Do you have a child or client with less than five words that you can rely on? Maybe the child has some pop-out words, but you don’t know how to get the child speaking more? Today, I’m going to talk about echolalia and autism, and the main way we can start to get words heard more frequently and to develop the ability for the child to echo our words and to expand their language even further.
So the number one thing you can do starting today, is limit your language. Instead of talking to the child in full phrases, really hone down on one word and even one syllable, or two syllable words. So, instead of saying, “Say hi to Johnny,” you just say, “Hi, hi, hi.”
I recently did a workshop at the ABAI conference and I had Sue, actually the woman who translated my book into Chinese, attend the workshop. She came up to demonstrate how important this concept is, by speaking full sentences in Chinese to me, which I obviously I didn’t understand, and then just one word phrases. You’ll see in this clap how echolalia and autism affect each other, and how limiting language can help children learn words. Watch the video version of this blog to see the excerpt from the ABAI conference (just scroll up and play the YouTube video).
I hope you now understand how echolalia and autism correlate, and the importance of breaking your words down throughout the day and talking to minimally vocal children or non-vocal children, with only one word utterances throughout the day. Especially, for the words that have been heard before or target words.
