
hyperlexia across Canada. Read and enjoy!
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Robin Leszner is the mother of Tamara, Steven, Ryan and Joseph and is a music teacher, La Leche League Leader, and the President of the Canadian Hyperlexia Association. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
