Echolalia
Repeating words or phrases heard elsewhere — immediately, or hours and weeks later. It is communication, not noise, and it is very often a stage on the way to flexible speech rather than a barrier to it.
Why echolalia matters.
A child quoting a film line is frequently saying something specific with it. The phrase carries a meaning attached to the situation it came from, and once you learn the code it becomes readable — one family's child says a particular line only when he wants a routine to end.
Programmes that treat it purely as a behaviour to eliminate can remove a child's only working means of expression before the replacement exists. The better goal is expanding what a child can say, not suppressing what they already do.
Questions that get a real answer
- What is my child communicating with this phrase?
- What is being taught alongside it?
- Is anything being suppressed before a replacement is in place?
Ask these of anyone, including us. What you are listening for is not the right answer — it is whether the answer is specific enough to be wrong.
Terms that usually turn up alongside it.
Executive function
The set of mental skills that run everything else — planning, starting a task, holding a sequence in mind
GlossaryExit criterion
The condition that has to be true for a stage of support to end, agreed in writing before that stage starts.
GlossaryExpressive language
What a child can put out — words, sentences, gestures, signs, anything that gets a message across. Distinct
Send it to us and we'll translate it.
Any report, from any provider, including ones we have nothing to do with. We will tell you in plain English what it says, what it recommends, and which parts are actually supported by the evidence in it. No charge, and it does not make you a client.