Emma's Speech Assessment Report

I got the official report from the speech-language pathologist in the mail today. It's funny because Emma tried so hard for this assessment and I thought she spoke more clearly for this lady than she ever did at home, and still the assessment is dismal.

Here are some highlights from the four-page report:

• Significant problems for oral movements (praxis) for simple mouth and tongue movements. Oral diadochokinesis (rapid alternating movement) was slow, labored with groping for placement noted...There was difficulty noted for motor planning for blowing a whistle and blowing bubbles from a wand.
• Hodson Assessment of Phonological Processes3 (HAPP-3); the higher the Total Occurrence of Major Phonological Deviations (TOMPD) number (from 0 > 150) the more severe the phonological disorder. Emma's TOMPD was 155 this score indicates a profound disorder in phonological processes. Speech intelligibility is significantly affected for all processes tested with the exception of sounds in the initial position of words.
• The Kaufman Speech praxis Test (KSPT) which determines the level of of disorder compared to typical children and children with speech praxis disorders.
• Part 1 (oral movement) Unable to record a standard score for the raw score of 3. This is less than the 4th percentile for children with speech impairment and is less than an age equivalency of 2 years.
• Part 2 (Simple phonemic/syllabic level): Unable to record a standard score for the raw score of 56. This is less than the 18th percentile for children with speech impairment and is less than an age equivalency of 2 years.
• Part 3 (Complex phonemic/syllabic level): Unable to record a standard score for the raw score of 21. This is less than the 8th percentile for children with speech impairment and is less than an age equivalency of 2 years.
• Part 4 (Spontaneous length and complexity) Unable to record a standard score for the raw score of 1. This is less than the 13th percentile for children with speech impairment and is less than an age equivalency of 2 years.
• Assessment: Motor speech skills were severely impaired with difficulty noted for planning and executing the movements for speech and nonspeech oral tasks. Results indicate the presence of a severe verbal dyspraxia characterized by extensive replacements of sounds, omissions of sounds, disintegration in speech intelligibility with increased length and complexity of utterances, and the presence of profound phonological process disorder. Emma utilized backing for many sounds that she had difficulty producing. This was most prevalent in longer words and connected utterances. All sound classes, with the exception of lip sounds such as [m,b,p] were severely disordered, and these sounds were decreased in accuracy with greater word length and complexity.

So there it is. She still says the rehabilitation potential is "Excellent" and recommends two sessions per week for 3-4 months to start with. It is hard to see those words in writing "severe verbal dyspraxia," and "profound phonological process disorder," even though I knew them to be true all along. I hope to see much brighter reports once therapy is underway.