XP: Question about socialing and imitating peers

nictel

Another question from one of the "worriers" on this board!  LOL! 

My son is turning 3 and has a speech delay.  He started speaking about  5 -6 months ago, and is doing great!  Tested out of EI, and will get speech for articulation through CPSE in the fall.  He's really starting to interact with his peers, so that one on one playdates are now about 75% of interactive play with a a peer and 25% paralell play.  This cooperative / interactive play really got underway about 2 months or so ago.  Here's the "but".....But, a lot of it is him imitating the other kid or kids.  They sit down, he sits down.  They start throwing rocks, he starts throwing rocks.  He is even repeating their speech immediately after them.  They'll yell "come on!" and he'll yell "come on!" right after them....etc etc....  He's very good about coming up to me and telling me what his friends are doing.  For example, "Emily's swimming in the water", and then answering "yes I want to swim with emily" when asked if he wants to join in.  But, he's not good at phrases like "Emily come play with me" or "let's play in the sand instead"  He just follows and imitates his peers.

When he first started to learn to speak he did a lot of repeating of our speech.  Now the vast majority of his speech is original; he mostly repeats it if it's a new word or phrase he's trying to learn or if he doesn't understand or have an answer to an abstract question like "what did you dream about?"...  How normal is it for him to be immediately repeating the speech of his peers as he starts to learn to interact with them?  Do you think it will fade as it did with us once he starts to get more used to playing with peers?

We have also been told by mulitple clinicians that he is not ASD, just speech delayed.

So, how typical is this?  If it's not typical what should I do?  My SLP is not concerned.

Thanks!

susanmosley

Nothing about that sounds atypical.  Having an almost 3 year old boy say to a same aged peer, "let's play in the sand instead" sounds more atypical

If he is recently starting to engage with peers (which honestly, isn't too atypical either), what you describe sounds just fine.  My DD who is 2 yrs 9 months has some peers with whom she is the leader and some with whom she is the follower - she imitates them, repeats their sounds/actions, etc.  

Sounds like he is entering into a whole new world and he is developing true connections with other kids.