By Gail Prue

He has an angel's face: dark blond hair, gray eyes, and the most peaceful countenance.

He's smart: he was writing by the time he was three and could sight read dozens of words at three-and-a- half.

He's obsessive: for almost 18 months, he ate, slept and played Thomas the Tank Engine. When you asked him a question, he'd respond with a quote. "Malcolm, are you tired honey?" "I'm tired of pulling coaches, I want to see the world." It was cute. If he'd been quoting Shakespeare instead of the Rev. W. Audrey, the world would have beaten a path to our door to watch. It was still a good show. He knew the entire collection by heart and could pull an appropriate quote to just about any question he was asked. When he finally quit Thomas it was for Dr. Seuss. And after not eating a single bite of meat for his whole life, he suddenly started requesting green eggs and ham. The eggs he couldn't stomach. The ham, with a side of cantaloupe, became a staple.

He is loving: lots of kisses, lots of hugs, only the occasional flash of fury. And he had formed attachments to his family and to his caregiver, Sharon, that were steely strong. He seemed to prefer to hang with his adults. He wasn't very interested in kids his own age. My husband loved his independence. He certainly was independent. If he were hungry, he'd help himself to food, whatever he could forage. I walked into the kitchen one day to find him sitting on the counter, a line of six tomatoes beside him, a bite taken from each. He'd used the drawer handles as a ladder. But up was easier than down, so he sat, waiting, sucking on his thumb satisfied with his snack. When he wanted water, he got a cup, climbed on the toilet, turned on the bathroom faucet and quenched his thirst. We all admire him. His big brother, Kris, who is 27, thinks he may be smarter than all of us put together. His father believes him to be very special with rare peace that oozes and soothes. His sister, Alexandra, who is 7, vacillates between admiration - when he spells a word she needs for her homework and she's wildly proud of him - and frustration when she can't get him to do it her way. Oh, did I mention that he has a will of steel? He is undistractable, unstoppable, undeniable. If he wants you to do something, he will simply ask you again, and again, and again, and again. His tone never changes. He never becomes frustrated. He just repeats it over and over. Lord love a duck!

When the first letter came home from nursery school describing Malcolm's behaviour as unusual we all read it and smiled. I smiled too, although I had a slight sinking feeling in my stomach. I listened to how everyone else reacted to the letter and I let their confidence and their amusement buoy me. The letter described him perfectly: his distance from other children, his strong focus on wheels - he'd lean over and stare at the wheels of the tricycle, and run smack into the wall - his obsession with trains, his unusually early reading and writing. Yep, he certainly was smart. So what if he was a little different? And how could he have anything in common with all those other kids his age who were so far behind him?

When the second call came from the nursery school, I couldn't ignore it. It was like my Mother's Intuition was simply waiting for that second call. It went into overdrive. I observed Malcolm at school on two separate days. That sinking feeling I'd had in my stomach turned into a vast cavern as I watched him "not be there". He was somewhere else, not in that group of children. He seemed not to see them. He wouldn't let them touch him. He stayed on the perimeter of the group. He responded well enough to the teachers, although he seemed unable to answer most of their questions. What would you like to play with? Where are you going? Who is dancing in this picture? How would you feel? Even simple questions seemed to baffle him. "Malcolm, what colour is this shirt?"
"I dunno."
"Is the shirt red?
"No, is not red, is green." He knew his colours, but he didn't seem to understand what he was being asked. He was having huge problems distinguishing pronouns; "I" and "you" were totally baffling, never mind the problems he had with "he" and "she". He didn't seem to know a single preposition and all the articles - "the", "a", "an', - were missing from his language. I told my husband what I'd seen. I was distressed. He told me Malcolm was fine. This time I couldn't be assuaged. I hadn't realized how much our household had adapted to Malcolm's communication style, how much we had changed the way we spoke to him so he would understand us and we him. I suddenly realized that I had almost totally eliminated pronouns from my speech at home. "Malcolm, Mommy wants Malcolm to come and put on some clothes." I'd watched him struggle with I and you and my response had been to eliminate the struggle by using nouns almost exclusively. I started thinking about all the other ways we had changed what we did. We didn't ask Malcolm what he wanted for breakfast. We always gave him a choice of two alternatives, "Would you like crunchy toast or pancakes? Do you want peaches or apple? Do you want it whole or cut?" Realizing just how much we'd all changed for him scared my pants off. I got on the Internet and started looking. By the time I was finished I was sure he had Asperger's Syndrome. He was presenting with a number of the behaviours, although his emotional attachments, strong small motor skills and coordination belied Asperger's. I called my G.P. I love this man. He listens to me. He hears me. I cried. He promised to get Malcolm tested as quickly as possible. The testing was a disaster. I was emotionally a wreck. Malcolm sensed it from me. Both the women involved were lovely but said right off the bat that they'd never "seen Malcolm's brain before". We went back again and again for more testing. Each time he grew more and more uncooperative. They were puzzled because he seemed to have developed some higher language skills without having grasped the more rudimentary ones. His vocabulary ranked in the first percentile. More sinking stomach. More headaches. I felt as if each test was a reflection on what I was not doing right. I was obviously to blame for this. How could he not have any words? We have a fabulously verbal household. Alexandra has a rich vocabulary and a sophisticated understanding of word use. I tried reading to him, but he wouldn't pay attention unless it was a Thomas story. But it was clearly my fault. I had done this to him. The final result of the testing was that Malcolm had a communication disorder of some type. He was not diagnosed with a pervasive developmental disorder, but there was definitely something amiss with his language acquisition. "Give me a book to read," I pleaded. There was no book. I'd have to work with a language pathologist on this. They entered my case file for local service (I didn't hear from them for over eight months) and I went out and found myself a speech pathologist immediately. She was a dream. Able to deal with our quirky household, my strong resistance to anything I didn't understand, Malcolm's flight behaviour from things unknown. We worked with him all summer, in household, my strong resistance to anything I didn't understand, Malcolm's flight behaviour from things unknown. We worked with him all summer, in preparation for that fall's entry into JK. Yes, he could go to JK, but he needed to develop some coping skills first. I was scared. So many kids in a class. What if the teacher mistook his condition for a behavioural problem and labeled him? My baby, how could I protect him? I delivered a copy of the developmental psychologist's and language pathologist's reports to the school principal. I made it clear that with Malcolm's language disorder, the onus was on them to find a way to communicate with him, and that I didn't want to hear about "behavioural problems". I was assured everything would be done just so, and Malcolm was assigned to the most experienced JK teacher, a woman with a reputation for no nonsense. Somewhere along the line, my husband, Ken, met a man who was describing his son - a child with communications issues that seemed remarkably like Malcolm's. Ken told me this boy had a disorder called Hyperlexia. Back to the Internet I went. There it was: the American Hyperlexia Association. There was a Canadian arm too The sites were strong on descriptions of behaviours that were identical to Malcolm's: The fascination with letters and numbers; the copying of logos and signs; the fabulous memory; the rote learning of
language as a gestalt, incorpor- ating not only the words in sentence form, but the tone and facial expression that went with those words. This was it. Malcolm was hyperlexic.

Hyperlexia is defined as a learning or language disorder (both are used) where the child learns as if their first language were a second language. Nouns, verbs, adjectives come more easily than do articles, pre- positions and pronouns. Phrases and sentences are memorized and can be repeated, but the individual words within the phrases or sentences carry no meaning of their own. The child repeats back what he hears verbatim, referred to as echolalia. You ask a question expecting an answer, but
what you get is the same question echoed back.
"How are you, Malcolm?"
"How are you?"
"I'm fine."
"I'm fine."
While the child has a sense that a response is appropriate, since he doesn't have his own words he uses yours. And while most children learn through play - early childhood education is predicated on using concrete touch-and-feel experiences before moving up into the symbolic realm of reading - the hyperlexic child is symbolic from the get go. They need to be guided back to the basics of play to experience the realm of cause and effect, for example, which they just don't get until shown.

When I found The Book I was at once relieved and overjoyed. Here were stories of other children that were just like my Malcolm. READING TOO SOON: How to Understand and Help the Hyperlexic Child by Susan Martins Miller not only described the characteristics of hyperlexia, it described what parents and educators were doing to deal with it. I had found my bible. I called the language pathologist who had tested Malcolm. She reminded me that we had briefly spoken of hyperlexia, but that since it wasn't yet an acceptable diagnosis (it's still sort of a subcategory label), that the jury was still out on it as a syndrome. I didn't care. Not only did I now have a handle on this, I now had strategies I could use, strategies I could share with the school to help Malcolm adjust and grow strong. That emptiness in my stomach was gone. My guilt was gone. I had a way to deal with this. I could move forward.

By the time Malcolm entered JK in the fall, his vocabulary had caught up with his peers, he'd mastered the I/you puzzle and was well on the way to conquering he/she. He had made huge progress on the what, who, when, where, why, or how questions. And after practicing the category words for a couple of days, he had those down pat too. He's a remarkably fast learner. His phenomenal memory helps. And the prognosis for school is very good. Once he's reading and writing fluently, he'll be almost un- stoppable academically. He's on a continuous learning path for the social skills, and needs to be taught much of what other children take for granted when they communicate with each other: how to take turns, how to listen and respond in a conversational way, how to stop obsessing on the subjects that
interest him.

Happily, the whole experience did little to shake Malcolm's confidence. It seems all those adjustments we had made to him intuitively before he was diagnosed - the patterned  com- munication, the alternative questions - were exactly the right things to do. Thank heavens for intuition. And now that I've relaxed, he's relaxed. We're all aware of what we have to do to help Malcolm learn language, and we do it as part of the routine of the day, so the lessons don't feel artificial, as they did at the beginning of the summer. And it's exhilarating every time he takes a step forward. I called his Speech-Language Pathologist not too long ago and squealed with glee. Malcolm had, for the first time, initiated a conversation. It was a simple one, but as I relayed it to her, she counted the turns. "Six turns," she said. "That's wonderful." What's really wonderful is that my boy has started to talk to me. Finally. It feels so good to listen and respond and listen again. For the first time in my life I am so happy to just shut up and listen.

Gail Prue is a financial writer with columns in The Globe & Mail and Chatelaine magazine under the name Vaz-Oxlade. She's fascinated with kids' brains, how they acquire language, how they learn. She goes to school 1/2 day a week at her children's elementary school as a classroom volunteer. She has written 10 books about money that have been published, and several children's stories that have not.  She reads voraciously, hates authority, loves learning, despise unfairness and cherishes every moment. She believes she is the luckiest woman in the world.