Autistic Son Was in 1% Verbal at 3.4, at 6 on grade level

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Is this unusual? I gave him intensive home-based therapy--spent a large amount of money on products and have made a whole lot of visual/multisensory aids. We did simultaneous reading and speech. No speech path was involved, and I'm not a speech path, so I don't know what to think. It's unusual compared to other kids at his school, but the school is not so great. Is he HFA or what? He seems to have working memory issues but very high IQ.

It's actually not unusual. Most autistics learn to speak; and quite a few of those will "catch up" with and even surpass their peers, especially when it comes to using the words themselves. (Non-verbal stuff like body language, gestures, tone-of-voice, and such, are usually more difficult.)

That doesn't make it any less of an accomplishment, though. It seems you and he were both working very hard. You gave him a good environment and a decent teacher, and he learned. Isn't that what education is all about?

With autism you'll often see very odd developmental schedules. Me in the 3rd grade... hmm. Well, I was reading at a college level, doing 1st grade math, and socializing about as well as a toddler. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was twelve, at which point I was also figuring out relativity theory. And I learned to do algebra before I memorized the multiplication table. So, yeah, your son being way behind when he was little, and then catching up, is just one kind of developmental oddity that you see so often on the spectrum it's pretty much to be expected. (That also means IQ doesn't mean very much because IQ makes an assumption that your kid is typically developing and either slower or faster than his peers, when it's much more probable that he's faster in some areas, slower in others, out-of-order in yet others, and probably pretty unpredictable in general. IQ tests and autistics just don't mix very well...)

Reading is great. I learned a lot from reading, myself, because the words are right there in front of you, not just there and gone like when you're listening. I'm pretty sure that my own ability to speak jumped a pretty good amount when I learned to read; before that it was more following patterns and scripts than really communicating.

That's not unusual at all. I was like that.

Congrats and welcome to WP.