All my "auties", all my boys, they have gone through a stage where they are building up vocabulary in their mind, and they seem to verbally "stim" on certain words. Doctors refer to it as "echolalia" and they just keep saying one word, over and over, kinda like a broken record.
Right now, my youngest, he is stimming on the word B-R-A-T. He will start breaking rules, say the word, and giggle uncontrollably, then say, "that not funny". Now, I remember saying "that is not funny" to him one day when I heard himself refer to himself that way, and I have no idea where exactly he heard it, but it reminds me sorta how toddlers learning language in the copy cat stage repeat everything they hear, good or bad. I know it will pass, but in the mean time I feel sad when I hear him say it. I doubt he understands that word in the true sense of the word and meaning like I do.....so I will just ignore it.
When my oldest was in this stage, he heard in the word S-P-A-N-K at school from a kid that picked a fight with him the bathroom. The kid said to him, "don't (do something he didn't like) or I will spank you" and it scared him so much that all he could communicate to everyone was "i am going to spank you" in that echolalia kind of way. He didn't have language fully at that time to tell Mommy what happened at school, and no one could guess hearing him say that he would be referring to that incident. If you haven't already guessed, then I will tell you....that was a stressful time for us....because there are so many implications with that expression. A teacher over heard him say it, and she thought the worst of us as parents. She called an undercover cop located at the school to interview my child, without my permission. My child if interviewed would have said, "yes" to all questions he did not know....and I knew that, but did they consider that, umm, no! I got a special call from the school and came down to hear their concerns and felt interrogated myself. I was not a happy camper that I learned that due to lack of funding for paying for paras in the school district they started cutting their hours. The special education teacher decided to ignore his IEP and not give him a teacher's aide anymore, so he went from completely depending upon one, to uh, NONE....hello, don't you think you should wean a child first? Not a good idea! I doubt this incident would have taken place if he was not sent alone to the bathroom. I figured out their was a conflict in the bathroom and that is where the word was learned, that he meant "hit" by that word, but I didn't get the full story till much later, when his language came later. To my benefit, I had just became a foster care parent, so we had a back ground check done with that six months and training and was cleared to the state to place kids in our home. They knew us. When they got the call, they felt these claims were not even valid, so they did not further investigate. We didn't even know they were called! It came up in our annual visit where were review our license. I just find it ironic. It was a mixed blessing they knew us so well.
I am glad my youngest chose a less politically suggestive word to repeat. I have decided it could be worse.....
