Stuttering & apraxia

[Guest guest]

My son has been receiving speech therapy for over 1 1/2 yrs, and

started stuttering last week. The therapist hasn't seen him yet,

but feels it's just a phase from what I told her.

He stutters on beginnning sounds.

Anyone else see this?

[Guest guest]

Yes, yes, yes

We have been battling the stuttering in the past several months, and

the therapist stated that it is tied to the apraxia. We are working

really hard to help Zachary not get frustrated because then he will not

want to talk but to teach him to slow down. If anyone else has had

success with a different method please let us know we would greatly

appreciate.

Rowena

floweringmama wrote:

> My son has been receiving speech therapy for over 1 1/2 yrs, and

> started stuttering last week. The therapist hasn't seen him yet,

> but feels it's just a phase from what I told her.

>

> He stutters on beginnning sounds.

>

> Anyone else see this?

[Guest guest]

Stuttering can be a natural phase that kids with apraxia go through.

However, ask your SLP about this. Read this excerpt from a chapter that was

left out of The Late Talker book:

I first wrote this over two years ago in January 2002 for inclusion

in The Late Talker as parent observed stages of apraxia viewed

through our grouplist. This list was approved by all CHERAB

advisors

http://www.cherab.org/information/speechlanguage/advisoryboard.html

(but needed cleaning up which I never did)

We ended up not including this in The Late Talker because even

though approved, in the final cut we needed to edit out almost 300

pages for our book, and this included awesome pages that were

already completed. Dr. Marilyn Agin, Malcolm Nicholl and I chose to

leave in only the most critical information for a parent of a newly

diagnosed apraxic child to know.

I still don't want to clean this up, or change from my original

writing from over 2 years ago -so here it is, what I still stand by

and what still needs to be studied in my opinion and what I'd travel

to hear a researcher explain:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

" Just like typically developing speech in a child, a child with

apraxia appears from the members of our large Foundation to have

stages they go through -and some children skip one or two -or pass

through some of them quickly or get stuck in one or more of them.

We don't know if all the member's children were properly diagnosed

with apraxia or not, but this may be worth looking into.

OBSERVED APRAXIA STAGES (?) THAT SHOULD BE EXPLORED FURTHER

Stage 1

non verbal stage

Where the child uses one or two sounds to communicate everything with

gestures, and made up elaborate sign. At this stage, depending on

the infant's or child's age you may not be able to diagnose verbal

apraxia, but neurological soft signs should be looked for, as well

as signs of oral motor problems or oral apraxia. An older apraxic

child who is stuck at this stage will be using augmentative devices

and could be at risk for misdiagnosis of cognitive ability if not

tested appropriately.

Stage 2

simple talk stage

Where the child begins to just like a typically developing child

learn new sounds or words, but unlike a typically developing child,

most (not all) appear to forget how to say the sounds or words

again, so they lose that ability to " build " their speech like most

other children do. This is in most cases the only stage that is

acknowledged by ASHA and described by most of the speech

professionals*. Please see examples above (breaks down with

longer utterances, etc.) An older apraxic child who is stuck at

this stage will be using augmentative devices and could be at risk

for misdiagnosis of cognitive ability if not tested appropriately.

Stage 3

Dysfluency stage

Where the child who seemed to be progressing so well suddenly begins

to stutter. Most speech professionals do not consider

classic " stuttering " only a normal developmental dysfluency.

However with apraxic children this stage is especially frustrating

in that if the apraxic child does go through this stage, they appear

to get " stuck " here. In speaking to members from the CHERAB

Foundation who's apraxic child goes through this stage, there is

frequently another member of the family who is a stutterer, which

may mean there is some type of genetic link. Type of therapy to

provide to an apraxic child at this stage that is appropriate is not

clear and depends on which expert you speak to-in some cases there

are direct oppositional views.

Stage 4

Baby Talk stage

Where the child who is now talking and being understood continues to

mix up past and present tense, as well as sentence structure, and

frequently will leave out the " little words " like " the " and " a " .

This may not have anything to do with SLI as discussed above, an

apraxic child typically does keep sentences shorter than average,

but there may be children diagnosed in the SLI area that are

apraxic, and visa versa -and being there is a genetic link

to both SLI as well as apraxia, a closer look needs to be taken at

this stage. A five year old apraxic child who receives appropriate

therapy, including some of the recent discoveries we will talk about

later, may progress faster than previously stated, however just like

in the previous stage, apraxic children also seems to get stuck in

this stage. An example would be " Me want doe too " for " I want to

go too " or " Mommy me walk store too? " for " Mommy can I walk to the

store too? "

Stage 5

Full language stage

Where the child, teenager, or adult apraxic has learned strategies to

overcome the apraxia enough that it's not noticed by the average

listener. However upon closer observation you will notice that an

apraxic in the full language stage will frequently use less

sophisticated language. An example comes in right here. Instead of

saying " an apraxic in the full language stage will frequently use

less sophisticated language " they may say " an apraxic in the full

langwer' stage will not sound as grown up most of the time " So in

other words, there will still be words that he or she can not

pronounce correctly, and being aware of them, will avoid them and

substitute when they can. They can be highly intelligent, but due

to their lack of expressing themselves using sophisticated language

at times others may not know this. This is perhaps in some ways

just as frustrating a stage as any other. In some cases maybe more

so because now that they are " talking " and talking fine most of the

time, ASHA professionals may not consider them candidates for

further services. The genetic possibilities and medical involvement

needs to establish these stages, including this one, so the

population can understand and accept this disability just like they

do for those with poor eyes or poor hearing. This is an example of

a late talker that unfortunately for all did not " just start talking "

Another strong point that our Foundation has seen that is not

acknowledged by most professionals yet is that a child with apraxia

at two may not have had it from birth. So for this reason,

the " signs " of apraxia always stated may not relate to the parent of

a late talker, and for that reason they may not believe their late

talker to be apraxic

floweringmama wrote:

My son has been receiving speech therapy for over 1 1/2 yrs, and

started stuttering last week. The therapist hasn't seen him yet,

but feels it's just a phase from what I told her.

He stutters on beginnning sounds.

Anyone else see this?

[Guest guest]

One of my children started stuttering recently and his SLP told me not to ask

him to slow down, stop or give him tips about speaking--just focus on

listening to what he says. Since I stopped all of the above, his stuttering

doesn't

seem to be as bad except when he gets excited/upset. His cousin who is

slightly older also went through a stuttering phase and no longer stutters. My

understanding is that sometimes its a phase and sometimes its not.