All posts tagged: practicing words with older children with CAS

Apraxia Monday: Excerpt from Chapter 8: What you Can do At Home

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By Leslie Lindsay This may very well be the chapter/excerpt you have been waiting for!  Get ready to be inspired to help your child with some fun, and practical speech-inducing exercises at home.  It may be the most fun “homework” session yet.  This comes from Chapter 8 of “Speaking of Apraxia” (Woodbine House, March 2012). This chapter is about learning how to help your child overcome apraxia of speech in a natural environment: your home and community.  Here are a few ideas to get you started:  Have a family game night. Traditional  favorites will do the trick. The speech payoffs here: turn-taking, counting, requesting, being a good sport, and other communication opportunities. Visit your public library. Let your child find some books of interest and then read them to her. Speech payoff: child-directed learning, introduction to new vocabulary, 1:1 time with you in which you are modeling pronunciation and articulation. You might even hear some sounds or word approximations from your child! Experience and connect with nature.  Speech payoff: identify and describe what you see, hear, and smell. Think holistically—this is more than just a walk in the park. …

Apraxia Monday: “Because I have apraxia!!”

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By Leslie Lindsay Lately, my sassafrass of a daughter has been giving me this excuse when she can’t say or read something just so:  “It’s p-cuz I have apraxia, mmoooommm!!”  Whoa!  Enter the Sassy-Speech-Sqaud (We’ll call it the Triple-S).  I am hear to tell you that having apraxia, thought not necessarily a “good thing,” is not an excuse for trying–trying to read, trying to write, trying to speak intelligently (and intelligibly). Sure, it may be trickier to speak as a younger child with CAS.  No doubt about it.  Having childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), is a challenging motor-speech disorder in which kids know what they want to say, yet they just can’t coordinate their thoughts with with the intricate movementes of the muscles needed to articulate clearly–or at all.  When a child is young, explaining that she has apraxia to others is apporpropriate (given it’s the right situation and the right person, a teacher for example needs to know).  But by the time a child can say, “It’s because I have apraxia [that I can’t …