Verbal apraxia is a motor speech disorder. Children with verbal apraxia have difficulty coordinating oral motor movements necessary to produce and combine speech sounds to form syllables and words accurately. The child may be able to produce the word once, but unable to produce it again. It is important to remember that the child knows what he or she wants to say but has difficulty forming and sequencing words.
Characteristics of apraxia include:
- little or no babbling as an infant
- struggling, groping or labored speech
- reduced length of utterance
- words omitted from utterances
- reduced sound repertoire
- inconsistent, unpredictable errors
- frustration with communication difficulty