topic Re: Verbal Apraxia in Community Spirit

Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:30:54 GMT

Was told last week that my son has verbal apraxia.

He is 3 in 2 weeks and i knew there was a problem, just been tracking down the right place to help us.

His vocabulary consists of only 4 words.

I kept being told....

"Ohh' he'll talk when hes ready"

"His older siblings probably do all the talking for him"

"Maybe hes just got nothing he needs to say yet"

But i knew there was a problem. Now we will be starting intensive speech therapy as soon as we can get a spot

Has anyone else had a child with verbal apraxia? Im a bit overwhelmed by it all

Re: Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:34:10 GMT

for those who have never heard of it

http://www.tayloredmktg.com/dyspraxia/das.shtml

Re: Verbal Apraxia

silverfaun — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:38:14 GMT

Good luck and good thought sent your way.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

azureline** — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:48:41 GMT

I hope it all has amazing success. Speechies are very good at what they do.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

freakiness — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:57:26 GMT

Speech therapists can help do wonders with children experiencing such difficulties.

Good luck with it when you get him started with it.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

lakeland27 — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 07:34:10 GMT

DDB one of my sons has the same condition, i remember him starting primary school unable to say his own name clearly. it was almost indecipherable .. he started college this year and although i can still hear elements of his problem , with time it has become far less pronounced .. to the point nobody seems to notice anymore. he had speech therapy in primary school for a number of years and some private assistance from me (i'm a south australian so i have a magnificent voice ) he came through very well.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

fourandsixpants — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 15:30:39 GMT

Hi Daydream believer:)

Your son will be fine I'm sure of this.

My brother (aged 54 this year!) would not speak until after he had turned 4. I did all his comms for him til then.

Once he started speaking he wouldn't stop!

Nothing wrong with him.

He was put into hospital before he spoke for a tonsillectomy. Mum was crook with pneumonia and forgot to tell Dad to relay to nursing staff/Dr that my bro did not speak......he was marched off to the psychiatrist for a series of tests!!! and were about to do more when one of the nurses saw my bro looking out the window from his bed and was jumping up and down excitedly.....babbling and grunting(he did this !) she looked out and saw her fireman boyfriend driving a fire engine (we were located on an airforce base in UK and this was at the base hospital) The nurse scooped my bro up wrapped in warm blankets and after asking matrons permission and waving down her boyfriend, took my bro for a series of 'laps' around the outskirts of the airfield:) Afterwards they called the hosp psych so he could witness my bro talking and babbling excitedly about what he had been doing and where he had been.

Good luck with the speech pathologist etc. Be patient and don't stress x

....labels, labels, labels. Gotta have 'em some say *sheesh

Re: Verbal Apraxia

fourandsixpants — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 15:35:41 GMT

his attempts at 'talking' when in the hospital were single, hard to understand words like 'RED TRUCK' and mimicking of the fireengine bell clanging 'DING! DING! DING!' etc and lots of 'whooshing' noises....and accompanied by arm flaps etc.....he's quite a normal person:)

Re: Verbal Apraxia

azureline** — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 21:35:25 GMT

Daydreams little one is not choosing to not speak though. He has a medical condition preventing him from speaking which can be helped by speech therapy.

My second child did not speak to anyone outside our immediate family until she was 5 yo. but that was selective mutism, possibly connected to ASD. Labels are useful to get proper treatment.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:13:22 GMT

thanks everyone.

Yeh, my son is not choosing not to speak. He cant speak. He has a neurologically based speech disorder

Think of dyslexia, where the signal from the brain is getting jumbled as it gets to to written word so the child has trouble writing and reading.

Well verbal apraxia works the same way but the signal from the brain is getting jumbled as it gets to the spoken word.

We are looking at having to do speech therapy for a couple of years at least and also having him attaend a kindy with a full time speechy there

Re: Verbal Apraxia

toon_town_nutter — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:32:59 GMT

Does he comprehend what you're saying to him?

Re: Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:40:52 GMT

hi toon..

Yes he does. He understands everything we say to him. He tries to talk. Im sure he even thinks hes talking, but it just comes out all jumbled.

He uses a lot of hand signals, which the speechy told me is great.

He uses the sound "ba" for almost everything.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:44:11 GMT

It took us a year to teach him to be able to say "bye bye dad".

He could say both seperately, but when he tried to put them together, he got confused and would end up saying things like "bye bye ba du dad mum bye..."

He makes animal sounds like meow, woof, and brrm brmm for car, and toot toot for train but cant even get close to saying the actual words cat, dog, car and train

Re: Verbal Apraxia

chuk_77 — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:53:29 GMT

@daydream**believer wrote:
It took us a year to teach him to be able to say "bye bye dad".

He could say both seperately, but when he tried to put them together, he got confused and would end up saying things like "bye bye ba du dad mum bye..."

He makes animal sounds like meow, woof, and brrm brmm for car, and toot toot for train but cant even get close to saying the actual words cat, dog, car and train

must be a bit scary and stressful for you daydream but Im sat here intrigued at the way it works. Its amazing that the describing words (toot, brrmm) he can associate with the item but the actual word gets lost along the way. How about teaching him some basic sign language? Would that help while you wait for speech?

Re: Verbal Apraxia

*pepe — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:55:11 GMT

this sounds so frustrating.

now that you know what the issue is and how its to be treated i hope he goes ahead in leaps and bounds.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

lakeland27 — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:59:54 GMT

My son didn't seem aware that he was hard to understand, it only really dawned on him when he started school, with the other kids saying 'what was that ' etc . he's very sociable and found it quite distressing at the time , fortunately he also has a thick skin.

I think that is possibly the biggest problem this causes.. frustration at not being understood. a lot of support was required at school for the first few years . getting in early is important, i must admit to being in denial about it.. the old 'he'll be right'' but it sounds like you are right on to it which can only improve things for him.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

mainecoon1 — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 23:09:55 GMT

daydream my nephew who is now 13 was diagnosed with the same thing, he had intensive speech therapy and is speaking well now, and is also doing well at school, he still has some difficulties but on the whole it is not noticeable.

I must confess I was one of the people that told my sister not to worry that he would talk when he was ready so felt a bit bad when I found out he had a problem. Even though my sister got frustrated with the comments she realises they were said in good faith as she was sufferring from guilty mum syndrome and we were trying to make her feel better. She did not have my nephew until she was 44 so thought it was her fault because she was a bad mum.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 23:16:28 GMT

Hi chuk, we wont use traditional sign language but we will use hand signals.

Hayden has already made his own signals for when he wants something to eat or drink.

pepe, we have had some very frustrating times. He tries so hard to talk and i try to guess what he wants and it doesnt always go well which gets him angry and he then screams.

lakeland, we are now getting a lot of support. Hayden goes to occasional care on a thursday morning for 2 hrs and they have now got a spot for him on friday morning as well, while their speechy is there.

The thing i had to learn was that i had to praise all types of communication from him. If i ask him to say cat and he says meow, i must praise that and say "great talking". Kids with this can stop making sounds completely if they are corrected too much so its allo praise praise praise

Re: Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 23:19:26 GMT

maine, i went through that as well. A big cry wondering if it was my fault as i had him later in life (i was 38).

I still wonder if that was the reason, even though all the information says they know no reason what causes this.

Re: Verbal Apraxia

daydream**believer — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 23:25:47 GMT

my hardest obstacle at this stage is, to get the assistance we need for him, on a form i had to tick that he had a disability. That was hard to do.

But, then i was told that he is just a special child that needs a little extra help to communicate.

His "disability" is just that he has something that is delaying his development.

He will get past it. I know he will