Thursday, May 14 marks Apraxia Awareness Day. Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a speech disorder that seriously interferes with a child’s ability to develop clear speech. Apraxia is one of the most severe of childhood speech and communication disorders. I want to bring awareness to our community about this speech problem in children because it is still little known, very misunderstood, and has a huge impact on kids and families.
In a person who is not diagnosed with apraxia of speech, the messages from his or her brain travels to the muscles in their mouth signaling how to move them in order to form words. However, with a child diagnosed with CAS, those same messages never reach the muscles, and so the child has to be taught the correct positions, for each and every sound, how to move his mouth in order to form words. Children with CAS generally have a good understanding of language ”“ they know what they want to say ”“ but have difficulty learning or carrying out the complex movements that underlie speech.
At this point there is no information available to tell how many children have a diagnosis and there is no known cause for CAS. We need to find ways of supporting children with apraxia and their families because speech therapy, the only proven treatment for apraxia, is quite costly and will extend over many years for these children.
My son was nonverbal at 18 months and diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech at three years old. Through his own hard work and determination, intensive therapy, as well as the dedication of his speech therapist and amazing Head Start teachers, he is now in the first grade and is almost free from any apraxia symptoms. Though his apraxia is resolved today it is something that will never go away. While we are so blessed with this outcome, many children do not have the same results. Some children will live with severe apraxia symptoms, ultimately affecting every aspect of their lives.
Learn more about apraxia at apraxia-kids.org. Please help us raise awareness for these amazing children.
Jane McCabe, Acton
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