Verbal Dyspraxia

[MetalMummy]

Hi I'm new here and was wondering if anybody knows anything about verbal dyspraxia?
After nearly a year of me saying that I thought DS2 (3yrs next week) had a problem with his speech and being told that I was being silly, or the older 2 talk for him, or he'll come on he's only 2 1/2 etc, etc (a lot of this by a sure start speech and language assistant), he has finally seen a qualified speech therapist who says that he actually has quite a serious speech problem. She says that it is likely that he has verbal dyspraxia and will need a lot of speech therapy over a number of years.
Does anybody have any experience with verbal dyspraxia or know what I can expect.
I feel relieved that someone has finally listened to me, but worried about what this could mean for DS2.
On a brighter note he called me Mummy for the first time yesterday, he's always said MaMa before.

hello and welcome. love;y to hear he called you mummy
I am sure someone will be along who knows something.

I know only a little about this, but wanted to give you the bit of info I can.

My ds is 7 (8 in April) and has always had speech issues - very clumsy pronounciation, lots of "wrong" vowels - and language issues, too - rarely gets a coherent sentence out, even now. Example is when he saw a SALT at 4 and was asked to tell what was happening in a picture of a dog with its leash tied to a tree he said "tied by the neck all the way there" - no ref to dog or tree or lead or anything concrete at all.

They said his problems "weren't quite serious enough" to call verbal dyspraxia, but were of that kind. (And also "oral" dyspraxia, a pure motor thing, where your tongue and throat find it difficult to make the right moves.)

We've done some work on his speech and language over the years - but the main message I wanted to give is that it's only now, when he's getting on for 8, that he has really started "buying into" getting his pronounciation right. Before now he hasn't seriously cared that strangers didn't understand him - familiar people can, and can make sense of his fragmented conversation, and so he didn't really make much effort to get clearer. But he is now trying at last. I also think it's taken him till now to be able to deal with the "oral" dyspraxia - I can see that it's actually hard work to get your tongue flat on the roof of your mouth to make an "l" sound (eg) if it doesn't naturally do that - so you need a certain maturity to persevere with something that is so difficult.

So, getting your son SALT is GREAT; if he is like mine though be prepared that you may have to give him lots and lots of support and rewards over quite a while.

MetalMummy - welcome

My DS had/has? verbal dyspraxia and at 2.5 had the same gloomy outlook as you have been given.

His speech was severely disordered but he had excellent understanding and was using expressive language appropriately (it was just not easy to understand).

We paid for private SALT sessions, which started at 2.5 (this is very young, but he was very co-operative, you may need to wait some time yet to start if he does not have a reasonable concentration span). The sessions were all game based, and he saw them just as a chance to play games and have fun with the SALT.

We were told at that time that it was unlikely that he would be able to be taught in a main stream setting and that it would be worth looking at a local private school which specialises in dyspraxia and dyslexia.

I think it is fair to say that early intevension with SALT changed this outcome dramatically. He is now 6yo, has near normal speech, and has been taught in mainstream since he was 4yo. The improvement in his speech between 2.5 and 4 was considerable!

One of the things I would do for now, until you decide how to progress with SALT, is to google for the Mr Tongue exercises. Go through the routine twice a day, and you should see some rapid increase in the mobility of his tongue - this will help enormously with getting the right placement of the tongue once he starts the SALT.

I really hope you can afford to go privately, as the NHS provision so far for my DS has been 6 weeks SALT when he was 4yo and 6 weeks late last year! He would still be largely untreated if that was all we had available to us!

There are some good US sites on this topic - but they call it aspraxi (sp?) over there.

Good luck!

Hi, Thanks for the responses.

DS has had to go on another waiting list to actually get SALT, he was on the waiting list for 8mths just to be assessed, We have been told they should be able to start seeing him in April but we'll have to wait and see.

He starts Nursery in September and one thing that has been mentioned is the I CAN Nursery, it's a specialist speech therapy unit attached to another primary school. He will go to his own Nursery 3 days a week and hopefully to the I CAN Nursery 2 days a week, but until his SALT actually starts we won't know for sure if that will happen.

It just annoys me that no one seemed to listen to my concerns, I've got a better idea now of what my Mum went through trying to get my brother assessed for Dyslexia (it was 25yrs ago so not easy)