Delayed Speech? Verbal Apraxia? anyone?

goblue

DS is 21 months (18 adjusted) and doesn't have any true words - just a few animals sounds (woof, moo, meow).  We had him evaluated in early December, and the speech pathologist said that his receptive language was at a 19 month level (ahead for even his actual age at the time) and his expressive language was more of a 10-11 month level. 

We had our first session with our speech therapist last week, and she suggested that Jake might have verbal apraxia.  Essentially, his brain might be having trouble telling his mouth how to form words.  He's too young to diagnose, but he seems to have a lot of the indicators - receptive language way ahead of expressive, not much babbling, and mostly gutteral/grunty sounds.

 Just wondering if anyone is familiar with this and what your experiences have been.  Or if anyone else's LO has (had) delayed speech and has some great success stories to share.  I am losing hope for the "language explosion" that his pedi and developmental therapist thought would surely happen once he started walking (6 months ago now).

TriciaJoy

I don't have any success story.. just sympathy. We're somewhat similar. our OTa suggested apraxia a few months ago, though I don't think he qualifies (he babbles all the time and does have a few mostly unintelligable word, plus his receptive language is behind as well) but he's definitely not where he should be.

I'm actually waiting on the paperwork to set up our speech evaluation to come this week. 

Good luck.. I'll be thinking of you guys.

preemieparent

My daughter sounded really similiar to your son.  At 2 she rarely made a sound much less a word.  Her receptive language was always high and we knew she understood things that we were telling her.  She wasn't really able to communicate with us at all.

Olivia is now three and her language has exploded.  To the point that we have to tell her to stop talking sometimes because she's interrupting or distracting to others.  Along the way she had little explosions of language development as she picked up words, phrases, or sentences.

Some things that helped us:

1) Sign language - that really helped her figure ou that she could communicate with us and control certain things. We started with one sign at a time.

2) Slowing down and simplifying our own language when we spoke to her - Instead of saying "Can you find the matching puzzle piece?" we would say "Same, same?" or "Olivia down? instead of Do you want to get down?  That helped her hear what we were saying and imitate back

3) Encouraging and waiting for her to say something back.  We would ask a question or encourage her to respond and then give her time to say something. We would touch her lips to remind her she needed to say something (vs. just nod her head or wave).

4) Time. Unfortunately speech delays often take a lot of time and hard work.  Sometimes progress seems to happen over night and other times it happens almost instantly. Try and be patient!

I hope that helps!

goblue

Thanks to both of you for the encouragement!  I know we will work on this and he will overcome it.  It just gets overwhelming sometimes, and his 18-month adjusted NICU followup is looming over us next week.  I just wanted it to come easy but I should know better by now!

He does use about 10 signs, and he's good at learning them.  I think we are going to take a mom/dad/child signing course soon.  Thanks again!

 

Septmomtobe

DS#1 (now 3yrs5months) has apraxia.  He's been in speech therapy since age 2 and now receives it 3 days per week (1 day through IU and 2 days privately).  He now has about 40 words that we understand and closer to 15 that strangers could understand. He was evaluated last week by a developmental pedi and has expressive language of a 24 months old (the age of my youngest). 

I would suggest posting on the special needs boards.  There's a couple moms on there that have kids with apraxia.

Heather