Repeat after me | Autism PDD

Well, Daniel has a new thing now that just started a couple of days ago. A new "perservation" I suppose is what you call it. He makes me same names. Like character names. Hell' say "Say Spongebob!" or "Say Squidward!". And he is very insistent. And if I say anything other than the name, he shushes me with a "SHHHH!". He is asking me to repeat after him is what he is doing. He tries to tell me about a game that he is playing either on the internet or on his playstation and then everytime he mentions a character he will make me repeat it. Like, "I just knocked out Patrick!" "Say Patrick Mom!" Anyway, I don't get it. Does anyone else have a child that does this? I am always facsinated by the new behaviors. Not necessarily always pleased but always amazed. I would love to get in that head of his.

We haven't had that here, but could it have been something he learned from tv or speech therapy?

It sort of reminds me of my son's repetive questions that usually take a form similar to this: "What would Scooby do if such and so happened?" He got a lot of pleasure out of hearing my answer, over and over (he didn't need the exact same answer each time).

Rubyruby,

My son did the same thing! It used to make me crazy. He would tell us what to say. "Say go outside", "say it's a nice day", etc. I suspected that it was because when he was learning to speak, we would tell him what to say. It went something like this: L pointing and signing milk. Me saying "you want milk, say 'I want milk'". This eventually stopped as became more verbal.

Tiffany

Skylar does it as well. Sometimes it just makes me crazy. But most of the time I go along with it, seems to make him happy.

LOL, sounds like Dora scripting! "Can you say, Empujen?"

Can you turn this into a more complex game ... maybe say his requested word, then get him to say a different one for you? It IS a bid for attention ... as well as a perseveration ... maybe making it more interesting will make it more tolerable to you and more interactive?

My son does this all the time and if I dont say it how he wants me to say it or Im sick of repeating after him all hell will break loose till I do. I wasnt sure why he did it and he is very verbal.My ds used to need prompts to respond to question "Do you want milk,
say yes or no" . 4 years later he still phrases questions with a prompt at
the end himself. "Can I have a popsicle mom, say yes or no" The kind of
funny thing now is that his 3 year old sister has picked this up.He must like to hear you say them....I like hearing how people say things too...different though...car-a-mel or car-mel, pe-can, or p-uh-con...you get the idea...maybe it's the same for him. Drew does this too, except he'll say, "Daddy, 'got to go to work'" and Dh has to repeat the "got to go to work" part, or Drew will repeat it until Daddy does what he is supposed to. I always wonder though when these new things come up is it an autism thing or is it something any kid would do. I guess it's autistic because what puts the autistic twist on it is that is has to be repetitive.

My son does this as well but I thought it was because we do it to him. We will tell him to say all kinds of things because his language isn't where it should be so I just figured he was turning the tables on us (ha).

Karman