When I was two years old, my pediatrician suggested that I might have Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) because I was not yet talking and had other medical issues at the time. Later, in 2002 when I was two and a half years old, I was officially diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Later that year, I started speech therapy using the DTTC (Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing) method which I continued for all my years of speech therapy.

Essentially, I had a full-time job in the form of speech therapy for most of my life, starting from age 2. In speech therapy, I repeated words and phrases over and over, like actors rehearsing lines in a movie or TV show. However, the lines are broken down into individual sounds, letters, and words. Once you’ve mastered the words, you have to say them in a sentence like this: “I want this for dinner tonight.” There are 11 unique sounds in this sentence alone, and you have to nail down each of them in order to speak the sentence correctly.

That’s a lot of speech therapy, and it felt like a full-time job. But when you’re so young, you don’t have a choice in going to speech therapy. Over time, though, I gained respect for the process. Even though it was hard and not fun at all, doing something you don’t enjoy over and over might instill values in you that stick with you for life. In my case, Speech Therapy gave me not only my voice, but also a strong work ethic and a hunger to succeed in my life.

Apraxia of Speech has given me more at a younger age than I think anything else could have given me. You might think it’s crazy that I view Apraxia of Speech as a kind of blessing, but I do. I didn’t overcome Apraxia, but I was able to apply the values I learned during my journey with Apraxia of Speech to my life without squandering them.

People tend to underestimate me and my knowledge in general because of our society. The vast majority of people put so much emphasis on natural abilities that most people’s brains and bodies automatically do without much prompting from them, like walking and speaking. Suppose someone has trouble learning those essential life skills. If someone has not mastered those skills in very early childhood, most people assume that it’s a lack of intelligence and maybe even lesser than a human than them.

While some people with other disabilities are affected in all aspects of their lives, Apraxia of Speech only impacts my verbal communication. I am grateful that it does not affect other areas of my life, but is a significant part of it. I have developed my writing communication skills, which have become one of my greatest strengths. This has helped me to compensate for my difficulties with verbal communication.

People with Apraxia of Speech absorb information because our first instinct is not to talk first like some neurotypicals tend to do. However, when we are in group conversations, we analyze conversations, contexts, and environments to optimize what we will say, increasing the chances of being understood by others. Suppose the other people have a hard time understanding us. In that case, they might be able to understand a couple of words we may have said since we analyzed every part of the conversation up to that point. So, they can take an educated guess about what we may have said because of the established context of the conversation and the environment that we are in. Then, they might be able to understand what we are saying for the rest of the time we are speaking in the group. In summary, we rely on the environment and other people’s contributions to the conversation to help convey our ideas effectively.

It’s just taken longer for us to develop our speech. We are soaking in the world around us while we are still learning how to talk. When we start talking, we may still be unintelligible to talk to other people. Our speech production lags behind due to the time it takes us to develop our speech, so our brains are so ahead of our speech production that we are so mad at ourselves when we are younger. We cannot get out what we truly want to say, especially when talking with friends or family. It makes us sick to our stomach that we can’t express what we honestly think. So we find words we know we can say and could be understood by others.

Other than years of speech therapy, Apraxia only plays a minor role in my life because I have been living with Apraxia of Speech for so long. I have fully adapted to living with Apraxia of Speech. For example, if I’m at a fast-food restaurant where there is a number and the names of the item, I will say the item number instead of the item’s name so I have optimized my vocal vocabulary. The most significant impact is when I go to places with loud music; I might need to repeat myself more to get the thing I want from that place of business.
Also, if there is a word that I do not say often, it’s because I might struggle just to be able to pronounce the word. It doesn’t happen often anymore. If it does, I just laugh at myself because I can say whatever I want 99% of the time. I’m ok with that 1% of the time where I need more time to be able to say that word since the word is either new to me or a word I rarely say.

Childhood Apraxia of Speech has made us work very hard just to be able to achieve one of the most basic things in life. From day one, we have learned how to navigate the world with Apraxia which tried to take away from us one of the most important skills a person could have. No other disability we might have will stop us from adapting to our life and prevent us from being the best person we can be, even with all our challenges. That’s why you shouldn’t set low expectations or hold us back, especially if we have other disabilities.

Dive deeper into Mark’s story & read additional advice he had to share from a blog written by Mark in May 2022.

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