Apraxia

[Emerald1486]

On the recommendation of one of the posters, I've contacted DS's speech therapist (he has been in private speech therapy for 8 months) to ask if she believes he should be evaluated for speech apraxia. I admit I'm a little scared that she will say yes. 
Since DS started preschool, he is better at the beginning and the middle of words but still has issues adding the end sound. Luckily we are understanding more of what he says. Once and awhile, usually when he is tired, XH and I struggle to understand what he is saying, 

Have any of you dealt with apraxia? If she agreed that he needs to be evaluated, what can I expect?

[Emerald1486]

Captain Serious, you were the one that suggested it. What has been your experience with it?

[marissa]

I have three with Apraxia. There's a Facebook group for it if you want the info.

[abs]

My daughter has apraxia. Intensive speech therapy made a world of difference. Now at 4 she is working on "L" and some other articulation issues but she is 100% intelligible. What you are describing sounds more like phonological processing disorder than apraxia. It's scary but therapy can do amazing things!

[Emerald1486]

I heard back from the therapist and she said that she doesn't believe he has Apraxia. She says that the characteristics he has are more typical of a delay in speech sound development.
Thank you guys for your replies.

[Captain Serious]

Sorry for the late reply; I just saw this. I'm glad she doesn't think your daughter has apraxia. Good luck as you go forward!

[soxin2]

Can I get a lay-description of apraxia?
Everything I look up is very jargony.

[abs]

Feb 20, 2015 14:48:38 GMT -5 soxin2 said:

Can I get a lay-description of apraxia?
Everything I look up is very jargony.

Key characteristics are lack of babbling as an infant, inconsistent errors when trying to speak (words can come out different every time and may not be even close), hard time with imitating, speaking mainly in vowels, and you see a large gap between expressive language and receptive language. When I had my daughter evaluated by ECI at 21 months her receptive language tested at the 30 month level but her expressive language was way behind at 16 months.

Apraxia is a motor planning disorder. The words are all there inside the child's brain but they can't get them out. Therapy usually revolves around targeting individual sounds and then combining them into more complex sounds.  You may also notice that it can affect fine motor skills as well.

[soxin2]

Feb 22, 2015 12:51:21 GMT -5 abs said:

Feb 20, 2015 14:48:38 GMT -5 soxin2 said:

Can I get a lay-description of apraxia?
Everything I look up is very jargony.

Key characteristics are lack of babbling as an infant, inconsistent errors when trying to speak (words can come out different every time and may not be even close), hard time with imitating, speaking mainly in vowels, and you see a large gap between receptive language and receptive language. When I had my daughter evaluated by ECI at 21 months her receptive language tested at the 30 month level but her expressive language was way behind at 16 months.

Apraxia is a motor planning disorder. The words are all there inside the child's brain but they can't get them out. Therapy usually revolves around targeting individual sounds and then combining them into more complex sounds.  You may also notice that it can affect fine motor skills as well.

Wow. Thank you. So much. So much easier than what I was googling. In the quote above you said receptive twice, but the follow up sentence, you meant receptive is high, expressive is low?

(Totally what I'm seeing)

And he has motor planning problems as well.

[abs]

Whoops. Fixed it to make more sense!

I found the book Speaking of Apraxia very helpful when we first starting on our journey. Let me know if you have any questions!