Babbler at times, silent at others, any BTDT experiences?

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My DS is 3yo and dx'd with Autism Disorder and has a profound speech delay. He's very vocal, he babbles and speaks his own language *a*lot*, at times I think he has a verbal stim.......but when it comes to actual words and vocab that he's learned, he just mouths the word and no voice comes through. If something is hot, you can see him saying "hot" but there's nothing coming out, same thing with the letters of the alphabet. He will sound out S's and V's, but otherwise it's lips and teeth and tongue movement, when I know he can use that voicebox of his.

Where does it go from here? Do any members here recall this in their childhood? Have parents here seen such a delay in their ASD kids?

Mainly I'm intersted in knowing how likely it is that he WILL talk someday. I realize "there's no way to tell" but hearing others' experience would be helpful

Sometimes when my students are "mute" or mouth the words, I hold their hand to my throat as I speak, then to their throat as they "mouth". (only if they are willing to try.) Then their eyes light up to realize that the voice box vibrates and they often like to try to make it work. After a few times, I can just touch my throat when they are "mouthing" and they remember to make their voice box vibrate.

Hope this works for your child.

I wonder if the process is part of separating inner thought and outer communication. I have a student who mutters all the time, but has great difficulty remembering words when trying to verbally respond. Her language is fairly clear when she is muttering, but it is almost like a stream of consciousness from her brain, words that help her get through her work with rules and comments about what she is doing.

How you describe that student does make me think of my DS. His question/answer processing is slower (like, pointing to items in a book, letters on the fridge) than his babbly talk. Some of his signs come second nature, though.

I will def try the voicebox tip, thanks for sharing!

When I speak in a foreign language, I slow way down in my ability to answer. Sometimes, I can't get the words right, so I don't try. I learned to read Spanish, for example, before I could speak it. Sometimes I see the words written in my mind before I speak them.

Yes, time is a factor. I try to give people time to respond, which is not an easy task to do. I read somewhere that it takes an average of 14 seconds for the average person to truely process what another is saying. Then the person has to respond. For some people on the spectrum, I think they need to become aware that someone is speaking to them, to sort through their thoughts to be able to receive the incoming information, then process it in the many ways that it might strike their mind (and the resulting streaks of related information that is touched), then to be able to respond. Whew!

Good luck!

Precisely. This is my experience, and why too much incoming stimuli at once clogs the mental processor's 'funnel', causing a shutdown.

As you'll see in other threads, talking and muttering to oneself is a common Autistic trait. A lot of it is an unconscious attempt to prepare for anticipated conversational interactions, which may never actually occur. The processing logjam occurs less when we're working off a prepared script.

Thank you Willard. I have just begun reading through Wrong Planet. I appreciate all information that helps me understand my students better.

My son is 5 and pretty verbal. His progression sounds a bit different from your son's, but this is our experience. He started speaking words around 10 months. He could pronounce lots of words, but we started to realize that he was not using them for back and forth communication. He was doing a lot of echolalia (repeating what was just said to him) Like I would say "Do you want to go outside?" and he would say "Do you want to go outside?" We started speech therapy at around 18 months and over time, this started to improve. He now speaks in full sentences. Some of it makes perfect sense, and some of it is nonsensical. I hear him talking to himself all of the time. He talks about things that have happened through the day, or things that I think he is trying to understand. Like Willard said, he is practicing scripts. Oh yes, that is one thing that he started doing at a very young age too was to repeat things that he heard off of TV, books, radio, etc..... Even though his speech continues to improve and develop, he still loves to babble, repeat, and make up silly words. I think he does do verbal stimming as well.

I have also noticed that he seems to talk better with me and my husband or others that are close to him. If he starts speaking to a stranger, then his thoughts seem to get a bit jumbled.

Hope some of this helps. I have no way to know if or when your son will speak, but with a good speech therapist, it sounds like your son may be able to speak one day. Good luck and Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Thank you, sorry I didn't get to respond earlier.

My DS definitely has this funnel and does not like to be asked questions----we can be having a lovely time playing blocks on the floor, but is very resistant to switching some things around particularly when I'm asking him to do something and not just leading by example. When we were picking up the parts and putting them back, the one block that was out of my reach, I kept asking him to hand it to me but he just did NOT want to hear it. Not with the pointing or anything--I don't normally push so much but I was checking to see if I could get through. Nope...