Repeating... repeating.. repeating words...

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So my 4yr old son has his ADOS test next month to give us a proper diagnosis.. A little backbround, he was far behind in speech & language and had a resource teacher for year before he started JK (which was very helpful), he's since been in numerous special needs play groups, occupational therapy (which... was worthless for him), referred to a pediatrician, dietitian, and a psychologist for IQ testing which was an utter failure (She literally couldn't complete the test with him). Needless to say, he's actually a rather well behaved boy but has many quirks that get in the way and are far from typical.

A new one for us though is that for the past couple months, especially since starting school he's begun to repeat words constantly. For starters he talks out loud at home all day everyday to himself while he plays or even if he's just sitting in the backseat of a car. Then he'll either begin repeating words or phrases as if he's stuck in a loop that needs to be broken. For example I've heard him say robot like 50 times and then suddenly make an explosion sound in the car last week. This happens every hour of every day, sometimes only repeats things 5 or 6 times others 25+. He'll also repeat phrases back to you and constantly repeat what he's heard on TV or a movie while acting it out with his toys.

Is there a recommendation on breaking this cycle? When I try to ask him about it he seems say either "I can't control it" or "I'm not talking to you". I have no doubt he can't control it, it's an ASD thing but how do you bring it up when you know it makes him feel ashamed? I want to try to work on it before becomes a bigger problem in school. Right now our teacher assure us he's the quietest in the class, that's just his anxiety & shyness but eventually he'll regress that and begin talking out loud I'm sure as he does at home.

He's also just started to be bothered by loud noises but has never even mentioned that to us before. The other day I was just digging through the box of lego to try and help him find a piece when he started to scream at me to stop covering his ears that it was hurting him... then said it again this morning when my 1 year old was crying next to him.

Is it normal for more symptoms to keep coming up like this over the years?

Why do you feel it needs to be "broken"? Leave the kid alone, he's not hurting anyone. I did the same thing as a child and guess what - I made a 30 year career out of talking to myself and mimicking celebrity and cartoon voices, on the radio, as a disc jockey and commercial voiceover talent. There's nothing wrong with your child. He is a unique individual and you should never treat him as though he is anything less than acceptable just as he is. The most cruel thing you can ever do to your child is to make them feel as though you're disappointed with who they are.

As for the sensory issues, IF he is a spectrumite, yes, you can expect to see more of that over time. It isn't just developing, you're just starting to notice it.

Autism is a dysfunction in the brain 'filter' that naturally sifts through incoming sensory data like sound, light, touch, voices, nonverbal social signals, and prioritizes each element according to importance. Many of the things going on around you at any given moment are irrelevant to your safety and personal needs and are filtered out, or assigned a lesser degree of focus, so you can concentrate on the more critical signals.

In the autistic brain, that filter is defective, so those signals all come in turned up to 11 - this is not a literal auditory phenomenon, but a psychological one. Our brains have to manually do what yours does automatically and it's often confusing and overwhelming trying to take it all in and make sense of it all. It's easy to miss a social cue when you're distracted by the squeak of the ceiling fan that others in the room don't even notice.

As a result, sensations like sudden, loud or unpleasant noises, unexpected or unwelcome intimate touches, psychological or emotional pressure or even flashes of light are actually perceived as physically painful. It's not our eyes or ears that hurt, but our entire nervous system that is suddenly overloaded.

That glitch in our brain function never goes away, we just learn as we get older to suffer in silence or develop coping mechanisms (like soothing repetitive stim motions) to help distract us from the discomfort.

Thanks for the reply Willard, that's all helpful information I wasn't aware of.

But just to clarify a couple of points. Firstly, I would never say nor think that there is something wrong with my child. I only want what's best for him and I'm just open to trying different methods that can help him progress than regress. He's come a very long way this year, both socially and with his communication and I'm very proud of him for it. We've had tools and resources that we've thankfully had access to to help along the way but now the resource program has ended since he's begun school.. I'm much less concerned about him talking to himself, that isn't a concern to me, but the repeating of words is new and something I'm unfamiliar with. All I was asking if there's a method that other parents have found helpful with their kids who repeat words and ways to control it.

Is it echolalia a stim, or some combination?

Echolalia is part of language development for many on the spectrum, Language development does not necessarily consist of the same milestones, just delayed. There are some unique aspects and echolalia is one of them. You don't want to stop it because it progresses into more original language. It would be like insisting most kids go straight to walking without crawling first (though some do that naturally) My son repeated phrases, and words. Sometimes used them in proper context, sometimes used them idiosyncratically. Sometimes it was right after he heard it, sometimes it was osomething he heard months ago. It was followed by a language explosion, eventually. Now he will not stop talking and most of it is original language.

If it is a stim, it is as Willard says, he need the stimuli. It could be he needs it on the verbal end or the aural end to block noises out. Unless you figure out why he needs it (a good OT is useful for this) you won't know what to try to substitute. You have to be very careful extinguishing stims, because if you do not give them a stim that they find to be superior or at least equivalent, they will develop a new one which might be either dangerous/self-harming or more distracting. If no one is complaining about it, and it is not creating problems for him, I would leave it be. If it does create difficulties for him, it might be replaced with noise cancelling headphones if it is to block out noises, or chewies might work if it is a mouth thing. I would proceed cautiously

Well thanks a lot ASDMommy.

He seems to repeat words in all sorts of instances and definitely appears to have echolalia. A simple example would be me saying "I've got to go the store" and my son would then repeat that phrase, but only once when he repeats someone! This doesn't happen very often, only a couple times a day but I don't actually even recognize it most times maybe because I've become accustom to it and he only repeats it the one time.

It's usually when he's playing by himself (talking out loud) he'll suddenly repeat either a word or phrase a dozen times on average and this happens pretty much all day. If he's playing with superheros (The current obsession) he might say "I'm coming to get you" and then repeat that 10-15 times in a row before continuing the 'fight' (like a broken record). We did a 2 hour drive on the weekend to visit my sister and he talked outloud the whole way (which is normal for him) but I probably could count 6 or 7 times that he got stuck in repeat mode.

I guess it's something we'll just leave be and talk it over with his doctor in more detail next visit. I really don't know if part of that is stimming or not, I guess it could be!

Edit1: I'm glad this took a long time to write. I went back to look for other responses before hitting "Submit." Mine follows a similar vein as Willard's.
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Full disclosure: I'm not a parent. Just a 46 y.o. Aspie. I've lived my whole life without diagnosis. I'm blessed with pattern recognition, analytic capabilities, and memory among my several other talents. I learned to function by observing and parroting others, and evaluating my own behavior ex post facto of social events. ("What made that person walk away from me? What was I saying just before that?", etc.) I am by no measure an Autism expert, save for that I now know that I have almost 47 years of experience as a largely auto-didactic, functional autistic.

With all that out of the way, I too exhibit this behavior, even to this day. These verbal tics, loops, repetitions. Whatever you'd like to call it. It's comforting in a way, like rocking or clutching is calming/comforting. I don't know why it happens, but I'm not at all concerned about this behavior.

For me it occurs when there is more to my thought, but I was mentally distracted or experienced a sensory distraction, or just can't quite connect the dots to the next part of the reasoning process. I'm hard pressed to recall a time when this was not associated with thinking. I'm racking my brain right now to find an analogy for you. I guess it may function like... well, perhaps you can think of it as a bookmark. That feels about right. So yea, think of it like a bookmark.

I don't know which of the expressions of autism are fixable and which are not, but I suspect this one is not. Medications can perhaps mask it or suppress it. Someone more qualified can provide insight on this.

My gut reaction is that I wouldn't want to lose this trait. When done in private it's completely innocuous. It's only when this trait expresses itself in front of Normals that it becomes a problem. The reality of the situation is that this is their problem, not ours. But They make it our problem through bias. (If you're normal, please do not take that as an attack. It is not meant as such. It's merely a statement of fact from my particular perspective.)

If I had to bet, I'd put my money on your concern stemming from your subconscious brain telling you the human in front of you is broken. ("This doesn't fit my expectation of behavior.") If you're normal, this may be what you're sensing. This mechanism is perfectly normal. Our brains are designed to think like that. It is your brain is doing its job.

Your brain is throwing up a red flag about the human in front of you. This is part of the same mechanism used in mate selection. We avoid asymmetry, we're feel revulsion at disfigurement... anything indicative of less-than-perfect genes. That's our brain's genetic damage trigger at play. Be conscious of this. If you're a Normal, you might want to read up on what we now know about the mind, its function and its purpose. It may provide some insight on your observations, and help you spot biases.

Now, with that bit out of the way, this verbal-looping behavior is definitely a double-edged sword. We have our tool, our "bookmark", which is not bad/not broken. However while trying to fit in with normal people this is one of the more noticeable inconsistencies in our behaviors, along with overt or unmasked stimming, among other things.

I don't know what to tell you to do, I can only say that Autism does not equate to broken, per se. He's gifted in ways that normal people can't even imagine. And I mean that literally. It's like any of us trying to imagine 5-dimensional space. We can't do it because we lack the physical wiring.

I'm autistic,. I lack the wiring that lets me interpret that cursed, unwritten language you all seem to know from birth. Over the course of 30ish years, I have lost immense potential using my mental and physical energy to learn to mimic "normal." I do it very well, and on demand. What could I have been, or what could I have accomplished if I was free to be myself? Who knows, maybe nothing. I'm a bit scatter-brained, dodging from one focused interest to another.

This, unfortunately for you, appears to be your and your kid's Catch-22. He needs to be encouraged to be himself, but being himself, if he's severe, lands him on the outside of the current societal expectations of public behavior. That might change by the time he's an adult. I like think it will. I may be overestimating Normals capacity for open-mindedness and learning.

As an adult I can assure you that I am no more broken than any of you. I do not need to be fixed. You go do your thing, and I'll do mine. I love it here. Although there's no way to tell that this applies to your child, this is what I would have told my mom had I known then what I know now.

Good luck.

If he is doing it as part of imaginative play it sounds like the beginning of scripting. My son had and has elaborate scripted routines for play. It is as if he is both screenwriter and director as he will include others and expect others to keep to the script. This is a form of rigidity and it provides a safe little place for him to play and know what is going to happen. It helps lessen anxiety.

So in my mind, this is also not a bad thing. If he is not now, he will probably start including you and other family members and want you to say the lines he has assigned you. It is not harmful to attempt to "ad lib" sometimes to see how he receives it as practice for playing with kids who will definitely not take direction or stick to a script. At this point, he will take my suggestions if likes them, and reject them if he doesn't. Sometimes he still wants to be an auteur with absolute dominion of his set, and that is OK b/c if it is something he needs, it is something he needs. It took him awhile to get to the point where it is relatively rare, as it is really hard to give up that kind of safe feeling of predictability and control.

Articles from the Indiana Resource Center for Autism:

Functional Categories of Immediate Echolalia

Functional Categories of Delayed Echolalia

I saw a lot of increase in autistic behaviors after my youngest started preschool. He does the stuck record word loop thing, also. I have noticed with him that he is much more prone to doing that and other things when he's had a stressful day, so I think for him it is a stim to help him soothe himself. He also became much more sensitive to sensory things after he started the preschool. Preschool was the first place he had been really pushed out of his comfort zone as he had been with me probably 98% of the time before that.

Have you heard the "spoon theory"? It's basically that you wake up in the morning with a set number of spoons to spend on activities in the day. If you have a physically limiting disability, like in the original example of this, then getting out of bed, taking a shower, washing your hair, and getting dressed might take up all but two of your spoons for the day and since you need those to put food in the microwave and feed yourself, then that's all you are going to accomplish in the day.

I think my son has a limited number of spoons for dealing with social and sensory inputs and when he starts getting low, I see a lot more stims from him, as he's trying to hold on to those last couple of spoons to survive the rest of day with. Yes, listening to him say "I dig and dig and guess what I pulled out." for fifteen minutes straight the other day in a store after he heard one of his brothers read the phrase from a greeting card, was annoying, but we made it out of the store without a meltdown, so I see it as a good use of a coping strategy.

If it's new since he started the new setting, it may be related to the anxiety of the transition or something that is going on at the school that wears him out mentally. If it is anxiety and you really want it to stop, maybe adding some elements to his routine that soothe and de-stress him would help it.

Wow, I am really seeing this in my 5 year old son. He wants to tell me what to say or how to play with him. I always do. I worry though. Other kids aren't going to want to follow everything he says or play the way he wants...I guess this is part of the social struggle. So, am I right to go along with him at home?

The replies to this post have been extremely helpful for me to read. My son has really increased the amount of repeating and talking out loud to himself especially during play time. It drives my husband nuts and he will often times tell him to stop. He doesn't stop of course and that is ok with me,but gets to my husband really bad. I don't quite think my husband really understands autism yet. My son has gotten smarter though and will say he wants to be alone. He will go in his playroom and do it in there so not to bother anyone. I can tell it is something he cannot control and it is somehow soothing to him. I don't know if what I am doing is the right thing, but I don't want to change him or make him feel he can't be himself especially at home of all places. So, I usually just let him do these sorts of things. It can get annoying sometimes, but I try to overlook it and I usually can.

LizaLou74,

My way of looking at it is that if your brain is wired differently, it needs different things. What I do is I go along with it but try to shake things up sometimes by introducing new elements, so that hopefully one day he will be OK with kids doing the same thing. I will suggest games, also for the same reason. I don't push it, like a real kid would, but I try to encourage.

There may be others who take a different approach either more laissez-faire or more interventionalist, but that is what I do b/c it is what makes sense to me and is what is in my comfort zone. I don't find that with my son, pushing excessively hard works real well. Also, it seems like he needs it to stay grounded.

If your child is around other children then he'll get practice dealing with push back and kids who won't agree to play the games he wants, how he wants. If that is the case, then he won't need you to be that "realistic" at home. You can just explain those incidents to him, when he complains about them, and explain the notion of give and take. If it is worth it to him, he'll compromise...if it isn't...well...then it may take awhile for him to be comfortable with that.