Signing & Apraxia - the awesome benefits from the eyes of Apraxia Mom

 THANK YOU Apraxia Mom for this awesome post!

Last month we did a post on the benefits of using sign language with Apraxia (Check here!). We paired up Apraxia Mom for a similar post and I wanted to share.

Here's the link to Apraxia Mom's article. We also copy/pasted it here for you to read about Apraxia Mom and her journey with apraxia and sign language.

Long ago, back in the day when my girl was barely a year old and even had a diagnosis of apraxia, we were signing with her.


At the time, I thought it was so cool that my little baby girl could tell me "milk" and "more" and "please" and "thank you" with her little hands. 
She wasn't talking, but we were communicating.
Time went on and she still wasn't talking.


We were communicating, but it was hard and it wasn't the type of communication that I thought I would be having with my baby girl.
Back then, I didn't realize that I was actually paving the way of communication for her.


Back then, I just thought it was cute. Once she hit 18 months and still wasn't talking as much as a typical child of her age, we got our apraxia diagnosis. I spent countless hours on Google, trying to find ways to fix her and help her. And the funny part was that many sites encouraged signing with your child.


By the age of 2.5 years, my daughter was able to sign up to 100 different signs! People in the grocery stores were amazed at her "talent". Family members accused me of delaying her speech even more.

What did they know?

By pairing a word with its visual cue, I was allowing my daughter to feel less frustration and to express herself. I always gave her the verbal cue as I signed it to her, and she picked up on it very quickly. Soon, I saw that she was attempting the verbal word as she signed. Then, I saw the sign slowly fade as the word became isolated in her vocabulary.

Genius approach!



This was NOT the be-all-end-all-cure-all for apraxia.
What is did do is allow an avenue for myself, my husband, and my daughter to communicate while we were working on her speech therapy.

Fast forward 7 years and I am still a HUGE supporter of signing.
Whether your child can speak or not, this is a great way to facilitate communication with your baby.

A great lady named Kristy over at Hear My Hands has a wonderful site to teach you just about everything that you need to know about ASL. Here is a little about her:

HearMyHands was created 2008 after a research study conducted by Kristy at LaSalle University using sign language and hearing infants. The study was a success and HearMyHands launched from there! HearMyHands provides workshops, classes and tutoring for babies, children and adults.

Kristy is a masters level certified Signing Time instructor in South Jersey. She has been a member of the Sign2Me Presenters Network since 2006.

Kristy has her bachelors in Communication Science & Disorders and masters in Speech-Language Pathology. She is currently enrolled at Nova Southeastern for her doctorate in speech-language pathology.

Kristy truly enjoys learning the language of ASL and is eager to share that joy with others. Knowing infants' minds are like little sponges, learning ASL is just a great way to help them absorb everything they have at the tip of their little fingers.

It is people like Kristy that make our jobs as parents with children with speech and language issues a little easier.
I just wish I knew her back in 2004 when my journey just began.
You can find Kristy and her site on Facebook as well as Twitter, too!

Signing & Apraxia: Why should you use ASL?

Why Sign Language is Beneficial for Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

            Sign language has shown to be beneficial for children diagnosed with CAS.  First, what is Childhood Apraxia of Speech?

-       CAS is a motor speech disorder. Therefore it’s important to understand the component of the brain that is negatively impacted – the motor strip area.

-       Motor planning is difficult. What’s that mean? Coordinating movements of the jaw, tongue, lips, and palate can be challenging.

-       Difficulties happen when the brain tries to tell the mouth how to move, and how to achieve sounds, words, sentences, etc. The brain knows what it wants to say but can’t relay that message to the mouth (lips, tongue, palate) effectively.

It’s important to stress the motor planning component of CAS because I truly believe sign language can help children with CAS because of the motor planning skills that are used in sign language!

Motor planning in layman’s terms examples:

1.                    Think about brushing your teeth. Think about which hand you use. Think about how you brush your teeth. You don’t typically change the hand you use to brush your teeth. You don’t typically change the set of teeth you brush first (top/bottom).  You don’t necessarily have to look in the mirror and concentrate while brushing your teeth. 

2.                    Think about texting on the old fashion flip phones. Think about how quick you got at texting and perhaps you didn’t even have to look at the keyboard!

THESE are SUCESSSES we have on a DAILY basis because of our ability to MOTOR PLAN!

Again, children with CAS struggle planning the speech movements to communicate effectively. 

Sign Language can be used to:

1. Reduce Frustration
2. Provide Symbolic Communication (the signs mean something)
3.  Increase Expressive Communication
4. Relieves Pressure to Verbally Communicate and Allows for More Focus on Academics
5. Positive and Successful Communication Attempts
6. Better Control of Rate of Speech for Both Adults and Children (when signing individuals tend to slow down to allow for simultaneous verbal and sign communication)
7. Provides Visual Cues
8. REINFORCES MOTOR PLANNING!

Sign Language will not limit their speech attempts or increase their difficulties verbalizing. The first fear is that a speech therapist is going to put speech therapy (training, drills, etc.) on the back burner and focus on sign language. It’s important to note – sign language is an awesome supplement!

Check out other resources that express the positive change ASL can have in your life

Signing Time explaining Benefits

Sign2Me explaining Benefits

www.apraxia-kids.org

For great sign language products to help you along the way, check out our  Amazon Store!

Don’t see what you want? Email me! hearmyhandsllc@gmail.com

We'd love to hear your success stories with CAS and ASL! And if you don't have one, this is the year to create one!