"Hello. My son is five years old and has been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. His language is coming along but he still uses a lot of jargon in his speech, although his echolalia has disappeared in the last year. I wonder if you can tell me what we can do to alleviate his use of jargon. It is hindering his social interaction greatly and dents his confidence of talking to other people. I don't think it is related to anxiety as has been suggested because it happens in situations where he is absolutely comfortable, in his own environment and acting on his own terms. Thank you." VE

Answer: Dr. Pam DiLavore, Lead Psychoeducational Therapist, Raleigh TEACCH Center

Jargon and echolalia are both interesting phenomena. At one time, people working with autistic children thought that jargon and echolalia took away from the child's ability to speak spontaneously and communicatively. A lot of research has been done that shows that they can be an important part of learning to use language to communicate.

Often when a child uses long strings of jargon, we can hear identifiable words springing up here and there. As the child matures and understands more about the relationships between sounds and words and between words and meaning, we usually hear less jargon and more strings of clear words. My suggestion would be to think about the best and most functional way for your child to communicate right now. If he says words but doesn't always use them communicatively, you might want to use pictures to give him ideas of topics to talk about and/or what words to use. This is different from using pictures as the main form of communication as many children do; rather, the pictures are visual cues to help cue verbal language. The most important thing is for your child to have a communication system that is truly functional for him. As time goes by, you can build on that system and move more toward verbal language.

In the meantime, you might want to respond to the jargon as you would to any other acceptable social overture. If you know what meaning your child attached to the jargon, respond to that meaning as if he used real words. If you can't tell or if there isn't any real meaning attached, just respond in a fun, social manner and try to get others to do the same.

If you want to read about language development in young children with autism, you might be interested in some of the work of Dr. Barry Prizant.