Kekoa's Journey With Childhood Apraxia of Speech: Catching Up!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Catching Up!

I know, I know... it HAS been a while! As other faithful followers of our other family blog has so politely put it "Wow, you must really be busy, since you haven't updated your blogs in MONTHS!" To put it as saying that we've been busy really, is putting it mildly. Yes, its been a whirlwind three months!

In the past three months we've learned a new thing that has come into play with Kekoa's overall praxis diagnosis. For months I've noticed that his whole oral sensitivity issue has not let up, in fact, I feel as if it either gotten worse at times or at best, stagnant. With my instincts telling me to push further, I contacted our service coordinator and set up an appointment with an Occupational Therapist to have Koa checked.

The session was quite helpful, not to mention interesting. To cut a really LONG story short, the OT concluded that it looked as if Koa had overall Sensory Processing Disorder. She noticed that in terms of anxiety, hesitation, not to mention inability to go with movement of his limbs, he was just overload with what his "capabilities" were. An example of this were, for instance, Koa lacked overall bilateral coordination. At his age, he should be able to do things like march his feet, bounce a ball alternating between his left and right hand, climb using his two sides intermittently. Koa unfortunately could not do either (which would also explain why to no avail and however many attempts we tried, Koa can't ride a tricycle either). However, the little bugger is indeed a really smart little cat. The OT noticed that with his shortcomings he had, little man would do all sorts of things to either compensate for his lack of bilateral movement or completely avoid the situation together. A great showing of this was when Koa tried to climb a padded wall. He pretty much ran and jumped as high as he could, hit the top and flopped like a fish until he got over it onto the other side. He was supposed to climb it; right leg, left leg and alternate his limbs to get him over. Not Koa! :) He did the task albeit, "incorrectly."

Now my instinct as a mother told me, "So my kid doesn't conform to the 'norms'... he's doing it right?" Well, I noticed that with each task Koa was real uncomfortable, to the point that it started to create a form of anxiety in the poor kid, not to mention it started to overstimulate him.

The thing to calm him- a beautiful golden retriever named "Blessed" used by the therapist to get children to partake in the different tasks. And Blessed worked like a charm. All the tasks that Koa needed to do that he initially had hesitancy in, he did just fine after following Blessed's lead.

Koa still has a road ahead of him, but its one that we're still strong to take.

Koa & Blessed 9/20/2011

Koa doing sensory work in the backyard with shaving cream (hence why we did it in the backyard!)9/28/2011

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Definition of Apraxia per CASANA

Childhood Apraxia of Speech is a neurological motor speech disorder. For reasons not yet fully understood, children with apraxia of speech have great difficulty planning and producing the precise, highly refined and specific series of movements of the tongue, lips, jaw and palate that are necessary for intelligible speech. Apraxia of speech is sometimes called verbal apraxia, developmental apraxia of speech, or verbal dyspraxia. No matter what name is used, the most important concept is the root word "praxis." Praxis means planned movement. To some degree or another, a child with the diagnosis of apraxia of speech has difficulty programming and planning speech movements. Apraxia of speech is a specific speech disorder.

The act of speech begins with an intention to communicate. Next, an idea forms, outlining what the speaker wants to say. The words for the desired message are put in the correct order, using the correct grammar. Each of the words are comprised of a specific sequence of sounds (also called phonemes)and syllables that must be ordered together. All of this information is translated from an idea and information about order of sounds into a series of highly coordinated motor movements of the lips, tongue, jaw, and soft palate.

The brain must tell the muscles of these “articulators” the exact order and timing of movements so that the words in the message are properly articulated. Finally, the muscles must work properly with enough strength and muscle tone to perform the movements needed for speech.

In typically developing speech, children make word attempts and get feedback from others and from their own internal systems regarding how “well” the words they produced matched the ones that they wanted to produce. Children use this information the next time they attempt the words and essentially are able to “learn from experience.” Usually once syllables and words are spoken repeatedly, the speech motor act becomes automatic. Speech motor plans and programs are stored in the brain and can be accessed effortlessly when they are needed. Children with apraxia of speech have difficulty in this aspect of speech. It is believed that children with CAS may not be able to form or access speech motor plans and programs or that these plans and programs are faulty for some reason.