My Son Echolalia Scripting: need some answers and help

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I do know a lot of kids learn to use echolalia in a functional way--like if they're upset, they might quote a line from a character in a movie when that character is upset.

Thanks everyone for responding to my post. I greatly appreciate your comments and insights. I would like to give a bit more detail. My son, Tristan, has very good language ability. He has trouble with grammar and still sometimes talks in phrases more akin to a 5 or 6 year old, but he can easily communicate via language. He is very bright and does have a remarkable memory (he loves memory games and puzzle games).
He is in several therapies for language, social and motor skills. We are all for therapy or anything that will help him or support him. I do understand that his echolalia and stimming behavior are a large degree comforting mechanisms for him. The problem is that exposure to media (videos, games, or online games) specifically seems to increase the scripting.

I appreciate the comments of those like naturalplastic who say that if he is going to script, give him something like Shakespeare or a foreign language to script. I have tried this. Believe me I have tried (with Shakespeare, Carl Sagan, documentaries, poetry…you name it). But, the problem is that Tristan is fixated on mostly one thing – Thomas the Train. He does not show much interest in anything else. I realize that concentrating like a laser on one thing is typical of spectrum behavior. Though it can be used to facilitate especially high expertise in an area, in Tristan’s case (at least currently), his total fixation on Thomas the Train at 12 years old is not helping him intellectually or certainly socially. When he is with boys his age who are talking about Spiderman and the Avengers, for Tristan to begin spouting Percy and other T the Train characters in perfect narrative style does not get him interactive conversations. On top of that Tristan’s ability to have a give and take conversation is practically nil anyway. He lacks any ability to interact socially. Nor does he understand how to have a conversation. After all he is autistic.. and that is after all what autism is all about.

And I have often tried the tactic of joining with him when he scripts, trying to make an interactive game of it as someone here suggested. Tristan either runs away or gives me a grin and says, “you can go away now dad, I don’t want you to talk with me anymore.” One telling thing is that he seems to see his scripting is a very private thing. He does not want anyone to watch him or try to talk with him when he is doing it, which is most of the time.

On car trips he drives his little 9 year old sister batty by going word for word through every Thomas the Train episode he has seen and heard (which is all of them). A common thing from the back seat is his sister saying, “Dad, will you please tell Tristan to quit talking about Thomas the Train. He is making me crazy.”

We constantly tell Tristan to “talk to yourself in your own head.” Usually, if this works at all it is only for a few minutes before it starts bubbling out of him with increasing volume. We usually don’t force him to stop, but after hours of this it gets nerve wracking. When he is home he combines this scripting with walking in circles around a tree in our back yard.

What we are concerned about is that this scripting (and pacing) interferes with and completely stops any attempt at social interaction or regular communication..or learning. Tristan really is zoned out and oblivious to any outside influence when he is scripting. He is home schooled so his mother tries all day long to break into his mind and practically interact with him. We had to take him out of public school after his second stab at third grade when things started getting too abstract for him to deal with. It is a constant uphill battle and it is wearing all of us out.

It sure is a great deal easier to just let him veg out in front of a screen (tv or computer) for hours at a time. And he would sure just love to do that. But, the more such screen time he gets the greater his stimming and scripting. Also, he also goes into rages anytime he tries to get on the computer or play a video and we stop him. Even when we set a timer (and he agrees ahead of time to stop when time is up), it’s like he is on a drug and he does not stop and can not stop. It usually turns ugly. In fact, it if he can’t get it, he freaks out and tantrums (as he gets older the tantrums get more intense of course). Add to this the fact that the hormones of the teen age years are starting to kick in, and our lives are getting very interesting.

Our A. Spectrum doc has advised us to get rid of all media if it causes him such zoning. “If you don’t want the wolf around,“ she says, “then don’t feed it.” This is very difficult in today’s world. I find it hard to do myself. I am still not completely convinced that denying him all media is the fully correct thing to do. Of course, admittedly I am a bit “addicted” to media myself, so denying Tristan media is also denying it to me (at home anyway). But, I am willing to do this if it helps Tristan. My wife is truly convinced that all media is greatly exacerbating the problem, if not the root cause, and it is causing Tristan’s inability to focus and learn.

I know there is no clear answer. But, I appreciate any insights and ideas that the folks on this forum have. Thanks.

double post-please remove or ignore

I went through all of this. I still do the scripting/repeating thing. I'm 36.

I only had therapy and special classes and two parents till I was seven, after that I didn't have a parental unit that had the tools to be able to raise a disabled child, I had to figure out everything else on my own from that point. After much abuse I was truly on my own at thirteen. Most of the social programs I have learned, I learned from movies and TV... I imagine my parents went through hell trying to deal with me. Might have even been the catalyst for their break up, that and if my mother is anything like I am, I'm sure that didn't help either..

Radio and TV commercials used to really mess with me, they still bother me to this day, I just don't listen to them. I'll mute the TV or walk out of the room for a smoke for commercials. I don't listen to broadcast radio ever because of the commercial jingles. Computer game voice overs, catchy phrases from TV shows and movies I still do to some extent. TV and movie intro themes. Music. Natural sounds. Animals. Essentially everything in our surroundings.

I use them as expressions now, little highlights. Like in the game BattleField2, the MEC guy gets hurt and he screams for a medic by saying "Mobooboola!!" so when I stub my toe or I drill my elbow into something for the third time in a day, I scream "Mobooboola!" Makes me feel better. Actually, I use a lot of lines from that game... My sig line comes from the movie Serenity, I use it all the time to express displeasure when something or someone fails on me or lets me down.


I can usually redirect it, like when I'm on the phone by pacing or trying to talk to someone in person by internalizing it or fidgeting, rocking. Around the house though is a different story. My poor boyfriend... Sometimes I'll get whistling something and I won't know what it is so I'll say "What The Hell was that?!?!" He'll reply "Archie Bunker!" from another room. I haven't seen Archie Bunker in over twenty years. Or when he wants me to go shopping with him at Walmart or some other evil place I'll hum or whistle the Imperial Death March from Star Wars, then I'll start dropping quotes from Darth Vader and The Emperor(my special subtle way of saying I'd rather stay home and hit myself in the teeth with rocks). Or I'll start drumming the rhythm of a song that's going through my head over and over. It's not nearly as bad as when I was a child. I hardly notice it... Others do sometimes, though I've yet to hear anyone complain about it.

I tried Rosetta Stone language software. I could learn new languages all day long if I had the full package(I only have the demo), though I tend to mimic the voice overs accent.. Maybe get Tristan to try out Rosetta Stone. He could be a polyglot in no time. I mean rosetta stone won't teach him entire languages, but it would get him started.

We can mimic fairly well, I learned how to order two beer in Spanish just by listening to people at a wetbar in Venezuela, mimicked the order so well that the bartender started speaking Spanish to me... <Insert deer in the headlights look here>. Figuring out how to ask for the washroom was a bit more difficult.

I had essentially no help and I manage semi okay. Your son has loving caring parents, he's off to a good start already. As to what to do to cope, have you looked into therapy for yourself and your wife? Maybe a therapist might be able to help you both figure out some coping mechanisms.

Thomas the Tank Engine... ah, good memories. I loved that when I was a kid, too--never a true passion, but I was very fond of it. My grandma would let me watch it when I went to her house.

How good is your son at communicating within a conversation? Have you tried talking to him, finding out what he likes about repeating his scripts? You might start with the idea that he is entertaining himself; like any sort of entertainment, it has its time and place. You could teach him under which circumstances it distracts others (for example: People in the same room having a conversation, watching a different show on TV, working on homework).

I was raised mostly without TV as a child. My mom used to send me to church to take part in children's musicals. I would memorize the entire musical, script and all the different parts of the music, and perform it for my parents. There's nothing about media that really predisposes us to want to memorize it--if we can't memorize that, we'll memorize other things. I'd chant the preamble to the Constitution or the Gettysburg Address. I remember being at a restaurant with my grandparents--I was in my teens--and reciting Brutus's speech about Ceasar's death from Julius Ceasar. I'd read all those for school, of course. I knew at least a hundred songs, all the verses, all the way through. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep, I'd sing for hours, never repeating one. Mom was surprised when, in my twenties, I sang a song she used to sing as a lullaby when I was a toddler. I didn't think it was that unusual, but I guess it is.

When you're looking at an atypical autistic-style thing that your son's doing, don't just say, "That's autistic; he needs to stop," because... well, autistic people act autistic. That's just the way things are. We're not meant to act typical and we aren't happy if people force us. So rather than just automatically trying to damp it down, a better viewpoint to take is to ask yourself what that behavior does for him--is it fun? relaxing? a way of expressing himself? Just something he does when he's trying to think? (I learn best while rocking or pacing. Seriously. You try to stop me, I don't learn as well.) Depending on what it does for him, you can address it just like you would any other sort of behavior. Like for an NT child, say they are bouncing off the walls chattering at you when they get home from school--well, probably they're de-stressing from a day of learning and having to sit still. If your son were to, for example, lie under the window and look up at the dust motes in the air, he might be doing the exact same thing.

So yeah, forget for the moment that he's doing this kind of thing because he's autistic--just teach him how not to annoy other people with it. If people are trying to concentrate or listen, he can move to his room or somewhere else in the house; or he can wait until they're not trying to concentrate or listen. Teach him about what other people need, and how to get along with them when he wants to recite something. Maybe even work out a signal that you can use to tell him that he is in one of those situations where reciting may be annoying others.

One more thing: If your visitors give you funny looks and expect you to come down hard on your son for reciting Thomas scripts, you have our permission to chew them out thoroughly. That is your son, and your house, and they're just going to have to deal with it--you should never, ever let anybody make you or your son feel ashamed of who he is.

AutismDad writes:

Oh, come on; why're electric trains better than Thomas the Tank Engine? They're both legit hobbies.