question re levels of apraxia (mild, moderate, severe)

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone. I guess this post is for the parents whose children who are now

speaking or attempting normal speech. Are there any guidelines for treatment

once a child reaches the point where he or she is attempting to speak

" conversationally " ?

I'm in the process of transitioning my son from EI to the public school system

for speech services and, even though we have a diagnosis of apraxia from a

speech therapist and a developmental pediatrician, I'm having a hard time

getting the school to recognize that he still has it because he " speaks " in 5-9

word sentences and often strings multiple sentences together. The problem is

that his voicing errors are inconsistent and the longer the sentence is, the

more errors he makes which makes him virtually unintelligible even to me at

times. Unless he's speaking really slowly or in very short sentences (2-3

words), most people think he's speaking gibberish. However, the language tests

for kids his age (like Goldman-Fristoe) only test single word articulation so it

appears at first glance that he isn't delayed enough to require more therapy

than 30 minutes once a week. He's made so much progress under intensive Kaufman

and PROMPT therapies that he's been receiving over the past year. I just want to

make sure he continues to improve. He has an age-appropriate vocabulary (he'll

be 3 in a few weeks) and he tests above normal for cognative skills.

Intelligibility is his main hurdle now.

Thoughts and advice are welcome!

thanks!

-les