Apraxia Revisited

I had my speech therapy appointment yesterday and we revisited Apraxia. A while back it had been discussed as a possible diagnosis to my not talking but was not decided upon. But Apraxia is being mentioned again and honestly, Mommy can't ignore the facts. I am just flat-out not talking. The other kiddos in my special needs playgroup are saying words. "Kitty", "Daddy", "Momma", and more. I am starting to say "dada" on a more consistent basis but not much else.

This is a hard one for Mommy to swallow. She can take the low muscle tone, she can take feeding issues, and she can even take the sensory issues. But no talking? That's a difficult food to digest.

For those that don't know, Apraxia is a motor/coordination delay. It means that I completely understand a word (as you know by my ever-expanding sign vocabulary) but I can't coordinate my body to speak it. For example, I'll say "ooo" but every once I'll mouth the word "ooo" but nothing will come out.

Mommy figures that to give this a positive spin, Apraxia is very hard to diagnose, especially at a early age. So it is very good that the therapist is addressing it now because that can help define the services I get to help overcome this difficult speech disorder. Also, Mommy is thinking about allocating some of my limited therapy funds to more speech therapy. She's also investing some more time into learning more sign language.

So she's coming to terms with my large speech delay but slowly. Oh the celebration for the day I can really say "Mommy" and not struggle to say it. Or "puppy", "hat", "apple", "ball".......