Echoboy.....

One of the symptoms of Autism that I find fascinating and yet sometimes as a parent can grate on your last nerve is Echolalia.

For a child that is considered "Non-verbal" Diddles does an amazing amount of talking. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of Echolalia there are two types. Immediate Echolalia (also known as parroting, repeating the exact words or sound directly after hearing it) and delayed Echolalia (repeating a word or sound an hour,a day, a week after hearing it). It is not just a symptom of Autism, it can also relate to tourette's syndrome etc. etc. Immediate Echo is for example me saying "Would you like Juice?" and his answer to me would be "Would you like Juice?".  Diddles does both Immediate and delayed, which is pretty common with kids with an ASD apparently. It is the delayed "Echo" that amazes me as he can repeat an entire script from a TV advert or TV show at perfect pitch and sometimes in the exact accent he hears. It can also remind you of a broken record at times as it is repeated SO often!

The first incident with it that sticks out in my mind was when Diddles was about 2 and he was sitting in the trolley while we were doing our weekly food shopping. We were half way through the supermarket and the queue's were long, people everywhere. All of a sudden we heard this little voice shouting "HELP!", we were looking around to see where it was coming from when we realised everyone was staring at us because it was Diddles. Bare in mind that he had never said more than "Mama" or "Dadda" before this. He was shouting HELP! as if he was being dragged away by 8 foot monsters. Barry and I looked at each other both flushed with big red faces, shrugged and laughed it off awkwardly. "Oh he's just playing he he," I remember sheepishly saying to fellow shoppers who were actually starting to look concerned. Yes we kidnapped this child and brought him .... you guessed it FOOD SHOPPING! I think not! We could not just abandon our shopping so we had to endure the "HEEEELP!" shouting even in the queue. We realised when we got home that he had been repeating a line out of the pixar movie Cars.

He also used to walk around in public echoing the advert for Subway in a very angry french accent, you might remember it. It went something like this .... "Whats the matter? Too Hot? Too Spicy?" "HOT! HOT!" Now can you imagine people walking by and Diddles (a 3 year old half pint with blonde curly hair) re-enacting a role played by a giant jalepeno pepper?? 

He has repeated entire episodes of Thomas the tank engine while playing with his trains. One time at the perfect moment he said "Well bust my buffers You're right James" to a man who asked him was he four years old. Then he turned on his heels and ran into the house. His timing is what makes you giggle!

His current favourite is saying "Bless you" at the weirdest most random moments. He picked it up from a kids TV show when all the characters sneeze and they say bless you. The great part is that if he uses the language enough he begins to put it in context and builds it into his vocabulary. Now if I sneeze he says "Oh bless you Mammy". He might not tell you his name when you ask him but at least he's polite when you sneeze! :)