verble dysraixa tell me about it please

[trace2]

we have been told dd sounds like she as this we been seeing salt since she was 8 months due to her none eating and other medical needs, but now as i put they think she as verbal dyspepsia too, she babbles lots and some words are very clear. but she bringing an other salt with her this month to check!

i am trying to find out as much as i can before they come!

oops sorry

hi my ds has this in his case he has verbal and oral dyspraxia as well as Gdd .In his case he cant blow bubbles , pucker up for a kiss never blew raspberrys etc also he has problems chewing food some stuff just ges spat out .He also never rbabby babbled the mmmm ddd sounds .He is totaly non verbal and is 4 next week but from my understanding this is not the case for most children with this dx like anything else theres a wide range on it.

Ds does use makton to communicate and has bastardised personlisedit to suit him self

How old is your dd .We got dx of sli 8 months ago then this one about 3 months ago and Iadmit found it bit of a shock.

There is various subsections within the category for some its pronucing certain words or certain sounds

Trace2

SALT thinks that my son has this but wants him to see an OT as he also has GDD and poss dyspraxia. Like phoenix's ds mine had problems chewing (still does a bit). He does speak quite a bit but is very unclear.
The salt gave us an example of verbal dyspraxia - if a child can stick out his tongue to lick a lolly but not stick it out the same way on command. It seems with verbal dyspraxia there are problems with consciously controlling the tongue (processing instructions) as well as muscle weakness.
We've been given exercises like drinking with straw and reading him a story "Mr Tongue". that encourages him to move his tongue about.

Actually on rereading Phoenix's post I obviously know v little myself - I didn't know there was a difference between oral and verbal dyspraxia I thought they were interchangeable words.

Phoenix -what's the difference? Is verbal the processing and oral the muscle weakness?

oral tends to affect the mouth shapes so is often seen with feeding problems also means a reduced ability to voluntarily control single or sequenced silent movements of the lips, tongue or soft palate.

Verbal dyspraxia affects the purposeful control of the movements necessary for speech. so yes your right mummysauras

ds can not move his tounge around at all for example if you told him to lick his lips his tounge will just not move no matter how hard he trys .We to had mr tounge but he just can not make it move

couple of other things to try if you can is blowing pingbowl ball across tale, blowing feathers blowing bubbles in thei drinks for some reason my kids love trying teach ds to do this

Put sprinkles round lips and get dc to lick them of or lie on their back and blow tissue paper upwards

Fingers crossed your dc are both babbling is a help ds missed this totaly for me i knew at 8 months he had problem but took long time for them to agree.

How old are your dc ad do you use any othe rforms of communication?

ds also has delay in his receptive language hes coming out at 17 months behind so more of a 2.7 year old

if you wnat can cat me or email me on [email protected]

Im ploughing my way through it slowly ,but was defintley a shock you always expect your child to talk just seems so natrual and for ds i found very little on it at first but sometime sthe term apraxia is used as well

Thanks Phoenix - sounds like ds has both types then. He was an awful awful feeder as a baby -took him hours to breast feed and the latch was never great. He is 3.6. We are bubbles in drinks and ping pong balls and cotton wool balls (when i get round to it . love the idea of sprinkles round lips and blowing paper upwards. The only thing ds tries to do from Mr Tongue the dog wagging his tail - he thinks this is hilarious. and makes me do it endlessly so I'm sure my pronunciation is now crystal clear!

This is one of the best explanations I have found:
www.tayloredmktg.com/dyspraxia/downloads/das.pdf

Printed it off and gave it to my MIL who thinks that talking REALLY LOUDLY at the child is helpful......

My DS (4.10) also has a diagnosis of oral and developmental verbal dyspraxia (as well as general dyspraxia and GDD). He was also a poor feeder as a baby with bad reflux and didn't sleep much at all. I too knew there was something amiss really early on and he didn't babble at all till around 18 months. Progress has been slow but he can now put some words together and we have also used Makaton since he was around 2.5 which has been great - gave him a voice. His expressive language is probably at around a 2 yr old level but his receptive is age appropriate (at the last check anyway). We have done all the excercises you mention and now pretty much follow the Nuffield Dyspraxia programme with our SALT and advice from the Nuffield. My DS is at the severe end of the scale but we have been encouraged by recent progress - it is hard work!

mumysauurus if he can blow bubbles and pingpongballs thats good news lol at your pronunciation

crispapple

My ds to is at the severe endof the scale sadle despite following he program and very good salt intervention he still is non verbal can not make any recognisable sounds or get his tounge to move have been told that he is unlikely to have functioing speech

sorry went to bed feel ill! dd is 2 sounds like a 1 years ld though and as i say she as other problems to hyptiona, hypmobile,a movement disorder, some kind of seizure. and a gatric feeding tube as she still carnt eat solids. we have "Mr Tongue to chloe can stick it out but nothing else she can not move her food from front of her mouth to the back and she still chokes if she try,

sorry didnt know i started two thread

ah ds also has hypertonia and hypermoblity and has problems withgross an dfine motor control

Hi...can I ask a question??
DD2 and DS have been having SALT (3 blocks of 5 sessions over 2 years ) because of poor pronounciation - leaving the first letters off words, and some consonants in the middle/end too. DD2 (7) has made fantastic progress, and people can understand her most of the time.

My DS (5 1/2) has not made much progress at all and is to be assessed for Verbal Dyspraxia next week. His current SALT has never actually held a conversation with DS, only ever asked him to repeat single sounds at the last five sessions.

I am concerned that as she has never heard DS actually speak, she is not seeing the full picture IYKWIM.

DS babbled normally and spoke early, albeit garbled and difficult to understand. He never had any feeding problems, but has always found chewing tiring. We were originally told his speech problems were because he has Benign Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, and muscle weakness (all over, including his tongue).

He is very chatty and is ALWAYS talking at home...he will speak to most people, isn't shy, but gets very frustrated when they don't understand...I have to translate....I mentioned he was awaiting assessment to one of his Paeds. who asked if his descriptive language was the problem. When I said no, just pronounciation, he seemed surprised.

So, my question : Is this Verbal Dyspraxia????

I am not entirely convinced VD is the problem, as he doesn't seem to fit the criteria....he uses long, involved sentences and conversations, massive vocabulary, very chatty. He doesn't seem to have full control of his tongue, though....always has a mucky face, can't lick his lips, can't stick his tongue out in a controlled manner. We have the Mr. Tongue book which he practices, can blow bubbles, blow ping pong balls, and he can easily drink from a straw (though he has poor grip and weak hands, so has been using a straw since 18 months to save him lifting a heavy drink, so maybe just plenty of practice has helped!). It just seems to be purely pronouncing letters...even the three new sounds he has mastered, he cannot blend onto a word....and he gets I/Me mixed all the time. And he can NEVER remember he is 5... 3 and 4 weren't a problem though!!

An example of his speech...

Me am undy, dan me ave a doclut bed amidge bees? = I am hungry, can I have a chocolate spread sandwich please?
air oo dowin? = Where are you going?
un, doo, dee, oar, ivb, ixb, eben, oint, nine, den = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

Sorry this is soooo long, just I have doubts, and don't want SALT to mis-diagnose.....but I have no clue as to what else it could be....

Thanks, Pinkiepunksmummy

ppmummy - have a look at the link bubblle2bubble inserted above. it doesn't work if you click but cut and paste it into your browser. My ds can also speak longish sentences (not quite that long tho) but is very unclear as well and they also think it might be verbal dyspraxia.

Also see above phoenix's explanation of the difference between oral and verbal dyspraxia

It is a shame that your salt hasn't tried to converse with your son. sounds as if she hasn't reconsidered her earlier diagnosis.

Check if the verbal dyspraxia assessment does involve a conversation. If not can you video your son talking with you as evidence to show them?

Phoenix - it must be hard to hear your ds is likely to remain non-verbal. How is his makaton coming along? Love the idea of him making up his own version - his own street talk.

We went to macdonalds yesterday and ordered a thick shake - I had forgotton how delicious they are and all in the name of speech therapy! My ds had a good go at sucking it up through the straw and it is really hard work.

Also tried the sprinkles thing. What a mess we made and he couldn't really move his tongue or lips to get them off but we had some fun anyway.

I am going to get my DD those frijee milkshakes in the name of speech therapy mummysaurus how funny! Problem is I will HAVE to have one too!DDs SALT has never mentioned dyspraxia either type but said her jaw muscles are weak and givn me exercises like drinking through a strw and blowing bubbles, face shapes etc so I am wondering if that is what she thinks DD has got. I also bought some thins called floatys from a sports shop, they are for swimming you blow them and they flip over.

pinkiepunksmummy:

my DD1 was in anSLT group therpay for a few months with 3 other dyspraxic kids. At the time she had very little speech, though she was the youngest. I was really surprised that the others seemed to chat away quite happily, but generally only their mothers could understand them. My DD is now more or less at that stage ( 6 months on )- she talks a lot, but to anyone other than me it is totally unintelligible

It seems to be a big jump from learning individual sounds to putting sounds together to make words - we had weeks and weeks of this- but it does eventually work. If it is dyspraxia ( and I'm not saying it is ) the DC has to learn every sound individually from scratch, like someone who has had a stroke, before they can move on to to new words. In the meantime, if they have the confidence they will try to talk, and may even think they are making complete sense!

Incidentally DD1 had no feeding problems though she did take awhile to learn to blow bubbles, but she had huge gross motor skill difficulties

mummysaurus

i had a lot of wobbly moments when found out but its nowgetting better think for me was when a speech and laungage unit said im sorry he is just to severe for the units was a realisation that its well might not happen

his signings comeing along really well is using 2 signs together big , dog etc and can signs all his colours he sup to 150 or so now lol hes going be keeping his lsa n her toes when he goes to school in September

Hi

I'm an SLT. Pinkie, DVD (developmental verbal dyspraxia, or Childhood Apraxia of Speech in Aus/US) doesn't exclude talking in long sentences/being chatty/having a great vocab - at all!

DVD often occurs with other specific language disorders e.g. Specific Language Impairment (SLI) so some children with dypraxia are minimally verbal with massive spoken language difficulties, and some are not.

Your DS has some language issues, from the sounds of things (e.g. the me/I substitution at 5 and a half suggests that he has language issues) but if he's very unintelligble, working on language can be counter-productive as his sentences might get longer and then it would be even harder to understand him!

Blending letters in words is the hard part in DVD - the single sounds your SLT is doing are the foundation for future work on building up words.

Typically, kids with dyspraxia need things to be drilled, drilled, drilled. So the therapy work is quite boring and behavioural (no, not that, try it again) and repetitive.. but it's the only way it works, sorry to say.

Over time, if he's following a Nuffield programme, he'll probably have multilevel targets e.g. some single sounds, some sequenced single sounds e.g. p-b-p-b-p-b some cv sounds (boo, moo, may, knee etc), some vc (ice, oot, oom, oon), some cvcv (initially with both consonants staying the same and using the same vowel like booboo, then varying consonants like boonoo, then varying consonants/vowels like baby and so on and so far). These sounds are just examples - the sounds your therapist will work on will depend on the sounds and syllable structures your DS is using. It's complicated stuff, dyspraxia, and the evidence says that the therapy needs to be frequent, drill-like and intense.. so she wouldn't be chatting or doing lots of different things with his speech, but getting right down to it and maximising the time spent achieving accurate productions.

I can't say if that's the right treatment approach for him without knowing his full assessment results, but actually, even if he had an associated diagnosis (e.g. severe phonological disorder, inconsistent phonological disorder) most of the therapy techniques for DVD would be similar. The key thing is treating the unintelligibilty, really...

The key differential factor for DVD is if the progress is slow and gains won are sometimes lost again - e.g. in a phonological disorder, the sounds 'mastered' usually stay mastered, whereas in dyspraxia, if there's a break in therapy speech can regress. Dyspraxia responds better to high intensity treatment, too. Also, it is typically very difficult to get a child with true dyspraxia to sequence and blend sounds - they just can't get their mouth round it and it needs a lot of hard work and perseverance!

Hope this helps!

mrsBean

we tried repeating with ds but he just can ot do it he wants to so badly

How often do you see children that are nonverbal , ds has oral and veral as well as GDD receptive of 2.7

Mrsbean78 - that was a massively useful post - you packed at lot of stuff in there all highly relevant to my ds. My ds's sentences are getting longer and I was thrilled but it is true it is not helping clarity.

If you or indeed any one else could spare more time I have a couple of other questions

Is it easy to keep developmentally delayed, v active 3.5 yo engaged in these repetitive exercises?- he is normally v willing to please but is already resisting Mr tongue!

How long does speech therapy go on for typically - if say they are verbal and forming sentences but unclear?

phoenix 150 signs sounds a lot and its great that he is now putting words together - I'll always remember my ds putting together his first words - big house - somehow it made more of an impact than his first word. I think it was because it sounded much more conversational iyswim

His receptive language is at the same level as my ds so it must get frustrating for him when you can't get what he wants to say instantly.

To be able to understand at 2.7 already shows he must be bright underneath all the learning barriers - that's what i (maybe self-deludingly?) think about my ds anyway. Perhaps somewhere out there you'll find someone to help your ds get some speech? Sorry don't want to upset you by well meaning ignorant optimism but its hard to believe salt unit can give up on him when he is so young.

Thanks for you replies....have read the link and a lot of it seems to fit DS.
Everything I had read (googled) seemed to be saying that VD meant no sentances, just single words...couldn't find anything that said it was possible to have an unintelligable chatterbox!

We are just starting down the verbal dyspraxia road, as it hadn't been mentioned before. It was only because I pushed the SALT as DS seemed to be getting worse not better, and DD was progressing, which has made DS sound worse, iyswim.

DS has had three blocks of group sessions, nothing actually tailored to him. So far it has been 'k' and 'g' and then 'shhh' 'ssss' and 'ffff'. He has mastered the k and g, but cannot blend them or use in a sentence. And the others he just cannot do...he can't seem to get his tongue in the right position, even with years of practising snake noises, the sss still comes out as 'clll'.

The assessment on monday is apparently a pre-assessment, that is done by his SALT, and then if she has concerns he will be referred on for a proper assessment....is this is how it usually happens, or I am being fobbed off once again??!!

Thanks again, Pinkie

mummysaurush

ds not putting words together he is putting signs together

unfortunatley salt does seem the case , one we seen feels hes as severe asis possiably going to get .hough am going to be asking for referal to nuffield as were going to be losing our greaat sal and switching over to school team even though he has in statement .We have no blocks just 6-8 weekly checks and me doind the rest

pinkipunksmum

I to googled it and had oppsite problem wit everything read about kids WITH some laungage

ds was dx by the salt we now see but took her 6 months to be sure sadly here the salts are tied by senio mangerment that when a dc has a severe need and unlikely to talk they scale back salt as they can see and fix minor problems in the time spend with ds becomes all about waiting lists

Grrrr... don't get me started on waiting lists.

RE: How often do you see children that are nonverbal , ds has oral and veral as well as GDD receptive of 2.7

I'll be honest with you, pretty rarely over the long term - but it does happen. A lot of little ones may be nonverbal for a long while, though - not sure how old your son is? RE: the long term picture, I am working with a boy of 16 in a language unit now who was more or less nonverbal until Year 5 (also severe language disorder).He is now very verbal - can have a long conversation - but he would still struggle with longer words and his sentence structure would be choppy (e.g. 'Long time ago, my mum and my mum's sister, go there, buy new computer'). That's after a LOT of therapy but he is in the 'extremely rare' category - we have other students with dyspraxia who just have some minor clarity issues at 15/16 e.g. on longer words and AGAIN these would have been students with very severe presentations throughout childhood.

RE: How long does speech therapy go on for typically - if say they are verbal and forming sentences but unclear?

How long is a piece of string? lol
It depends on the types of things they are doing with their speech, how quickly they progress through sounds, how well they maintain gains, how intense speech therapy is etc. I worked with a little boy last year in a language unit who we spent SIX MONTHS doing 's' with - that's four sessions a week. I really thought at one point he'd never get it.. but then it started to click, and once he could blend it, we progressed to generalisation very quickly and the next three sounds were done in about six weeks! So it's so individual.. you just can't tell. You will find though that there will be times that progress is very slow and you feel like you're getting nowhere.. again, just one of those things with dyspraxia. Frustrating for you, but more frustrating for the poor child who's being drilled all the time and not getting anywhere with it!

RE: Is it easy to keep developmentally delayed, v active 3.5 yo engaged in these repetitive exercises?- he is normally v willing to please but is already resisting Mr tongue!

No! You have to be ultra-creative.. but they do get the hang of it (after a fashion). You also need to strike a balance, in the early days, between table work and repetitions in context. A little boy I worked with last year was so massively frustrated (4 and a half with no real consonants so e.g. 'Bear in the Big Blue House' was 'air i ih oo ow') that we had to do everything in play e.g. hiding games saying 'Boo!' (with little feedback). It took 4, maybe 5 months of being seen weekly before he was at a stage to do specific speech work - he just wouldn't have coped to begin with (I've met other kids like this, too!).

RE: The assessment on monday is apparently a pre-assessment, that is done by his SALT, and then if she has concerns he will be referred on for a proper assessment....is this is how it usually happens, or I am being fobbed off once again??!!

Different areas have different pathways. It sounds to me like if it looks like Dypraxia following assessment after the group she will refer him onto their local specialist - but you might want to clarify with her what exactly will happen. In my trust, the community SALT has to do a lot of assessment and trial therapy to see if there's progress before the child gets passed to the specialist in severe and specific speech disorder. This is because the specialists see the children with the most severe difficulty and because of the nature and intensity of the work, they only have capacity to see 20-30 kids for ongoing therapy (a typical community caseload is more like 120-150). To be honest, even this doesn't allow kids as much therapy as we would like them to have based on international evidence.

My tip for the day to anyone battling dyspraxia is cued articulation! Not everyone uses it but I can't imagine doing dyspraxia or speech sound therapy without it! It's a visual sign system to support and cue the production of sounds and you can find resources here:

www.stasspublications.co.uk/index.php?cPath=22

Take care