Does/did your autistic or hyperlexic toddler...

[TrucksAndDinosaurs]

Recite stories, especially rhyming ones, and chunks of Peppa Pig dialogue (or whatever DVD they like) in bed, after being put down for the night?

DS does this, not just in bed ( but in bed he declaims away for up to an hour to his teddies in the dark). He also breaks into scripting and reciting stories in the day. Or counting to 10 as fast as he can with the same sing song intonation.

He has functional expressive language as well and talks a lot. Has started to narrate play scenarios. Example 'owl climbs up a ladder. Oh dear! Owl fall down! Bang head! Poor owl, panda kiss owl, never mind, try again...'
And on and on. Running commentary on himself too.
'Baba push Hoover! Oh dear! Not work. Mummy help! [shriek of dismay as toy vacuum cleaner catches on rug]

Will play same thing over and over but also incorporate new motifs. Is now using favourite toys to act out and coming up with new scenarios all by himself. Although often plays out same story over and over.

Will start scripting as a game and look for validation/ attempt shared attention eg: will be offered milk and say

'We'll float on a boat on a milk White Sea
With a dipper and a cup
We'll sip it up,
Creamy and white
We'll sip, sip, sip
To our heart's delight'
(Which is from a book he likes. Then he will recite another six pages)

It's kind of freaky, but charming. He's 2.5. Two months ago, he was diagnosed with autism.

Sometimes he kisses us with joy. Other times he doesn't greet us. He looks backwards when running, shakes head back and forth, recites and has a crazy memory for books - after reading 3 times he can say the missing word if you stop mid sentence- he's not NT.

He loves, loves language and is playful and creative with it. I'm not in denial and agree with the DX but he doesn't match the children in all the autism parenting help books I'm reading and I am having a hard time reading up on it and trying to apply the learnings as - that's just not Ds.

Sorry. Embarrassingly long. Nobody to talk to about this.

Yes, the pronoun reversal is part of imitating speech from others but not being able to turn it around to refer to them. It has corrected itself in both of my boys. Ds2 has very limited speech but can say I appropriately.

Ds1 doesn't echo any,ore but he has questions he asks over and over and statements that he makes over and over, so he still perseverates, more so when he is stressed. He has a pheno,inal memory for little details, too, sometimes from years ago.

Ds2 has done this from a young age, harry potter, spiderman and various other shows, will recite them start to finish, he has a set time for it now, half an hour and that's it. I honestly can't listen to it after that. He is 11 so he understands, but will ask can he have another half hour later. Yesterday he recited a whole part of the karate kid in chinese. When he has enough of watching certain dvds he will change the language, put on the subtitles and learn it that way. He recently started quoting scenes from harry potter in different languages too.

Dd used to recite books from memory and could sing any song word perfect even if she only heard it once. She would draw a crowd in Waterstones when sat in her pushchair at two she would drag books from the shelves and seemingly read them. She has always been tiny too so looked like a baby reading the Hairy Maclary series and the Little Princess books word perfect. She lost the ability as she gained more of her own speech but now she reads avidly instead so never lost her look of books.

Couthy, the minute ds3 is formally diagnosed, you become 'a family at high risk of ASD'. So it'll be much easier to say 'can we have a second opinion on ds2 please' without being fobbed off.

When his diagnosis is in place, you take dd (by then 16y) and have her say, "can you test me, mum and I think I'm similar to my brothers"

Saves face for the services, you see. Doing it in that order, they can make a different judgement 'because of the strong family history' without being forced to admit they should have managed it earlier.

Following the pronoun reversals, we got lots of he/she/it mix-ups. And I then noticed an adult doing the same, cos their English was limited, then I discovered their first language simply didn't have the 3 separate pronouns.

So I googled it and got totally . No wonder ds1 had trouble cracking the code!

I remember from teaching English as a foreign language many years ago that pronouns can be a bitch for some students but never really clocked why.., thanks for link! (Mareeya)

Also thanks for biscuit idea zzzzz...

Spent day attracting strange looks trying to teach pronouns
'I, Mummy, am eating a biscuit. Do you want a biscuit, Ds? Yes, I want a biscuit Mummy. Yum.'

Basically narrating for him and speaking as if I am him. He says something in third person and I echo but in first person.
'Baba want apple!'
'I want an apple mummy'
Then hand him the apple saying 'here you are'
Everyone including DS looking bemused.
Hanen book suggests it but I feel an arse.