Toddler obsessive word repetition

[HeyJupiter]

My 16 month DS loves cars and repeats the word “ca” when he sees a car/plays with a car almost constantly throughout the day. He does this whilst pointing to show me cars, when bringing me toy cars to see or when out and about. When he wakes in he morning he starts repeating it and walks to the window to look outside for some. It tends to extend to any vehicle with wheels so features heavily in our day. He says it repeatedly whenever he sees one. It was getting a bit ridiculous at the multistory yesterday! Although this doesn’t bother me it does have a sort of obsessive quality - is it typical for toddlers to repeat words this excessively? He has a few other words too (dada, yaya for flower, moooo for cow and eeeesh for fish) which he also repeats frequently if he sees the person/item but cars definitely win out, probably because we come across them more frequently during the day but also he clearly adores them.

I’ve always had a few concerns regarding autism to be honest and he’s shown a few red flags over the months, eg patchy name response (which has got a bit better but isn’t consistent. If he’s busy or walking away from me with purpose he’ll ignore me until I say it a few times) and was a stiff and uncuddly baby (still doesn’t like to be held close.) His eye contact when meeting new people is a bit avoidant and he’s never done the whole gazing into my eyes thing. He does use eye contact to communicate though and I would say his joint attention is good.

Would be good to know if this repetition is part of typical language development?

Thanks :)

[vinoblanco1]

Hey Jupiter my almost 18 month old started repeating the same word over and over at that age too and still does it tbh. I too was and still am slightly concerned that he's slow at learning words.

I don't suspect Autism in my - DS I think it's probably normal for some to be a bit slower at learning words than others as with everything else.

Perhaps if your really stressing out about it, you should speak to your HV? I'm sure he's probably developing normal and just at his own rate. Try not to worry too much this early on.

[HeyJupiter]

Thanks so much for your reply. I haven’t seen our health visitor since DS was 8 weeks old (just a telephone chat at 12 months) so not sure how helpful they would be but maybe it would be a good idea in order to get some reassurance. I guess I’m not so worried about him being delayed in language but rather the obsessions he has with saying that one word. He gets so much pleasure from cars though that obviously I don’t want to discourage him. Toddlers are funny things aren’t they!