Apraxia

Well, as many of may know, Camden is in preschool to work with a speech therapist on his communication since he doesn't speak very clearly. Yesterday he and I went to his parent/teacher conference and I found out that he has apraxia. Apraxia is a condition which means that he has "difficulty planning and producing the precise, highly refined, and specific series of movements of the tongue, lips, jaw and palate that are necessary for intelligible speech. A child with the diagnosis of apraxia of speech has difficulty programming and planning speech movements. " -Apraxia kids website. If you are interested in looking at more about this here's a pretty informative website. It is www.apraxia-kids.org/.

I found that website very informative. This condition is something that Camden will be able to overcome with a lot of work. He will be increasing his preschool days to 4 next year instead of two, which will be interesting for us to work out with our work schedules and making arrangements for him getting off the bus. Camden has a hard time sticking his tongue out all of the way, and moving it side to side. His speech therapist is working with him while holding a mirror while he talks to practice the movements. I have to say that I am glad that there is something real that is going on with him. I was afraid that it was because he didn't have very many other kids to associate with. His hearing is perfect, but we have wondered about that also. We also have to practice at home by making a "game" out of sticking his tongue out. Fortunately, there shouldn't be any long term effects with this. (Exept thinking that it's okay to stick your tongue out at people!) Oh well, one thing at a time right?