{"id":292,"date":"2013-07-24T16:23:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T22:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/speechchick.com\/?p=292"},"modified":"2013-08-14T16:41:21","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T22:41:21","slug":"a-systematic-approach-to-viewing-and-treating-apraxia-of-speech-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/?p=292","title":{"rendered":"A Systematic Approach to Viewing and Treating Apraxia of Speech: Part Two – What is Apraxia???"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part Two: What is Apraxia???<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Imagine you are driving to a familiar place.\u00a0 A place that you have driven to many times before.\u00a0 Maybe your work or your school.\u00a0 Someplace that you drive to often.\u00a0 Now \u2013 think about how much thought you put into your trip to get there.\u00a0 It is surprising how little we actually have to think about trips like these.\u00a0 In fact \u2013 there have been many times that I got in my car, began driving, and next thing I knew I was home.\u00a0 And I wondered \u2013 how did I even get here \u2013 I don\u2019t really remember the drive.\u00a0 I am sure you have experienced this same feeling.\u00a0 Our bodies and our brains kind of go into autopilot mode when doing things we are familiar with.<\/p>\n

Now imagine you are driving to a completely new place.\u00a0 A place you have never been before.\u00a0 When making a trip like this – a map or directions become crucial.\u00a0 There is almost no way you will get where you want to go without them.\u00a0 The map or directions tell you which direction to head in and they tell you where to turn.\u00a0 They give you a guide and a plan as to what to do.\u00a0 You have to be thinking about and focusing on the plan in order to follow it correctly.\u00a0 And as time goes on, the more a destination is traveled to, the less attention and focus is needed because the route is familiar and well know.<\/p>\n

Now compare these two scenarios to speech.\u00a0 When typically developing children are exposed to speech their brains start to create a bunch of maps.\u00a0 These maps store the traveling information required for speech.\u00a0 These maps tell the articulators how and when to move to convey specific messages.\u00a0 They show the movement patterns necessary to travel from one speech sound to another.\u00a0 And as time goes on, the more a speech movement pattern is practiced\/used, the less attention and focus is needed to produce it correctly.<\/p>\n

Now compare this to children with Apraxia.\u00a0 I have learned after working with many apraxic children that they are simply missing their maps.\u00a0 They know what they want to say or where they want to go \u2013 but they don\u2019t know how to get there.\u00a0 Speech for them is like hopping in a car and traveling to a destination they have never been before without any map or directions.\u00a0 You can see how frustrating this would be.\u00a0 They may even know where to begin, and where they want to end, but they have no idea how to get from point A to point B.\u00a0 To them, speech seems like an endless amount of unknown endpoints and they are left driving around lost and discouraged.\u00a0 Often times it seems like they jump in their car and start driving around any road they can find \u2013 any road that seems familiar and it is just pure luck if they find the right route to take.\u00a0 This is what groping looks like.\u00a0 These kids are searching with their articulators to find the correct points of contact and are trying to move correctly from one sound to the next.\u00a0 Once they find a route (or movement pattern) that is successful \u2013 it needs to be practiced and repeated so many times that they can find it again when they need it \u2013 through memory instead of a map.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 you can see how overwhelming and discouraging this journey would be.\u00a0 Most of the time, when I meet kiddos like this, they are ready to give up on verbal communication.\u00a0 It is way too much work with very little success.\u00a0 I would probably feel like giving up too.\u00a0 So the real question is how can we help them?\u00a0 Where do we start?<\/p>\n

***Remember to FOLLOW ME along my 7 post journey in which I will describe my systematic approach to viewing and treating apraxia of speech in great detail. \u00a0Don’t forget to add your comments and feedback and together we can conquer apraxia of speech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part Two: What is Apraxia??? Imagine you are driving to a familiar place.\u00a0 A place that you have driven to many times before.\u00a0 Maybe your work or your school.\u00a0 Someplace that you drive to often.\u00a0 Now \u2013 think about how much thought you put into your trip to get there.\u00a0 It is surprising how little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[54,34],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apraxia-of-speech","tag-speech-therapy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/speechchick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}