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To anyone with autistic children about speech
At what age did your child start to speak? If your child is on ths autism spectrum scale I would be really interested to know at what age did they say their first word or to talk.
Hi,
I have a 5 year old who was diagnosed as having classic autism, he still hasn't said his first word. Some speak at the 'normal' age and others are mute for life, it just depends on the severity of the autism, and whether they have other learning difficulties which could delay speech as well.
I have a 5 year old who was diagnosed as having classic autism, he still hasn't said his first word. Some speak at the 'normal' age and others are mute for life, it just depends on the severity of the autism, and whether they have other learning difficulties which could delay speech as well.
My son said - "mama" and "papa" around 15 months of age, labeled things, about 100 words by 2 years old, sentences by 2.5, from 3 thru 4 increased vocabulary to 700 plus words, now - almost 5, has very good vocabulary and expressive language, has not trouble answering questions about something he sees in front of him, quite a bit of trouble answering abstract questions (how was your day) - usually needs prompts i.e. did you play outside or inside today? Which friends did you play with? Sometimes he declares - "mommy, I do not want to talk".
His diagnosis - PDD-NOS through ASD clinic, his school classified him as "mild to moderate delays", his teacher does not see ASD at all because he interacts a lot and is very expressive. They think along "mood regulation and anxiety" route, which both run in my DH's family. Every one of his family members, including himself, has some sort of mood/anxiety combo in moderate to severe form.....Most of my son's delays are of social nature...
Amyway, just to give you an idea where we are in terms of Dx
His diagnosis - PDD-NOS through ASD clinic, his school classified him as "mild to moderate delays", his teacher does not see ASD at all because he interacts a lot and is very expressive. They think along "mood regulation and anxiety" route, which both run in my DH's family. Every one of his family members, including himself, has some sort of mood/anxiety combo in moderate to severe form.....Most of my son's delays are of social nature...
Amyway, just to give you an idea where we are in terms of Dx
My husband didn't say a word until he was 24 months. his first words were all numbers. He didnt' say mama or dada until after age 3. Although delayed in speech, he took off quite quickly on speaking and was reading at age 3. He didnt' have any early intervention because back in the 1970s, there just wasn't until you were like 4. My brother also didn't say anything until he was after age 2. Around 2 1/2, the first words out of his mouth were "the green car goes uphill". My parents said he just started talking in complete sentences, never having said or babbled words at a younger age. He needed speech therapy, but again, back in the 1970s, there just wasn't any until you reached kindergarden. One of my cousins evidently did the same thing. None of these people are autistic. Oh, my sister went through speech therapy through 5th grade. She was born in 1981, so by then there were speech therapists starting at age 3. She went a couple times a week for 2 1/2 hours. She pronounced everything wrong and didn't understand a lot. She was 8 years younger than me, and almost 10 years younger than my brother... and my brother was so bad... she couldn't spell either... so she'd ask my brother for help on her homework, and he'd tell her all the wrong answers. My mom would check over the homework, and for her spelling she'd have swear words written all over the sheet. That was in 2nd and 3rd grade. It took her until 4th/5th to understand the concept of phonics. By middle school, she was caught up in speech and spelling and reading and language, and by high school she was getting As and Bs in those subjects and went on to college and got straight As there. My brother only was in speech until 2nd grade and didn't start until kindergarden. Another one of my sisters did speech in kindergarden. I was the only one in my family who didn't go through speech, but I had a lot of reading comprehension issues and problems understanding questions and meanings of stuff. So, well, I guess I probably should have had some sort of help back in elementary school too. We lived in a pretty poor school district so our schools and teachers were pretty uninterested in helping the kids when I was growing up there. If you didn't fit in the normal mold of things, you just got ignored back then.
Anyways, point is that late speech does not mean autism. It can mean a lot of things. You really need a professional to figure it out. 20 months is probably still on the early side unless you have a lot of other issues to deal with. Some parents who have kids who are having seizures are probably more anxious to get some sort of diagnosis because seizures are scary things. I am lucky that my daughter has never had them. There are also some kids who might not interact at all with anyone, and well, I'm sure that would also be a reason to try to get a diagnosis at an earlier age if they won't look at anyone or just sit and stare at the floor or something. Going in around 2 to 2 1/2 is good though so the doctor can get a sort of benchmark of issues your child has, to compare to when they are older. As several people have told me on the forum... it takes years of observation usually to get an accurate diagnosis. In the meantime, you just have to get early intervention as much as you can get, to deal with the issues.
Anyways, point is that late speech does not mean autism. It can mean a lot of things. You really need a professional to figure it out. 20 months is probably still on the early side unless you have a lot of other issues to deal with. Some parents who have kids who are having seizures are probably more anxious to get some sort of diagnosis because seizures are scary things. I am lucky that my daughter has never had them. There are also some kids who might not interact at all with anyone, and well, I'm sure that would also be a reason to try to get a diagnosis at an earlier age if they won't look at anyone or just sit and stare at the floor or something. Going in around 2 to 2 1/2 is good though so the doctor can get a sort of benchmark of issues your child has, to compare to when they are older. As several people have told me on the forum... it takes years of observation usually to get an accurate diagnosis. In the meantime, you just have to get early intervention as much as you can get, to deal with the issues.
My sons speech delay was ruled apart from his other difficulties by his neuro and because our other son is with a psych for asd's I got the feeling from the neuro that he felt it was either mental retardation or autism, whos to say, all that I know is at 20 months he should have at least one word!
As you say your child has other health issues, I would bring up your concerns with your paediatrician.
Thanks to everyone who responded to my post! The reason I asked about speech is that my son(who has other health issues, not related though) is almost 20 months and still hasn't one single word not even MAMA. What Does anyone make of this, all thougths gratefully recieved!!!!!!!!!
I got a connection error too, don't know why. Try this. Google 'Delayed echolalia', and one of the results should be the above link and click on that.
Are you sure you have the url correct? I tried to go there but got a connection error.
Info about echolalia and analytical/gestalt perception on http://www.groups.msn.com/theautismhomepage/echolaliafacts.msnw
I don't think echolalia is a bad thing. Although it does indicate speech 'disorder'. But it was the only way my son was able to communicate for quite some time and communication in any form is to be encouraged.
If you imagine all the things they hear are like pieces of verbal information. When they want to 'say something' they access these pieces and put them into a sentence (rather like constructing a sound jigsaw puzzle). It may sound strange to us, but it is usually used in the correct emotional context. Autistic children seem to find it very hard to understand what 'single' words mean. They have difficulties with pronouns, sentence structure, grammer etc. My son never uses 'I' or 'me', he always uses his name.
Some do not develop speech (however may be able to communicate through a computer)
Some remain echolalic.
Some have a mixture of their own speech/echolalia and can progress further.
Some use brief echolalia and quickly form their own language.
Some don't speak at all until 9+.
Some do have speech but remain mute.
Some appear to have no speech difficulties and are usually diagnosed Aspergers.
There is such a wide range of abilities and no-one can tell you 'how your child will develop'. But from a diagnosis point of view they 'all' are showing speech disorder.
Echolalia can be immediate repetition, as that quoted of asking a question and getting the question repeated by. It can also be delayed where phrases/songs etc will be used months/even years after the event in which they were heard.
I found a very useful website about echolalia. I will find and post it.
If you imagine all the things they hear are like pieces of verbal information. When they want to 'say something' they access these pieces and put them into a sentence (rather like constructing a sound jigsaw puzzle). It may sound strange to us, but it is usually used in the correct emotional context. Autistic children seem to find it very hard to understand what 'single' words mean. They have difficulties with pronouns, sentence structure, grammer etc. My son never uses 'I' or 'me', he always uses his name.
Some do not develop speech (however may be able to communicate through a computer)
Some remain echolalic.
Some have a mixture of their own speech/echolalia and can progress further.
Some use brief echolalia and quickly form their own language.
Some don't speak at all until 9+.
Some do have speech but remain mute.
Some appear to have no speech difficulties and are usually diagnosed Aspergers.
There is such a wide range of abilities and no-one can tell you 'how your child will develop'. But from a diagnosis point of view they 'all' are showing speech disorder.
Echolalia can be immediate repetition, as that quoted of asking a question and getting the question repeated by. It can also be delayed where phrases/songs etc will be used months/even years after the event in which they were heard.
I found a very useful website about echolalia. I will find and post it.
I have a 30 month old who is late speaking. She's not diagnosed autistic (developmental pediatrician wants to wait a few years before making a diagnosis), but she has a lot of autistic tendencies. Her first word was probably around age 24 months. With speech therapy for the last 6 months, she has a larger vocabulary, spoken vocabulary of 20 to 30 words, though she usually needs to be prompted to say a word and even then she won't always say it. Signing is a little easier for her. She has to be prompted for that usually too. And although late in speaking, I can see she will probably be reading at age 3. She's already starting to at 2 1/2.
Is echolalia totally bad? I am just excited that my daughter is starting to talk. So if she's singing along with the Backyardigans saying phrases like "We're going to Mars," is that a bad thing? You have to start somewhere with language.
Oh, Sally44 said that speech is not related to how intelligent our kids are. That is so true.
Is echolalia totally bad? I am just excited that my daughter is starting to talk. So if she's singing along with the Backyardigans saying phrases like "We're going to Mars," is that a bad thing? You have to start somewhere with language.
Oh, Sally44 said that speech is not related to how intelligent our kids are. That is so true.
My son was saying 20 words by the age of 18 months and by 2 1/2 had over a hundred words, however they were nearly all labels, he found it very difficult (and still does to a certain extent) to structure sentances, ask questions etc etc. By 3 years old he was quite echolaic, confused me, you, your etc rearely used the word no and never said yes in response to a question. For example were I to ask would you like some juice he answered "Juice please", he always repeated the last word or two of the question as his answer. That's when he first started with speech therapy and it was infact his speech therapist who refered him for autism screening.
He's now 4, diagnosed just 3 months ago and so has been having much more therapy than before (he was already in early intervention) and his speech is much improved, he can name the functions of many objects, answer questions about his name, address, phone number etc. Can name features of things eg a car has doors and windows makes coomets about absract things eg a few days ago whilst we were out walking he said "it's windy". The extra therapy that we have recieved since diagnosis has really speeded up his progress.
He's now 4, diagnosed just 3 months ago and so has been having much more therapy than before (he was already in early intervention) and his speech is much improved, he can name the functions of many objects, answer questions about his name, address, phone number etc. Can name features of things eg a car has doors and windows makes coomets about absract things eg a few days ago whilst we were out walking he said "it's windy". The extra therapy that we have recieved since diagnosis has really speeded up his progress.
My son started to say single words at around 2. By three he was putting two words together. He did point at things and show me things (but not to the same level as my daughter). He didn't get that sudden explosion of language at around 3+ that I noticed with other children. He didn't ask me questions about things eg 'what's that', which other children seemed to ask all the time. He started repeating back to me questions I asked him eg. 'do you want a drink', he would reply 'do you want a drink'. And I could tell he was getting pronouns mixed up eg. could use I, me, you, he, she, etc properly. From 3+ he started repeating DVD and TV dialogue and sounds and tunes from commercials.
At age 7 his speech is 50/50 his own made up speech and echolalic phrases/words/sounds etc. His expressive language is typical for 7 year old (because of the use of complex echolalic phrases brings his score higher). His receptive language (ie. understanding what people are saying to him) is at around age 3. I would also like to add that difficulty/lack of speech does not necesarily relate to levels of intelligence. It is simply what it is, a 'speech disorder'.
At age 7 his speech is 50/50 his own made up speech and echolalic phrases/words/sounds etc. His expressive language is typical for 7 year old (because of the use of complex echolalic phrases brings his score higher). His receptive language (ie. understanding what people are saying to him) is at around age 3. I would also like to add that difficulty/lack of speech does not necesarily relate to levels of intelligence. It is simply what it is, a 'speech disorder'.
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