A five-year-old child genius has won the hearts of over 400,000 TikTok followers for his mind-blowing reading and writing skills.
While other five-year-olds are getting to grips with their ABC’s, Sebastian Esposito has learnt the Greek, German, Armenian, and Turkish alphabets and can recite the entire periodic table of elements by heart.
Living with his dad, Ryan, his wife Amanda Esposito, 33 and her 14-year-old daughter Shyann in Albuquerque, US, Sebastian showed interest in reading from an early age.
At 18 months, he became obsessed with a wooden letter puzzle and began spelling out words such as cat and dog.
By his second birthday, when most kids are just learning to draw squiggles, Sebastian could write more than 200 words and knew the Russian alphabet.
Proud dad Ryan always knew his son was talented.
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‘Every parent thinks their child is special,’ the 30-year-old mine worker said. ‘But I knew Sebastian was really special.
‘When he started to spell words backwards, I thought maybe he was an alien.
‘And he picked up all these words so quickly. It was incredible.
‘We think he has a photographic memory. Anything he sees he just stores in his head and never forgets it.’
Now aged five and starting Kindergarten, Sebastian has ‘devoured’ hundreds of books and loves teaching his dad something new every day.
Ryan feels blessed to watch his son flourish, after a birth that was incredibly traumatic for this first-time dad.
Sebastian and his mum had been just moments from death when the baby became ‘jammed’ in the birth canal.
Incredibly, both mum and son survived, but Sebastian was placed on a ventilator in the intensive care unit for nine days.
Doctors told Ryan was told his son would probably have significant developmental issues, but this didn’t matter – he wanted him to be okay.
Three years later, Sebastian was diagnosed with hyperlexia, a condition where children are fascinated with numbers and letters and have an advanced reading age.
For Sebastian, this means he has the same reading comprehension of an 18 year old.
At the same time, it was confirmed that Sebastian has autism, which is common in kids with hyperlexia. ASD affects how Sebastian communicates.
‘Sebastian can’t really speak with his words, it’s quite difficult for him,’ Ryan said. ‘He has all of these thoughts, but he struggles to communicate that way.
‘He has an amazing mind, but he needs to write it down and he can let you know exactly how he is feeling.
‘If he falls down and hurts himself, it’s tough for him to let us know, so it can be really difficult.’
Hoping to raise awareness of hyperlexia and ASD, Ryan started posting videos of his son to TikTok. He didn’t expect them to go viral, but one video of Sebastian writing all the Microsoft fonts quickly racked up over 15million views.
In other popular videos, Sebastian is drawing every countries’ flag and brand logo from memory, as well as writing in cursive.
Ryan worries that people will think he is forcing Sebastian to learn, but the little guy loves it.
Five facts Sebastian taught his dad:
‘We tried to get him to play with trucks and cars, but it’s not what he wants,” Ryan said. ‘All he cares about is learning.
‘He has plenty of toys, but they are just covered in dust.
‘We want people to know that every kid isn’t the same. But they are all brilliant
‘Sebastian can’t put on his own shoes, but he can write in Russian – and that’s fine.’
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