Apraxia is nonsense, or is it? Speech delay by any other name

Our youngest isn’t much of a talker. At 18 months the doctor was saying that we should take him to a specialist because he’s not saying 6 words.  We didn’t do that because that doctor, in hindsight was a bit of an alarmist.  His answers seemed straight out of Google and he never factored in some things that we thought should be considered.  Because of his answers and the way he presented things we didn’t do anything.

This is the alarmist duck.  The bottom of the duck says HOT, even when out of the bathtub.

One of our friends has an 18 month old who was just told by their doctor that they needed to see a specialist because they weren’t saying 6 words.

My wife didn’t say much until she was four years old, then the talking started.

A friend of ours didn’t say a word until she was four and then all of a sudden said, “I want to go outside”.

Apraxia is what I thought of as speech delay.  In reality I’ve learned that it’s a neurological condition that makes it difficult to do certain motor functions, like speech.  As parents, we became somewhat alarmed when he turned two and a half and wasn’t saying too much.  By then we had switched doctors, for a couple different reasons and had him evaluated by a couple specialists.

My inner monologue started to question about this being named thing ‘apraxia’ and what happened when it occurred back in the day.  Did it have the same name?  Did the doctors just say that the child is a late talker or did they have to name it so someone could get credit or funding? I then put away my tin foil hat and came to grips with getting our 3 year-old to speak.

But really, have you ever heard of Apraxia?  If nothing else it sounds like a metal band from Europe, ironically that I would probably listen to on Spotify.

Our son’s hearing and movements were great, but his speech wasn’t on par with kids his age.  The public school system has a program for PRE-K kids that he was accepted into.  Initially I wasn’t too enthusiastic about his acceptance because, it’s a public school, why of course we would be accepted.   No.  I met one couple who had a child similar to ours that wasn’t accepted and apparently non-acceptance happens frequently.

Shoot, does that mean our child has a more severe version of Apraxia?  Should I be happy about him getting into this program or just be quiet and see if it helps? Does severe speech delay exists and mimic what people think Apraxia is?

The bugger with all of this is that scientists are still trying to figure out Apraxia.  Some kids just pop out of it while others struggle through it for a long time.  For a person that thrives on concrete answers this is frustrating.  But, this is also parenting as we’ve learned from previous years and have come to expect it.  As a parent, sometimes you need to embrace and accept the gray areas in certain circumstances.

The process of having a child declared as having Apraxia and its treatment is a different story.  We’ll run through that process, at least in our state at another time.  The alarmist duck is always wrong.  Our first doctor may not have been wrong about this, but I certainly wish his delivery would’ve been packaged differently.

We’re obviously not a doctor and this is just our story with Apraxia or speech delay. If you have specific questions about either of them visit your doctor, check out an Apraxia site we found or Web MD.