What is Childhood Apraxia of Speech?

studio-portrait-of-a-happy-boy-with-a-clean-white-2025-01-10-05-21-02-utc_edited.jpg

Apraxia is a neurological motor speech disorder where the child’s brain knows what to say, but the mouth, tongue, and jaw do not cooperate. Frequent, intense therapy is required in order to strengthen the brain pathways necessary for speech to occur.

The following are a few facts about childhood apraxia of speech (CAS):

Apraxia comes in all shapes and sizes. Some kids have verbal apraxia, which only affects speech. Other children have global apraxia, which affects other motor skills such as catching a ball or running. In other words, the brain knows what to do, but is not able to communicate that message to the legs or arms.
Sometimes apraxia is the only disorder a child has, but other times it presents itself with autism, downs syndrome, sensory processing disorder, and a host of others.
Progress varies from child to child.
Symptoms include: Quiet baby who does not babble, first words are late and limited, can understand what is being said much better than he/she can talk, and inconsistent speech errors.
Specific, frequent speech therapy for apraxia is required.

In the book “What’s Eating Your Child?”, the author Kelly Dorfman correlates that learning how to speak is a lot like learning a fancy dance routine. Some people are naturals. From day one, the moves come easy and they require minimal practice. But, for other people the twists, turns, and dips are far from second nature and they have to do the routine over and over again before finally they get it right.

The apraxia timeline with my son was as follows:

Started speech therapy at 27 months old.
Received apraxia of speech diagnosis at age three.
Incorporated holistic health strategies at age four because the words were not sticking in speech therapy.
Started speaking much better three months later.
Tested out of apraxia and stopped speech therapy approximately a year later at 5 years and 2 months old.

Apraxia Mamas …

Keep. Fighting. The. Fight.
Keep shuttling those kids to and from speech therapy. You are making a difference.
When you feel exhausted, rest.
When you feel like you are not with the right SLP, have courage to make a change.
Trust your gut instinct.
Stand up for your child; you are their biggest advocate.