“Echolalia” is one of the fun new words that has entered our vocabulary in the recent past. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines it as “The often pathological repetition of what is said by other people as if echoing them.” Echoes can be fun. There are some places where you can talk and then hear your own words bouncing off of walls, or coming back at you from inside a cave. “Echolalia” is when someone else echoes what you say. For the longest time, this is how Matt-Man has talked, and even to this day his speech is very much echoing word-for-word the things we say. It’s like he is a cave, and when I speak to him, whatever I say bounces right back.
In general, this is how all people learn to talk. Our infant daughter is learning to talk and does her best to mimic the consonant-vowel combinations we say to her. Evangeline won the game of getting her to say “mama” before I could get her to say “dada”. Pretty soon, however, her vocabulary will increase to about 10 words she can use on a regular basis and after that, her speech will boom exponentially. All of the words any of us know were words that we heard someone else use and we found the right context in which to use them.
My 5-year old participates in “echolalia”; the annoying 5-year old version where a child repeats everything you say just for the sake of being annoying. For instance,
Me: Nathan, what are you doing?
Him: Nathan, what are you doing?
Me: No seriously, what the heck are you doing?
Him: No seriously, what the heck are you doing?
Me: Stop it, that’s annoying!
Him: Stop it, that’s annoying!
Even verbal threats can’t stop him from this. The sequence of “I speak” and “he obnoxiously repeats” usually ends when I say, “Nathan eats boogers!” That is something he will not echo.
While all children learn to talk by repeating what others say, and while other children repeat what you say just to get on your nerves, Matt-Man echoes to an obsessive degree, as do many verbal Autistic kids. It was cute to begin with. We would encourage his speech by saying, “Matt-Man, say ‘Mommy’”. He would respond with the exact same phrase, word-for-word.
“Hey Matt-Man, let’s go for a walk.”
“Matt-Man, it’s time for a bath.”
“Come and get your diaper changed, buddy.”
All of these and more would receive the same “echolalic” response. Again, all kids learn to speak by repeating words they heard from someone else. Yet at some point, kids take their corpus of words and make it their own. They begin to use those words in a context that makes sense and can respond appropriately to questions when asked. I could have a conversation with my older son when he was 2. Granted, it was a very basic conversation, usually about what was for lunch or Sesame Street, but he had taken the words he learned and used them to have a meaningful dialogue with me. This has been hard to come by for Matt-Man.
He is steadily improving, even within the last few months (now that he is almost 4). Much of his speech is still echolalia, but more and more his repetition is in context. He clearly repeats words and phrases he has heard us say, but he uses them at the right time. He is exceptionally food-motivated, and the only time he will voluntarily engage us in conversation is when he wants a snack, or lunch, or a snack, or a drink, or a snack. We used to say, “Do you want some peanut-butter toast?” and he would answer, “You want some peanut-butter toast.” It was only a few months ago before he would switch pronouns and say, “I want some peanut-butter toast” when asked. And now, he doesn’t even need to be asked. Instead, he will tell us, “I want some peanut-butter toast.” We had never been more ready and willing to satisfy a child’s desire for a snack than we were the first time he, on his own, asked for some food.
It took no time to convince him to talk when motivated by food, and it seems, much to the chagrin of mom and dad, that he echoes those things we would prefer he didn’t remember. For instance:
Me, yelling at the TV: That stupid idiot! If you’re a major leaguer, you should be able to turn a routine double-play!
Matt-Man: Oh no, that stupid idiot!
Finally, there are those things we would give a kidney to hear him say and no matter how hard we try, he simply will not budge. We have tried for the longest time to get him to say, “I love you, mommy,” or “daddy.” It’s funny; I could probably get him to recite the Pledge of Allegiance backwards if it involved receiving a Twix, and just about everything he hears throughout the course of a day, he echoes, but if we try to fix his mind on loving mommy and daddy, he stares at us stone-faced. He can copy his brother when he says, “Guess What? Chicken-Butt!” but I couldn’t pay him to say, “I love daddy,” even with a Twix.
However, just the other night, we got what has been the biggest, most uplifting surprise to date. We follow a pretty regular bedtime routine: clothes off, go potty, jammies on, brush teeth, hop in bed, pray with mom and dad, kiss and hug goodnight. This is usually where we push the hardest, “Say, ‘I love you mommy’. . .” met with the same stone face every night. That particular night, nothing was out of the ordinary. The boys undressed, went potty, put their jammies on, brushed their teeth, hopped in bed, prayed with us, and got a kiss and hug from us. And as always, we tried to get Matt to say, “I love you mommy/daddy,” and not surprisingly, we were met with a stone face. Nevertheless, we told Matt that we loved him, and told Nate the same. That’s the moment when we had the biggest surprise, at least in Matt’s life. Totally unprompted, and without us having to offer him a Twix, Matt-Man said in the clearest, most distinct voice, “I love you, Nate.”
Echolalia, for sure, but echolalia with incredible meaning. Echolalia, but genuine and sincere. Echolalia, but Matt-Man meant it when he said, “I love you, Nate.” The dad in me would love for that to have been my name, but not only did Matt-Man echo in context, he also expressed affection for his very best friend—something that has been incredibly hard to come by. I am satisfied with that.
Echolalia can be cute. It can also be a bit frustrating. Sometimes I wish I could just chat with my kid, about bugs, snowmen, baseball, or cars. I can’t do that. I have good reason to hope that some day I will be able to do just those things, but if God were to forbid him ever to speak another word, we will always have the memory of those unprompted, sincere words from one brother to another, “I love you, Nate.” It was meaningful to us, his parents, and you bet it was meaningful to Nathan too! So frustrating as it may be, we celebrate the small victories.
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