Aiden Is Dealing Well With Severe Childhood Apraxia
We noticed that Aiden was not speaking well after his first birthday. We contacted First Steps for speech therapy when he was eighteen months old. It was then brought to our attention that he may have childhood apraxia. Shortly after his second birthday, we enrolled him at the Ludden Speech Clinic at St. Xavier University. The additional therapy paid off: Aiden has since tripled the number of words used.
However, he will no longer be eligible for speech therapy through First Steps after his third birthday. Aiden can start pre-school after that, but we need to make certain that he can get special services there. We have already started looking into special training services in pre-school, but we want to make certain that he stays in a regular classroom (not one for special education).
Aiden is actually very smart: he knows all of the primary colors, recognizes some letters and can count to five. Although he does not have the vocabulary of other kids his age, he bridges the gap very well with sign language. We think that he will be more motivated to speak in a classroom with other children that speak. Also, we want him to be challenged intellectually just like regular children.
In addition to pre-school, we’re also looking into additional speech therapy at St. Margaret Mercy, a local clinic that conducts pediatric speech therapy. They have speech pathology specialists there. We’re not sure if Aiden will be doing this in concert with the St. Xavier therapy or if we’ll discontinue those (it’s a long drive out there). That will depend on how much therapy Aiden is comfortable with.
We are now in the process of petitioning our insurance provider to allow more therapy hours for Aiden. Currently, they will pay for up to twenty sessions of therapy. The therapist at St. Xavier said that Aiden should be getting the maximum amount possible, preferrably four thirty-minute sessions per week. With their recommendation to back us up, we should be able to get the insurance company to increase coverage.
From what I understand, most cases of childhood apraxia rectify themselves by age five. The therapists at St. Xavier say that Aiden’s case is severe though. He has come a long way with therapy and hard work at home, so I feel confident that he’ll be speaking normally by the time he enters kindergarten. Until that time though, we want to afford him every possibility and do our best to help him.
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My godson had speech delay and they did not seek help until he was much older. I can assure you that by age 5 he more than caught up with some speech therapy! Best of luck as your journey continues!
I was very interested in Aiden’s story because my daughter has childhood apraxia as well. I was especially interested in the amount of classroom time and speech therapy he gets.
Prior to starting in school (in Jan.) Abigail was getting (2) 30 min. sessions per week. This was done in one hourly session because the nearest speech therapist taking new cases is an hour away. (We are very short on services here. The waiting list was 6 months long at last check.)
She is in an early childhood education class through our local school district. Abigail attends a class (segregated as they don’t start regular classes until kindergarten) for 3 hrs. 4 days a week. She only gets (2) 20 min. sessions of 1:1 speech therapy a week! She does do oral/motor exercises in class as well.
I am told the class is language intensive, but have visited twice and am not convinced. I also attended a “therapy” session where the therapist had her blow bubbles and glue paper. She does more than that at home! I am also disappointed that she knows more sign language than any of the people working with her.
Abigail will also be working on a picture exchange system this year. The teachers started working on this about 2 weeks before school ended and I received no materials to work with her over the summer! I requested some exercises from the therapist, but frankly the cards Abigail and I made together interest her far more than any of that.
I am interested to hear your experiences with the school system which would be especially insightful because your wife is a teacher.
My plan is to be much more assertive in preparing her IEP this year. I was told we would not be having an IEP because she had one in January and they only do them yearly. I don’t think so! She met all the goals but her speech goals in the first quarter. I backed down on the IEP that time, but no more. I guess you have to know what your rights as a parent are going into this. You know what they say, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
I hope my grammar, spelling, and punctuation were proper in this short narrative. It seems to be important to you. (lol)
Loree — Your situation sounds very similar to ours. We recently had our first IEP meeting and we came to a decent agreement. We only got two mornings per week of pre-school (including a half hour of 1:1 speech therapy per morning), but we are also sending him to private school and an additional private speech therapist.
Aiden has been making incredible progress in the last few months. He has started speaking in short sentences (minus the articles) and has picked up a lot of words. We’re seeing a lot less sign language lately, which is both good and bad. He still needs to continue with the speech therapy though.