Levi's Speech

I don't think I've posted about this before, and I just found a really helpful website to help me (and you, if you are interested) understand apraxia.  When we started Levi with a speech therapist this past Spring, she mentioned the possibility that Levi could have apraxia.  Since that time, it has become quite clear that he has this speech disorder, which is almost definitely a result of the CP.  Thinking about things like this is why I can only handle thinking short-term.  If I think about the long-term issues with this and other complications of CP, it's just too much.  We try to encourage his speech as much as possible and use sign language (but that's also an issue because of the CP and his difficulty with gross- and fine- motor skills).  Thankfully, he responds extremely well to praise and has built up an impressive (in my mommy opinion!) vocabulary with sign and limited speech.  It's just going to take a lot of time and effort to develop his speaking skills into something that other people can understand.  We don't know what his speech will look like in the long-term, but at least he is making progress and hasn't reached the point of complete frustration when we can't understand him. He is making progress, and for that, we are so thankful and thrilled!

A short intro to Apraxia (if you don't want to visit this website for a fuller overview):

"DAS (developmental apraxia of speech) 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...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." 

"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."  


This is Levi to a "T". He has trouble with any sounds that are not /d/, and will substitute /d/ for any consonant.  For example, when he is saying Machiah, he will say "da-di-ah".  Another issue is that he hardly ever spontaneously says a word.  It is too difficult for him to "retrieve" the sounds and put them together and say them out loud.  So, most of his speech is a repetition of something we ask him to repeat or say. (This was an "aha" moment for me - because I know he can say different words, but it's almost always when we say it first. Which also makes sense when we hand him the phone to talk, he just holds it and smiles...it's too difficult for him to come up with words to say on his own.)

That's the very (not so short) short explanation and some of the main issues that come with apraxia.  Just thought this might be helpful to some of you who interact with Levi on a more regular basis.  As always, thanks for following along on our journey and for your continued support and prayers!