22 month old and speech delay or apraxic?? Please read.

[Guest guest]

Hi there, I have posted here a couple of times in the past couple of months, but

didn't really get a good response. I have been hesitant to post again, but I

don't know anyone else who is or have gone through what we're dealing with, and

I would like some input <please> from someone who's going through this as well.

A little background, we started noticing a slight speech delay in our son when

he was 18 months old. He would only say a couple of words duh-doo (thank you)

and doe (dog). As he got older, by 21 months, he hadn't picked up that many more

words, he was at around 10. So we were sent for evals with the EI for our

county. He was found to be a candidate for speech therapy, with an expressive

language rating of around 11 months, and receptive at 24+. So far we have only

had one speech therapy session, where the SLP stated she couldn't make an

official diagnosis of a delay, or apraxia because of his limited words.

I started him on one capsule of ProEFA back in April, and recently upped his

dose to two capsules. I'm still waiting on seeing results. While I can say he's

attempting more words since starting it, I've not seen much significant

improvement.

So here's where we are, he can now say cookie (cuey/eekey), dog has become gah,

all done/gone is ah gah, more is dooo (? don't get that one, but that's what he

means) and just about everything that would begin with a /d/ comes out starting

with /g/. He can make the /d/ sound though, which is what makes it soooo

frustrating. I can sit and go over the alphabet and make the letter sounds, some

he will imitate, others no. The ones he does imitate, I will then prompt him

with a word beginning with that letter, and he either grins sheepishly, or

" gah " . For example, he does the /s/ perfect, we got this by using a toy snake

and making the snake sound. S words are not there. He will not imitate a word.

Certain sounds, yes, but not words. When he " imitates " , it's usually a catch-all

" gah " or " a-guh " . I'm scared the speech therapy is going to be a flop if he

doesn't even try to imitate a word.

I don't know what apraxia sounds like in the early stages, or maybe this is what

he should've sounded like back when he was much younger, and it's just taking a

while for the process.

Please, please, don't skip over this post. Please respond with an experience of

your child at this age. He will be 2 on the 13th of July. I am so overwhelmed

and frustrated, as well as scared for his future. It brings me to tears

everytime we try to talk.