Doing the Detective Work: Finding the Meaning Behind Your Child's Gestalts

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As shown by this real-life example, it's important to do the detective work to figure out the meaning behind delayed echolalia and the gestalts that are picked up by your child naturally, because gestalts communicate!

In this example, the child is communicating with a gestalt that had been stored in his episodic memory. During the balloon exercise, he might *feel* the same excited way he felt watching the scene in the show, and is expressing that feeling with his gestalt.

Now that we recognize and understand why he is using this gestalt, where it came from, and what it means to him, we can validate his gestalt. 

We might also model something else that is a little easier to understand and mitigate, such as "it's a surprise"!

by Halle Demchuk, SLP

Paediatric SLP | GLP-Trained Clinician | Owner of HAEPI SLP