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Speech Therapist Helps Kids With Apraxia of Speech
Reported by JoAnne Purtan
Web produced by Kelly Reynolds

	Nancy Kaufman has helped Drew improve his speech for the last year. Video

It can often be difficult to understand children when they're in that baby-talk stage, but some children can barely speak. Now, their parents have a place to get help here in Michigan.

Eva is two-and-a-half-years old, and quite a talker. Little ones her age typically use at least 200 words to help them navigate their little world.

Drew, at two-years and seven-months, had a hard time even imitating the most basic sounds.

"At that point, he had a 11-month-old vocabulary and he was grunting. We thought that Drew was going to be a point where he'd have to learn sign language," said Linda Lobbestael, Drew's mother.

Drew has apraxia of speech. He can't coordinate the muscles of his mouth, and has trouble combining consonants and vowels to say words or phrases. For the past year, Drew has been working with West Bloomfield speech therapist Nancy Kaufman. She developed the nationally known Kaufman Method. It's a way of diagnosing and teaching kids the easiest way to say words until their motor-speech coordination improves.

"I might say to the child, say apple, say apple, and they don't have a clue how to say that word. But if I change that word and make it simplified, and say try 'apo', then they might be able to do that," Kaufman said.

"Even though there's a lot of drill and a lot of work in one session, I try not to let them feel like they're working hard."

Gordon comes from Minnesota.

"It's working. By the second week, we saw changes in Gordon. We saw him stepping up from two word combinations, to three and sometimes four and it's happened that fast. It's like she gave him permission to speak," said Donna Burns, Gordon's mother.

It's not known exactly what causes apraxia of speech, but Kaufman says that by using her technique, within about a year, kids who could only grunt at first are then able to combine words into sentences and phrases.

"It's amazing. It's just amazing to see the difference," Drew's mom said.

There are things you can watch for that may indicate apraxia of speech, including a lack of cooing or babbling as an infant, and grunting instead of using first words.

For more information, call Nancy Kaufman at 248-737-3430.



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