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Is this echolalia?
Just some quick background: My son is on a 3 month waitlist to see a developmental pediatrician in our area. He is 26 months old now. We're also having EI come out again soon while waiting to see the dev pedi (but we had them out when he was 10.5 months and were not impressed with the therapists in our area). He just barely didn't qualify for services at that age - need a 30% delay and he was 28%. Some of our concerns have always been eye contact (non-existent even as an infant), some sensory issues, massive meltdowns if his routine is disrupted or we do not follow the pattern he is accustomed to.
His language skills exploded in the last few months and at times he speaks in full sentences. However, he will also do some repetitive speaking but I'm not sure I fully understand what echolalia is, and if this is what he is doing or not?
He doesn't do repetitive speaking all day long, but here is an example of something he does: About a week ago he was eating blueberries and I told him that blueberries are dark blue. Now when he eats blueberries, he will say about 100 times "dark blue in here." I will affirm that his blueberries are dark blue, and he will continue to say "dark blue in here... dark blue in here, mommy." I keep responding to affirm what he is saying, or I will respond with a question such as "yes, do you like them?" He will answer my question with "good" and then keep going with "dark blue in here." Once he's done eating his blueberries, the repetitive statement stops.
He does this repetitive talking with a variety of things, this is just the most recent example that came to mind. And again, it's not all day long, it is only while he is doing the specific thing, such as eating blueberries. Is this echolalia? And if so, how in the world do I respond to him if he tells me something 100 times? Do I just keep affirming him, or trying to draw more communication out of him with questions? Am I misunderstanding what echolalia is?
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Re: Is this echolalia?
That seems like repetive speech, similar to echolia. The way I was explained it (I'm not an expert my any means)- but typical children begin their speech with echolia. Like if you say "wanna bounce the ball" and a 12 month old repeats "bounce the ball!" That's the typical way to learn speech. It should go away by 2 or something. DS had echolia until he was 3, and still does to some extent (he's almost 4). If I ask him a question he doesn't understand he'll repeat it back "Do you want to go to the Home Depot?" He doesn't know what Home Depot is so he'll say "Want to go to Home Depot?" He understands a lot more now, so we don't see as much echolia.
We do see a lotof repetive speech like you have explained. Every morning he'll ask me if he's going swimming, and he'll say "why", even though he knows the answer. (He has swimming lessons once a month- I remind him it's not a swimming day). You are wise to try to entice him to say other things related to the blueberries. Sometimes DS will repeat rules over and over to me until I vehemently agree with him- like he'll see it's dark outside and he'll repeat 10x over with urgency- "It's dark, that means we have to go to bed! It's dark, that means we have to go to bed, Mama!" It makes him feel good and reassured that the world as he understands it is operating properly- like your DS is satisfied that indeed, his blueberries are blue. It threw my DS off that mornings are really dark in the morning during the winter- I had to explain that sometimes we go to school in the dark, which was strange to him at first. For this reason it is important to change up your routine as much as you can- I changed our route to daycare when he wouldn't stop saying the same things about a creek we passed every single morning. Maybe only give him blueberries once in awhile, or give him something else blue.
My son had a lot of repetitive speech past the age (and general speech level) that it would usually be expected. His SLP actually said though that she was never positive if his was quite echolalia or not, and he actually phased out of it just in the last few months; it doesn't happen nearly as much. Though he still does some quirky repetitive speech at times. E.g the past week any time you ask him a "Do you like ...?" question he says, "No, I like cantaloupe" (even when the question has nothing to do with food and is something he really does like).
I agree with pp that it's good to try to sort of gently break the pattern by making other comments, modeling other things you can say. "Yeah, the blueberries are yummy, aren't they? What else are you eating?" etc.