Speech Delay in my 3 Yea Old

Question

My son has speech delay issues and he has just turned 3 on April1. He has a limited understandable vocabulary, he excells in everything except for his speech. I am a stay at home mother and he does not have playtime with many children at all. He has had early intervention but that ended when he turned 3. Now he will begin to have a 45 minute class once a week at the school where he will be able to interact with other children his age. When he is outside playing with the children in the neighborhood, he just follows them around and repeats everything they say to him. He doesn't answer a question when asked, he just repeats what was said and there are a few times he will answer but it's not consistent at all. He has a hard time understanding when I'm giving him a choice on weather he wants to wear a pull up or a diaper - he'll as I said before repeat what I say without making a choice.
What can I do to get him to GET IT? He is our first born, we have a 3 month old now as well whom he adores.

This discussion is related to language delay.

jdtm · Answer

Your son reminds me of our nephew - he also repeated back what was said to him.  He was five years old before he was able to participate in a conversation.  Our nephew was diagnosed with PDD - NOS which is a high functioning form of autism.  By the way, being stubborn or inflexible is one of the behaviours of children on the spectrum as well as the unpredicability of comprehension and/or understanding.

I agree with the other posters - I really think you should have your son evaluated as soon as possible by a developmenal pediatrician or neurological child specialist.  If your son is high functioning autistic; the sooner the diagnosis and treatment, the better the prognosis.  Our nephew began speech therapy at two years of age and this continued until he was in elementary school.  At the time, the professionals said he would never graduate elementary school.  By the way, our nephew graduated college, got married, is a father and a contributing member of society.  But - early intervention is the key.  If your son is not "autistic", then by seeing a specfialist, you will have peace of mind.  I wish you the best ....

Jaylor24 · Answer

did you ever get your son evaluted by a develomental pediatrician or pediatric neurologist who ruled out any form of autism? There is also PDD NOS where the child is on that spectrum..there are different severities as well...your son might be very mild. Or are you just assuming he isnt?   A child can be mildly autistic or PDD NOS and they very well understand you and have selective hearing jsut like any child when they hear what they want to hear like "do you want a cookie?"  At 3 he should understand the difference between a pull up or a diaper as well as "repeating things" usually the repeating things Is referred to as echolalia and usually happens with autisic or children on that "spectrum"  you really should get him evaluated he might be eligable for more service that will help him

NickTracy · Answer

I have no idea why my post landed in the autistic spectrum area. My son is not Autistic, he seems to be very stubborn. :o)
There are times when he gets what I'm saying, it depends on what it is. If he likes it he responds but if he wants to do something totally different then he will not respond or will wear out the word NO. I can ask him a question like do you want to go outside and if the answer is Yes then he will repeat what i have said or he'll say Tony outside. If he does not want to go outside then he simply will say No.

Sally44 · Answer

As you are posting in the autism forum I am assuming he has a diagnosis of being on the autistic spectrum.
What it sounds like your son is doing is called echolalia.  It can be immediate or delayed echolalia.  It is a different way of acquiring language.  All children begin learning language in this way, but then change to analytical speech ie. understanding individual words and putting them into a sentence.  Your child is probably learning language in whole chunks ie. the meaning of the sentence instead of the whole word.
My son was the same at 3.  He could repeat whole DVD dialogues.  I would ask him a question and get it repeated back, or an answer totally unrelated to the question.
He also struggled with pronouns because they are interchangeable.  It took him along time to get that.
The answer is speech therapy.  You need a good one that has experience of speech disorders and autism.
Your son will begin to get it.  It maybe later than other children.  But it will come.
As he gets older (around 6+) look at Semantic Pragmatic Speech Disorder as well to see if that is relevant.