I’ve recently learnt, that May is Apraxia Awareness Month.
For those of you who are not familiar with the term, Apraxia of Speech (AOS) is an uncommon neurological disorder that affects the brain pathways involved in planning the sequence of movements involved in producing speech. The brain knows what it wants to say, but cannot properly plan and sequence the required speech sound movements.
[source: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)].
It could be congenital or acquired and could affect children as well as adults. It’s also known as Verbal Apraxia, Verbal Dyspraxia, Developmental Apraxia and Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) when present in children.
—> More info can be found here: Apraxia Kids, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), 

When I started investigating my younger son’s speech delay, I did a lot of research and my research led me to suspect that my son could be suffering from CAS, but neither our family physician nor our pediatrician would help me with the diagnosis, saying that a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) would be the person to diagnose Apraxia… But as it turns out, of all the provinces in Canada, the one I live in, Ontario, restricts speech language pathologists from communicating the diagnosis of CAS. (Yep, and the doctors I’ve been to weren’t even aware of this fact).
I’m not sure if there is any other Canadian province that limits the SLP’s authority as is the case in Ontario, but as far as I know (and please enlighten me if I’m wrong), it seems like Ontario is the only one. Continue reading