Most of you don’t know this, but my second son, Miles, had all of the Red Flags for childhood apraxia is speech! He started speech 3x a week at 18-months-old and it has been a long process. If you met him today, you would never guess he had the symptoms of childhood apraxia of speech. I’m so so proud of him and all of his hard work and progress. It isn’t easy and he amazes me everyday.
Since he started speech therapy, I have made it my goal to learn as much as I could about childhood apraxia of speech and I’m happy to say I’m now on the directory of Apraxia Kids as CAS speech provider!
Please read this educational post by @cariebertseminars.
(Repost from @cariebertseminars)
When can a diagnosis of Child Apraxia of Speech (CAS) be given?
As an apraxia specialist, this is one of the most common questions I get asked by speech and language pathologists and parents.
Did you know that we now have tentative guidelines for identifying CAS at age 2?
Thanks to recent research by Overby, Caspari, and Screiber (2019), we now have 7 RED FLAGS that speech and language pathologists should consider when evaluating late-talking toddlers:
- Limited vocalizations in the first two years of life
- Lack of a consonant by 12 months of age
- Use of fewer than 3 consonants by 16 months of age
- Use of fewer than 5 consonants by 24 months of age
- Limited to no velar (/k, g/) productions
- Favoritism of stops (/p, b, d, t/) and nasals (/m, n/) over other consonants
- Productions at 13-18 months are largely vowels, with little use of other syllable shapes
It is important for speech and language pathologists and pediatricians to be aware of these red flags so that speech therapy can be initiated sooner…rather than later.
Reference: Overby, Caspari, Schreiber (2019). Volubility, Consonant Emergence, and Syllabic Structure in Infants Later Diagnosed with CAS, Speech Sound Disorder, and Typical Development, Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 62(6), 1657-1675. .
