Best of luck on that celebrating! Has he been dx'd yet? I am in the fun process of dx'ing ds.
Sally sorry I don't have advice on this as ds doesn't talk enough yet. However, he does repeat. He likes to repeat "E I E I O" over and over, but not out of stress. Just for no reason that I can figure out. He also does sound repetition. I just join in or ignore it. But you situation sounds diff. I think the others gave good advice on it. Best wishes.
Amber
Benjamin was diagnosed a couple of years ago. for some reason we didn't get to the echolia thing today. There was some much to talk about. I go back to the same clinic on Friday for my adhd and ptsd. Don't you love all these acronyms?:) Anyway, I will ask about it then. We did tweak his meds though, a little. We recently added Tenex to the regimen. Hopefully, this will help ease some of his stress. This thread is so helpful! Benjamin is going through this thing where if I correct him, he begins crying, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" over and over.Even when I calmly say honey i'm not mad at you. I just want the toys picked up. sometimes it's not even a correction, it's a simple question or observation. We were in a car crash recently and , his behavior has been a bit more off-center than usual. I couldn't understand the echolalia. Now that I do, it is breaking my heart. I pray that God will help me to understand what Benjamin is really trying to say to me. while I am somewhat comforted that this not unusual, i still want to cry. We have a scheduled appointment in the morning to see the clinic. thanksI was wondering if anyone had some tips or techniques for managing stress echolalia. My dd goes through stages with it and we're definitely in an ON stage right now with lots of meltdowns and the stress echolalia. When she's in it, repeating the same thing over and over and crying and agitated, it seems nothing I do can get her out of it. In fact, I have found the best thing to do is to be kind and calm, nearby but not to look at her or talk to her. That seems to be the only thing to calm her down and stop the stress echolalia. Once I give her eye contact or talk to her, she starts in again. The thing is the stress echolalia reaaallllly gets to me. It's so eerie and depending on what's she's repeating over and over, it can really break my heart. Thanks for any advice (or online resources/books if you know of any).
I'm not sure i've heard it put as "stress echolalia", echolalia was explained to me as, "he knows he needs to use words to express what he wants/needs/or is feeling, he doesn't know what to say so he'll refence something he's heard before to explain what he needs" my advice to you is, listen to what she is saying, she she repeating a phrase from a movie that happens at a sad time? is she asking herself questions that you may have asked her yourself( do you want some juice?) actively engagre her, flood her with language, while she's doing this, ask her "do you want juice, do you want a snack, do you want to play ( name her favorite game) ect, unfortunatley, from my experience with my son, it's like playing some twisted game of charades but with the advice about echolalia, we've actually been able to form some meaningful dialogue. "no, I'm not a murderer" (from the lion king) was his way of telling us he was overwhelmed. when we realized this, we were able to say..."say, i've had enough, i want to stop", it worked we've now replaced what one might consider jibberish into a purposeful phrase that has served all of us well.Sallys,
I'm not sure what you mean here. Maybe you could explain a little more? For instance...what is going on in her surroundings and what is she saying when this is happening? There are times where I am flat out not allowed to speak to adam or it will cause him to tantrum. These are times where mommie is hiding from flying objects and staying quiet so as not to make it worse. But at these times he is not using echolalia. He is usually screaming NO at me for talking or singing to him. and if I keep on then it escalates. So anyway if you could explain in more detail maybe i can understand what is going on.
Karrie
Well, I was sure I came across that term "stress echolalia" somewhere in my research because it really struck me as being something that I deal with a lot. But what happens is this - my dd will get upset about something, say having to take a bath. She will then get very agitated and scream and cry and be very distressed and repeat over and over "do you want to take a bath" or something that I have said that she apparantly doesn't like. Or, it'll happen when I reprimand her so it'll be something like "no jumping on the bed." The phrase is "off" and is just repeated over and over and over while she's also highly agitated. It seems to be a form of echolalia because she just repeats it over and over and it doesn't quite make sense. And it's like the more frustrated she gets, the more she just repeats it. It seems like if I try to talk to her or do anything, it makes it worse. Hope that helps clarify what I'm dealing with. Thanks!Yes Sally's I understand now. LOL Adam has done that too. Actually it sounds like she is doing her best to communicate but it's just off a little. It sounds like the echolalia is still pertaining to what is going on and this is GOOD. For the "do you want to take a bath" when she says this and it is obviously meaning to her that she does not want a bath i would say to her, "you don't want a bath but we have to get clean." If she is anything like adam she is going to have a meltdown..LOL But you know what? They have to take baths and if your going to be right there with her anyway while she's having that fit giving her that bath then you might as well throw language in there..LOL This is not going to fix itself overnight either by doing this but it seems to have helped adam tremendously with certain things. Adam has come a LONG way in just the last 6 months and is using more appropriate language now but I remember when it was EVERY DAY that he was mixing things up and never made sense to me. I do understand where your comming from when you say that sometimes it's better to ignore her. I have done this also with adam. You have to pick and choose your battles I think. I have written down certain things that I know he would get mixed up and use the echolalia with and when he was calm i would work on those things with social type stories. For instance, if you want to ignore her while giving the bath because you talking to her makes her more mad then you could get pics of kids taking baths with different expressions on their faces and show her the difference between "i don't like to take a bath" and "I like taking baths" etc. IF you can't find any pictures like this then you could always draw them on 3x5 cards. You may not even have to be a great artist but just able to draw a frown and a smile on a stick figure..LOL YOu could choose to do this when she is calm instead of while the fit is going on. Anyway don't know if this helps or not...Hope things get better there for you soon. I know what it's like to deal with these meltdowns though. Take care,
Karrie
i know exactly what your dealing with, i agree with waht Karrie said and have done this on many occasions, while your daughter is saying " do you want to take a bath" say "yes, i want to take a bath, we take take baths to get clean" ( probably why my son has the choice of showers or "clean" now LOL "i need to take a shower, i need to take a "clean" ) same thing goes with the jumping on the bed, she repeats the phrase because she obviosly understands what you mean, now you can elaborate on it, "we don't jump on the bed because we can get hurt" most of the time with connor, he'll repeat what i've said " we don't throw sand" because he has no way of saying "but mom, it's soooo fun" all he knows is i said no and now he has to stop, he doesn't know that if he got it in the eye, well lets just say it'll open a whole new can of worms. the best way, i feel, to curtail the echolalia is too keep talking to them, don't discourage it because it is a form of communication, just not one we would ordinarily perfer.