**The names of clients have been changed to protect confidentiality. 

Luca came to me for a comprehensive Speech Evaluation when he was 2 years old. He spoke mainly in vowels and some syllables. While he was able to produce a few words, the number and consistency was far below his age-matched peers. Luca had already been in Speech Therapy for about 6 months, but his parents knew that it was time for a change. 

Luca’s mother had researched Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS), and though Luca was currently too young for me to officially diagnose this Speech Disorder, his mother wanted to reach out to a specialist and see if a new therapeutic approach could work. 

Luca demonstrated many of the characteristics of CAS: articulatory inconsistency, limited consistent word production, voicing errors, and the use of vowels to stand in for whole words. His speech patterns were highly variable, and his attempts at communication often resulted in frustration for him, his parents, and his siblings. Luca wanted to communicate very much, but his neural pathways needed a lot of support.

We started off with 3 sessions a week for 30 minutes. At first, Luca and I built rapport by playing, and my dynamic therapy approach was supportive to his communication needs at a holistic level. I began to understand more of his speech patterns, and was able to start providing support for the words that were most motivating for him. Though CAS wasn’t able to be diagnosed when I first started with him, I applied the Principles of Motor Learning within our sessions, and he began to thrive. We created a target list of 10 words, about 4 of which we targeted each session. His parents and I collaborated both within and outside of therapy sessions in order to adjust his target words based on what he was currently attempting and accurately producing. Over time, Luca’s speech was becoming more clear by the day. After a year, we reduced our session time to 2 sessions a week for 45 minutes. By 1.5 years, we had reduced down to 1 session a week for 60 minutes. Over the course of our work together, Luca changed from a toddler with limited ability to communicate verbally into a 4 year old who was speaking so clearly and effectively, that he was on par with his age-matched peers!

Stories like this are the reason that I specialize in CAS, and motivate me to continue to hone my skills in order to best serve my clients. I am so grateful to my clients who entrust me with their little ones, and so thrilled that I get to be a part of their Speech Journey. Cheers to Luca!