Posts Tagged ‘childhood apraxia of speech’

This video was taken two years ago (November 2009, age 5). C is talking about the pygmies and vampire bat in Pocket God. (Note his “I heart speech therapy” sticker)

Nearly a year later (August 2010). C reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Nearly a year later again (July 2011). C and D swimming in the pool. C is the one who says “it’s cold underwater”, so you can really measure the speech difference in him.

And in August 2011, C again reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

My kids lived their first four years in virtual silence. They sometimes made murmuring noises, and when they were four they could say “Ma” and “Da”, and “buh” (brother), but they were otherwise very quiet children. I spent a lot of tears and terror over their future, worrying about what would happen to them, how they would live if they never learned to speak.

I always say that I am grateful for my childrens’ every word. Everything they say is a delight to me, because they are finally speaking. In the last two years, they’ve gone from saying three approximations (not even real words) to monologuing about their Lego toys and Star Wars. Twin A can say an “f” correctly now, without an encroaching “p” behind it. This is a huge accomplishment for him, considering that two years ago, he had no words. They are turning more and more into regular six year olds. They lecture me. They talk back and are sarcastic. The other day, I had called them to bed about five times, and finally Twin B came back to the bathroom to brush his teeth and said to me, “I learned a new word at school today, Mama. It’s NAG.” They often stay up past their bedtime because they’re busy talking, or have a long conversation in the backseat of the car and tell me “I wasn’t talking to you, Mama” if I try to join in.

So now I finally, finally have the extreme parental pleasure of telling them something I never thought I’d get to say, which is “It’s time to stop talking now.” I feel a little weird every time I say it (only at bedtime, and followed by “… and go to sleep”), from all those years of trying to coax them to make a single sound. There’s a small fear in the back of my head that if I tell them to stop talking too many times, they’ll go back to the silence, but I try to ignore it and teach them when it’s appropriate to talk and when it isn’t, just like any other kid. They’re not always clear in their articulation, and there are a lot of phonemes they still have difficulty with, but the monologuing-like-a-supervillain gives me hope that they will someday master all their speech sounds.

Right now they’re at school, and I’m savoring the silence.

I wrote an article for Hippymom about CAS. Read it here.

Want to listen to my boys’ speech to hear what CAS sounds like? Our YouTube channel.

Our Apraxia Kids STARS page.