3 yr old attention problem

[valamuru]

Hello everyone,

I am new here and I am a concerned a lot for my 3 yr old daughter.She is speech delayed and has been diagnosed with ASD and Hyperlexia about 2 months back. She started private speech therapy since then and will attend the school program once she is three. She has already started communicating by echoing and sometimes with spontaneus talk. For now mostly her needs,though. she refers to self by name still,no ponouns. All this happened in the last two months. Her receptive language and cognition are on average with other kids of her age.cognition is actually higher.
The problem that I see mostly is with focus. If she can focus and listen she will and can do a lot of stuff but getting her attention and holding it is very hard.She is also very active. so she is not learning as quickly as she can. She also has a lot of echolalia.
She is a bright kid and fits the description for 'The Einstein kids syndrome' children perfectly except for her echolalia.
I was hoping to find answers on how I can control that activity and get her attention.any help will be appreciated.

[sbgrace]

My spectrum son is extremely difficult to focus as well. He can focus on his interests but his attention to other stuff is very poor (even poor enough to affect day to day stuff like eating). This is our biggest struggle. I don't know if it's a co-morbid condition with the autism or just part of autism for him. I don't have advice really just sympathy I guess and I wanted to welcome you to the board.

My son did have some significant visual processing issues and vision therapy did help in his attention to others part but he's still got major attention issues. Sometimes there are sensory issues going on that can cause attention or hyperactivity signs. Those areas might be worth looking into. I hope someone has some good advice for us both!

[valamuru]

Thanks for your reply. It is so gut wrenching for me to see a bright girl like her struggling to learn to talk. I have never had any doubts on that previously. I thought it came naturally to every child.I took the appointment to get her vision checked.

[BookGoddess]

Welcome to the SN board, valamuru. It sounds like you have a very bright child.

One thing that stood out to me in your post was your reference to echolalia. If your daughter has echolalia, her receptive language is probably not age appropriate yet. Most typically developing three year olds don't have echolalia. They can ask and answer questions without echolalia. Our kids have echolalia because they don't understand exactly what we're saying to them. Part of the reason your daughter may not be paying attention may be because her receptive language isn't quite where it should be. She sounds somewhat like my daughter who is bright but quite unfocused. My daughter has an auditory processing issue. She processes language a bit slower than is typical for her age. We had her tested and she's not exactly where she should be. There are things you can do to improve auditory processing. We're doing NACD with a neurodevelopmentalist. It's a type of therapy you do with your child. You don't have to hire someone to do it. It's also not expensive.