More Children Diagnosed with Speech Apraxia

There is a new report complied by speech pathologists at Nationwide Children's Hospital that shows there is an ever increasing number of pediatric patients who are being diagnosed with speech apraxia, a motor speech disorder in which the child has trouble pronouncing the basic sounds and words.

In 2006, at Nationwide Children's they had a total of 150 children, about 7% of all of the children receiving speech therapy, who were diagnosed with speech apraxia. This may not sound like much, but it is double the number from 2005 while the number of patients getting all types of speech therapy only increased by 13%. There has not been a lot of data complied on the number of children in the country who have speech apraxia, but the therapists at Nationwide Children's estimate that there could be as much as 1 to 10 out of every 1000 children who are sufferers.

These children know what they want to say, but they have difficulty when it comes to the brain being able to coordinate movements of the facial mussels necessary for speech, namely the lips, jaw and tongue. In many cases, these children can only say vowels, or parts of sounds or even words or sentences will be missing. The child can become very frustrated and can develop behavioral problems

The earlier the condition is spotted, the better chance there is for the child to be able to improve his or her speech and be able to communicate.

The pathologist will teach the child to make individual sounds and then they teach how to make the sounds longer, then form words and finally sentences. The results show that many children can learn to speak normally, but some of them are also taught sign language.

The pathologists at Nationwide Children's are encouraging parents to watch out for these signs that can be an indication fo a speech or language problem.