By Leslie Lindsay

A few weeks ago, I was busy preparing for my Small Talk:  All About Apraxia group.  It was our first night and I needed a little help stuffing the folders I had prepared for each participant.  So, I did what any good–over-scheduled mom would do:  I enlisted the help of my children.  “Why not?”I thought.   After all, it’s because of my daughter that I even have a group dedicated to helping other parents of children with apraxia.  So, Kate Riley and I sat down and stuffed folders.

About half-way through, she looked up at me and said, “This looks important, is this your job?”  Well, yes.  I suppose it is.  Depends on how you define “job.”  I don’t get paid to do this–at least not in the typical  dollars and cents kind of payment–but I do get some kind of payment for my services…it comes from helping others.  It comes from a smile on their face, or a kind word of appreciation.  It comes when they tell me that they took the next step to finding a better SLP for their child, or they looked at another resource.

And then Kate wanted to go with me to the next apraxia meeting.  I arched my eyebrows and tilted my head, “Really?!  You want to come?”  She nodded and smiled.  She told me she could talk about apraxia.  What?!  I was a bit dumbstruck.  Kate–my beautiful daughter with childhood apraxia of speech is offering to come to my evening group and chat with other mommies who also have children with CAS.  Talk about apraxia!?  It all seemed pretty ironic, but well, why not?

She came and she shared her thoughts about Childhood apraxia, “My name is Kate.  I have apraxia.  But, parents it is not serious.  All you have to do is take your kid to speech.  And practice.  A lot.  Then you can say your words better.”  It was a short, sweet statement from a little girl…but in her mind, her apraxia wasn’t serious.  We continued with a question-and-answer series, “what should you tell your friends?”  (Nothing, they don’t really need to know, she said).  I probed a little more, “What happened in your classroom when you shared with your desk-mates that you have apraxia?”  (Well, they didn’t know what it was, I tried to tell them, but I couldn’t).  I know, that’s the irony.

Anyway, I was very proud of my Kate that night.  It took a big step of courage and she did great!  I can only hope that she continues to share with others her experiences.  I can only hope she will be the best that she can be!

Coming Up in “Apraxia World:”

• The 3rd Annual Chicagoland Walk for Apraxia will be held this Saturday, October 15th at Ty Warner Park.  I will blog about the event on Monday the 17th…so stand by.
• Later this month, we’l talk more about preparing for Halloween and also guest-blogger, Becca Jarzyinski, CCC-SLP will step in on the 31st and share her thoughts on kids with apraxia and prosody/volume issues.   
• As always, if you see the need for a certain topic related to CAS, please let me know leslie_lindsay@hotmail.com