About Apraxia

Debbie, almost a teen

Below are two short videos I found on the Apraxia-KIDS website.  This explains what we have gone through with our youngest daughter, Debbie.  She is a very bright 12-year-old starting 7th grade at home with me.  Lately I've been doing research to find out more about the future of kids diagnosed with Apraxia.

Apraxia is a communication disorder in which a person has trouble saying what he or she wants to say correctly and consistently. It is also known as verbal apraxia or apraxia of speech. It is not due to weakness or paralysis of the speech muscles or problems with the vocal cords. The severity can range from mild to severe - completely non-verbal. It is a neurological disorder of unknown cause.  (Kate@apraxiaspeaks.com)

Sometimes I have questioned whether we did the right thing returning to the mission field after only a year and a half of speech therapy, but when I listen to tapes of teens with Apraxia who have been in speech classes all their lives, I honestly believe Debbie's speech is as clear or more clear than theirs. We still have a ways to go, and school remains a struggle in some areas, but I do pray that God will use this disability for His glory in Debbie's life.

If anyone knows of a special education teacher and/or a speech therapist who would be interested in ministering in Mexico, the Oaxaca Christian School is in need of both.  We would love to have the option of sending Debbie to OCS at least part-time for high school, but this may not be feasible unless the right teachers are recruited who can help her in a specialized way, testing her personally and creatively to determine what she actually knows.

Looking back eight years, when Debbie could barely speak at all, and remembering not so long ago when we still struggled to understand what she was saying, we are grateful for the progress she has made.  People who don't know her sometimes comment that she has an interesting accent.  With her halting speech, it almost sounds like someone speaking English as a second language.  Her biggest challenge is vocabulary - trying to find the right label for the right thing, just like a foreigner learning English.  You can imagine how difficult it is for her to learn Spanish.  She understands a lot more than she speaks in both languages.

As you think of us, please pray for Debbie.  Starting this month we are starting a nutritional supplement, NutriiVeda, recommended on a website for teens with Apraxia.  We hope to see more improvement in school this year. I have no idea how it was discovered that this weight loss product affected and improved neurological conditions like Apraxia, but I'm willing to give it a try.