I think one thing, well actually I KNOW one thing I never knew about CAS before Ashlynn, was the significant difficulty kids with CAS tend to have with word finding. Ashlynn and all of my clients struggle with this to varying degrees. Sometimes, Ashlynn’s seem innocent. She’ll call me grandma after she’s been with her grandma all day. She’ll say “today” when she really meant “tomorrow,” or say “tomorrow” when
I realized in the entirety of my blog, I have never even once addressed oral motor exercises, aka mouth exercises, or now being touted as oral placement therapy; in the treatment of Childhood Apraxia of Speech. The “why” is actually very simple. Massive amounts of research consistently demonstrate they are ineffective in the treatment of speech sound disorders. In graduate school I had to do a paper on their ineffectiveness
When Ashlynn was in preschool, there was a sweet girl in her class I’ll call J. Her mom and I hit it off right away. Her mom is currently a stay at home mom, but she was a teacher before that. We have similar ideas on parenting, discipline, and just raising kids in general. We had a few play dates and the girls got along great. Her daughter is typical
We all know Childhood Apraxia of Speech is rare! The odds then of having a mother who is an SLP? Probably substantially rarer right? When I first started on this journey, I knew of none. Now I know at least 30! We have a unique perspective for sure, and I wanted to team up with two other moms to tell you what we do in our own homes with our
Thanks to the internet, I went from feeling I was the only SLP mommy of apraxia in the world, to meeting one other, to now knowing many others! One year ago, I teamed up with one of them to write “Strategies to Promote Speech and Language in the minimally verbal or pre-verbal child with suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech.” Today, I’ve teamed up with two other SLP moms
It has been awhile since I posted directly about Ashlynn’s speech. Once we all started to understand her, it didn’t seem as pressing anymore. Her dyspraxic components (gross and fine motor skills) definitely started to take precedence. However, she is still in speech for a reason, and that reason being percentile ranks well, well, well below average. Ashlynn is 6 years and 2 months. She can say every single sound