So how did we get to this point? I had a fairly normal pregnancy, some blood pressure issues, but nothing too concerning, and a drug-free/intervention-free delivery. Nate weighed in at 9 pounds 13 ounces, probably one ice cream sundae short of 10 pounds! He was a happy and easy going baby, sleeping through the night at 3 months. It wasn't until he was about a 1 that I started to think something was a little different. He didn't seem to babble much and when he did it was really noticeable-probably because it was so rare. He was very active and even though he wasn't walking he "army" crawled everywhere. And he was quick! We all just figured that being he was the youngest of 3 boys, that things were maybe a little behind being that he was the baby of the family.
At 18 months he started preschool and at that time he still wasn't walking. He continued doing the army crawl or hands and feet when needed. He didn't seem to mind. At 19 months he decided it was time to walk. All the while he was being seen by a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) and an Occupational Therapist (OT) once or twice a week through his preschool. By the time he turned 2, we clearly knew something was definitely wrong in that all he could say was a sequence of vowel sounds, mostly short a (like in cat) or oo (like in moo). Not a single word, including dada or mama. He was communicating, just without words. It was worrisome but everyone tried to reassure us that he was just a late talker or that everyone was doing the talking for him. (These kinds of 'helpful' reassurances get tiring after a while).
We took him into his pediatrician who referred us to another SLP. She was young and had recently graduated. It was almost as if she didn't quite seem to know what to do with him and since he was only 2, stated that he possibly had a language delay (there's a big difference between "delay" and "disorder", but I didn't know that at the time). Since it wasn't a medical issue, he could not been seen through our health-care provider. This was disappointing news but she recommended that we look into the local area's Regional Center who could direct us to resources that might help. At the time I was continuing my on-line research into what might be wrong. Googling anything that had to do with children understanding everything but not being able to speak. I had never heard of Apraxia or Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) but through many hours spent on-line this seemed to be a possibility. Many of the descriptors seemed to match.
The Regional Center sent a nurse and clinician to do some assessing on Nate late in the spring. They agreed that he was a delightful boy and that in most areas he scored average, except in expressive language. The only thing he qualified for was an in-home play therapist. As I continued reading and researching, I felt more and more strongly that CAS was the disorder that Nate had. He enjoyed working with the therapist who came to our house and we all worked hard on increasing our knowledge of sign language (ASL). I printed out photos and reminders of the signs and posted them around the house. Being that none of us are hard of hearing or have much experience with ASL, we had to work on it. Now he knows between 40-50 signs and has many of his own gestures or sounds. It has definitely helped to decrease his frustration in being able to communicate his needs.
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