Apraxia--The Journey Part 1

They Apraxia Journey began 29 years ago, when my parents seeked help for my speech. I wouldn't stop talking, but what was being said, nobody really knew. My first speech teacher I remember was Ms. Crabby. I remember vividly sitting in an inclosed room with heavy headphones on my head, raising my hand every time I heard the beep. My second vivid memory is speech class with Miss Stagner. By now, I was in grade school and had stopped talking as much since kids can be cruel and I was consistently being made fun of for my speech. It didn't help that I lived in a town of blondes and had dark black hair or that I was being pulled out of class for speech.
I remember the games, the pracitices and the reassurance that I was doing great.
My last viivid memory of speech was a meeting with my mom (and possibly my dad) and Miss Stagner, prior to moving to a new school. I was 13 and I was given the option to continue speech class in the new city, or decide I was done. After 10 years of speech class, I decided I was done. By then, I was uncomfortable speaking in large groups of people, having improptu conversations or indepth conversations because I knew the chances of me misprouncing a word would probably occur. It probably didn't help that I spoke very quickly and that teenagers aren't much kinder than first graders when it comes to speech problems.
In high school, it wasn't that big of a deal. I hated classes that made us give speech, but I think I attended a large enough school that my speech disorder wasn't that big of a deal.
In college, I remember three instances that reminded me that my speech was far from perfect. The first was learning that the things we color with aren't pronounced crown, but cray-on. It was quickly discovered, though, that the misprounciation is because my parents also misprounce it and not directly related to my speech delay. The second instance was when I realized that not only can I not hear the difference between pin-pen, I also can't say it. This was a huge realization, as it was a class needed to be a early childhood teacher. I had changed majors prior to taking that class and I was thankful since, teaching the difference between those two words--seems important for a teacher. The third, was when someone asked me how to spell my name. Age 22 and I find out that for 17 years (took me until I was 5 or 6 to be able to pronounce my name semi-correctly) I was misprouncing my name (again--the en-in problem).
Shortly after Grace was born, I began worrying about one of my kids having a speech disorder. That worry, encouraged me to seek more information on what my problem was. After reading online and talking to a speech patholgist on-line, I discovered that I more than likely had dyspraxia.
After I read the description to my mom, she agreed that that was the main problem, with probably articulation problems adding to the struggle.

Dyspraxia of speech is
For some children, the primary difficulty is in making and co-ordinating the precise movements, which are used in the production of spoken language, which results in severe and persisting speech production difficulties. The condition is termed developmental verbal dyspraxia: it may occur in isolation or in conjunction with general motor difficulties.

Basically it means that while I can hear the sound in my head, by the time the signal gets from my brain to my mouth, I wasn't able to form the correct sound. Now as an adult, I know there are times that I have to stop, think and really focus on making the correct sounds. I've learned to adapt and even joke and laugh about the speech problems, but there are still struggles.

I'm not comfortable teaching my kids how to read or the sounds of their letters, so we rely on vidoes. I sometimes confuse them with wrong pronounciations of words, when I don't stop and think about it. I avoid situations where there will be a lot of impromtu talking or situations where I'll be talking to someone I don't know well (customer service, one on one meetings, etc). Pretty much any situation, where it's more noticeable.

But, unless someone is told that i have a speech problem, it's not noticeable.

But, my biggest fear as a parent was that if they had any delays, it would be a speech delay...not that the speech delay is bigger than other delays, just that I didn't want my kids to experience a struggle I knew so well.