Talking slowly, weird prosody | Autism PDD

One method to work on that I have heard about is setting up situations
intentionally where you will use a lot of intonation. For example (and you
could do anything) make a batch of toy store slime and play with it. Don't
get too wordy but use a lot of intonations like 'yu-uck slliiime' but stay
natural. The idea is that your kid will learn and hopefully use himself
intonation in a natural environment without it being prompted or being
out of context. Because it is the natural context that gives intonation
meaning.

Hi, don't know the answer, but both my girls do that - they can sound very spacey and draaaaaaw out their words - especially the last word of a sentence. What's odd is that they only talk this way part of the time. Other times, they sound completely normal (though, their volume knob is stuck on '10'). I haven't been able to figure out what's different from when they are talking like this and when they sound normal - it just comes and goes - usually the spacey sounding voice comes on when they are into 'repetetive questioning' mode. Does he talk this way all the time, or does he have periods where it sounds 'normal'?

Hi. My son does this as well, and I didn't notice it until he was five years old. (I also mentioned it to him before and it seemed to hurt his feelings, so I haven't brought it up again.) It does seem like it is getting a little better lately. DS is coming a long way in speech, but he talks kind of strangely. He speaks correctly, but will drag out words and talk slowly--will say Moooo-mmy instead of Mommy. Or say "I don't knoooooow" instead of "I don't know"--when I asked him to try saying it the way I said it--he seemed to get hurt (which really made me feel bad). He said he was saying it the right way. Then I felt like I was criticising the way he talks and I felt horrible. But, I just don't get it--why does he have this weird tone of voice and can it be fixed? It is odd. Is there a way to work on this? Oddly, his voice sounds more unusual now than it did 2 years ago--he had other language quirks then, but the pace of his language and how it sounded seemed more normal. Does anyone work with their child on their childs intonation, monotone, or speed of pronunciation or whatever you call it? Thanks.
Nowwhat
Ali does this all the time...I am used to it and really have not worried about it. Should I? She has always talked this way. The last word of every sentence and an occasional word here and there are real drawn out and have a slight accent of sorts.Fred, EXACTLY! That is what is so strange--he doesn't talk that way all of the time, but probably 70% of the time. It's his predominant conversation tone, but he does switch to something more "normal" when people use a lot of intonation. Micki, I think he must be picking up signals to switch to intonation when others use intonation--almost as if he cannot "hear" mild intonation, but when it is exaggerated, he gets it. And Fred, it's the same here, it's the last word in a sentence that gets especially dragged out. I guess part of what bothers me is that this voice he uses makes people assume that he is cognitively delayed--the extreme version of this would be an nonverbal child with ASD with no cognitive delay. I really think there are many people out there whose underlying cognition (though different) is intact and it is just the getting the thought to the speech that is the issue. I just think that your average Joe thinks "can't talk, then can't think"--I think we're learning more and more that this is not necessarily true. I guess I think if he learned to talk NT, life would be easier on him and he would be teased less in the future--but it is such a delicate line. I don't want him to think that I personally have any issue with his voice and the LAST thing I would want to do is to make him self-conscious of his voice to the extent that he speaks less! I guess I should probably drop some of my concern about this, but it puzzles me.
Nowwhat

I saw a video a while back - I think it was Sue Rubin's - and she was taking questions from (presumably) autistic young adults who were heading for college. One of the boys who asked her a question had a very obvious prosody thing going on - like, iirc, all of his statements came out as if 'asked' instead of stated and he had a high, melodic pitch. This is obviously a self aware and HF kid (college bound, asking questions of a public speaker), but apparently the prosody issue isn't something he can (or something he cares to) control.

Like everything else, I reckon that if the girls become aware of their differences and motivated to fit in, then they'll inevitably begin to imitate their peer's manner of speaking, if they can. I'm not really doing anything to correct it at this point - the last thing I want to do is discourage them from sharing their thoughts because I'm always nit-picking their language, something that I see has crossed your mine, as well.