Is copying others in the same exact way an asd sign?...perplexed!

[mysonben]

I'm puzzled because a lot of books say asd kids do not copy the actions of others.
Yes when ds was a baby, he didn't, he was aware of nursery rhymes with actions but didn't seem intersted in copying the gestures,...

However, when he got to about 2.9 years old, he started copying his peers as a mean of interaction i guess.
And his copying is something to be seen really! He will do the exact same gestures of another child, the exact same laugh, or tone of voice and words (if he can say them).
He will literally parrot/echo/mimicry what the other kids do and say. He does that a lot , plus some parallel play with the other kids.

A few people (such as his paed.) view this as positive progress.
To me it just seem like another oddish behaviour he displays when he's around other children.
Do asd kids do that usually?

ds1 nearly 3) never did as a baby but recently he has being copying movements from the tv the cbeebies summertime song is his favourite and he drags me to join in. He was copying the kids on waybuloo this morning. Oh god it sounds like he watches tv all the time [blush} he doesnt he just seems to do alot of things in response to it. He does copy what kids are doing though sometimes but he does seem to try to initiate interaction now by getting other people to chase him.

The thing with ds 's way of copying others , is that it's frankly over done. He will mirror what the other is doing.

He doesn't even do it as part of a game between him and the other child, because sometimes the other child isn't even paying attention to ds at the time.

I think he does it, because that's his own particular way of trying to interact with others, and ds 's social approach is obviously not what it should be in a nearly 4 year old kid.
When he does the copying it's ds trying to engage, because ds hasn't mastered the social skill of walking up to a child and saying " Hi, what's your name? can we play ...?"

ds2 copies ds1 parrott fashion, even if ds1 does something wrong & is caught out & told off or punished, ds2 will still copy him & get upset if I don't dish out the same reprimand word for word.
Not sure if its progress but its bloody annoying.

Ds mimicks others as a way of joining in. He started with cooing back to the pidgeons, or 'riveting' to frogs! At the time he was preverbal ( so I worried he would never get language) but I guess it was a good sign that he could copy. Now he is a very good mimick - and he can talk- he does not do it as a lark but will repeat an instruction with the same intonation and body language even if he has no idea what it means and cannot fully verbalise it! ( he repeats catchy adverts too) Ds (9) does have a dx of asd but then I do not know if asd is the reason for the skilled mimecry.

Thanks for replying ladies.

I suppose the deficit in copying others can be more prononced during babyhood, and very young toddlers.

I am reading atm, "10 things a child with autism wishes you knew", and she wrote that her son strted imitating the other kids at nursery, and that he had a gift for imitation.

So i suppose he must have been copying others in a very precise manner. Which is what ds does. So it may well be an asd thing after all.

The imitation thing maybe a bit of a misunderstanding. Many children with ASD have problems with imitation, which is why most therapies work on it. However, most children with ASD still pick it up in the pre-school years - you won't learn language/to talk without an ability to imitate so most get it. Even ds1 learned to imitate around 7 or 8 and that seemed much later than most.

DS3 does exactly the copying thing but models himself on ds2. It drives ds2 mad. For a while we were quite concerned about his development (until we swtiched him to goats milk) but he's 4 now and clearly NT. No problems at school or social interaction. But I did wonder whether his odd copying was a sign of developmental issues when he was younger. Perhaps it's a sign of a vulnerability for developing along an ASD pathway or something.

I think it's copying and then assimilating what you have copied into your own repertoire that is crucial - not just parrot copying. However the parroting may come first and may carry on for longer than in an NT child so it's certainly a good rather than a bad thing.

My DS2 who is obviously somewhere near the bordline slavishly copied DS1 from 18 months -basically as soon as he could follow him! They are like two soldiers marching behind each other.