Echolalia getting so much worse during lockdown

[Tired1920]

My DS is 4.5 and is at speech nursery. He has severe receptive and expressive language delay- he can make his needs known but in very fixed formulaic sentences. This means, for example, that the dialogue for the start of each day is very predictable, to each line:
Good morning mummy
Can we get breakfast
Let’s go downstairs
Come on mummy.

He also has quite severe delayed echolalia, but this was lessening.

Before, when he was at nursery and I was at work, life was so busy I felt like his echolalia was diminishing- nursery have never reported it happening there either. But now, his talking is about 90% scripting from TV. It isn’t large chunks, it is just the odd sentence from here, there and everywhere, but we could go through a whole mealtime with just echolalia now. This wasn’t the case a few months ago. If he was being assessed for ASD I’m pretty sure he would get diagnosed as before he was lacking the ‘repetitive behaviour’ but now he has masses of it.

I feel like it has got worse due to the lack of stimulation, routine, trips out and I’m so worried for him. His nursery isn’t open as of yet. His behaviour is usually ok (he has ok receptive language in that he tends to understand what you tell him to do and he thrives on praise for good behaviour, but really bad in the sense he’s unable to answer all but the simplest of questions) but his behaviour has been awful for the past few days; whiny, screaming and but for the echolalia, more or less non verbal. I have spent the day crying and feeling so extremely worried about him. He’s due to start school in sept and he can barely talk. Does anyone have any insights or advice? Thank-you

Don't despair, I'm sure he has benefited from spending time with you!! Sometimes it's always darkest before the dawn, and behaviour gets worse when there's some major cognitive development underway. Can you ask his key worker for advice on activities that will benefit him most? Are you able to set up a predictable routine at home so that he knows what to expect throughout the day? When he knows what to expect, this will free him up to learn more. It must be difficult to be stuck at home right now - I really feel for you!

I have read that echolalia can be a really good thing - he's doing all of the practice of forming words and speaking conversationally, and that can build good building blocks for his own words.

Does he communicate with echolalia or is it more random snippets?

DD2's speech took an absolute nosedive when schools closed for so long (she's at a mainstream infants with verbal dyspraxia). She lost so many sounds she was previously saying fluently - to the point we pushed school to take her back as a vulnerable child. It's coming back - it's coming back fairly rapidly since she resumed school - I don't know how much that might comfort you but I hope it does a bit. Even listening to my older child's friends chatting over Skype their language fluency's dropped over lockdown as well (it's actually something I'd love to be able to do for my SALT degree dissertation looking into it but the timings of things aren't lined up well enough).

My DS followed a similar pattern after lockdown. He's been back at school a week and I'm already noticing it easing off considerably....