My son will be three December 24, so he is nearly 32 months. He didn't say his first word until sometime around 18 months, and after that he didn't say much more for quite a while. He used to call everyone "Ma". Now, he says pretty much anything I ask him to, though he often says it wrong. I've looked up the symptoms of apraxia endlessly; I'm quite obsessive with researching things. His first speech therapy appointment (through the state) was last Wednesday, and the therapist said that until she hears him say at least 50 words, she can't diagnose him with apraxia. He'll say quite a few words around me, but when he gets around new people, he tends to grunt and point excitedly a lot more, or just do things himself rather than saying them, so she's under the impression that he doesn't talk much. I assured her that he talks a lot more at home, but she's just a fill-in therapist until the end of the month, so I don't think she cares too much.
Anyway, my concerns are:
*He often confuses the consonants; he says "kys" for "sky", for example. He'll often say things in the wrong order
*Sometimes, with the d or t sound, he'll subsitute a y. He'll say bayyeries for batteries. But doesn't consistently do this. Other words, he'll say the t or d sounds just fine.
*He adds s at the end of words sometimes; he'll say "poyees" for "potty", for example.
*He'll pronounce a word perfectly once, and then wrong the next time he says it.
I've read that inconsistency is an indication of apraxia, and this really leads me to think that he has it. He still points and grunts quite a bit, but he's making a lot of progress. I spend a lot of time with him working on it during the day. So I guess I have two questions. First, does this sound like apraxia?
Second, I've been told that if he qualifies, he will get once-a-week sessions with a speech therapist through the school board, once he's three. I'm going to homeschool my kids, so the therapist would come to my home. They also told me that if he qualifies, they have a preschool class he could go to. I looked it up, and the preschool class is taught by a preschool teacher and an assistant teacher, and a speech therapist is not involved, I don't think. I really would rather not put my son in preschool, mostly because I really want to homeschool my kids. Also because we only have one car, so I would have to get another car, and we can't afford to do that. I work with my son A TON at home. I've bought quite a few resources (the Baby Babble DVDs are helping so much), and I sit on the floor and play with him, and try to get him to repeat whole words and separate consonant sounds with me. I also plan to buy the Kaufmann kit for apraxia as soon as we have the money. So I'm wondering about everyone's opinion on not enrolling him in the preschool, if he even qualitifes. Honestly, I probably won't enroll him, but I'd like to know what those of you with experience think. I don't think we will be able to afford private sessions. I've looked it up and they're about $90 per hour, and we have a $1500 deductible on our insurance. We just can't afford that. I'm already paying about $100 a month to the hospital (and various other places) for my daughter's birth in May. So I'm wondering if my efforts will be sufficient, along with the once weekly sessions that the state will offer. I've read that apraxia usually requires 3-5 sessions per week, but I don't think we'll be able to do that, sadly.
I'm very curious about apraxia. From all the stuff I've found on it, I'm very scared. I just want my little man to be able to communicate like everyone else. I don't want him to feel stupid, and I don't want him to give up. I feel horrible for him. I've read other posts in which people ask if it will get better and if you'll be able to tell once the kid is older...I'm curious about this too. What about people who were never treated? And does anyone know any adults who had apraxia and were or weren't treated for it? Can you tell?
I'm so sorry you haven't been responded to yet. Really (I'm not at all a therapist) it doesn't sound like my son's Apraxia anyway. He has severe Apraxia though so I don't know if that makes a difference. When he was 2 he said 'Duh' for almost everything. 'Duhduhduh' was firetruck. I think its kind of ridiculous to say you have to hear 50 words. You may need to go to a neurologist to be sure. My second son had a severe delay and he did the switching sounds thing. My husband had some kind of severe delay. I'm pretty sure it was Apraxia but he was never diagnosed. His speech is fine (he received no therapy until K). He struggles with some words (for a while when we first met he would say 'incest' when he met insense') but his speech is fine otherwise.
It sounds to me like you are set to teach your son. It also sounds like you are more then capable of carrying on his therapy 2-3 times more a week on your own. The difference in Apraxia is repetition, however if it's not Apraxia I don't see how repetition is going to hurt lol. You are doing great mama! Keep up the good work!
It doesn't sound like my son's apraxia either, but that doesn't mean he doesn't fall under the apraxia diagnosis somewhere. I can give you some advice on the preschool situation since I went thru the same thing last winter/spring. After my son Asher (he's 4) aged out of our state's first steps therapy program on his 3rd birthday I didn't want to enroll him in public school for him to get his therapies. Our area doesn't offer many other options so I kept him home with me for almost a full year and I was his teacher and therapist. He did WONDERFULLY. His vocabulary increased from about 50 words to over 200, but his pronunciation didn't improve so Dh and I decided to see what the school system had to offer. It took them 3 1/2 months to do all the evals and actually get him enrolled when it was supposed to only take 30 days. We never wanted to do the preschool because we plan to home school him, but they talked me into it. When I took him for his first day I immediately saw how wrong of a decision I'd made and I tried to take him home. The director pretty much told me I was a bad mom for not wanting him in public school and there was no way I could help him by myself. Let's not get into that tho. We arranged for me to bring Asher in for each of his therapy appts and sit in on them so I knew what to continue to work on at home. (That had always been the biggest plus of having in-home therapy was learning what types of things to work on) That's what we do now. Asher just went back this week for the new school year and the therapists were amazed by the progress he'd made over the summer:) I'm still sitting in on the therapy sessions, but I'm also still looking for other options in our area. I'm so sick of every time I walk in the building being bombarded by criticism for wanting to home school. The therapists are ok, but I know he needs more help with his speech than the therapist he sees can offer. She's NEVER worked on oral motor exercises or pronunciation at all. She doesn't even attempt to get him to say something correctly when he says it in his "Asher language". So, my advice on the preschool is: don't do it if you don't intend on keeping him in public school.
Now for your money issues...have you tried to apply for SSI? Asher qualified based on his speech even tho he has an Autism diagnosis as well. Your son could very well qualify then you could use that money for private therapy sessions.
I'm so sorry I haven't gotten back to this until now. I am buried in school work, work, and spending time with the kids!
Leo still has the twice monthly speech therapy, and I've talked with her about my concerns with his pronounciation. She seems dismissive, says it's normal. But she does think he has a delay. I don't know. We went to an evaluation today for his transition to the school system, and they did say they think he's delayed, and the also said a few other things, but I think they just really did a shitty job altogether, and I don't give their opinions much credit. They basically put him in a preschool room with a ton of new toys and other kids his age, and then the evaluator lady tried to simultaneously ask him and another child to ignore the environment and perform the tasks on her list. It made no sense. Of course he's going to want to play rather than stand on one foot for five seconds or name his body parts. And then I guess since he could only stand on his foot for four seconds, not five, they mentioned that could indicate a gross motor delay. Seriously!
I'm just kind of tired ot it all. I hate taking him to be judged and picked apart by people who don't care enough to take the time to look at him as an individual, or do it in an effective way. They expect him to be able to concentrate on a task for an extended period of time, even though he's not even three years old yet!
And speech therapy is basically the therapist playing with him, trying to persuade him to say words while he's playing. How is that any better than me doing it with him at home?
Sorry! Sometimes I just get really bothered by all of this!
He is definitely improving. He still says a lot of words wrong, but he uses a few signs and uses words to tell us what he wants now. He will likely qualify for the in-home sessions, though I think they are actually with a preschool teacher, not a therapist. So we may end up having to figure something out, maybe with SSI, to get him some actual therapy with a therapist. We will see. Thank you all so much for caring enough to respond!
I hope he keeps getting better, and I hope someday we can look back at this and think we shouldn't have worried so much.
Thank you for updating us. I've been wondering how things were going with your little guy.
Yeah, I'll definitely keep with it. And I'm looking forward to when we (hopefully) get the in-home speech therapy once a week. Like I said, they're nowhere near diagnosing him with anything, probably because they only see him for half an hour, two times per month, so I don't think we could qualify for SSI right now. At least not until he is diagnosed with anything (if he ever is). I am thinking I might try to Speech Tails website. I just did a demo and it seems very helpful. It seems to be pretty much exactly what they do in speech therapy, but even more helpful since it gives you at-home activities and suggestions. My son seemed pretty responsive to it. Has anyone else tried it?
There is a book I found at our local library called 'A Parent's Guide to Speech and Language Problems" by Debbie Feit which is like my bible now. I'm planning to buy it on Amazon.com (its about 5 dollars). It lists all the speech/language disorders and gives you all the info you need to know about diagnosis, signs, treatment, working with insurance, school, anything else you could think of. My son was just diagnosed with Severe Apraxia (he's 3) and goes to a public Pre-K class 5 days a week for 2 1/2 hours a day (his teacher is a SLP and has a teacher's aide), there are 4 other little boys in his class Justin gets daily group and individual speech therapy from his teacher along with the normal Pre-K curriculum) and OT once a week. He only says mama, dada, baba, go, no, vowels sounds and 3 or 4 consanants. I have the same concerns you do. Good luck and if you need to vent or talk, I'm here.
Okay, so he did improve with the half hour every two weeks. But he had his evaluation to see if he could transfer into the program for 3+, and they found that he was average. Which is really BS. At first I was kind of happy, but now I just feel like a horrible mom. I feel like I'm not getting him what he needs, esepcially after reading so many times that children with Apraxia have to have speech therapy 3-4 times per week for years. They said I can go back and have him evaluated again within six months, and I will, but I'm guessing they will come to the same conclusion. I'm going to contact a local hospital that our pediatrician recommended because they do speech therapy, and hopefully we can try to afford that. Even with insurance, though, we have a $1500 deductible to meet. This just sucks. I try to work with him at home just like I watched the speech therapist do, but I just feel like since it's not a professional doing it, it's not good enough.
Leo does talk a lot more, but he makes some specific errors. He leaves off the beginning of words when I ask him to repeat me, and if it's a two or three word phrase, he will only try to say the last word. Also, he doesn't say any phrases that are more than three words. He only grunts every now and then now, and it's only when he can't come up with the right word. He can say almost all sounds individually, but when they're combined, he has trouble. He also mispronounces a lot of things. I don't really know how much of this is just normal for a three-year old and how much is a speech delay/disorder. I strongly suspect it's apraxia, but the women who evaluated him kind of brushed me off when I brought it up. I hope it's not because I hate to think of him not being able to communicate how he feels, but ever since I started reading about it, I've just thought that he had a lot of the symptoms of it. I will keep you all updated.
It does sound like Apraxia now. Just keep on the path you are going. The only other way is to go to a neurologist for a dx. I was very lucky with my SLP. Most don't want to DX. I know my second SLP, for for second son who had a severe delay but not apraxia, didn't believe in apraxia. LOL How can you not 'believe' in it. She didn't agree with sign either. We got a crappy preschool with our first son too. You just have to go with what you have and keep working with him at home, because with apraxia, repitition is so important. Remember progress is slow but it will happen.
My son started speech at 26 months. At 8 his teacher still had trouble understanding him until learning his speech paterns and more about his family to get an idea about what he was talking about before he was talking about it. He just turned 11 and at his last case conference she told me "We are working on letter r". That's it. Just r! OMG you don't even know. I cried right there in the conference in front of 4 teachers lmao. He still has learning disabilities but his Apraxia has been beaten down!!!! So hang it there!
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I have a 3 year old with Apraxia and I need advice
- shawnaquijada
on Aug. 21, 2010 at 2:40 AM