Echolalia

Back when we were trying to get a diagnosis, any diagnosis, for The Boy and I was asked about echolalia I said he doesn't do that. And I was wrong. I was not completely versed (probably still not) in the subtleties of echolalia. The Boy most certainly does echo words and phrases, its just not always very obvious. And I am learning to see the different situation where he really does use echolalia.

When I look back now (hind sight is much closer to 20/20) I can see that whenever we asked if he wanted milk or water, he always answered water. Or whatever the last choice was. I finally figured this out by asking the same question in different orders a few times in a row. 

Do you want to wear jeans or sweats? 

Sweats. 

Do you want to wear sweats or jeans? 

Jeans.

All within one minute of each other. We've now learned to wait a few beats, then ask Which ones do you want? And then he can usually tell us what he really wants. Thankfully the days of meltdowns over misunderstanding his choices are (mostly) over.

I picked up on another subtle echo just last week. As I talked about in my post "We Survived...I Think", The Boy has had one illness after another this fall/winter. Last week when he came down with another (thankfully short lived) virus he started asking "You OK?" all the time. And I couldn't figure out why he kept asking me if I was OK. Until I saw the sniffles and runny nose. And it finally dawned on me, he was trying to tell me that he wasn't OK. So the next time he asked me I didn't just answer "Yes I'm fine", I then asked him if he was OK. And he said "No, don't feel good".

When ever The Boy is sick we ask him (probably too many times) "Are you OK"? So naturally, when he doesn't feel good he echoes "You OK"? It is not obvious (at least it wasn't to me initially) but he is echoing what we say to him when he's sick. Really, now that I'm writing about it, it is sort of obvious.

He does something similar whenever he has an accident or something breaks. He will yell "I OK!" Because what is the first thing you say when an accident occurs? "Are you OK?" So he gets straight to the point and the first thing he says is "I OK". Whenever we hear those 2 words, we know we need to go investigate. This may not be a true case of echolalia, but it does show how he makes strong associations between phrases and events.

I'm sure I'll discover more and more instances of where he actually does echo words and phrases. Its a never ending learning curve for me.