For the past year or so, my 7 year old first-grade son (hyperlexic) has been displaying ever increasing ability in arithmetic, growing to story problems and algebra. Like the reading ability, this mathematical ability seemed to be self-taught We had been working with Gordon extensively on language and social skills but hardly at all on math. Given the hyperlexic fascination with letters (which led to reading), I wondered if the math abilities Gordon was displaying was a natural outgrowth of his fascination with numbers. Could this be part of the syndrome? Hypermathia?

I posted a question to my internet listmates on the hyperlex listserv to find out what other parents reported about precocious mathematical ability. I told them of a story of when Gordon met a 13 year old boy, seconds after learning the older boy’s age, Gordon formulated a simple algebra problem in his head, solved for X and responded "Wow, when you were 6, I was zero!".

The hyperlex listserv. . .

Gordon is constantly playing math games like this. He was with Mom at the grocery store when she was looking for a turkey for Thanksgiving. Mom said, "to feed everyone, we will need a turkey that is 12 to 16 pounds." Gordon instantly calculated 14 from this description and started looking for a 14 pound turkey. Over Christmas, we were all playing cards while Gordon played with some extra cards at a nearby table. I looked at him sorting cards by suit, and all of a sudden he blurted out, "My score is 42!". In front of him were 7 cards face up, the 7, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 5 of hearts (for the rest of us, 7+2+4+6+8+10+5=42). It’s amazing how quickly Gordon calculates these.

I was curious what the other parents on the listserv were experiencing with their kidwonders (listserv jargon: affectionate term for our special learners). Here are some of the wonderful responses to my question:

Sheri in Michigan responded, "Yes his math skills have been just as amazing as his reading and memory skills!" Many others replied with generalities about their child’s strong math abilities. A mother of twin hyperlexic boys responded, "Our twin boys displayed early math abilities. At 5 years old they had addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts up to 12. They continue to be ahead of their peers in math."

Another responded that his son was also doing the simple algebra games – especially with calculating dates: "Thomas, just turned 7 and in 1st grade also, also displays excellent math ability. Last spring we were waiting for speech one day when he came out with "In 2004 I'll be able to watch Guiding Light." Because it's rated TV-14, and that's when he'll be 14. Just blew me away!" Kathy in Chicago added, "He was about 4 I think, when we were in a liquor store, and he said ‘in the year 2008 I can buy liquor’ or something like that (he was born in 1990). At age 5 he was calculating how many jars of spices were in a grocery store by multiplying the number of jars in each row times the number of rows."

Another post came in that described a 6 year old who was actually doing formal story problems in first grade: "Evan had a worksheet that had story problems on it. E.G. I am a number that if you double me and take away 3 the answer is 7. Who am I? He quickly used algebra to figure the answer (x + x) - 3 = 7 then x + x = 10 finally x = 5."

Other stories indicated our kidwonders can grasp negative numbers or even the concept of infinity at an early age: "My son was fascinated with the concept of infinity at about age 4 or 5. I had to e-mail "dr. Math" on the web to ask all of the questions he had about infinity (i.e. what is any number + infinity, etc.). He also discovered negative numbers at about age 4 or 5. He was trying to figure out what happens when you subtract a larger number from a smaller number so I showed him the number line with negative numbers and he immediately understood it."

It seems at least one of our kidwonders had combined the math with the letters into alphabet arithmetic: "If you asked him what's ‘c + f’ , he would immediately answer ‘I’. More amazingly, if you asked him what is ‘d - g’, he would answer ‘negative c’!"

As is the case with my Gordon, many report that their kids use the math ability as a basis for social interaction with peers: "Michael is big into asking people how old they are by what year were they born in and then telling them how old they are."

As you might expect, these abilities are reported to be primarily self-taught, similar to the reading ability: "I’d say he developed the mathematical functions himself and then found out they had names. When he was three and a half he announced ‘If there are five cherries in each pie and five pies, that's 25 cherries.’ I said that's right that is called multiplication. 5x5=25. He said, ‘is that what those X's mean?’"

One possible down side to this is one parent’s report of difficulty when asked to be imprecise: "One area that he is lacking in is his ability to estimate. In first grade he would not provide any answer when asked to estimate-he had to know the correct exact answer before he would respond. He has now learned to offer a guess when asked, but is usually way off the mark unless he is able to perform some obvious calculation to arrive at his answer."

But are these amazing feats by our kids truly signs of advanced mathematical abilities? Mary speculated, "I don't feel he has any special mathematical abilities but more of a phenomenal memory. Once he sees it, it's there forever. But then he's only 4, can't imagine where he'll be at 7." Indeed, I have noticed in my own son that the learning style for math is similar to that used for learning reading. At first, the strong memory and rote learning, combined with the natural visual fascination with symbols like numbers and letters are the root of the ability. But just as with the reading, the rote-learned information gets slotted into some systemic order and moves beyond the memorized to an actual skill or ability. Problems with estimating and the less concrete, however, suggest that our kids may have difficulty with the more abstract concepts of mathematics. Still, one of the concerns of parents is that math is too easy for our kidwonders and parents worry that their kids will become bored with the grade level curriculum.

One thing is for certain, many of our kids like math. Why not nurture the ability?

Kathy from Chicago recommended: "You might want to look for some kind of gifted and talented program in your area which offers math classes for children his age. Or invest in some software that will challenge him more. If your school has a pull out program for gifted kids you might investigate this too." Also, if you live near a college or university, there may be Saturday programs available for gifted students that can provide appropriate challenges. Oh and yes, many parents have the aptitude in math to keep pace with our kidwonders. Gordon loves to play math games with me.

As parents, we all want a window to look through – to see what our special child will be like at age 7, 10, 14 and young adult. That is one of the wonderful things the internet and the hyperlex listserv can do. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. You may not have a half a dozen parents of hyperlexic children in your village, but there is a village of over 200 willing to share with you via the internet at the hyperlex listserv. If you have on-line access (and if you are reading this version, you do!), I encourage you to subscribe.