Saturday, June 20, 2009

Apraxia, again

I don’t talk to the kids on the phone that often. Generally there they are. Right next to me. But when I was in Toronto last week, I spoke with both of them daily. Boo sounds so much younger than going-on-7. Cute and perky and really young.

Talking to Nea was difficult. I know that sounds stupid, but I don’t realize how much I depend on her gestures and context to help. Context is everything. “Yellow but” is either “yellow school bus” or “yellow karate belt”, but usually it’s less clear than that. “Stop” is either “stop” or “camp.” I mean, the substitutions are endless. But if I’ve spent the day with her, I generally know what she’s talking about, in general. Usually. You know. Generally. Mostly.

She had her 5-year checkup yesterday. I love our doctor. He’s always been really great about referrals or anything else we need. They had this exchange:


Dr. Dave: So, Nea, where do you like to go?
Nea: Park.
DD: And what do you like to do there?
Nea: Peel. (aka, spiel, German for “play”)
DD: (pause) And are you good at that?
Nea: Yeah!

Dealing with the apraxia always hits me the hardest around Nea’s birthday. Soon I'll be the mother of a 5 year old who can barely talk. It didn't sound as bad at 2. Or 3. Or 4. But 5? Yeah, that doesn't seem ... right.

2 comments:

arlopop said...

is there improvement, B?

I know with ours I just feel as if I'm not seeing any progress. But then our official diagnosis is the vague "low muscle tone", which is being used to describe both her physical issues as well as the speech problems.

Did you ever get that one before apraxia got dialed in?

Bluestem said...

My standard response to “How’s progress?” is “Glacial.” She does string words together better. And now that she’s repeating everything Boo says (Oy!), she getting a lot of practice, at any rate.

Yes, I think we heard about the low muscle tone at age 2, whereas I didn’t even hear the term apraxia until maybe 2.5, when I started reading up on speech delays. Are you seeing a lot of inconsistency in responses? If you ask her three times to say “blue swimming pool”, are the responses slightly different every time?