Got a Question..Please help me!! | Autism PDD
Hi everyone...
I have a quick qustion maybe you can help me with.
It it considered a stim when my son keeps scripting phrases from movies? honestly it is driving me crazy!! It seems like some days he hardly does, than other days he does it constantly and his eye contact is so much worse.
Why is it that you have days like this and other days you don't? I am constantly on this roller coaster of thinking he is doing better, than he has another bad day.
It plays with my emotions so bad. I am sooo affected by what kind of day he is having.
If it is a stim..what do you guys do for this? if there is anything you can do. He doesn't have any stims like hand flapping..and I honestly think this is worse.
Thanks guys,
Kelly
It sounds so familiar. We deal with that same question, why some days she can do so well and other days slip backwards almost. It has always been 1 step foward 3 steps back sometimes more. I hate that I get my hopes up only to see her get worse.
Anna will say the same things over and over. Sometimes when she is trying to share her thoughts she will say "Nate (a freind of hers) and I skated and Nate skated and Nate and I skate, somebody..., and I skated and Nate, and I like Nate". That is how she talks. She throws a word in out of nowhere and gets off track. Sometimes she will add "And mommy says, Don't do that, and Anna says I want to go, Anna says, Anna says."
I don't understand it. I just am glad we all have each other here for support.
My son, now 10, did that all the time from age 2 to 6. It drove my wacko!! The perseveration and echolalia are right on. It is a way for them to "organize" themselves internally. That's what self-stim does, and ocd stuff--it's making order out of disorder. The hard trick is to figure out what sets them off and how can you work with the child and the environment to "fix" it. Lessen, soften, decrease, whatever. This is how I make sense of it.
As for an actual intervention for video talk--I'd redirect answering his repeated phrase differently each time, or asking him something about it--anything to break the cycle. And I ABSOLUTELY agree with Jennifer. I would take the video, toy, game, whatever it was that he was perseverating about (he still does a bit!) away. Take it away. Hide it, burn it, throw it on the roof, but take it away. My son would just move on to a different thing but it at least kept expanding his world.
It was helpful for me and my son. Everyone is different. I don't mean to come on strong but I'm with you....it just drove me nuts!!
I'm reading a great book by Lynn M. Hamilton called "Facing Autism giving parents reasons for hope and guidnace for help"
"Individuals with autism frequently have no speech at all, or if they do speak, they may continually repeat the same words (perseveration) or they may echo back what others have said (echolalia). Normal give and take communications is generally absent or very difficult."
This is taken out of context it is in the section of diagnosing your child. But those are the terms for the repetitive speech and I thought you could jump there looking them up with a search.
This is actually a great book reading from the parents point of view and the treatments she and her husband put in place for their son who is now around 12 or 13 and is integrated in a reg. class room and other parents are hard pressed to figure out which one is their son. It usually is only trigger things that set him apart, like extremely loud noises and such. Otherwise she says her son is only appx. 9 mo. behind the other kids now. This was very encouraging since my son is so far behind at this point and I don't see much improvement in him since we started intervention.
I'm planning on making a peditrician appointment when I am done with my research I want a few test's run on Zach. I have metabolic disorders and so Zach flunked his PKU at birth twice! I want it re-run, I also want yeast run since he has had bowel yeast his whole life and we have had problems with this. Another is heavy metals my mom has lead poisoning currently and is being treated for it. We still havn't figure out how she got this (one guess is her blood pressure medication) but they are unsure. So I feel this is a good reason to have his heavy metal's run. After this is all run, I want to start him on Super Nu-Thera vitimans and see if it helps. Just some simple things to start with right now. I don't want to include any ABA right now because he will be starting 4 day a week spec. ed. pre-school on Sept. 6th. I don't want to confuse too many things right now. And I want to finish my reading before I have test's ordered since I do not want to take Zach in for multiple pokes. It will be hard enough holding him down for one set of blood draws.
Ok, I know I'm going on and on.... I hope the above perseveration and echolaloia help you understand your sons repetitive speech. Zach does this also, his first sentence was after playing Mario Bro's games "Here we gooooo!" he said this over and over for weeks on end. I took that game and hid it!
So echolalia is a form of stimming? I thought echolalia was a good thing. I never try to redirect my son when he is doing this because I thought it would help him develop speech/language skills. We meet with the school counselor next week to get him started in the fall Early Intervention Program so hopefully I will learn much more on how to handle my son's behaviors. I get scared that I have wasted so much time by doing nothing or doing the wrong things....I hope I haven't screwed things up. Goodness, I can't wait for him to start school.
Is stimming bad? I thought it was just a calming method for our kids. There isn't much as far as noise (or anything else) going on in our home to make him uncomfortable that I know of. I'm not aware of any sensory problems except for my son only eating certain food textures. When my son is repeating things it's because he is uncomfortable?
This is one of our son's most troubling behaviors, as well. It's been going on for about 6 months now. Some days are worse than others, but he echoes something every day, and it is really hard to figure out the trigger. Fortunately, he usually changes up the script every now and then. ;)There are times when ignoring the scripting (which is called "delayed echolalia," btw) seems to help... he figures out we only pay attention when he actually has interactive speech to offer. But it feels wrong to ignore him! We want to encourage him to talk and develop his diction, of course.
It's a very frustrating symptom! I'd love to hear other ideas for handling it. We've asked him questions about the script, but that almost never works.
Adam is echolalic. I am actually thankful that he is. At least I know that he can speak. It has also helped him develop more appropriate language. When he starts scripting I usually will engage him in conversation about what he is scripting for instance he would say, "get the mask....get the mask" This was from nemo....I would then say something like this to him, "that's from nemo movie. That was a really good movie" Mommy really Likes nemo. Do you like that movie? Yes...Adam likes that movie Nemo. Etc. It never fails...he always would smile and then later would start echoing things like this instead of the script and we could build from there. Sometimes it is frustrating but I try and look at the positives that echolalia can bring.
Karrie
I also think that could be a form of stimming. What comes to mind for me is those few scenes from Rain Man when Dustin Hoffman's character would recite the whole Abbott and Costello routine, "Who's on First?", when he was upset. He didn't understand why it was funny or what the conversation was about, but it seemed to calm him down when someone was upsetting his routine.
OMG Karrie Nick says get the mask all the time too!!!!!! He also calls any scuba diver or scuba mask a stranger....took me a long time to figure out why he called it a stranger until I watched Nemo again and the guy who takes Nemo has on a mask and they call him a stranger!!!! LMAO It is amazing how are kids pick out the details in the movie that most of us don't pay any attention to!!! I also agree I will engage him if he is saying lines from his movies and make it into a conversation it really isn't a bad thing if a child is doing this because they atleast have some language. My favorite is when he gets close to my face and says "You are a Tooooy!!" from Toy Story. He cracks me up that son of mine!!
Nita
keith does the echolalia too. it does drive me crazy BUT i have every FREAKING episode of Dora thae Explorer on the cox cable dvr, THANK GOD! sometimes he will ask for an episode and i will take to him and mix up the questions on which one he wants. I will ask him ?'s like is that the one where Dora goes to the grocery store, and he will say "no, the episode you are talking about is.....I want the one with twinkle little star....so it does open up additional conversation, which is about the only time i can have that w/ him... Hopefully, it will continue to expand, into more daily use. Since keith has started his meds, he does echo less.
My new motto is " trying to make my family sane, is driving me CRAZY!
kate
Ok there has been a post on this before and this is my opinion. My son has vocal stim's and echolalia. His vocal stims are actually just weird sounds that he will repeat over and over and these sounds don't even sound human. He uses this when he is stressed, bored etc the same way as some of our children will flap their hands or spin objects.
His echolalia is different. He is repeating sentences that he has heard and I can actually engage with him when he is doing this. He doesn't do it as a calming thing so with my son echolalia would not be a stim for him. He will even use echolalia to try and conversate with me. When he is vocally stimming he is sort of in his own world when he does it and it's harder to reach him so to speak.
This is the difference with my son. Don't know about your kids though.
Nita....Took adam swimming at my sisters and they had masks there (he has one that he was sleeping with for a while but he lost it) and he started getting excited and saying.."mommy get the mask". He held on to it the whole time in the pool while I was carrying him around in there...LOL That's hilarious about toy story. Adam likes toy story 2 and seems to really like buzz because he is on his pull-ups..LOL
Karrie
This thread got me wondering if it's 'better' to be echolalic or to not talk at all? Luke will occasionally say words ... not necessarily to stim but to name things (e.g., bear, dog, ball, etc.) but it's rare and when he says words I know we won't ever hear them again. He has started singing 'Row row row your boat" and I'm just waiting til that, too, will fade. This is a horrible admission, but I kind of feel jealous when I read about other kids who are echolalic. As Karrie said, at least she knows her son can talk! I don't know what Luke can do or what he understands. His primary form of communiction is gesturing.Anyway, I guess I wrote this here so that those of you who are 'driven crazy' by your child's echoing everything can have some comfort that at least one silly mom is looking at your grass and calling it "greener" than her own!
Kellie,
Adam didn't even become echolalic until after he was 3 years old. Before he was three his speech was much like you describe Lukes. And he didn't use language to communicate either. I used to just know what he wanted like for instance when he was hungry he never said anything....he went to the table and just sat there and waited for me to feed him. "keep your chin up kiddo" thats what my dad would say..lol I think that Luke will only improve on language because he IS vocal with some words like you said. I think Luke is just at a different stage in development with language right now but like you just said...you have heard words come out of that sweet little mouth right?? That means that he IS capable of learning more words...It just takes time sometimes with our kids. Take care,
Karrie
Gavin does this constantly too. Somedays I feel like if I hear thename Buzz Lightyear one more time I will lose my mind. He will just
say the name over and over all day. His doctor said that fixations on
movies and other things that are at least relatable to other children
are good. At least he is not fixated on some random object that
nobody can relate to. It does drive me crazy though. If he fixates on
one movie too much I take it away for awhile until he finds
something new just for my own sanity!
Karen
Kellie,
Same thing Karrie wrote about her son, my son didn't start using echolalia until he was 3 also.He only said one word at a time or screamed over what he wanted. I went through the same thing Karrie did if he was hungry he would drag me to the fridge or start dragging out food!! He never said he was hungry, and he just started telling me when he has to go to the bathroom and he is 5. Hang in there it gets better hon!! I look back to when Nick was your sons age and how different he is now. Just be thankful you know at this age that he has a disability, we didn't know until a month before he turned 5.
Nita
Interesting thread! My daughter was echoalic (really bad until about 4 months ago and she is almost 5). She had about 6 words when she was 2 and like Adam, the echoalia didn't develop until she was 3. Because she has such articulation problems, you might not notice her reciting, but I think under some circumstances she is "communicating" and in others she is organizing her little world. She just started reg. kindergarten and she is totally freaking out.. her way of dealing with it is having people write names of familiar people and characters on a sheet of paper. She practicies reading the names and then has you write more. It is very odd, but the paper goes everywhere with her and it is calming for her. It contains the name of everyone in the family, her former preschool class, all the strawberry shortcake characters and their pets, all the winnie the pooh characters..you get the drift. I guess it is just a coping mechanism and much better than screaming or biting other kids.Mt GS is all of the above.
It is decreasing, but we are grateful for we feel it helped him develop language.
At 2 1/2 he was just beginning to connect words, and within a couple of months he had memorized Green Eggs and Ham.
He no longer quotes entire stories, or video's, but still includes character phrases into his conversation quite often.
The words now, are usually appropriate.
He often uses phrases that are very advanced for conversation at his age, and we really try to keep a straight face or we would burst out laughing.
My Grandkids from Florida, are going home this weekend, and he is going to miss them, so we prepared him for their leaving.
His answer was "Why can't things stay just the way they are". My daughter tells me this quote is from a movie.
Kellie,
Please don't get discouraged, Connor was the same way, between 2 and 3 there were some words but not on a regular basis, it wasn't until he was closer to 3 that he started putting 2 words together, 3 is when we fell into echolalia heaven and now at 4 we are slowly moving on to proper sentences, he wowed the guy from the state today by coming up to the deck and saying "oh no I'm all muddy I need a towel" the man from the dmr/ div of children with asd just looked at me and said "that's awesome" so pleased like Karrie's dad said.... Keep your chin Up!!!!
I would have been SO SAD without Jo's echolia. She talked like crazy and it was all echolia. She said the craziest, most hilarious things. There were times that we never figured out where certain quotes came from or why she used them, but there was always a reason that she used certain phrases and words and it always made sense.For example, everytime I would mention the pharmacy she would say,"raising the bar". CRAZY!!
It took some time but we figured it out. I had told my husband once that I needed him to go to the pharmacy and pick up Jo's Singulair. Jo thought I said "Cingular" as in the cell phone company. So she just quoted a cell phone ad. It was her way of communicating. She didn't know how else to.
She is 7 now and her communication is much better. We used the echolia as a way to help her learn behavior. If you showed her something and sang it in a song, she would adopt the song and the behavior together. We were also lucky that she is hyperlexic. The two things together were like built in tools.
Her echolia wasn't stimming. But she does have several stimming behaviors that we can't seem to get rid of. She spins and walks on her tiptoes. And she talks VERY loud.
keith was the same. 1-2 words til he was 3 then echo til about a month ago, and it has lessened. he still does it, but he is being able to mix it up a bit. also, if we use one of "his phrases" he will tell us to shut up.
i remember an old joke i used to say. being the mom of 5, i would kinda tease the "new mommies" and say, you spend all that time trying to teach your baby to walk and talk, and then they get older and you can't make them sit down and shut up......profectic, huh?
kate
Kellie...
Thanks for putting it into perspective for me. You are right..I shouldn't complain so much about it and be happy he is talking even though it might not make sense or be out of context.
I guess my son is trying to communicate in his own words. His new one is everytime he is not happy with me he says" I'm not happy Bob..Not happy" a script from the incredibles movies. and just yesterday when he was crying about something or angry he call out Dr.Phil. Strange!
The hardest thing is when he does the things in public and people just give me this weird stare as if to say what is wrong with your child.
Sometimes that can cut through me like a knife. I really feel like one of these days I am going to loose it in public for people making weird stares at me and my son. I love him sooo much and I just want to protect him from all of that. Although maybe he doesn't really know or care that people are staring at him. Natural instinct as a mother is to protect your child from that.
Anyway... I will not going on and on..
Kelly
Wow -- you guys (sorry, NY colloquialism!) are awesome!
The people here always make me feel so good. Silly me looking forward to when Luke may become echolalic! LOL Funny thing is, he'd fit right into this family! My brother, my husband and I can quote almost the entire Star Wars movie (the original), as well as many scenes from the Simpsons, Seinfeld, and many movies. (It drives my parents crazy be/c they have no idea what we're referencing when we do it ;) He'll just be one of the gang. :) Luke still has 7 months before he turns 3, so I guess a lot can change in that time.
We were *ecstatic* about the echolalia when it started (about 6 months ago, he's almost 3 now). Our son was telling jokes from the HBO Family show "I Spy" (sadly, one of his favorites... it's pretty annoying!). We thought it was great! Even today, we can ask him the joke question, and he'll answer with the punchline. It's two-way communication... sort of. I don't think he really understand the jokes, or even the concept of jokes!
Increasingly, the echolalia is becoming more suited to what's going on. For instance, talking about Thomas the Train Engine when playing with trains. We're hopeful that it will result in more appropriate discourse.
Just in the past weeks he's started to say "do you want it, a cookie," or "do you want it, a milk cup"... echoing what we say when we want to know what he wants. This is the closest we've come to hearing an actual question out of his mouth! Everything else is labelling, demands ("more this, more that") or echolalia.
Don't get me wrong -- we're very happy to hear the words we DO hear. Songs and singing have been a huge boon to us. He loves to sing songs, and his photographic memory makes that very easy for him to do! Our only concern is that there is little or no "true" language... no conversation. Every time I have a conversation with a 2 year old, it breaks my heart, and increasingly it seems every other kid I meet who is our son's age can talk to me for hours about nothing at all.
I'd love to talk to my son for hours about nothing at all. Someday, hopefully.
Now he can have a conversation, though he talks quite loud. He can answer the phone and take a message.
Any behaviour that prevents him from learning needs to be minimised so I would say when you have the energy, redirect him when he is stimming. Definitely try to turn it into a conversation and keep prompting what you want him to say.
I can remember praying that God would help my son to talk. Though he can be quite annoying at times with the obsessive language I know how lucky I am. And he said "I love you Mum" this week without me saying it first. Something to remember and store up to think about on the bad days..
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