Alex loves camping, riding his bike, playing soccer with his best friend Will, and absolutely LOVES Boy Scouts (this means he has fantastic leaders!!).
Alex has been in speech therapy since he was two, largely in the public system in group therapy, with 1 hour of individual therapy a week. At four years old our speech therapist talked to us about Developmental Apraxia of Speech and told us that usually professionals would not diagnose it formally until about 7-8 years old, but she thought this might be what he had. For those of you who do not know what Apraxia is there are two kinds one that is a result of brain damage that a stroke or head trauma could cause, and the other that a child can have as a result of the brain not developing the ability to communicate with the structures of the mouth. So when we went to have him evaluated by the students at the Speech Hearing Clinic at U of A in Fayetteville, we were pleasantly surprised to see that they marked Apraxia as the diagnosis in their paperwork in order to help us get an Augmentative communication device (This is a device that is much like a large palm top with touch screen, that essentially speaks for the child). For those of you who know me I am a penny pincher and take every opportunity to save a penny. I knew I would be saving a lot of pennies on a formal diagnosis 3-4 years later.
Did Alex actually use a ACD? I don't remember ever seeing him with one. They are starting Ben on PECS, which is a picture exchange communication system. However, they are running it a little differently than usual as he is also required to attempt to say the word.
ReplyDeleteAlex has never used one at home. At school they use the PECS system too, but it is not very successful, he prefers speech over the picture cards. He has been evaluated 2x for an electronic one and qualifies, but will he use it or prefer speech. In the realms of speech, I am not sold yet.
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