Do you ever feel like “Sherlock Holmes” trying to discover what your special needs child is trying to say? Then, almost like Superman changing in the telephone booth, you are able to change into “Super Translator Mom,” so you can tell others what your child just said. With most special needs children, some days are better than other days, we need to be thankful for the good days, yet not expect them. I try to remind myself frequently, lest I set my 13-year-old daughter up for failure, by expecting too much.

She waltzed into the kitchen earlier today, just coming in from outside. I asked her where Allie was, because they had been outside together. She looked me right in the eyes, and confidently responded, “Allie is in the playpen.” Well, that caught my attention, why would a four year old be in the playpen, and how did she get into the living room so quietly. With a puzzled look, I replayed her words back to her, “In the playpen?” “Yes, she is, I just left her there,” she stated just as confidently as she had the first time. “Are you sure?” I asked, while glancing into the living room. “Yes, she’s in the playpen, you know, with the swings,” she replied defensively. Finally, I understood she was trying to say that Allie was in the backyard.

She frequently forgets the real names for things, only she doesn’t realize it until someone points it out to her. She also either leaves verbs out of her sentences or uses the wrong tense of the verb in speaking and in writing and fails to use plurals. She went to the rehabilitation hospital for speech therapy for two years, twice a week and then continued speech therapy at the public school for about five years. People who don’t speak to her on a regular basis can usually understand her now, unless she’s excited, telling a long story, or reading aloud. That’s when her words tend to slur together because she doesn’t open her mouth or move her tongue when she talks fast.

What is often seen in a child with apraxia of speech is a wide gap between their receptive language abilities and expressive abilities. In other words, the child's ability to understand language (receptive ability) is broadly within normal limits, but his or her expressive speech is seriously deficient, absent, or severely unclear.

Related topics:
Verbal Apraxia
Developmental Apraxia of Speech
Living With FAS/FAE