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: 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…
