Childhood Apraxia Speech

To speak, messages need to go from your brain to your mouth. These messages tell the muscles how and when to move to make sounds. If your child has apraxia of speech, the messages do not get through correctly. Your child might not be able to move his lips or tongue to the right place to say sounds, even though his muscles are not weak. Sometimes, he might not be able to say much at all.

A child with CAS knows what she wants to say. CAS is a problem with her brain getting her mouth muscles to move, not with how well she thinks. You may hear CAS called verbal dyspraxia or developmental apraxia.

Even though you may hear the term "developmental," CAS is not a problem that children simply outgrow. A child with a developmental speech disorder learns sounds in a typical order, just at a slower pace. If your child has CAS, he will not follow typical patterns and will not make progress without treatment. It will take a lot of work, but your child’s speech can improve.