By Pam Marshalla
Q: Our son is three and was non-verbal. Our SLP seems really good at helping him learn to talk. But he is very hard to understand. What can we do? The essence of speech therapy for little children is to learn about words and sounds. We need to focus on both when working with young children. Many of today’s younger therapists put all their focus on building vocabulary, and they spend very little time focused on the actual production of…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My son is 9 years old and has been diagnosed with autism and apraxia. He is non verbal and low-to-medium functioning. We are trying to determine the best methodology to help him talk more. I read a lot about your Apraxia experience but nothing about your experience with Autism. Since my son has Autism as well I was hoping if you could give me your expert opinion on what to do as I am trying to determine what is…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My son is 2 1/2 years old and has a great level of oral motor difficulty and has been diagnosed with autism. He has only one word that he can produce on command, and that is “mom.” He tries very hard to talk and things come out a jumble. We are working on letter sounds with him as he really enjoys letters. He can make the sounds for the letters S, M, H, A, U, E. It sometimes takes…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a 3-year-old student with Joubert’s syndrome. Currently we are using sign and an AAC device for communication. She can move her mouth, grunt, say “buh”, and blow a whistle. She grunts more when we model the grunts back to her. Should this continue? And do you have any ideas on improving vowel phonation? This child is not making vowels because she is not using her voice. Her grunts and productions of periodic “buh” mean that she is just…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Can you tell me how your books “Becoming Verbal with Childhood Apraxia” and “Apraxia Uncovered, The Seven Stages of Phoneme Development ” are different? Which one should I read first? Think of Becoming Verbal with Childhood Apraxia as Part 1. It is about how to get kids more vocal, verbal, communicative, imitative and interactive, and how to get them to play with the sounds they make. Read it first. Think of Apraxia Uncovered, The Seven Stages of Phoneme Development as Part…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a five-year-old child with cerebral palsy, developmental delay, severe apraxic and dysarthria. Jaw control is limited, she drools, and the tongue retracts when feeding. I am told by her speech reports she needs oral motor work 3 times to 5 times a day. Might you have any suggestions on what I could do? She is in school speech three times per week for 30-minutes and she does see a PROMPT therapist. My experience has taught me that…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: We have a 7-year-old son who has a diagnosis of moderate autism. About a year ago it was suggested that he has apraxia as well. He is completely nonverbal. We have read Becoming Verbal with Childhood Apraxia. Using some of your suggestions, he now imitates about four sounds. It is so frustrating because as soon as we get him to imitate a sound, he loses mastery of an old one – one step forward, one step back. He attends…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My granddaughter, Stephanie, is 4-1/2 years old and diagnosed with apraxia. She was born with the cerebellum not fully developed and is classified as having cerebral palsy. Her speech is non-existent, although I can get her to make a variety of sounds in different pitches. In class she seems not to be attending at all. The SLP reported that until Stephanie can let her touch her face and put a spatula on her tongue, she can do little. She…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My preschool client with apparent childhood apraxia is not willing to participate and often walks away from or gets annoyed with therapy plans and procedures. What should I do? He sounds like most of the kids on my caseload. Childhood apraxia comes with its pure stubbornness at times. But I don’t think that “behavior” itself is always the issue. There is a reason for the stubborn behavior. What I usually see with preschool kids like this is that they…
