Apraxia Awareness Day- May 14th
Today is Apraxia Awareness Day! You might be asking yourself, what exactly is apraxia? Here is a quick video from Kids In Motion Clinical Director and Speech Therapist Lynn Gallagher explaining apraxia and how it impacts children.
Characteristics of Apraxia of Speech:
-A decrease in the production and synthesis of consonant and vowel combinations (VC/CV/CVCV) from syllables up to multi-syllable words.
-Sounds may be deleted, omitted and substituted during speech production.
-Child has difficulty transferring one sound production to another (ma/mama/mommy) with increased word complexity.
-More complex familiar words are more intelligible than unfamiliar words. For example, a child enjoys crackers and always requests them (repetition) however unable to pronounce a much easier word, like bubbles.
-The child will increase correct production of words at the imitative level rather than in spontaneous speech.
-The child benefits from a Motor Speech Hierarchical (syllable repetition) Approach in comparison to a Traditional Speech Approach (isolated sounds).