Apraxia Conference

Over the weekend I attended a conference on Apraxia with Penelope Hall as the keynote speaker. It was very interesting, although it appealed more to the speech language pathologists (SLP) and students in this field of study than it did to a parent of a child with apraxia. In some ways it was informative, but in some ways it was too factual and not personal enough for a parent. They were using a lot of terminology that was way over my head. They also explained very little about therapy and more about how to recognize the disorder itself, it's characteristics, and what to expect from working with a child with this disorder. They didn't offer much information about what parents can do at home to aide in therapy. I felt like the presentation was disassociated from the children and more focused on the disorder. It was good in a way that these people were here learning about this disorder, but I was sad thinking that most of them will not hear much more about apraxia once they left the conference, and more than half of them will probably never work with a child with apraxia. In a way it was sort of discouraging as they said in such a factual way that "apraxia is a lifelong disorder... do we expect these children to fully recover from this disorder? - NO... (do we expect them to make gains from therapy? - YES.)" It's hard to swallow those statements sometimes when you have such hope that your child will come through this and it will one day be a thing of the past. The truth is that at some level a child with apraxia will always be "apraxic." I also learned that it is a pretty rare disorder. Only about 1 to 2 preschool children in 1,000 have developmental verbal apraxia. That's discouraging as well to think about how few people are actually ever going to be fully qualified to treat a child with apraxia... and will we ever find one for Alex? They explained that prognosis is based on several factors... the basic severity... how early the child is diagnosed and starts appropriate therapy... the quality of services he/she receives... and how well the child receives and participates in the treatments. You simply cannot determine what a child's ultimate prognosis will be, as each child, their experiences, and their therapy is different and may change during the course of treatment. One thing to be sure of is that children with apraxia will not just outgrow it on their own. That is why I'm trying so hard NOW to get the right treatment for Alex. One thing that I wanted to be able to share here to other parents who may not be sure if their child has apraxia was something that Penelope Hall stressed during the conference. She said that in order to correctly diagnose this speech disorder, there must FIRST be SPEECH. This disorder is characterized by the specific PATTERNS of speech the child exhibits, not the fact that there is an absence of speech. It can also be difficult to diagnose apraxia because of several factors... not all symptoms of apraxia must be present to diagnose this disorder, nor is there one particular characteristic that must be present in all apraxic children. Children also change over time, so that complicates things a little more. You can find out more about Penelope Hall and her research and publications on apraxia at http://www.shc.uiowa.edu/wjshc/facultyandstaff/hall.html.