Apraxia: Making Speech Therapy Fun

My 4 year old son Buster has childhood apraxia of speech or ‘Dispraxia. Oral apraxia is a speech delay where there seems to be a difficulty in getting the correct signal from the brain to the mouth. I’ve written about our family history with apraxia here.

Buster has seen a speech therapist 3 times now and we have finally got past the diagnosis stage to the speech therapy stage. This is the beginning of a very long road......

Buster's speech therapist has been trying to teach him to say the ‘p’, ‘b’ and ‘m’ sounds. These sounds are made at he front of the mouth and require him to move his lips…something he doesn’t seem to be able to do very well or with accuracy. He makes most of his sounds with the back of his mouth (if you say the sounds ‘c’ and ‘g’ you will see what I mean).

It’s amazing how complex speech really is when you break it down to it’s component parts. Most of us, including me, just take it for granted and picked the sounds up when we were babies. However, Buster has to be taught each individual sound. It’s a little like learning to read, I didn’t realize how complicated it was until I tried to teach someone to do it!

Buster only has a speech therapy session once every 2 weeks, so it is vital that we practice his speech at home. He was given this book to complete by the speech therapist.

You can just imagine how utterly boring this is to an active and exuberant 4 year old!!

He soon refused point-black to have anything to do with repeating the same sound (that is difficult for him to say) 12 times over, be constantly corrected and reminded that he can’t say it, only to be rewarded with a tick!

I thought that maybe if I try and make his speech practice more exciting, he will cooperate and practice his sounds. So, to make speech therapy fun for Buster I made him a wall chart with some of the materials from the girls craft box (hence, the pink ribbon…) (you can see that I’m definitely not a craft blogger!!).

I laminated some cards that show him the correct sounds to make for visual cues. I also laminated some Ben10 pictures I found on a google image search to be used as a reward. I attached Velcro spots to the cards and Ben10 pictures.

I find the chart to be much more tactile and stimulating than the black & white photocopied pages of the book. So-far he really seems to enjoy using the chart. He gets to place the cards on the chart when he says the sounds correctly (or at least gives it a really good try). He really enjoys choosing a Ben10 sticker to put on his chart as a reward. He even spent some time today carrying his chart around with him and practicing his sounds on his own

I am determined to do whatever I can to help my little man communicate with the world. He really does have a sweet little personality that I really want the world to see. I don’t want the world to judge, label and categorize his personality and intelligence by the way his speech sounds.

Buster starts preschool this year……I am very, very worried for him and I am a little reluctant to let him go…I’ll keep you posted.....

I listed Busters speech practice as one of my goals for 2012 in this post for me and you with the Mother Experiment. I'm linking up with her me and you link to share the progress of my goals.

I am also linking up for the first time with a lovely blog I discovered, Austism Wonderland who is developing a wonderful community where everyday wonderful moments are celebrated with her 'the little things are a big deal link-up

and because it's Tuesday. I'm linking up with the lovely Jess from Diary of a SAHM for #IBOT