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Angie was brave enough to admit that the previous post was kind of hard to read.  It was technical, for sure.  Basically, Apraxia means that the brain knows what it wants to say (ex. I want the ball), but the signals themselves going from the brain to the mouth muscles are broken OR the muscles aren't receiving them correctly.  What comes out may be ahh baa or even less understandable as pure gobbledeegook.

Essentially, it might be like trying to talk when your mouth is completely numb from the dentist?  You know what you are trying to say, but your mouth isn't responding exactly right.  You have to really slow down and focus to talk to your family as you wait for the feeling to come back.  I read somewhere online comparing Apraxia to having Cerebral Palsy of only the mouth.  There are varying degrees of severity and varying responses to treatment.

Treatment is intensive speech therapy where they have to learn to talk.  It is not like traditional speech therapy for children that are delayed in speech or have pronunciation problems.  Imagine learning a foreign language while your mouth was taped shut or full of pudding or something.  Your brain has learned it, but you have never had a chance to practice.  Now, the learning tapes are gone and you are required to speak the language.

I have heard stories of children who speak completely normal after therapy and are no longer considered apraxic.  I have also listened to a tape of a 15 year old boy reading and he obviously had a serious speech issue, but was understandable if you focused.   I have also heard of children being forced to rely on alternate means of communication because their speech never becomes understandable.

I don't know that Jack has Apraxia yet.  I suspected it after much research and the speech language pathologist mentioned it without me bringing it up.  I am not going to mention seeing an SLP to the other SLP that he sees on January 7th and see if she comes to the same conclusion.  Many professionals believe you can NOT diagnose it until 2-3 years of age because a child needs to be able to participate in repeating a few words to do the "test" to diagnose.

I tried to tape him copying me saying bubble today, but then realized I was in my nightgown.  Geeesh,  woman, pay attention!!!  I will try again tomorrow.  It's adorable.  He says "bu -b"  He kind of swallows the second part.  You will have to see it to know what I mean.  So, cute.