Apraxia of speech and language delay: the complexity of diagnosis and treatment of symptomatic children

Apraxia of speech is defined as the inability to sequence the movements required for accurate articulatory production, traditionally involving a deficit in speech motor programming. Language clinicians often confront about speech inconsistency clinical cases, which raise questions concerning the differential diagnosis between apraxia and language disorders. Such problem often results in the difficulty to establish an adequate treatment decision. In this work, we discuss a clinical report in which both diagnosis and treatment raise questions about the apraxic speech condition in childhood. We start from the recognition that, in apraxia, it seems imperative to consider that the body to be considered is the one that surpasses its organic functions and structure. Clinical consequences arc drawn from the premise that the human body is one whose ear can listen, and mouth can speak, i.e., the organic structure is a material realm open to the incidence of language and its "music", which creates the speaking body.