imitating the traits of other kids?

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I have noticed this with my seven year old.

There was one kid (who is a friend of my nine year old) who has a very different way of speaking than other kids in this area (more of a west coast accent), who my 7 year old thought was really cool and he began speaking in a similar accent. He also seemed to adopt some of this kids gestures and way of walking (which is also distinct).

There is now a kid in his class who is friendly with my son (they are both Pokemon fanatics) who has some quirky inflections in his speech and distinct gestures as well. I have noticed that my son has also adopted these qualities to an extent.

Do any of your kids do this too?

I am not a parent, but someone with autism, regardless, i'm postin' anyways.

I accidentally developed a New York / East U.S Coast accent (or so i am told) by watching the news/ american programming for the vast majority of my formative years. I do not live near this region.

After a google search, it seems that people with autism are actually bad at mimicry. The research was physical based, however, as far as i can tell, so verbal stuff might be less affected.

The way i see it, any focus of interest for an autistic individual receives more focus than is typical, resulting in more learning.

It's normal when socializing for children to speak the same way their peers do. The difference here is that he/she is copying from one peer, and ignoring the rest.

If your autistic child considers something cool, it is likely they'll end up with a stronger grasp of that thing their non-autistic peers.

^ This contains a fair amount of guesswork

-LeLetch

Yes, I thought that it was unusual for ASD kids to imitate too. But, he seems to do it with just these kids. Or, just the one kid now. He has always really wanted to socialize and fit in with other kids, and it may be a way he is trying to mask his social challenges, I don't know.

He does not have an official diagnosis yet. He was evaluated, but we don't have the report yet. So, I am not 100% sure he is on the spectrum, but it is highly suspected.

You would fit right in over here with the accent you developed:).

Trying to purposely mask social challenges by adopting a different accent?

That sounds like advanced socialization to me. I'm not buying it.

What might be possible is that he wants to be just like his friend. It's actually very possible that he's copying everything.


Be aware that an 'autistic focus's' or 'autistic specializations' aren't isolated to things like trains, lego, pokemon, whatever.

You can specialize and focus on an individual human being.

I think it's pretty common.

You're probably right. He definitely has across the board social delays. His social skills are probably not sophisticated enough to be trying to mask his social challenges. He does really think this kid is great.

Funny, you listed the exact progression of his special interests . His first love was trains, then Lego, now Pokemon. Although, he had an intense focus on Minecraft between Lego and Pokemon.

Hmmm?

Pattern detected.

The progression of his interests are progressive.
This leads further credence to the theory that your son's friend is a special interest.

Lego -> Minecraft (which is lego with animals/monsters in it + level progression) --> Pokemon (just monsters in it + level progression) --> Friend (likes pokemon)

Also, this progression becomes more humanistic over time.
(Also, these are all popular autism interests. If you sub in tanks for trains, i share all of them with your son, lol, other than his friend who i couldn't possibly have ever idealized )

If he has a train made of lego i want an award.

I call it cross-specializing. Most new interests are connected to previous ones, or they wouldn't have been noticed or considered at all. I think so, anyway.

I've observed this with three other real-life autistic individuals other than myself. We all seem to do it.

Hopefully his friend is a good influence. He might, you know, adopted his friend's EVERYTHING. There's really no end to the rabbithole when it comes to interests.

Is your son on the spectrum? Does he tend to copy other kids no matter what disability they have or if they are normal or not?

I did this as a kid and that was why my mom had to pull me out of my special class and put me in mainstream because she found out I was copying the wrong behaviors at my school. She found out I was screaming and shrieking in school and I thought it was school behavior. I started doing it at home one day and my mom finally talked to me about it and I apologized and told her it was school behavior. She talked to my teacher and found out they had a boy in their class that shouted. I thought it was normal behavior. Never again did my parents have me be in a special school or in any special programs. They always kept me with normal kids where I would learn appropriate behavior. I also remember copying the wrong behaviors from normal kids and my mom always had to correct me or I always had to learn the hard way.

Your son may not understand what is normal and not normal and he is trying to figure out how to act. You may need to try and explain things to him. I think my parents found it easier to just pull me out of that class and put me with normal kids than having to try and explain to me why Lisa could scream when touched and I can't or why Billy could have a toy to play with and only have it be his and not ever have to share it. Plus I wasn't learning anything because they weren't giving me work normal kids were learning so it was holding me back so mainstream was the best for me. They thought I was also intellectually delayed because I would score low on IQ tests but that was because of my profound language delay. It wasn't easy getting me out of that class because once your kid gets in there, it's hard to get them out and my mother had to figure out how to get me out of that class.

^ That's a thing that happens

No filter for the speech coming out, no filter for the things being learned coming in.

Congratulations, you have a bouncing baby sponge. Give him an outdated collection of medical encyclopedias and see if he cures cancer.

^ Copycat Pokemon for the win

LeLetch, he has made many a Lego train . I also remembered that his Lego phase morphed to include a Lego video game phase, which led into Minecraft.

League_Girl, he has copied behaviors that were not "normal", yes. The first kid he was copying is also on the spectrum and he picked up on some of his stims. There was also a kid who was really into saying curse words (has older siblings) and other inappropriate things. These phases don't alarm me too much, as every kid I know goes through it, but my son did not understand that you can't say the same things to adults/ teachers that you do with your friends and was saying things the kid taught him at the wrong times.

You son sounds a lot like me when I was a kid. I can't count how many times I would come home ad say things to my brothers kids said to me at school and have my mother yell at me about it and make me apologize so I would figure out that was only in school, not at home. Now I think it may have been a different situation so it made it not okay or the kids were being mean to me and I didn't know it and it may have been I said it at the wrong time such as telling my brother it was so funny I forgot to laugh and he had falling off the swing. Instead I had learned that was only said in school but at home it's a bad sentence to say. I can remember it was a fad going around so everyone was saying it at school and then my father was saying it so one day I decided to use it only to get scolded for it.

My 9 yr old Aspie does this ALL the time. Wow, League Girl, you just described my son's behavior to a T. My son is very verbal, and he can do imitations of all kinds of accents. His British accent is very authentic, lol. He is pretty smart, (not a genius), but pretty smart. He has been in special ed, but is slowly being mainstreamed. It is a catch 22 for me because he doesn't really seem able to keep up with peer interactions with the typical kids as much, but when he is in the special ed environment, he picks up unwanted behaviors. I have to keep my eye on this because I feel that it sometimes hurts his progress. I am actually considering homeschooling him because of this.

My son also gets fixated on different kids and it seems as though they become his "special interest" We are dealing with this now, and it is frustrating.

I also did this. I often tried to find the kids who seemed the most well liked and who were most celebrated by their peers and try to imitate all their characteristics. I would try and talk like them - which often led to some serious problems when said kids were peppering their speech with the 7 words you can't say on tv - I would try and imitate their body language and their tone in which they talked and would try to be around them as much as possible in order to get a sort of visual tutorial on how to gain the same acceptance as any other kids. It definitely had mixed results though - once kids made up their mind that I was not acceptable to them I would have magically given them any kind of new toy or gadget they wanted and it still would have failed badly in getting me to be one of them.

With me it was always with short cuts. I would find a short cut and do it. So when I discovered that shouting got my teacher's attention, I started doing it because it was easier than raising my hand or waiting for the teacher to call on me or come to me. I bet if I had seen an autistic child have a meltdown when something didn't go their way, I would have learned to have a tantrum to get it because it would have been easier than dealing with the discomfort. Another reason to keep me out of special schools and classes. I would have learned to be more autistic because I would have thought it was normal behavior. Sadly I hear this isn't uncommon in special classes with special needs kids. They all tend to pick up on each others behavior and mimic each other, kids with behavior disorders do the same too. It is a catch 22. It also wouldn't surprise me if autistic kids act more autistic with their autistic peers.

Then later it was about wanting to be normal so I copied normal kids.

angelbear I think what matters is his education. Can he survive mainstream with an aide or not? Does he still get a normal education in special ed? I wasn't getting a normal education in special ed so I had to be in mainstream and there were cons to being in mainstream but I was no longer held back. My parents felt it was better for me so they did it and I do think it was better for me because I wouldn't have learned stuff in special ed I learned in mainstream.

Thanks League Girl-

He seems to be learning okay, but I am not sure that he is improving in the social area all that well. He is mainstreamed in some classes with an aid and does okay. I really am not sure that the special ed setting is helping him at all, but I am not sure he would do that well in mainstream without an aid. He definitely needs an aid because he tends to have adhd problems.

Maybe it is also a special interest? I am interested in languages, dialects and accents for as long as I can remember. Today I watched a video on the pronunciation of Old Norse (which I don't speak), and earlier I watched a video on the pronunciation of Chinese words (I don't speak Chinese either). I think it is quite natural to be interested in the speech of other people, whether it is just a different accent or a different language.

He could have an aide in mainstream. I had one too and I probably needed one in elementary school but I never had one. But my school wouldn't have given me one in junior high because they didn't think I needed one but when we moved I had one.