[Preemie-l Member],

Huh! That’s interesting that you would mention that. My daughter Brooke does that too. As I think about it, she does it mostly on things she doesn’t understand (or doesn’t care to understand). If she understands what we are talking about she’ll counter with whatever is appropriate. Lately I’ve been excited to see her figure out opposites. We’ve just started the game where we say ‘yes’ when she says ‘no’. We do this “forever” and eventually try to trick her by switching our ‘yes’ to ‘no’ to see if she’ll switch to ‘yes’. So far she sticks with either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (which ever one she chose originally).  

Anyway, it does seem that she copies us less and is able to understand more than say just 3 – 6 months ago.  Maybe your daughter will start to move past this in a few months.  However, she’ll have days where she repeats more than others. On those days we usually just tell her what to say and she spouts it back at us. For example, if she just echoed something back that doesn’t fit the conversation we’ll say: “Brooke, say: “I like purple”.  Then Brooke will say, “I like purple”. I don’t know if that is the “right” thing to do or not. It’s just what we do. We’re not in Speech right now (we changed states) but we are supposed to be (based on a recommendation from her ST in Vermont) so I can’t vouch for it’s “normalcy” and couldn’t venture a guess as to what it’s supposed to mean when they echo back what you say to them…

Lauren

Mom to Brooke (born 26.5wks – 3yrs old tomorrow – Unbelievable!) and Brandon (born 38wks – 10.5 months)