The Echolalia Chamber

"Bye Mommy. Have fun at work!"

Oh, these six innocent words lay bare the whole ginormous universe of my autie-related neurosis. If you weren't, for example, me, you'd think "Ah, so carefree, so loving, so spontaneous, so not spectrummy." (Thanks Niksmom for that new word!) If you were me, you'd be a little less sanguine. Because this particular outlier followed months of "Bye Mommy, have fun with Beata!" (his nanny) and "Bye Mommy! Have fun at school!"

You see, he hears me say "Bye sweetie! Have fun with Beata!" or "Have fun at school," and he repeats the same thing back. In the language with which we've become all-too-familiar, it's called "mitigated echolalia." He knows that comes next, much the way he always says "So I can sit" when I say "Isaac, move over." It's what's next. It's what's expected. But the other day, I said "Isaac, you go to school and you play with Beata. Mommy goes to work." And, smart little business that he is, he tried it out the next day. And it hung in the air for a moment, magically, before all the doubt and second-guessing started rushing in.

(In the interest of full disclosure, today was another "Have fun with Beata" day. Watch as I manage my feelings about this.)

I know in my heart that through the echolalia and the non sequiturs he really loves me and wants to be with me. I know it when I hear him come into our room at night, burrow under the covers, and snuggle up against me. I know it when he wakes up in the morning, pops his thumb out of his mouth, grins at me, and announces, "I want to ride in the elevator!" I know it when he pounds down the hall straight into my arms when I come home at night.

But I want to know, really know, that he thinks about me when I'm not there. That he wonders how my day is going. I don't know if he does, if he just can't express it, or if he ever will. But it's part of this whole experience of obliqueness, of hints and sidelong utterances, of mitigated this and theory of that. Bottom line, I want to hear that sentence again, and not immediately second-guess it out of all existence.

Part of what's hard about this sometimes is that we can't always read the signs our children make for us. Sometimes we misread, misunderstand, or miss altogether. Sometimes it feels like listening for a pin to drop...in a wind storm. Even as we're trying to help our kids communicate, we're also trying, trying to learn their language. We're trying become better listeners. And, just like them, we're trying to screen out all the extraneous noise and hear what's really important. It's just a matter of perspective, isn't it?

Comments

[kristen]

Oh Susan. I hear you. I know. I have nothing to say except, we're with you. Hang in there.

[drama mama]

I'm having the same meta-moment myself.

Mitigated echolalia is a good thing. It's progress. Remember that.

I've had to turn off the super high focus on my microscope this week, too. Miss M was getting a little warm with the scrutiny.

Lovely post.

[Niksmom]

What is it in the air these past couple of days? Seems we're all getting a touch angst-y or highly introspective or overly analytical (BTW, I am describing myself here especially!)...
Hang onto your inner knowing that you feel —the snuggles and running hugs to greet you at the end of the day, the elevator rides. A wise person once told me to pay attnetion to the actions more than the words of those we love. Isaac's actions fairly SCREAM of his love for you, Susan.

[gettingthere]

Patience, Susan. As "drama mama" says, mitigated echolalia is a good thing. Don't push too hard to hear the magic words again. They will come again, at random times, and finally, at the right time. Isaac does love you even if he can't express it in words. His actions do speak louder than words anyway.

[Kristina Chew]

"that out he wonders how _my_ day is going?"

I've wondered often, does Charlie just think we put him on the bus, go back into the condo, and then come out to wait for him again? I've taught him to say "Daddy work" and "Mom's at work" but it's very hard to know. It's just in the past year that I have realized that Charlie is very attuned to my weekday vs. the weekend wardrobe---especially my shoes (which he has been arraying beside his bed). When he wakes in the morning and I take the pair that I wear to work, he has been grinning at me...

[Christine]

I haven't commented here before, although I lurk quite a bit :-) In my opinion, this is the most maddening thing in the world and you captured it so well. I can infer a lot about my son. I can read him. I can hypothesize, sometimes with a lot of accuracy. But Oh, how I wait for the day when he can tell me!

[Tahirih Bushey SLP]

One time, when I was working at a University and teaching students about language development and language disorders, I got it in my mind to do a little informal study. I had heard myself repeat, exactly, a comment that another person made to me the week before (it seemed perfect both times it was said) and I thought to myself--I am using delayed echolalia! So I started to listen, all over the campus, to how much language was scripted and how much language was entirely self-generated. It would have been to hard to know when others were using my kind of closet echolalia, but it is reasonable to assume that others do it too. I came away from my week long informal study with the belief that scripted language is more the norm than the exception--it is just that we mitigate a lot of social scripts with personal flourishes and we have a large inventory of scripts.

I also think that unfortunately, most of the time, language therapy for children with ASD does not extend to teaching children to become gradually and increasingly able to add the personal flourishes, vary the scripts, and most importantly, produce self-generated language appropriate to the child's own ideas and feelings. I think we could do a better job at this.