So that is what we are thinking is the cause of Haylea's speech delay. Apparently, in layman's terms, there is a missing connection somewhere between her brain and her mouth. We noticed that when she isn't thinking about it words will randomly fly out of her mouth but if she tries to concentrate on saying something she struggles to get out even one syllable. At 28 months she actually has quite a list of "words" in her vocabulary. However, most of them are signs and all of them are one syllable starting with the few consonants she can say. She has been in speech therapy since September and we haven't seen much progress in regards to actual words. She has become much more expressive, learned new signs, and new "words" but no where near the progress I had hoped for after 4 months of therapy.
The diagnosis came about when I showed Mrs. Erin (Haylea's SLP) a video of her saying "notebook" and "air hockey." Yes, how random! Brian was teaching her to play air hockey while Blues Clues was on the TV. She heard them say "notebook" and she repeated it! After a few seconds I asked "are you going to play air hockey?" and she totally, clear-as-day, repeated "air hockey." WTH! We were shocked and thought it was so cool! This must be progress, right?! When Mrs. Erin saw the video she came to the realization that a lot of what Haylea was doing was consistent with Childhood Apraxia of Speech. Apraxia affects the expressive language skills, not the receptive language skills. She can comprehend everything we say and knows what she wants to say but has trouble getting it to come out as words. Ok...so now what??
Basically, we start from scratch. We have to teach her how to say words piece by piece. She has to be taught how to form sounds in her mouth because her brain can't get the message through. For example, instead of asking her to say "yogurt" (because she won't do it...it is way too complicated of a word for her to even try because she knows she can't) I ask her to say "guh guh". It works. She now comes to me when she wants yogurt and says "guh guh". Later we will concentrate on "fixing" her words. Guh Guh will turn into Oh-guh then Oh-gurt and finally Yogurt. See where I am going??
Other examples of the "shells" of words that we are focusing on are Me/Muh, Sissy/Dee Dee, snack/dah or dak (she still doesn't put an ending on a word so once we get the first syllable down we will add the ending), bye bye/bah bah, milk/muh or muk, etc. It seems like we are backtracking. To think that "baby talk" will get her to improve her speech seems a little...well...just wrong but we really do have to start from scratch. I have to think about how a small child might pronounce a word incorrectly and teach her to say it that way...because she won't try unless it is a sound she knows she can make. Confused yet? Me too...
So everything I have read says that kids with Apraxia need intensive, frequent therapy. Like 3-5 times a week! We get speech therapy once a week through first steps. That is not nearly enough. We need to tackle this and get her the help she needs NOW. I feel like we are already behind since it took us 4 months to figure this out (and don't get me started on the pediatrician who is always one step behind, hence our switching to a new one). Again, now what? We are meeting with the director of Talking Time Learning Center on Monday. I am really excited because this preschool is run by an SLP, is where Mrs. Erin is employed, and offers preschool classes taught by SLPs as well as outpatient speech therapy. We will see if first steps will allow us to have therapy twice a week but if that doesn't work out I want her to have a one-on-one therapy session at MINIMUM of twice a week. I guess we will go from there...who knows how much she will be affected by this. It could be that once she learns to speak there will be no other issues. She could have problems later on with reading and writing. We just have to take it one word at a time...
I go back and forth from thinking "it is what it is, and we have a lot of work ahead of us but we can do it!" and just wanting to let loose and cry. Not because I feel sorry for my child or because I don't want to put in the time that it is going to take but because it isn't FAIR! Not to me but to her. She is so smart and she is going to have to work so hard to do what comes so naturally to most everyone else. She is so smart and CAN'T even tell us what she wants or needs. She physically can not tell us what is on her mind. That is not fair. We probably have no idea how smart she actually is and how much she actually comprehends. It isn't fair. She deserves to be able to speak. That is what would be fair. I am not bitter. I just want what every mother wants...for their child to have every opportunity in life to be the best they can be. And I am making it my priority to make sure she gets every bit of help she needs to be able to perform at her highest potential. See...I just went from crying about it to Let's do this!
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