Apraxia diagnosis...

[Ericsmomma]

I know we talk alot about speech issues, but does anyone's child have a definite diagnosis of apraxia?
We took Eric for some extra speech therapy and the therapist told us she thought he was severely apraxic.
I always thought he had more going on then just the usual delayed speech, so this wasn't a surprize to me.
I'm actually glad someone else sees this too.
My question is...if your child is apraxic, what type of therapy is he/she getting? Is it different then the usual approach? How often? And are you seeing any results?

Dolly

[belovedlife2]

My middle child, my son 2.5 years old, Not DS, Has a severe phonological and expressive language delay. They say he is apraxic, but will not officially make that diagnosis until he turns five. But they are treating him as if he has apraxia (it makes me crazy the diagnosis we have is the definition of aone type of apraxia). We currently get speech therapy four days a week, two in house and two out patient at the hospital. We were supposed to have three in the hospital, but they had no room, and I had no time in my schedule (my baby Peanut has ds and has her own services daily). There is a program called easy does it apraxia that they use. They do alot of max cuing. They do sounding warm ups Called turtle vowels. We also do alot of signing and have started with lip to lip sounds (b to p , m to p like Mop, Mom, Bob, warm). When using the system it build in a way the kids actually GET IT. Here, in Pittsburgh, PA the guru for apraxia is David Hammer, he is with childrens Hosp of Pgh. I'm pretty sure he developed the easy does it apraxia program. For us it has worked wonders. My son is now using three words together on his own with no visual prompting. This is a far cry from where he was back in April ( very few one word utterances).
There is a great web site www.Apraxia-kids.org that has wonderful resources.
Depending on what kind and what degree os apraxia your child has he may also benefit from OT services which would help with lip shaping. We had talked about doing Beckmans Oral motor stretches at one point, but ended up not needing to use them. Sometimes kids with oral apraxia do well with chewing gum under adult supervision, because it warms up their mouth and tongue to get more sound out of them.
Good luck, Feel free to emial me privately too [e-mail] is the account I check most frequentely.
good luck,
Robyn

[CC]

DOLLY, my guy has had the Dx since he was 5 years old. I was never told it was severe just that is was definitely one aspect of his speech troubles. We have always had "Total Communication" in Christopher's IEP which would include verbal, oral motor, signing, cueing and having an augmentative communication devise available to him.

He receives 150 min. of speech each week thru his IEP and LOTS of carry over at home. I honestly can say the cueing is very cool and has helped Chris lots

We happen to have a local group right here in my area just for Speech Apraxia. I have lost the addy to the main site as for years now I just get all the messages and info sent thru email. I will try and find it for you.

BEST advise I can offer is make sure the speech therapist you go to has training in dealing with Speech Apraxia

CC ~