UNPREDICTABLE! Autism and Echolalia in Action
Jack, near where he surprised me by being “Unpredictable!”
Around age 3 1/2, Jack went through a phase where he liked to escape the house. I would listen carefully for front door opening/closing sounds and knew he was in the front yard. Luckily, we lived on a very quiet cul-de-sac, so traffic danger wasn’t terribly eminent. It was a manageable issue: Jack isn’t an adventurous wanderer, meaning he only seems to go places that are familiar and comfortable. He was usually just sitting on our grass or driveway right outside.
And then there was the day I got out of the shower to a quiet house. I heard the silence and knew immediately where my child had gone. I was barefoot and robed and I carefully opened the front door to call him inside. No Jack. Oh brother. Luckily our door couldn’t be seen from the street. I took a few more steps than I really desired while in my robe, and I peered around the front of the house. No Jack in sight. Now what? I called for him and started to analyze my situation, when suddenly he appeared. He was at the corner of our street, running happily toward the house. I was ready to lecture when he appeared before me, stretched out his arms, and yelled in an uncharacteristic cheer, “Oh yeah, UNPREDICTABLE!” And then he went back in the house.
From Despicable Me
Wow. That was strange. But, once I had a chance to get dressed, and then to think about it—it was pretty amazing! I knew full well that was a movie line from the “Despicable Me” Vector character. Even though we were in a completely different situation, he used that line 100% appropriately. Funny kid, that Jack.
The Movie-Quoting Obsession
One of Jack’s “things” is movie quotes (as I mentioned here). Whenever he mumbles a long paragraph, it’s almost always from a movie. He knows the general rhythm of how the quote should sound, so he mumbles filler sounds and then throws out the few words he actually knows. He does this quite often, hinting to me that he thinks about movies A LOT. While he has cut down on this substantially now that he’s five, it is still very much alive in his mind.
It bothered me that he seemed to be in a world of cinema. Should we cut out movie watching to eliminate this make-believe world for him? But, oh but how he loves his time re-watching his favorite movies, rewinding his favorite parts over and over! Especially at ages 3 and 4 he seemed the most awake and happy when sitting with his animated “friends”, trying to copy their sounds and phrases.
An Interaction Breakthrough!
For a time, when Jack would bring a movie quote into our interactions, I would redirect the conversation to real life, asking an easy question such as “what color is your shirt?” He would either ignore me or shut off and that was the end of our ‘conversation’. Then, I decided to try the old “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach. I figured out what quote he was using and I joined in…and….EYE CONTACT! He looked at me as we spoke together! He might have even smiled! We connected for that quick moment! When we sat and watched movies together, he would freely quote and even make unique comments—a quasi-bonding moment for us, at last!
At the height of my correlating movie quoting and connection with Jack, I heard a podcast that stopped me in my tracks. There is a dad who made similar conclusions as I had, but he took it many steps further with his autistic son, calling it “Disney Therapy”. He would full on act out scenes from Disney movies, with props and puppets and voices—and his son would open right up and tell him how he was feeling! I have since discovered that he wrote a book about it called Life, Animated and there’s a future movie coming out {edit- its now out, here’s a link} with the same name. I have not read the book, but if you want to hear a podcast that tells their story, go here.
And now for a teaching moment.
A common word in the vocabularies of autism families is echolalia. Think of an echo. That’s what many with autism do: they echo the sounds and phrases they hear. Why? So they can make conversation, just like we all want to do. So they can hear their voice. So they can practice language. So they can enjoy the phrases (and scenes) they love whenever they desire. They may be echoing “real-life” conversation, previous words heard, or a quote from a media source.
Echolalia in our day-to-day
I was always frustrated with Jack’s echolalia because he would never answer my questions: “Do you want a sandwich?” was answered with “Do you want a sandwich?” Or even “sandwich.” Asking “Do you want the red shirt or the blue shirt?” was complicated. The latter was always picked, for it was the most recent and easier to repeat. If he said blue, I swapped the order to “Do you want the blue one or the red one?”, he would then switch to red. It is tricky to get him to choose on his own, but it really helps to recognize that echolalia is going on. In this instance, I might try one shirt–blue–and then look for signs such as fussiness (ie. trying to rip the shirt off of his body) and then try to clarify, “oh, you meant the RED shirt. You want RED.” And–fingers crossed–he’ll be happy with the red shirt…
I’ll close with 2 more quick movie quoting examples from Jack, just because I think they’re amusing:
From The Incredibles
One day I had something stuck in my frizzy curly hair. Jack pulled the thing out and carefully said, “Is this rubble?” Totally appropriate comment taken from “The Incredibles” movie.
From Despicable Me 2
Lastly, we had a pretty 13 year old babysitter show up at our house. Jack looked up at her and asked, “Are you single?” Haha, that would be from “Despicable Me 2″. The girl was quite shocked and we got a good laugh.
Anyway…the point is—echolalia. Wow, that is Jack.