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- Jennifer
- MacLeod
- No
- Private Practice
When providing treatment for a child with moderate to severe CAS, it is very important to determine the child's interests first so that the activities are motivating, interesting, fun, and functional for the child. I choose a small number of speech targets to work on and we pick words that are functional, meaningful, and important to the child and his or her family. It is important to meet the child where he or she is at and begin treatment with the sounds they can say and the syllable shapes they can do and build from there. It is important to follow the principles of motor learning and it is very important to make sure we are engaging in activities that provide opportunities to practice our target words over and over. I like to use multi-sensory cueing (pictures, gestures, touch cues) to help the child when learning something new but we are always working toward fading the cueing so that he or she can produce the words without help. I pay attention to the feedback I am giving to make sure we start with letting the child know what to do to increase success and we move to a place where I can help the child figure out if the word or phrase was correct or not without my help. Just as with cueing, I gradually fade my feedback too. We always use a play-based approach to ensure we are engaging in fun, motivating, and meaningful activities - it is important that the children are having fun while learning!
I enjoy engaging with the Apraxia Kids website and have watched all of the treatment videos that are available. I am a member of the Apraxia Kids Facebook group and regularly read posts there. If I am listed in the directory, I would like to continue to build my skills in the area of CAS and hopefully attend the Boot Camp offered by Apraxia Kids in the future. I would like to promote awareness of CAS and engage more in this endeavor by participating in the Apraxia walks and other fund-raising and awareness-raising efforts.
I want parents to be included during treatment sessions and to be an integral part of the intervention as well. When treating CAS it is very important that family members are involved and know what targets we are working on and how to embed those targets into their daily routines to ensure that practice occurs at home in between therapy sessions.
AAC is a very important part of treating children with CAS. It is important first and foremost that they have a reliable means of communicating their ideas, wants, and needs. I regularly introduce sign with the children I work with to help them communicate. I have used LAMP Words for Life as well as TouchChat with students who have a diagnosis of CAS. Using these AAC programs with my students has been so important in building their language skills while we focus on their speech skills.