K’s speech is very often echolalic in nature and we have recognized that this is one of his “stims” that will become more pronounced during times of stress or tiredness. We have also noted that it can be an attempt by him, at times, to engage us and try to get us to share his interest of the moment.

As part of our overall philosophy in our home, any time K tries to engage us, without using bad behaviour, we do our best to respond and try to use the social “connection of the moment” to not only reinforce his verbal attempts, but also to help him get more out of the interaction. In this way we hope to put the echolalic nature of some of his speech patterns to good use and encourage further verbal interaction.

I found more information recently on this topic and thought it would be the good source for a post as we are going to be starting with a new speech pathologist soon and this is one of the topics I would like to discuss. It can, at times, be very disconcerting to see K just talking to himself and hearing parts of movies or tv shows he has been watching lately and I would like to get some ideas for how to interject in a meaningful and positive way. Hopefully we can use this trait as a gateway to more meaningful conversation and in the process reduce its frequency of occurrence.

Feb 13/08 UPDATE: I am going to link to my google reader feed to add some additional information here, I just need to finish some other tasks first, so check back soon.

Google reader links pertaining to speech:
Speech on our GR page

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