Working on Verbal Dyspraxia with a Speech and Language Therapist

Common, dyspraxia is a learning disorder affecting 5 to 7% of children aged 5 to 11: it affects the performance of certain voluntary gestures and actions. Affecting 1 to 2 children in 1,000, verbal dyspraxia more specifically creates difficulties with speech. Let’s find out together how a speech and language therapist can gradually ease the consequences of this disorder through rehabilitation.

Verbal dyspraxia: definition, cause and symptoms

While verbal dyspraxia targets difficulties with speech, this doesn’t mean the child’s muscles aren’t working properly, or that they lack stimulation. This specific language development disorder results in a deficit in phonological and phonetic planning, as well as in the motor execution of speech.

In practice, the child with DYS struggles to articulate sounds and words clearly, despite clear effort. They may pronounce the same word differently within a few minutes: a “boat” might become “doat”, then “oat” or “poat”. Learning seems to constantly have to start over.

A child with dyspraxia will find it easier to pronounce one-syllable words like “pot” or “hand”, whereas combining two syllables will be harder (“pepper”), let alone longer words, which represent a significant challenge for them (“chocolate”).

Dyspraxia appears from the child’s first year, showing itself, between 10 and 15 months, through a lack of babbling, difficulties with feeding, gagging, and a lot of drooling. Up to age 2, they still don’t say many words, rarely imitate sounds and noises, and continue to drool. At preschool and school age, as the child remains hard to understand, they compensate with gestures and facial expressions, while constantly working out how to position their mouth to form the word.

What impact does speech and language therapy have?

Clinical observations tend to show that verbal rehabilitation in children with dyspraxia improves speech motor skills, even if progress is very slow. Speech and language therapists focus their sessions on:

• Motor control: activities involving deliberate, conscious, and precise repetition of syllables and/or syllable sequences. Intensive exercises improve the neuromotor programmes for speech.
• Augmentative systems: as with deaf children, using supportive gestures for phonemes, such as pictographic aids.
• Melodies: the therapist produces sounds that the child must repeat. The professional exaggerates the stressed syllables and adapts the rhythm to the child’s abilities.
• Use of written language: bringing stability to the child with verbal dyspraxia, writing lets them see the sequence of phonemes that they can’t find or keep losing, which helps improve their pronunciation.

Faced with this learning difficulty, don’t hesitate to contact a speech and language therapist on the Ora-Visio platform to begin appropriate, personalised rehabilitation, to support your child’s language development!