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Special Needs
malcivar
member
Echolalia question
malcivar
member
Christopher's echolalia is 'changing' for lack of a better word. He still will recite parts of his favorite tv shows and such but he's started incorporating some of the dialogue into his speech. For example, he loves Super Why and in every episode the viewer has to choose something and the line is "let's try ____". So now, if I ask Chris if he wants water or juice he'll say "water or juice, let's try juice"
This is a good thing, right? Might seem silly to ask but once upon a time we thought that knowing his letters so early was also a good thing - came to find out later that not so much.
Thanks
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Re: Echolalia question
Hi,
I'm a total lurker but Im curious as to this question myself. My DS will be 3yo in June and has delayed echolalia. His fave show is umizoomi--where all they do is count and talk about shapes--my son loves it. He finds shapes in everyday items and feels the need to share with everyone. In fact, he can recognize many double digit numbers correctly (loves to read me %off signs or price signs) with no help from me (learned from umizoomi) and also knew his alphabet before two even though the only words he could say at that time were "ma" for mom and "da" for dad. He learned letters from a toddler app and memorized them all in about a weeks time. He has been informally dx as mixed expressive receptive language delay so unless its a phrase worked on with the SLP the past 6 months he has usually no idea what you are asking or saying to him.
Recently though he is doing what you say your son is doing--incorporating it into his speech. Today's example-- he is picking up objects --two motorcycles and saying "One motorcycle plus one motorcycle equals 2 motorcylces. YAY!" The show he is scripting from uses turtles and its different numbers added. So maybe a breakthrough? He also started saying "How about a_______" took me a week to realize my mom says that a lot
I dunno. From my perspective, it's a step along the path toward more spontaneous speech. Not great, but better. DD1 still does quite a bit of scripting, but she's always been pretty functional about it, and even her inflection isn't exact-parroting when she's scripting, which it used to be. It's harder to tell, but since I pretty much know everything she watches and reads, I tend to recognize things and call her on them.
I see her generalizing phrases more, and so things are a mix of spontaneous and scripted, and getting more spontaneous. It's still not 100% spontaneous, and sometimes her language sounds a bit stilted b/c she's stretching a phrase's meaning, but she responds more to correction than she used to, too, and seems to grasp when she's not quite getting the language right.
It's kind of hard to watch. I see DD2 just getting those kind of things by osmosis, and it's such an effort for DD1.
The shows that have repetitive segments are ripe for this, IME. I've tried to focus more on shows where nothing or very little repeats from show to show (My Little Pony, Word Girl, etc.), versus things like Super Why or Jake & the Neverland Pirates, where they sing the same songs/use the same phrases in every episode.
DD1, 1/5/2008 ~~~ DD2, 3/17/2010
My DS does this all day long. He has a lot of words and can put them together without scripting but it is usually only to make his needs known ex. "Mama, want some water, want to watch Doc McStuffins." He loves shows that have a lot of repetition and will script them non-stop. We have cut out Word World and Cars since we'd get "let's spell the word or my name's Mater" all.day.long. He is starting to use some of the scripts in context but it is still 90% echolalia and 10% spontaneous language. I have been reading a lot about gestalt language learning because it seems to describe my DS. We are still in the evaluation process and have not started therapies yet but I am hopeful that using the script in context means he understands the situation but can't find the original language to respond. I'm looking at it as a good thing.
I do call him on the scripting. I'll say to him "who says that?" and he will respond "that's Dora." If I follow up with "what does DS say?" he doesn't respond. It's definitely frustrating but I'm very thankful that he is verbal and that we have so much to work with.
Thanks guys for the input. He's still very scripted. Like if he wants something he'll say "Want goldfish. Gimme goldfish" swap out 'goldfish' for any other word but at least it's better than taking us by the hand and crying.
And thankfully I think he's finally starting to tire of Super Why. When I asked him last night if he wanted to watch Super Why, he said no, then he said he wanted to watch Curious George and then Pocoyo.