Apraxia
Apraxia of speech is a motor based speech disorder. Children with apraxia have difficulty planning and executing the movements needed to produce intelligible (understandable) speech.
Characteristics of apraxia include:
Inconsistent speech sound productions: your child may say a sound or word correctly once, but incorrectly the next time he uses that same sound or word.
“Groping”: your child’s mouth may move as if it is searching for the correct way to make a sound or say a word, but the actual sound/word is never produced.
Distorted vowel production: your child may say words that sound nothing like what they should. For example, the word “red” may sound like “rode”.
Difficulties imitating speech sounds/words: your child may be able to say “ball”, but has great difficulty imitating that same word when someone asks him to do so.
Difficulties performing movements on request, yet able to produce that same movement involuntarily: your child may have no ability to stick out his tongue while imitating someone performing that movement, but he is able to stick his tongue out to lick an ice cream cone.
Apraxia may also be called verbal apraxia, developmental apraxia of speech, or verbal dyspraxia.
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