Speech delay and echolalia

[Ratchet101]

Hi all, need some advice or others experience. DS is 2.7yr and has some speech/communication delays. He was a late talker anyway and even though he has come on leaps and bounds the past few months, still appears quite far behind his peers (he goes to nursery 3 days a week). He has good vocab and he started speaking more with 2-3 word sentences including very basic requests. However he lacks the skills to be able to use his vocabulary to have spontaneous conversations or articulate his thoughts/needs. He loves books and we read to him all the time and he can recite a number of his books which he will do confidently. We love this and hope that this will encourage his speech more but we have now found that when he engages with his peers he will use this echolalia as conversation. It's hard to watch other children trying to play and engage with him with toys and basic chatter and he will watch them/approach them good natured but then recite words/phrases from a book (like Julia Donaldson Highway Rat!) until the other child stops trying or gets confused and will just walk away. Nursery have said his speech needs more support/work and at his 24m review his speech was flagged as borderline low so he had a speech review where they said he was doing fine, just a slightly slower development but they didn't see any concerns. Now just a little lost in other ways to help him communicate and interact with other children. My fear is that over time he gets more and more behind when perhaps an intervention was needed earlier. I have voiced this to others who have said he just needs time and his language and communication skills will develop on their own. I want to keep reading with him as I know this is great for language but I also want to stop him relying on echolalia as his only "go to" way to speak to others. Any advice/thoughts/experience people have on this would be incredibly appreciated!

I should also mention we recently have had a little DD who is only 2 months old so it has become harder to focus all our time on our toddler like before and I worry this big change in his life will have a further effect on his confidence in communicating. We have also "put off" potty training as he does not seem to communicate clearly if/when he needs to go and again am worried of introducing too many changes in his life right now.

Look at the book on the gestalt language processing by Marge Blanc. It is possible to develop independent language through echolalia, just following a different path.

I agree with @BrainNotAvailableTryAnotherOne that resources on gestalt language processing/learning may be helpful. There's a lot available online, eg:

www.coventrychildrensslt.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Gestalt-Language-Processing.pdf

The most helpful thing you can do if your child is acquiring language in this way is to model new phrases and chunks of language to help them to build up that internal bank of language. You could do this during play like role play games too to help support social communication.

Thank you! I've not heard of this. That looks helpful (the PDF) and I will take a look at the book too