Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder in which the child has difficulty coordinating movements of the jaw, tongue, and lips when speaking. There is no known cause for CAS. It is not due to muscle weakness; however, the speech muscles do have difficulty planning and programming the movements. Common characteristics include difficulty blending sounds together, inconsistent sound errors, and trouble imitating simple words.
A child with apraxia of speech will not “outgrow” this speech disorder; therefore, traditional speech therapy or PROMPT therapy is essential. PROMPT stands for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Motor Phonetic Targets. Only those Speech-Language Pathologists who receive extensive training at the PROMPT institute can successfully carry out this technique during therapy sessions.
Paul is a PROMPT trained speech-language pathologist who has received rigorous training in executing PROMPT. During PROMPT therapy, Paul facilitates the child’s motor movements by manually guiding the child’s jaw, tongue and lips to produce a targeted word. The child learns to say functional and meaningful words while attending to a fun and motivating activity.