Why Do Children Repeat Everything You Say

Is your child repeating everything that you say? Is this echolalia? There are some benefits to this type of communication, right? And of course there's drawbacks. And the key is here, your child is practically verbal at this stage, and all it usually takes is just a little push to get them to use sentences by themselves and flexibly. So my name is Ming from agentsofspeech.com we coach parents on how to do speech therapy at home on the Internet. So the first thing is, if your child is repeating after you, that actually shows language competency. So it should give you some sort of relief because in speech therapy at times we use sentence repetition to gauge how far a child can go in in terms of their grammatical skills and also their language skills. So let me give you an example. So if you speak a different language other than English that I'm speaking to you right now, and I told you, repeat a sentence from a different language, chances are you're not going to be able to repeat it word for word and sound to sound, right? So there will be errors, there will be whatever. When a child can actually repeat after you at a certain sentence length, that's actually where they should stand in terms of their language capabilities. A lot of times when we're doing assessments or whatever, we see this and we'll mark it down, right? Are they able to echo or repeat after me like a three word to a forward sentence? If yes, then that's probably where the treatment should start at, around there, because they're able to remember it. Let me give you an example. Now, I recently went to Italy, right? Everyone who spoke Italian to me I did not, was not even able to repeat after them. And that's because I didn't even understand what the words meant. I really didn't know. Let's go back 10 years ago when I went to Mexico, where they spoke Spanish there. I was there for around three weeks, much longer than where I spent in Italy. Italy they would speak English to me still, but in Mexico, no English at all. When I was there, all I had to learn, so I had to say I had to pay money and stuff. So when I say quanto cuesta, I still remember it after 10 years because I understood the meaning of the two words. And when people ask me to repeat anything longer and add words behind or after the phrases that I knew already, it would be easy for me. Whereas this time when I went to Italy, full English all the way, I didn't have to learn anything. And so when someone asked me to repeat a phrase, I can't even recall anything. It's very difficult because I didn't even understand the unit of the word. I didn't understand that. When people say gestalt, learning, processing, whatever, this is the same idea, but it makes it a lot easier to remember the phrases and repeat the phrases. If I already have some sort of knowledge about the words, the sentence structure and the sounds of the language. Right. It shows language competency. If you ask me to repeat something in Japanese, I would have a easier time in Indonesian. Yes. In Cantonese, my home mother tongue, it would be very easy for me. But anyways, the next thing I want to talk about is typical language developing echolalia. So this happens a lot and I just want to make a parallel again. If you are learning a second language, a lot of times what you're doing is repeating after the teacher. Right. A lot of times what we do is a lot of copy work. Even when we were learning to write, we would copy writing. When we were learning poetry, we would copy out poetry. It makes sense that when we're developing the competency for language, we tend to repeat and we repeat it over and over again until we can make our own work. Which is true with instruments as well, if you think about it. So I'm drawing parallels, but there's scientific data, there's literally a milestone where children will be able to echo after you is developmental echolalia to learn and adapt language. So think about back then, if you've ever played a musical instrument. I have. When I was playing the saxophone or later on the bass guitar, I would try to learn a song. Right before I didn't even know 100% of the basics. And through learning, just copying what other people have played, it gives me understanding that way. So it's more like a top down approach rather than a bottom up. So that's typical developing. So if your child is using echolalia right now and it's immediate, sometimes it's delayed, it may or may not. It may not be actually related to autism. It's just that they're trying to learn something. And there's actually something called tics, by the way, that is a disorder that's pathological that children will repeat something over and over and over again many times. But that's something for another video. What I want to talk about is when they repeat everything that you say, what, what should you do in terms of a language? In terms of a language perspective. Right. The third thing is if a child is stuck in language development and you're stuck there and children are In a parent mode. Or they only repeat and wait for you to give a verbal prompt in order for them to, to repeat. Then we have a problem because then they're stuck in a. In the way that they're using imitation as a way of getting their needs met. So what do we do here is that we need to think about what we're doing wrong. So in therapy we're always thinking about not what's wrong with the child, what's wrong with it. It's like, what can we do right? The responsibility is on us. A lot of times I see teachers and also parents, they're like, oh, he's like that. It's up to his mood or whatever. No, we have to take a hundred percent of the responsibility. We need to think, what can I do here? In order to see a difference in behavior. They're stuck. What can I do to make them unstuck? It's not, oh, they're like that. And I don't know. So a lot of times you hear me say, what can we change the rewards, right? Can we change the way that we prompt and queue? Can we change the level of language that we're inputting and asking for an output from the child? We think about this. Usually stuck in language development here is the way that we prompt. Especially those who are on the spectrum, they are more prone to guess what's going to happen next, right? Are you going to say something? And they recognize patterns and they think that, oh, you're supposed to say something and I repeat and I get what I want. That's what they think is happening, right? You have to break that. So a lot of times when I say a verbal cue cannot be faded out, that's what I mean, right? For instance, if I always say, what do you want? And then the child imitates what do you want? And then you say, I want whatever. And then the child says, I want whatever. You get the gist of it. What happens is that the child is trained in that routine. And we have had a lot of these kind of need based communication children in our agents of speech coaching programs. And what we do is to start changing that verbal prompt into something gestural, number one. Number two is we do not ask for a verbal response in the beginning. We want to teach the initiation of language instead. You're going to say, man, this is counterintuitive. I want my child to speak. They're speaking less. What does that mean? The thing is, no, we need to get a child to want to talk to us first. And we're pretty sure from the first point I made, if they're able to repeat such a long sentence, the true language capability should be around there. So the problem now is that of the context and if they want it or not. You want the child to understand the new routine, which is them coming to you to ask for something to initiate. And because you can only get a child to talk through repetition, we don't want to do talking. We want them to use some sort of a gesture. They might be tapping you, they might be using eye contact, they're using whatever. And then response shouldn't be a question form, should be more of like an expectant look, as we call it, so that we can see what kind of language or communication comes out of it. All right? And then there are some children out there who use this imitation as a get out of jail card. I've had a, a few clients when I was doing more clinical work that she would literally wait for me and try to imitate everything that I do, right? And it was a hard battle trying to get rid of it because everyone was doing it around her. And I remember this was an 8 year old autistic girl. Her favorite thing to do was to smell hand sanitizers. And what happened was like she wanted it so bad, right? I didn't even say anything and my mouth was moving and she was already moving her mouth trying to guess. I made a, like an open mouth kind of gesture. She already thought I was going to say apple or whatever and she would say the word or whatever. She's so conditioned. And, and don't mind me using this word into thinking that, oh, this is my get out of jail card. This is like a wild card. I can use it for anything. Like as long as I imitate you like a mirror, then I can get whatever I want. So a lot of times I should take a step back. Don't allow that. Use teach commands, right? Get them to listen and, and think. First use their hands instead of the mouth to, to respond to, to a verbal command. So for instance, we can do something like put the, the headphones onto the table, whatever. So instead of them saying the word, you can tell them, go do it. Can you throw everything here into the bin? And then they're like, no, go do it. And then it changes the pattern for them. And then you can ask, you can teach them how to respond to questions instead of repeating them. And in answering those questions there must be a consequence to it. So like, why should I answer this question? So for example, if I Ask them where is the TV remote? And if they can answer, if they point to it, then I can change the channel or switch it, make it louder, make it softer, whatever that they want. Okay? There must be a consequence to why they answer your questions. Okay. The last thing I want to say is a child has no incentive to create their own language. And I just got off with a call, I think three days ago with. And she was like, of all the things that you taught, we taught at Agents of Speech, she said, and. And I'm not trying to make it sound good or whatever it takes you to try out. She's like, everything worked. Especially something what we call language sabotage. And language sabotage. I'm not sure what I learned from this, this word. I could have seen it in like a hand in program book or whatever. But how it works is you want the child to have incentive to create their own language, right? If they're repeating sentences while they're waiting for you, change it into a gesture, change it into a single word without using verbal prompts, right? If you get that part, then you can do sabotaging. So sabotage means when I talk in a long form, like I am right now. Why am I doing this? Is because I have to be very direct and specific about what I'm telling you, right? Or else I can just wave my hand and you'll understand what I'm trying to say, which were not there yet. Okay, so why is. Because the longer it is, the more specific it is, the more you understand what I mean. So when a child wants something from you and they say milk or whatever, and then you go ahead and say, can I have more milk? Right? And then they say, can I have more milk? Right. That's counterintuitive. What you want to do is to do something that is illogical, funny, and also irritating with milk. So you take the milk out and then you're like, yeah, this is milk. And you put it back in the fridge, right? And then they're going to get annoyed. And then you can prompt them with gestures to say, take out the milk, right? Okay, take out the milk. And then it becomes a sequence of events that your child has to say in order to get the milk. So you see, when a child says milk, right, what it means by context is a sequence of events that should happen and you should do in order to get it. So it might be like, take out the milk, get a cup, pour the milk, put it in front of me, so on, so forth, right? I want you to chop these sequence of events up as much as you can, right. And act like a robot. Don't move until your child actually says something more specific. And obviously, you will have to prompt. And I would push you to use more gestures for this prompting. Because if you don't use gestural prompting, then you're stuck with verbal prompting, which cannot be faded out, meaning you will always have to use it and your child will always be waiting for you. And this is what we call in the therapy world prompt dependent. Children only become prompt dependent when we don't systematically get rid of it. Right? It's like glasses is a prompt. It's something that we can't fade out. We always have to wear it. When there are like, there are people who got rid of their glasses by actually systematically fading it out. And this is the same thing. If you're going to walk with crutches for a very long time, you're not going to get better. So then get rid of those language crutches for a child. Okay? Start fading out verbal cues, right? Going back to. To the beginning. Understand that if a child is already repeating such long sentences, they're pretty good. Their true ability is good. So remember that. That's a benefit of having a child who would echo after you. Remember that echolalia is developing, is also developing traitors. And then if you're stuck in language, get rid of all the cues and start from the beginning. Right? Teach your child to want to initiate with you in terms of a language communication with, like, gestures or even eye contact or whatever. And then systematically move up from there. Okay? Sabotage language when you can. That's all for today's video. If you want to learn more, this video was good for you. Just go to www.agentsofspeech.com course. We have a lot more free courses that cover exactly how to do this from A to Z. No matter if your child is nonverbal, have single words echoing like this, or they're speaking in full sentences. We have something for you. And there's a huge community there. There are 13,000 parents inside as of this recording. So just go there, check it out, and I'll see you in the next video soon. Bye.