Speech Apraxia & Dysfluency (Stuttering)

My son and one of my daughters has speech apraxia. Actually, my son also has other disabilities as well but we'll talk about that another time. They were both diagnosed as toddlers when we noted their speech was severely delayed. My son being the older of the two was the first diagnosed. It took us pushing his pediatrician a bit to get her to diagnose him so we could get him into speech therapy. (I MUST stress that if you, as the parent, feel something is wrong - if you have that feeling that "something isn't right" - then push your pediatrician to listen to you!) I must say I am VERY glad we did so we could get an early start with helping him. I believe it made all the difference in how well he is doing now - catching it early and starting treatment (speech therapy) because he was quite severe. Since we knew what to look for because of my son and had a diagnose and good treatment plan in place, we (the parents) and our pediatrician were agreeable in watching our other younger kids as they started to talk for signs of speech problems and were able to catch my middle daughter's delay early too.

We are not sure why they both have speech apraxia, also referred to as verbal apraxia. What I do know is that it took several years of weekly speech with an outside speech therapist as well as early intervention in a preschool setting with speech therapy there as well to get on top of it and get them both to a point where you can rarely tell they had any speech delay at all.

They both also have dysfluency. For those of you who don't recognize that word, it means they stutter. We do know where they got that. That is genetic from their dad's side. Their speech therapy also dealt with this as well.

I am pleased to say that with several years of dedication to helping them with therapists and lots of practicing speech at home, they are doing great! In fact, I think they are doing so great that I would be surprised if the school provides speech therapy for them next year. I have a meeting with the school in two weeks to find out! My kids have worked hard, have done great, and I'm very proud of them.

For more information, check out these resources:

Apraxia - Kids
Kaufman Children's Center