Do your kiddos ever get "stuck" on a word and repeat it over and over and over?

DS did this a lot when he first started to "talk". He only had one or two words that he would label with.

Phone for example.

And every time he saw a phone he would point and say "phone, phone, phone, phone" over and over again expecting you to repeat the label. and then he'd do it again even once you've said phone yourself.

I think this was an earlier concern of mine and his therapist which may have led to the PDD diagnosis.

It went away for many months.

But now he's doing it again. Part of me knows that a part of it is that he really loves validation and when he learns something new (which he's learned a ton of new things recently) he repeats it because he gets positive reinforcement. But a bigger part of me thinks this is something else.

We've been instructed to redirect him. Rather than repeat the label we ask him a question about the label "what color is the phone", "what does the phone do?", "who is on the phone?"....sometimes it works and sometimes it takes a few questions to redirect.

Does anyone else's kids do this? Did it come and go? Any other suggestion on how to redirect?

Re: Do your kiddos ever get "stuck" on a word and repeat it over and over and over?

My son did this too. He still does sometimes if he thinks I am not paying attention to him. He repeats himself until I acknowledge him.

I think it's a product of therapy though more than anything else. If you think about it our kids are asked to label everything, and then we always reinforce it... It's kind of what they expect.

Now my son walks around asking ME what things are... I answer, and he says "You're right mommy, good job." It's kind of funny now.

Re: Do your kiddos ever get "stuck" on a word and repeat it over and over and over?

My DD is 4 and has recently started doing this. It's almost like she has a thought but can't get it out.

She'll say "I, I, I, I, I" and I'll say to her "Take a minute and think about what you want to say" and then she can usually get her thought out.