Scripting Sponge Bob

One of the things we lived with long before Tate got his diagnosis of autism was Echolalia (repeating words, phrases, or whole dialogues). Although we had no idea it had a name or it was a sign of autism, we thought it odd. Tate would repeat the last word of my sentences or sometimes my whole sentences. He often repeated what he said too and sometimes the second time it was whispered.

Tate, age 3

As a toddler Tate said, “Mommy” all day long and I would usually answer with, “What?” He started calling me, “Mommy What.” He echoed my “What” right into my name for months. I thought it sounded really sweet but still had no idea why he did those strange little things that his five older siblings had never done.

When Tate was a little older he would repeat advertising jingles, lines from cartoons, or pages from picture books randomly throughout his day. I have heard others recently calling this scripting instead of echolalia. Either way it seems to be very common in kids with autism.

I follow a video blogger called Autism Hippie. Look for her on Facebook. Her son Mike scripts all day long and he starts early. He wakes his mom with a line from a movie or a video game and she hears the same line for hours at a time sometimes. One of my favorite blogs is Conversations With Casey. It is also a video blog. Casey does not script verbally much but scripts in a different way. He memorizes the movements of a musician in a video or of an actor in a scene of a movie and then repeats the actions over and over with the audio in the background. His violin “playing” fools people sometimes. His violin is silent but Casey sure looks like he is a virtuosos. I would highly recommend finding this blog on Facebook as well.

Tate has scripted for years but these days he usually only scripts with one-liners and it is not always evident to people what he is doing. He can cleverly fit lines from movies into situations where they often apply. Sometimes they are very random though, unfitting and odd. When Tate pipes up with a one-liner I can sometimes recognize it as one he has used before or I can even remember the movie it came from. Sometimes though, I cannot. Often I will hear it later in a movie he is watching and say, “Aha!”

A few days ago I got a phone call midday from Tate’s resource room teacher whom I appreciate very much. She is wonderful with Tate and she is a great communicator. She called because Tate had said something very inappropriate to his paraprofessional and she thought I should know how they handled it. Tate had randomly said, “Let’s get naked.” Of course this kind of thing could become a real problem in a public school setting! Tate’s teacher and I knew his comment was not of a sexual nature but also knew others might not be so understanding. Tate needed to realize that he could not ask people to “get naked.” She said he was very receptive when she told him that he could not say that anymore. He said he would not. I told Tate’s teacher that I was sure he probably got the line from a movie. I hung up the phone and a few minutes later it rang again. Tate’s teacher decided she would ask Tate if his offensive line had come from a movie. Without missing a beat he said, “Sponge Bob, Season 3.” I searched online immediately and up popped a scene in which Patrick said, “Let’s get naked.” to Sponge Bob.

This incident reminded of a book I had read by Sean Barron, an author with autism who has written about his experiences. He reminisces in one of his books about being young and memorizing lines in shows that were followed by canned laughter. He’d try out the line on his classmates or teacher the next day but rarely get the response he wanted. He did not understand that not all of those lines were funny when out of context. I am not sure that Tate is doing the same and delivering lines to get laughter but he is delivering lines so that he can interact with people. When Tate said, “Let’s get naked” I can be fairly certain that he had no intentions of doing so and did not expect his para too either. Sponge Bob’s answer to Patrick was “No” in the episode. I imagine Tate fully expected his para to say, “No” and then Tate would have had a “conversation” under his belt for the day.

Tate, January 2015

When you meander through life not understanding how to start a conversation, yet wanting to engage people, I can imagine that scripting would be what kids like Tate would turn to. I think Tate was just trying to “converse” with his para and this is how he tried. Of course, it could also have just been a random stim too. Tate does do a lot of stimming and scripting is a stim. I could just inquire of Tate as to why he asked his para to get naked. But Tate cannot tell me the whys. And if I did ask it would cause him anxiety because he cannot answer. If I try to have a serious conversation with Tate he usually sees it as discipline and becomes very stressed. I say it often, “I’d love to get inside that head of his for a while and see what is going on.” ha

This is a much older post, also about Echoes. You might like to read it if you want to read more about echoes or stimming. 

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Echoes

Eventually, I may run out of quirks to ponder and chaos to control but I am not there yet. I was remembering today how Tate used to memorize jingles and commercials. When he was a toddler, we’d walk through the grocery store and see a character that represented a product: the Charmin Bear, the Kool Aid Man, the Keebler Elf, Mr. Clean… Tate would recite the commercial or the jingle that went with the product, word for word. He memorized songs, books and dialogue from favorite movies too, often with just one or two exposures to them. He had some great language but no conversation skills. He couldn’t answer a question but he could repeat the question. It is called echolalia and is common with autism. When Tate was very young, he would say “mommy?” I would answer “what?” He started calling me “mommy-what” and that became my new name to him. That was before we got a diagnosis. He was a little strange to me but so cute. Once we got a diagnosis of autism and I recognized the echoes for what they are, I worked hard to eliminate them. I must have said, “Don’t repeat” a hundred times a day at first. Tate stopped echoing others but then replaced it by echoing himself. He would either repeat a sentence or repeat the last few words of his sentence. He still does this fairly often. It comes and goes and may always do so. Many of Tate’s stereotypic behaviors (stims) have disappeared and then resurfaced again. However, if Tate knows it is not something we want him to do, he often tries to hide the stim. Now, he frequently whispers his echo. Tate is never punished for echoing or for any other behavior that is stereotypic of autism. He just wants to please me, thus the whispered echo instead of the echo that we used to have. He is such a good boy and he is trying so hard, it is just hard to fight the “need” to stim. I wish I was able to explain it but I do think I understand it, somewhat. It seems to be like an obsession or a compulsion. OCD is often co-morbid with autism. I do not know where the line is drawn between a stim and an obsession/compulsion. I suppose that I may get a better explanation as Tate ages and if/when we need to see doctors regarding these issues. I have heard and read some of the reasons Temple Grandin gives for these kinds of things and I would highly recommend her books to anyone wanting to learn more about autism. She has autism but has overcome so much and is a brilliant writer.

Some of the stims over the years were easier to reduce than others. There was the awful telltale sign of autism when Tate was two and a half: hand flapping. Hand flapping is the stim that I have heard about the most. It looked awful; and although, I had no idea what autism was, I knew that we were looking at something huge. I first suspected a mental illness. The first time I ever saw hand flapping I held Tate’s hands and told him that it did not look nice. It didn’t creep up on us; because one day he did not do it and the next day he did…. a lot. Every time he started I would stop him. I stayed in the same room with him much of the time so I could stop it as soon as it started. He did it when he was excited, bored or anxious. I was vigilant and persistent. It didn’t take very many weeks until he stopped doing it, because of all of my intervention. As I found out though, every time we eliminate a stim, another one takes its place and sometimes the new stim is less desirable than the one it replaced. I have learned to live with some of them and be quite happy that they are NOT others. 

Why do I want to eliminate the stimming at all? Tate’s peers will not find him very approachable if he is chanting jingles and commercials, rapidly blinking his eyes, bouncing up and down on his toes, making squeaking noises, flapping his hands and arms, or gnashing his teeth. When he is stimming, the stim is bigger than anything around him so it is hard to get his attention or interact with him. When he is stimming, it consumes him. He certainly is not going to learn anything while he is stimming. Stereotypic behaviors could be a magnet that draws bullying in Tate’s future as well. 

The longer a stim is “with” us, the more ingrained it becomes. One of the things Tate did as a baby and toddler was to fan the pages of a book. He’d get a book; the thicker the better, for him. He would sit on his bottom, put his knees up, balance the book on his knees, and begin fanning the pages at eye level. He could spend a large part of his day doing this. I had no idea why he liked to do it but he did and it wasn’t doing any harm, or so I thought. Now that I know what autism is I regret all the hours that I allowed Tate to “waste.” That time could have been spent learning. He was not absorbing information from his environment like a typically developing child does. He was not playing with toys and pretending. I knew things were not “right” but I had no idea what was going on. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Note: This seems to be one of my more controversial posts. A lot of parents think their children's stereotypic behavior is endearing and have told me so, often in very harsh words. Some say they have even been told by therapists and/or doctors that the stimming is something their child needs to do to express himself. That was not the advice I was given by Tate's therapists and doctors not was it encouraged in the books I read. Tate was born in 2001. I truly believe Tate is as high functioning as he is because of all the early intervention and all the constant education he was exposed to. He was not allowed to stim for long periods of time when he was small. Please, if you take offense by my opinions and/or the fact that I believe I helped Tate by discouraging the stereotypic behaviors, know I am not sitting in judgment of others who embrace stereotypic behavior. I have to do what I believe will benefit Tate the most and you have to do what you believe to be best for your child. I'd rather not hear from anyone who believes I did the wrong thing. I will not debate it with you. Thanks! Lisa

This post was written in 2012. You might like to read something more recent about a similar topic. Read Reciprocity