Apraxia Awareness Day

My nineteen year old son, the one who takes care of the animals and milks the goats, was diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech a few months before his fourth birthday.  When he was seen by a specialist at nine years of age, the specialist said that it was the severest case he'd ever had, and described some other problems that we knew he had, we'd just never had them actually named before.

I've never blogged about this because I try to respect my children's privacy, so I rarely mention their weaknesses unless I have something useful to say to moms about raising and educating children, and I can do it discreetly, which is obviously impossible to do when writing about the only child in my family who has an actual medically diagnosed handicap of a rather profound nature.

So, for now, I want to point you to an article that nicely summarizes the condition and mentions some of the difficulties faced by these children and their families -- What Is Apraxia and Why Should You Care?

If this is something that y'all would find helpful for me to blog about, then I'll try harder to figure out how to write about it.  Until now I've only mentioned it in a generic "learning differences" kind of way, both because I don't know how my son would feel about me being more specific, and because that way the information might be useful to any mom.

Let me know what you think.