Echolalia

Hello all,

My son is constantly repeating questions such as

Is it Saturday

Is it Christmas 

Where’s Kyle (a friend from school) 

He will repeat these questions all throughout the day. So many times that I loose count. 

If I say today is Thursday he will do a short scream and say no it’s Saturday. Until I agree with him. 

He will do the same with the Christmas question. Short scream and say it’s Christmas. He excepted on 26th that it was Boxing Day. 

He will except the answer regarding Kyle. I say Kyles at home in his own house.

How would you answer these questions? as he is getting frustrated with me and others who don’t answer with the answer he wants. 

Would I just agree yes it Saturday? Sounds a bit silly now that I’ve written it out but I’m just curious what others would say?

Is what he doing echolalia? 

Thanks 

Parents
  • Nah sounds like he just really wants it to be a non-school day and xmas because kids love those things. He also probably wants to play with his friend and is fustrated he can't only do the fun stuff in life. Mine is the same, would eat cake for breakfast and nothing but sweets all day if you let him... and have no teeth in his head by 18. This is just a kid needs to learn to manage reality disapointment with resilience and optimism thing.

    Echolalia is something else entirely, in fact you could have looked it up and realised that this doesn't fit the typical expression of echolalia with no nead to consult us.

    How old is your son anyway (the one you are talking about in this post as I read you have 2) ? Sounds like he has some anger but depending on his age that kind of emotional irregulation could just be very typical and not even an autism thing.

    (I removed a line as I found the answer in your profile bio, also accidentally prematurely posted this when I went to look for the link, I have since added the end of this reply and the link in a reply below instead.)

  • I looked it up, it says in dictionary 

    1. repetition of speech by a child learning to talk. 

    2. Meaningless repetition of words just spoken by another person. 

    I did think it describes what he is doing to an extent.

    I’m not sure if he’s looking for his repeated questions to be answered by anyone. Maybe he’s repeatedly saying it as it is echolalia and Possibly when I answer that’s why he’s doing a short scream. 

    I wanted to know if I was approaching it in a correct way.

    Yes he was diagnosed at 3 years of age and he turned 5 at the beginning of December. 

    He is in primary one in an ASN school.

Reply Children
  • Ah okay, with context this makes more sense and is easier to draw a more accurate conclusion. I hope that didn't come over as dismissive as I also wanted to help allay some worry as there is often multiple things that could be happening either instead or concurrently. And I didn't want to just say yes without also giving other viable explanaitions to explore and asking a few more questions.

    I do think if it is this less common form of echolalia it could be driven by a comfort need, as equally for fun as well as calm in small kids, and the questions may not be a genuine enquiry but a round-about way of expressing some emotion, need, or want.

    Mine used to do something in a similar vein (which was relating specifically to questions) and that was rather than ask "can I have a ______? / Can I go/do/play with _____?" he would say "That looks tasty." or "That looks fun" quite a few times in a row until we realised he wasn't just making an observation but was dropping hints that he wanted us to give him permission, it took him a while to get out of it we had to remind him it was okay to ask for things (I think he developed some anxiety at some point which had triggered it to start with). But it is difficult to say whether or not that could have been echolalic, as it was many years ago now so the memory is somewhat blurry.