31-month old speech

My son's speech is bizarre.  He was diagnosed with a speech delay at 24 months but no autism.  Since he stared speaking, he REPEATS everything.  He does come up with a lot of spontaneous language (not so 6 months ago) and seems bright (knows colors, numbers, scribbles, follows directions, potty training, etc) but he echoes everything we all say.  It is maddening and I don't know if it is normal.  He has many verbal utterances on his own and babbles to himself all the time as he plays, but it seems like he is stuck in a habit of repeating everything he hears (not from TV, just from people) and usually the last part of sentences spoken to him, inflection and all. I don't know how concerned to be because he isn't even three, and he answers all questions asked ("What are you doing?", "What is you name?", etc), but the vast majority of his speech is echoing others.  What is going on?  He is now 31-32 months old.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

It's important to keep this situation in context - i.e., your son has delayed speech/language, and his verbal behavior is not typical of a child his age. Now, if he were repeating others' words in the context of normal speech/language development, the behavior would more clearly be indicative of a problem. There are some indications (his spontaneous speech, his responsiveness to others, his progress over the past half year or so) that this current behavior may simply be part of his process of learning expressive language. Since the behavior apparently arose subsequent to his S&L evaluation, it would be helpful to you to touch bases with the S&L clinician and ask for an opinion about this. Echolalia in the absence of some of the strengths your son displays can be a symptom of a more pervasive developmental condition, but that does not seem to apply to your son.