Another newbie with questions ;-)

[Guest guest]

Hi all - I know you get lots of newbie questions but hopefully you are up for

one more ;-)

My 21 month old son Callum possibly has verbal apraxia - while I do wish we had

a definitive diagnosis, I understand that it's a bit early to know for sure if

this is the cause of his speech issues.

We did the EI eval at 18 months - he was found to have receptive skills at 21-24

months but expressive skills at 6-9 months (with some emerging skills at 15

months). Based on that, we qualified for services and have been doing ST twice

a week for the past month. He has no motor issues (is ahead in motor skills)

and never has had feeding issues that I know can go along with apraxia (so I

guess no oral apraxia).

Now at 21 months we still have no words and very few sounds - most everything is

some variation of " da. " He went through a period of doing " bbb " and " mmm "

sounds months ago but dropped them as he went to the next sound. We've had a

few random words here and there (mostly weird things like turkey or applesauce

and I swear he called me Meredith one day - but never mama) - all have either

been one time occurrences or were only used a few times before disappearing. He

does have sounds for yes and no (ugh-ugh and uh-huh) and uses lots of gestures

and grunts to make his wishes known. He has never babbled in the sense of

making lots of different sounds and is pretty quiet around other kids/people.

He also will not imitate any sounds although he does mimic all sorts of other

things we do! He gets this sort of embarrassed grin if you ask him to imitate

something - almost like he knows he can't.

I'm mostly wondering if there are others who are or were in this position -

waiting for a diagnosis - or if Callum's story sounds like any of your

childrens. I've been reading as much as I can on apraxia since both the SLP who

evaluated him for EI and our current SLP feel it is a possibility (just read the

Late Talker). I'm interested in the different therapy techniques like Kaufman,

but what do you do when there are no sounds/words to work with?? Of course we

keep trying to encourage him to imitate or generate any sounds but I feel like

it's sort of a shot in the dark at this point - or rather that we are stuck

until there are sounds to build on.

Also, if anyone happens to be in the Triangle area of NC, let me know!

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Meredith