Echolalia

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips that they can share for decreasing echolalia?

I think I have tried just about everything with a child I work with. She is seven years old.......repeats EVERYTHING she is told and/or asked one or more times after she hears it.

TIA for any suggestions.

Re: Echolalia

I would love tips on this as well. My daughter is the queen of echolalia. She never does it at home or with me but at school that is all she does. She says nothing unless it's repeating and it's driving me crazy. Her test scores are so low because she refuses to answer any questions. Her teachers and her speech teacher have gotten no where in lessening the issue. Very frustrating.

Re: Echolalia

My son did this a little bit when he was developing speech.

one thing that helped him was to sing songs and to leave off the last word and let him fill it in...

I would say things like "Hey Johnny, twinkle twinkle little ..." and we would wait until he would look up and say "star!".

And then I would do it with phrases/sentences. I would go "ohhh lets go get a chocolate chip___" and wait until he said "cookie!". He would get a treat when he completed the sentence.

Don't know if this helps with all kids. My son stopped echolalia completely by about 2.5 but before that age he did it a LOT.

By me repeating certain things a bit dramatically (rubbing my stomach and saying things like "ohhh i just LOOOOVE apple juice!!" and then i would perhaps go "Mommy and johnny just LOOOOVE apple____" and then he would say "juice"!! EVEN if he said "love apple juice!" it was ok with me, because he was finishing a sentence.

Not sure if this is a method used by any therapists..it was my own thing i did with him that just happened to help.

Good luck!!

Re: Echolalia

We did the same things to increase her speech when she first started talking. Her vocabulary is awesome now she just won't use it with anyone besides myself. It's very frustrating because at school they are reteaching her things she already knows because she won't speak. They are focusing so much on numbers, letters, colors, sequencing but she mastered all that almost 2 years ago lol. She's already adding and subtracting, spelling and reading simple words at home but no one other than myself sees that. I think they think I'm nuts lol : ).

Re: Echolalia

Thanks for the suggestions!

Re: Echolalia

Quick question: Is it possible that the echolalia is functional in someway for this child?