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A look back at childhood echolalia

Hey everyone. So I just got some old home videos converted into DVDs so that I could watch them. Click here to view part of one of the home videos that my mom filmed when I was around 4 years old. The video starts at around 4 seconds.

This is a video of my echolalia as a kid. In this video, I started telling my mom to look at something in the book was looking at and then just kept repeating the word “look” over and over again, which is a kind of vocal tic called echolalia where you repeat a word or phrase that either you have said or that another person has said.

As I’ve said before, it always amazes me to see a little 3- or 4-year-old me ticcing! It also amazes me looking back on these videos that my parents really thought I just had bad habits that they needed to force me to break and never took me to a doctor or psychologist as a kid.

I kept ticcing throughout my childhood though and still of course tic today a lot, regardless of my parents telling me to stop ticcing. Telling a child to stop ticcing does not help! It only makes things worse for the child! Tourette Syndrome is a neurological disorder and cannot be stopped by pure will.

I know my mom recognized I was doing something out of the ordinary because once she realizes what I am doing she quickly turns off the camera and the video switches to a video of my brother as a baby.

I had echolalia throughout my childhood where I would repeat my own words and the words or phrases of others and still have it today, although it doesn’t happen as frequently now as it used to when I was younger.

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RuthieP

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