Our little boy has been working very hard at his speech therapy sessions. He has been receiving speech therapy twice a week from two different therapist. A private speech therapist and an Early Intervention therapist. Both of CJ’s therapist notice continued growth in his speech and language development.
CJ works super hard at trying to communicate with us. His apraxia is not as severe as Maya’s so we have an easier time understanding him when he is trying to communicate. However, outside our home, we translate CJ’s speech for others. I define CJ’s stage of speech development as the “My Mommy is my Translator” stage (See Below).
Side note: Having two kids with Childhood Apraxia of Speech has made me interpret the condition in my own way. Disclaimer: I am not an expert, just a mom who is coping with the challenges of a rare neurological speech disorder. To help me cope, I’ve come up with my own stages of CAS.
- Nonverbal: limited communication, challenging for everyone to understand, including mommy and daddy
- Verbal: Mommy/ Daddy translator stage
- Verbal: Let’s build your confidence so you can speak on your own stage
- Verbal: You can say your name and you don’t need so much help from your mommy and daddy = confident happy kid!
- I’d say Maya is in-between stages 3 and 4 and CJ is in stage 2, but there are times we still have difficulty understanding him.
Today, I was able to capture two videos of CJ attempting to communicate his wants and needs to me. You will notice in the videos he is working very hard for me to understand what he is trying to say. In the first video, CJ wants to eat his cereal out of a particular bowl. Through process of elimination I was finally able to figure out what he was saying. This happens frequently throughout our day. (Scroll below first video for the second video.)
Ironically, after capturing the first video, there was another moment where I had difficulty understanding CJ’s speech. In this video, CJ is requesting something. I could not figure out what he wanted. Maya helped me interpret what he was saying.
casmommy 