6 yo talks nonsense

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My Caleb is a very smart and loving child. He talks a lot of repetitious nonsense most of the time. My question- should we allow him to do this or should we curb it? He is an aspie- we love him dearly and if he needs to do this, we will listen, Just don't know what's best for him.

I don't see a problem with letting him do it but if he's trying to communicate to someone else via this method you might say something like "Honey (whoever) doesn't understand what you're saying."

I turned repetitious nonsense and mimicking voices into a 30 year career in radio. It may not sound creative to you, but its just playing with sound.


If you think its annoying now, just wait until he starts making fart noises. All the time. Don't bother trying to stop it, its a war you can't win.

my step-son makes those nonsense noises. if you try to stop it, it will just lead to another behaviour that may not be any better. the only one i have a real problem with is one he only does when he thinks the person talking to him is 'off'. i'm not sure if it's disrespect or a mirror of how they appear to him. he does this with his new teacher, he never talks nicely to her or interacts with her appropriately. he just goes 'doy, doy, doy... APPLE!" and laughs. i think it's because he doesn't like her. i have learned to deal with his other noises and if they are frustrating me i ask him to go play upstairs.

You're 64 years old and you have a six year old? Is he your grand child?

my son is 5 and he does a lot of that, too. I don't really think there's a way to stop it. Sometimes i think it's his way of processing something he's thinking about. Sometimes it's just straight up echolalia. Often, he's trying to tell me about something he learned that day by repeating phrases he read or something his teacher told the class. I have to ask about a million questions to figure out what he's telling me. It turns out, it's not nonsense much of the time in his case. He just is not so great at giving context when trying to tell a story.

That's awesome!

Sometimes when my boys do this and I cannot instantly follow what they are saying I will find some part of what they said and ask question about it and keep asking till they find a way to clarify what they are saying. We have been working on the skills of gaining a persons attention before speaking and then remembering to speak out side our minds and in sentences that give good details so others can follow.

An example: My 6 year old will often walk up to somebody and I can see by his face he is "talking" to them then I can see when he is waiting for them to say something back and he gets upset by them ignoring him. We have him to the point now that is half and half with him starting sentences in weird places that make it hard to follow most people he inter acts with will not ask questions but just stare at him like he has lost his mind and then tell me to he needs to learn to not speak non sense.

With my 9 year old we have gotten to a place he can communicate quite well now but we still have issues with his grandparents just either not getting him or not caring to try to follow what he says enough to understand.

Yes, Caleb is my son, my wife is younger than I am. Caleb doesn't so much make noises, he asks obvious questions repetitively.ie " Is it night time yet, " Am I going to school tomorrow "etc. We know he already knows the answer but he repeat the questions. Sometimes I try to redirect but am not having much success.

My son does what you're describing. A LOT. It drives me insane, actually. Sometimes I turn it on him and ask him to answer since I know he knows the answer. I will be curious to see if anyone has any advice on this. Your first post made me think you were talking about something a little different. I've learned to be more tolerant of what I THOUGHT you were talking about, but this...... I really haven't figured it out!

i also turn the question around when my kids do this. i will say, "are you going to school?" or "do you think we are almost there?" and then point out how he could tell if we were almost there or whatever might help depending on the question. sometimes it works. sometimes it doesn't. i can't tell if he asks less or not. for the record i also ask alot of seemingly repetitive questions and i know it annoys people but i feel i need to do it to make sure i have everything straight in my mind. when i rephrase the question i am sometimes told i just asked that question but sometimes it gets a more accurate answer. it seems to be useful when dealing with professional people when they try to be tricky with their answers and avoid commiting to things.

Well glad to see that I am not ALONE. My 6 yr old does ALL of this. The repetive questions, the random loud noises, the nonsensical talking. This evening he was tired and he went on a 2 hour rant of yelling and repeating things that I have said to him before and saying things that I think the teacher or other people have said to him. OMG, it is driving us insane. We have been dealing with the noises for 2 yrs now. Last year he was doing it at school and it was causing a real problem. I think he has toned it down at school, but he totally lets it out at home. If someone had a solution for this, I would gladly pay them thousands of dollars! We can barely watch a tv show or have a conversation. My husband sometimes just puts in his earplugs. I just leave the room sometimes and ignore it.

We love our son dearly and he is coming along in so many ways, but this just takes it's toll on us some days. I guess we are coming to the point of just accepting that this is our life and deal with it. We have tried EVERYTHING. We tell him that if he wants to be loud he can be as loud as he wants but he will have to go to his room to be loud. He thinks we are putting him in time out (which we don't even really use) Finally, when he gets in his room, he is quiet. It is like he needs his audience to be able to do all of this.

Sorry if I sound negative, I hate to discourage you, but I just had a really rough evening. I just hope my son wakes up in a better mood tomorrow!

My 6 year old talks repetitious sentences non-stop from other people, books, TV, and songs and stuff she makes up all the time. From 7.30am to 8pm. We encourage her.

I think that Cyberdad's kiddo has echolalia. Good idea to encourage her. My older son with classic autism used to do this all of the time. What stopped his echolalia was teaching him correct speech. You can checkout the "uploads" section on my speech channel to see some of the materials that I made for my son. There is a whole lot more in homemade book and flashcard form that didn't make it to the channel.

Basically, for expressive speech, while he was eating, playing with play dough, or doing something else to keep his hands occupied, I would read him a question, and he would read off the answer. We would do this until he tired of the activity. This did wonders for his vocabulary and ability to ask and answer questions. I did it every day.

We also used whatever speech videos that I could find, as well as various preschool videos. Whenever English subtitles or closed captioning was available, I turned it on. He watched a lot more videos than regular TV.

Anyway, as the speech improved, the echolalia went away.

When my kids ask the same question over and over (NT or AS, doesn't matter), my answer is always, "what do you think?".

I don't say it meanly, just matter of fact. Sometimes I will say "I dont know, what do you think?", but really, it's better to leave the "i don't know" off.

My younger son with OCD and AS tends to ask the ABA therapist the same questions over and over and she tells him that if he already knows the answer to a question or if he has already asked it, don't ask it again.

With my younger son, it is not echolalia or a speech thing; he just repeatedly asks questions about his fixations. He wants others to talk with him about the colors of objects, street signs, public restrooms, etc. He has trouble talking about things or drawing pictures of things that are not his fixations. (He actually draws pictures of street signs and public restroom doors).