Fintan was referred to Speech Therapy at PMC just before turning 2 years of age.  In the early stages of Speech Therapy, it became evident that Fintan was demonstrating signs of Verbal Apraxia and was then diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) by his Speech-Language Pathologist accordingly which requires ongoing, intensive Speech Therapy services. When Fintan began speech therapy, he was using less than 5 recognizable words, was not readily using verbalizations to communicate his wants, needs, & feelings, and demonstrated difficulty with imitation skills and motor planning skills for speech sounds and word productions.  He has always demonstrated intact auditory comprehension skills.  Fintan was highly motivated to communicate with others but struggled to do so verbally causing frustration for both him & his family. 

Fintan is now 3 years old and continues to make remarkable progress over the course of Speech Therapy intervention services at PMC.  Over the course of ongoing, intensive speech therapy services, Fintan developed functional means of communication such as the use of sign language with an amazing sign vocabulary which helped to decrease his communication frustration level.  He worked towards his ability to improve his motor planning skills for speech beginning with imitation of sounds in play and songs/music to then working towards building imitation of vowels, consonants, and syllables and eventually into recognizable words/word approximations.  Fintan is now demonstrating a significant increase in verbalized words with improved speech intelligibility and is consistently using at least 2-word utterances; given support, he is producing 3-5 word utterances.  He no longer relies on sign language as his primary mode of communication with others.  His motor speech planning, articulation, vocabulary, and grammar are improving weekly.  His speech intelligibility has greatly improved.



Early intervention, a supportive family with consistent daily practice and carryover in the home environment, as well as consistent weekly services have been key in Fintan’s ongoing success!  I am amazed by this happy, loving, little boy and the progress he has made and continues to make to overcome CAS and achieve his speech, language and communication goals!  There is nothing this little boy cannot do, overcome, and accomplish and it has been an absolute joy to see how far Fintan has come and continues to grow!

~Ms Sharon, PMC Speech Language Pathologist

Way to go, Fintan!

*Posted with permission