Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech have difficulty with motor planning for speech, and are extremely difficult to understand. They often are very frustrated and use gesture, vocalizations and the rest of their body to help them get their point across. They may also be a very quiet toddler, with minimal babbling.

​

Motor planning for speech is our ability to plan and coordinate movement of our tongue and lips, and to manage air flow so that we can speak clearly. Motor planning for speech is similar to learning to plan a motor movement to play the piano or dance. At first when we are learning to play the piano or dance, we have to think about what we are doing, and we probably won't do it smoothly or proficiently. However, once a motor plan is well practiced and is a part of our body, we don't have to think about what we are doing, we simply play the piano or dance. Speech is the same way. Once we have lots of practice moving our lips and tongue to talk, we just simply talk without thinking about how we are talking.

​

Typically developing toddlers who are just learning to talk are also learning about speech motor planning. We often refer to their reduced intelligibility as"baby talk." However, typically developing children's speech becomes more and more clear as they age. By age 3, they are often 75% intelligible to unfamiliar listeners. By age 4, they should be very easy to understand. Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech often remain very unclear after age 4, without intervention.

​

Children with childhood apraxia have a very difficult time saying words clearly and often need to begin by practicing very simple motor plans. A very simple motor plan does not require much work. For example, to say "Oh!!" we practically just open our mouth.  Some motor plans for words can be quite complex, such as "basketball."We have to use our lips, our tongue, and we have to move our tongue from the front of our mouth to the back, and then back to the front again.

​

After learning a simple motor plan via lots of repetition and cues for motor planning, children with childhood apraxia can then build on that motor plan and move to a more complex motor plan.

​

Here's how our apraxia apps help with motor planning:

​

1. Each apraxia app has a targeted level of word complexity. Talk Tales, Simple Sounds (vowels, exclamations, animal sounds) is our easiest level, and is for non-verbal children and low verbal children. Talk Tales: Simple Words is our next level available and has words with very simple motor plans. This level is for children who can already imitate exclamations, animal sounds and a few words.

​

2.  Consistent with motor learning theory, the apraxia apps are designed to offer many opportunities for repetition of a target word. The apps are designed to engage children. Each target word has a corresponding animation or video that the child can play over and over. Some apps will have words that can also be sung to help with auditory memory for sounds.

​

3. Each apraxia app includes videos of how to say each target word/sound. Children can look at the videos to see how to produce each word/sound. Parents can use these videos to learn how to draw attention to their mouths while they are practicing the words with their child.