One More Question: Speech ?s this time.

birdie_1010

My son, 3 with a PDD-NOS diagnosis, has had atypical speech development. His speech began as straight echolalia, and he talked only in questions. (Instead of "I want cheese" he would say, "Do you want cheese") Nothing he said was spontaneous.  He then graduated to echolalia that was not just questions, but sometimes phrases. Funny enough, the kid that spoke in all questions, couldn't answer a question to save his life. To combat this, we practice answering lots of questions and often have to give choices in order to help him come up with an answers. All of this has lead up to where we are now.

He has two new quirky speech habits.  He is still using a fair amount of echolalia in his speech, but I will say that it has become quite functional.  However, he has this new thing where he will talk in choices.  So instead of saying, "I am wearing a green shirt today" he would say, "Am I wearing a green shirt or a yellow shirt today?" This one I can deal with.  We stop and have him tell us the answer and then say the sentence as it should be said. Any suggestions for other things to curb this behavior?

The more annoying concern, has to do with his spontaneous language. When he is coming up with spontaneous language, he is adding an -a to the end of all of his words.

For example, he might say, "Imma gonna put on-a my-a black-a shoes-a"  It is driving me bonkers, to say the least.  On one hand, I am thrilled that he is coming up with utterances on his own, but it is seriously driving me crazy.  Any suggestions on how to correct this?