Not everyone has heard of dyspraxia – a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by problems with muscle coordination and poor organisational skills. Even less well-known, perhaps, is verbal dyspraxia. As you might guess, someone with this condition finds it difficult to coordinate the movement of their tongue, lips, larynx, palate or facial muscles, meaning their speech can be unintelligible.
As with other neuro diversities, verbal dyspraxia has a wide range of variations and each person will have an individual profile of difficulties. According to information on the Dyspraxia Foundation’s website, common characteristics include:
- Having a limited range of consonant or vowel sounds
- Difficulties with the volume, pitch, rhythm and tone of speech
- Tendency to leave out words or insert the ‘wrong’ one into a sentence instead.
- Language and literacy development may be delayed
- Sometimes a family history of speech problems
Verbal Dyspraxia Affects a Child’s Ability to Access Education
Not surprisingly, children with verbal dyspraxia face a great many obstacles at school. Mikey is twenty-one and lives near Solihull in the west Midlands. He was diagnosed with verbal dyspraxia at the age of two when his mum noticed that his speech wasn’t developing in the same way as his peers. He also had traits of sensory processing disorder, dyslexia, OCD and autism, which also affected his ability to cope with schoolwork.
“I struggled throughout my education with everything to do with literacy, making accessing the curriculum almost impossible” he explains. “My mum managed to make sure that I had an EHC Plan, so I did have some one-to-one support, but even so, I left primary school with the reading and writing age of a seven-year-old. At secondary school, thanks to the amazing help of the learning support unit and a lot of hard work on my part, I caught up and passed my GCSEs. After three attempts, I finally passed English at college.”
Verbal Dyspraxia Affects Confidence
It took Mikey many years of speech therapy and hard effort to improve his ability to talk but although as an adult, he can now make himself understood, he admits he is still anxious when conversing with people he hasn’t met before. “I still have speech-sound errors and word-retrieval difficulties and I worry that strangers won’t understand me or that they will look at me and wonder why a young adult can’t speak properly,” he points out. “The lasting effect of not having a voice as a child stays with people long after they find their voice.”
Happily, he went on to pass his Level 3 Childcare and Education qualification and now works as an early years educator. He also gives talks to trainee teachers and speech and language therapists around the world, raising awareness and understanding of verbal dyspraxia, and has been running a Facebook group since he was thirteen, supporting others with the condition.
Not Enough Understanding of Verbal Dyspraxia
“There is definitely not enough awareness in schools,” Mikey comments. “Teachers don’t get enough training in SEN and there are many children with speech and language difficulties where school staff have no understanding of the impact of their struggles on both learning and friendships. Health professionals aren’t much better – even some speech and language therapists don’t understand how to treat verbal dyspraxia. This is something I am trying to change.
“As for the general public, my own family had never heard of the condition until I received my diagnosis nineteen years ago and I hear from many people diagnosed today who say the same thing,” he continues. “When you tell someone you have verbal dyspraxia, you’re met with, ‘What’s that?’ or, ‘Don’t you mean dyslexia?’”
In addition, he believes, getting a diagnosis appears to be more difficult these days because health professionals now like to wait till children are older to avoid a misdiagnosis.
According to the Dyspraxia Foundation, people with verbal dyspraxia can be helped with a programme of exercises that improve fine motor control and breathing. They caution that this is a slow, tiring process and that it works best when children are encouraged to have fun and persevere.
“I would like people to understand that it is a lifelong, neurological speech disorder,” Mikey concludes. “It doesn’t just disappear the day we are discharged from speech and language therapy or become an adult. Children with verbal dyspraxia grow up to be adults with verbal dyspraxia. It evolves and presents itself differently as we find our voice.”
Visit Mikey’s Wish – https://www.facebook.com/mikeyswish/
