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tell me about apraxia
tell me everything you know about apraxia. DS has been language delayed (expressive) forever. he was finally qualified for speech services at 18m. he does have a few words now, but not a ton. we (DH and SLP and me) are also noticing a pattern to his errors, i.e. - he can't do any voiceless sounds, all his words start with "m" or "uh" regardless of beginning sound, etc) and SLP is starting to think apraxia.
at what age was your LO diagnosed? is this done by SLP? do i need to ask to see a developmental pedi? should we be getting OT also?
he has had some issues with eating. he saw an OT for feeding/texture type issues from 14 - 20m but has been dismissed. should i be asking to go back?
anything you can offer would be greatly appreciated. i'm feeling a little overwhelmed and just want to make sure i'm doing all i can for him
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Re: tell me about apraxia
i have to make this quick (aiden is getting fussy)....
aiden is dx with motor apraxia and his SLP really thinks he has speech apraxia too. i asked her who will give him this dx later (if that is the case). she said she will. she is waiting a little longer...prob after he turns one to give dx. sorry...i know not a lot of info. GL!
aiden gets EI, OT, PT, and Speech/swallow/feeding therapy. speech apraxia is soley addressed by our SLP.
I'm not a mom but I am a SLP so hopefully this helps...
-An apraxia dx should be made by a SLP, not a developmental pedi. It's been the general consensus in the research I've read and with the other SLPs in my department that it's really difficult to definitively diagnose apraxia before age three, and extremely difficult to do so before age two. It can be done, but it's not easy. That doesn't mean that your SLP can't use treatment techniques that are generally used with kids with apraxia, just that an apraxia diagnosis made at a young age should be taken with a grain of salt and not seen as definitive or ironclad.
-Sometimes, kids with apraxia can have some fine motor coordination issues too, as well as oral motor coordination issues when eating. What kind of feeding issues is your LO having? If you feel he's still having issues, by all means ask his former OT for a reevaluation or recheck. In the event that there are fine motor issues too, you could see about having the OT evaluate your LO in those areas as well.
I hope this helps!
DS was diagnosed right at his 3rd b-day by an SLP. It is my understanding that diagnosis before age 3 is not appropriate, before he was 3 I was told that it was likely. DS gets OT for fine motor skills, he's never had feeding issues so I don't know about that.
I can tell you our experience with Apraxia. DS was non-verbal until 2 weeks before his 3rd b-day, he had no words, no word sounds, no animal sounds, nothing but grunting and crying. Between age 2-3 he would occasionally (about every 6-8 weeks) say a word perfectly once, never to say it again, it was like it was a mistake that it slipped out. When he started talking it was the same way, like it just slipped out, but he was finally able to repeat the word if asked.
He's been talking for a year now and is very difficult to understand, I understand about 50% of what he says and I'm with him 24/7. Specific speech sounds are his problem, he omits alot and has a very hard time making many sounds, even with lots of prompting.
HTH
My son has an expressive speech delay and "mild apraxia". I felt like something was wrong when he was 1. No one believed me. I started getting pretty assertive with it when he was 18 months old and EI said he had a bit of a delay and they would qualify him for 1x per month speech therapy for 45 minutes. That wasn't good enough for me. When he was 20 months old I started paying OOP for a private speech therapist who finally gave me the dx that I had been waiting for. I now take him to speech therapy 2x per week for 45 minutes.
In the two months he has been going, I have started to notice that he is definitely improving with some words. He is about 8 months behind with his speech now, but that is an improvement.
We don't have a diagnosis for our 2 year old DS, but I can tell you that our son's sound similar. I sought help for him when he was 16 months old. He had no words at all, only made one sound, and had about 3 signs. He was also having trouble eating (though not gaining weight as he was still getting a ton of breastmilk). He gagged and vomited at about 60% of his meals on a weekly basis, and sometimes it happened several times a meal, several times a day.
He was evaluated by Early Start's speech therapists, a dev. pedi, a speech therapist at our insurance company, and an OT. All agreed he had an expressive delay of about 9 months. Several people thought he might have some form of apraxia but said it was too early to diagnose.
Meanwhile he said a few complete words out of no where and never repeated them.
Once he started therapy, he had real trouble making any sound on command. And once some sounds came, he had trouble forming words, often getting things out of order and working really hard at even that. His therapist worked with him an hour a week and we usedd her strategies at home.
It's now 7 months later and he speaks in 4 word phrases and is understandable to me about 70% of the time or more and I'm not with him all day long (I WOH). His progress is amazing to me and I'm not even sure he will qualify to receive more therapy even though he is still making a lot of mistakes (replacing some sounds for others, skipping syllabels, etc.).