Apraxia

We have been talking to many of you about how Cooper was referred to a speech therapist and many questions and comments have been generated (isn't he just too young and maybe a little behind? shouldn't you wait until he is older?)....all legitimate and our initial thoughts too, but we knew something was just not quite there. Well Cooper has begun his speech therapy and has an official diagnosis. It is called Apraxia of Speech and when you read the literature and sit down and talk with Cooper, it is very clear and helps us support that we are definitely not just being overly worried parents. He will continue speech therapy weekly for the remainder of the year and then we will evaluate and see what progress has been made. Cooper tries very hard to talk to us and experiments with new words all the time, but they all sound the same and are using the same few consonants and mouth movements.

Here is a blurb from an article we received from the children's speech specialist:

DAS is a speech disorder that interferes with a child's ability to correctly pronounce sounds, syllables and words. It is the loss of ability to consistently position the articulators (face, tongue, lips, jaw) for the production of speech sounds and for sequencing those sounds into syllables or words. Generally, there is nothing wrong with the muscles themselves. The child does not have difficulty with non-speech activities performed with the muscles such as coughing, chewing or swallowing. However, the area of the brain that tells the muscles how to move and what to do to make a particular sound or series of sounds is damaged or not fully developed. This makes retrieving the "motor plan" for saying a word difficult.
As a result, even though the child knows what he wants to say, he cannot say it correctly at that particular time. Sometimes he cannot even begin. Either the wrong sound comes out, or many sounds are left out all together. At that particular time, the motor plan is not accessible. These errors are not under the child's voluntary control so he often cannot correct them, even when trying his hardest. Frequently, a child will be able to produce a sound or word at one time and not be able to say is again when he wants to. A parent may hear words when the child is playing alone or when he is angry, but when asked to say the same word, he can't.
For a young child with DAS, a limited speech sound repertoire is frequently the main characteristic of his speech. This simply means that the child has very few speech sounds that he can use automatically so he frequently uses a simple syllable (such as da) to stand for almost everything.
If the child has gotten to a level where he can use several different consonants and is actually talking, the main characteristic of the DAS is inconsistency. A child with DAS is likely to have inconsistent speech errors and speech capability. For instance, he may be able to say a /p/ sound at the beginning of words as long as the /p/ is followed by an /o/, yet, he may not be able to say it if followed by an /e/. Or, maybe he can only say a /p/ at the beginning of a word if the word also ends in a /p/ as in pop. Another example could be that the child can say a /p/ word just fine by itself, but if there is a /t/ word in front of it, the /p/ becomes a /t/( so two pan is said two tan).
Perhaps he can say short single words well, but as soon as he uses two or three words in a row, he drops all the ending sounds. These inconsistencies can easily lead to confusion on the part of both the child and the parent. The child learns that he cannot trust himself to communicate his ideas well, and the parent may wonder whether the child is just being careless or lazy. Apraxic children are usually better at imitating speech than at saying words spontaneously. If you ask a child to say a words right after you, he is likely to say it more accurately than if he said it without your model.

Patrick and I have a lot to learn as far as our role in helping Cooper stay confident in his speech and a long road of correcting and improving upon his language skills. We, and the medical world, know little about what the actual cause of this brain impairment is, but it seems there are ways to "fix" it. If you want to read more about it, you can google "dyspraxia" or "speech apraxia". We just wanted to inform everyone a little bit more intelligibly than we have since this all came about. We will certainly keep you aprise of his progress.