Childhood apraxia of speech is a motor speech disorder that causes children to have difficulty speaking. Children with apraxia of speech often understand language and know what they want to say. They don’t have weakness of the speech muscles. Instead, they have trouble coordinating the movements of the tongue, lips, jaw and palate necessary for intelligible speech.

Some signs of apraxia are:

• Little to no babbling
• Limited inventory of consonants
• Delayed onset of words
• Limited vocabulary
• Inconsistent speech errors
• Difficulty imitating speech
• Groping behaviors during speech production
• Vowel distortions
• Simple syllable shapes

Evaluation

Most children with apraxia of speech are diagnosed between 18 months and 5 years of age. To determine if your child has apraxia, a speech-language pathologist will observe your child and use formal tests to examine his or her muscles used for speech, understanding of language (receptive language), expressive communication (syllables, words, phrases, etc.), motor speech skills (coordination of movement in speech), and prosody (rhythm and melody).

Treatment

Therapy for children with apraxia of speech takes time and consistent practice. A speech-language pathologist will provide therapy to improve your child’s coordination of sequenced movements for speech. Therapy sessions will include practicing syllables, words and phrases with focus on the sound and feel of speech movements in order to help your child produce clearer spontaneous speech.

Contact us

To schedule an appointment, call us at 727-767-4141. A physician referral is required for apraxia evaluation.

You can also request an appointment online using our online form.

Medical records may be faxed to 727-767-6743.