14/11/2025
This is a great explantation if CAS. If you don’t know much about it take a minute to read and look it up.
Like most things, it’s a matter of time until it walks into your office, practice, classroom or effects a family member.
Our CAS child is extremely intelligent , funny and inquisitive but the struggle is daily and multifaceted . And rough on a child
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What is Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) previously known as Verbal Dyspraxia?
CAS is a neurological speech disorder that can affect people from birth to adulthood, calling it ‘childhood’ apraxia of speech only indicates it has been present from birth. People with CAS have difficulty making the precise movements required for speech but there is no evidence of nerve or muscle damage. They have difficulty producing individual speech sounds and sequencing sounds together in words. This can make their speech unintelligible even to family members. There is no quick fix, children with CAS need intensive speech therapy, that follows the principles of motor planning, with a speech and language therapist to have any chance of improving their speech. Learning to talk is a very slow process. (I have heard it be said that they need to pronounce a word CORRECTLY 1000 times before it comes naturally). Some, like me, can take years in therapy until they master just one sound. I worked on getting the 'p' sound on the beginning of a word for 1 and a half years, day in day out before it finally clicked. I used to talk only using vowel sounds and missed the beginning and end sounds off words. It was almost impossible to understand me. With a lot of support, hard work and patience the majority of people with CAS will have clear enough speech to be understood. Even now at 24 not all my speech sounds are perfect and my speech does still sound a little different, more so if I’m extremely tired or ill.
Even though CAS is a neurological speech disorder it can affect so much more than just speech. I struggled with literacy so all aspects of school was difficult. Now I have intelligible speech I still have trouble with word retrieval, for example, I was talking about the speedometer in my car the other day but for the life of me I couldn’t remember its name and I called it a ‘speed thermometer’. Processing information can be hard, especially if it is given verbally, same with following instructions. I can keep the first two or three instructions in my brain but any more than that and I forget. I also spent years struggling with my self esteem and confidence, something that has improved since I started work and public speaking.
Living with CAS can make life challenging but it has nothing to do with our intelligence. We know and are capable of so much more than we are able to prove verbally.
