21 mo old son newly diagnosed w/ apraxia - need therapy advice/suggestions

[Guest guest]

Hi Everyone,

My name is and I've been lurking on this board for a few

weeks and have been blown away and touched by the support and

resources being shared on this list. Just last week my 21 month old

son was diagnosed with Apraxia and I'm trying to figure out what our

next steps for treatment should be.

Ethan has been in regular speech therapy (1x a wk - in home, private

sessions) with the Early Intervention program in Pennsylvania (we live

in the Philadelphia area) for 5 months with little to no progress.

After being frustrated with our speech therapist regarding my son's

lack of progress and any suggestions from her on what to do about it,

on a recent vacation to the San Francisco, CA, I located a speech

pathologist experienced in apraxia and had him evaluated by her. I'm

still waiting for the full diagnoses report, but essentially she felt

that Ethan does have apraxia.

My question now is: what kind of speech therapy support should I try

to get for him? I've heard that PROMPT therapists seem to help with

Apraxia - are there other specializations I should consider? I would

love to see the person who evaluated him (she's even in our insurance

network) but given she's across the country, she's not an option.

I figured that I would try to get additional services through our

Early Intervention program for hopefully a therapist with some

experience in Apraxia and perhaps more sessions per week? I also

assumed that I'd try to locate some kind of private therapist with

experience in Apraxia to supplement the Early Intervention work b/c

frankly, I don't have a lot of hope that they will have a competent

therapist with experience in Apraxia (my experience so far with EE has

been very disappointing).

Can you tell me what approach you took for your child with apraxia and

what you'd recommend? Has anyone had experience getting increased

services through Early Intervention for apraxia? If so, what kind?

Also, we're in Northwest Philadelphia (right near the PA turnpike) and

I was told that there is essentially only one local speech pathologist

in the Philly area who has true apraxia expertise (and she doesn't

have any openings until end of January!!). If you have any

suggestions for private therapists with apraxia experience in the

Southern or Northern NJ or even the lower NY area - that would be

great. For private therapy, I'm willing to travel to get the right

expertise and will consider anyone within an 80 (or possibly 100) mile

radius from our zipcode of 19119. Not ideal, but want to do what it

takes...

I should note that we've had Ethan on ProEFA (1/2 TSP of the liquid

version) for 4 weeks and it has definitely made a difference. I also

will be starting the EPA soon and will be looking into adding NV based

on testimonials I've read from this list. We're meeting with a

naturopath later this week due to another health issue for my son and

I'm hoping she'll be able to help us look into starting NV and any

other relevant supplements (for apraxia and also his immune issue -

selective IgA deficiency).

Thanks so much for any help. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed about how to proceed.

Best,