by Annette Pinder
In 2012 Carly Fleishman, who has childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) posted three questions on her Facebook page: What do you know about apraxia, and did you know I have it? Did you know one in five people with autism have it? Do you know what it is? Carly says people talk a lot about autism, believes they aren’t talking enough about apraxia, saying, “Every person I meet asks me why I can’t talk. They see my apraxia as a way of testing my intelligence when it is just a cloak to who I, and many like me, are like inside.”
The technical term for what Carly has is called childhood apraxia of speech, or CAS. It is a neurological speech disorder that affects a child’s ability to correctly produce sounds, syllables and words because their brain doesn’t signal the mouth for speech purposes. Children with CAS understand language and know what they want to say, but are unable to translate those thoughts into speech that is consistently understood by others.
According to the National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), CAS occurs in children and is present from birth. It most often occurs in boys, and is different from what is known as a developmental delay of speech, in which a child follows the “typical” path of speech development but does so more slowly than normal.
The causes of CAS are not yet known, but some scientists believe it is related to a child’s overall language development. The general consensus is that it is neurological, affecting the brain’s ability to send proper signals to move the muscles involved in speech. However, brain imaging and other studies have not found evidence of specific brain lesions or differences in brain structure in children with CAS. Children with CAS often have family members with a history of communication disorders or learning disabilities. This observation and recent research findings suggest that genetic factors may play a role in the disorder. Children with CAS do not outgrow it, so finding a speech and language pathologist with experience in treating CAS and apraxia specific techniques is critical for progress to occur.
