Ask Sebastian Esposito, 9, to write a word, and he might ask which language you’d like it in. While many children his age are still mastering one language, this New Mexico boy can write in 10. Well, that’s not all. He might even ask you if you have a preferred font. Why? He has mastered a dozen fonts. His favourite is Abadi, a clean sans-serif typeface that looks a lot like Helvetica. He is quite a familiar face among TikTok users. He goes by the username ‘@litttle.einstein’ and showcases his wide range of talents there! Sebastian was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3, according to The Post, but that has never stood in the way of his talents. He knows the periodic table by heart and can even recreate the logos of popular brands, including Disney and Ray-Ban, from memory. One of his videos, in which he shares his love for fonts, took the internet by storm in 2022, garnering over 20 million views.
Solving a puzzle at 18 months
It really started with a wooden letter puzzle. When Sebastian was about 18 months old, he kept arranging the pieces into words such as ‘cat’ and ‘dog’. His parents, Ryan Esposito and Amanda, quickly noticed this. By the age of 2, Sebastian could read and write around 200 words, according to his parents, as reported by ABC News.Sebastian has hyperlexia, a condition in which a child reads far above their age level and often fixates on letters or numbers.
He is in love with languages and letters
Sebastian now writes in 10 languages. He has memorised the Greek, German, Armenian and Turkish alphabets, and he learnt the entire Russian alphabet before most children his age could recite the English alphabet! He can also recite the periodic table without any trouble. His parents say he learns mostly on his own. They provide markers, chalk, puzzles and educational videos, and he does the rest.Beyond language, Sebastian is also obsessed with geography. He can name the capitals of all 50 US states and identify the flags of countries around the world by their shapes alone! His father has a habit of turning these moments into jokes. When Sebastian tackled a maths problem that would stump most adults, Ryan joked that if the boy solved it, he would become part of a secret society. “Every parent thinks their child is special. But I knew Sebastian was really special,” he told the outlet.“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.”
The virality
Amanda and Ryan Esposito started posting videos to raise awareness about autism and hyperlexia. They never expected the clips to go viral. The account, @litttle.einstein, now has hundreds of thousands of followers, and some videos have drawn close to 20 million views.“We just wanted to show that there’s a whole community of kids who have hyperlexia,” Ryan told the broadcaster. That community is the reason the family keeps going.Speech, however, is harder for Sebastian. He struggles to communicate verbally, which makes the pen and chalk more than a hobby. They’re how he communicates. Amanda puts it simply: “Some kids love their trucks and dinosaurs, and he loves his markers and chalk.”
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