What are the red flags to know if my child has childhood apraxia of speech?
What are the red flags to know if my child has childhood apraxia of speech?
There are several red flags or signs that your child has apraxia of speech during early development. Red flags include:
- Limited inventory of consonants and vowels (how many sounds your child makes with specific letters) and gaps in types of sounds like saying “pie” instead of “bye.”
- Limited rise and fall of voice (pitch) when speaking (intonation).
- Only pronouncing words that have simple syllable shapes (part of a word that has one vowel sound), which are a combination of consonants “C” and vowels “V.” A simple syllable shape consists of words with one C and one V, like the words “me” or “up.”
- Words appear then disappear quickly.
- Your child leaves out sounds of words like saying “coo” instead of “school.”
Signs that your child has apraxia of speech between birth and two years include:
- Saying their first consonant after 12 months. Consonant sounds are not vowels (A, E, I, O, U).
- Saying fewer than three consonants by 16 months.
- Saying fewer than five consonants between 17 and 24 months.
- Focusing on bilabial sounds of speech where the lips nearly close (P, B, M, W), alveolar sounds where the tongue connects with the upper part of the jaw (T, D, N, L, S) and nasal sounds where air passes through the nose for a sound that forms in the back of their mouth (M, N).
- No velar or posterior sounds where the tongue touches the roof of their mouth (K and D) by 24 months.