A 5-year-old boy with autism who has a photographic memory and the amazing ability to read and write 10 languages, including Greek, has stunned social media users.
The boy, Sebastian Esposito, regularly uploads impressive clips to the social media site TikTok showing off his incredible ability to write in many different languages and perfectly replicate elaborate fonts.
Hailing from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Esposito has always had a tremendous talent with language. At just over a year old, the toddler became fixated on wooden letter blocks and spelling out words.
By his second birthday, he could spell out more that 200 words with his blocks, which is incredibly advanced for that age, as children typically begin writing around four. Even more incredibly, English wasn’t the only language he could write in — Esposito had already learned the entire Russian alphabet by that age.
Five-year-old boy with autism has incredible talent for languages
This amazing talent with language is called hyperlexia, and refers to children whose lexical capabilities have advanced far beyond their age, whether it be in terms of speaking, reading, or writing. This talent may be linked to Esposito’s autism diagnosis.
5 year old writing cursive #hyperlexia #autismawareness #cursive #HaloSilverTeam
♬ original sound – Sebastian
Hoping to shed light on the talents of children with autism, the boy and his family created a TikTok account that has nearly 450,000 followers. Some of the toddler’s videos have racked up millions of views.
While many children with autism have difficulty with language, particularly speaking, the disorder can also cause children to become very interested in particular subjects from an early age.
As the five-year-old boy’s father notes, despite his amazing lexical talents, his son does struggle with communicating.
“Sebastian can’t really speak with his words; it’s quite difficult for him. He has all of these thoughts, but he struggles to communicate that way,” he stated.
The toddler’s talents aren’t limited to words. In fact, he can list every country and identify every flag, and can even pinpoint their capital cities. He can even identify nearly every country just by looking at its outline.