The Apraxia Guide: What Every Parent Should Know About Childhood Apraxia Apraxia is a motor disorder. The child is unable to transfer a speech messages from the brain to the mouth. This disorder can cause a child to be a “late talker” because of his/her inability to coordinate jaw, lip, and tongue movements.  In cases of Apraxia, the child’s speech intelligibility is unrelated to his/her language capacity; in other words, the child most likely understands more than what he/she can actually say. Apraxia is very different from a typical articulation disorder and so is the treatment approach to it. What is Apraxia? Apraxia is defined as a decreased ability to coordinate and initiate an imitated motor movement with the use of a body part. Apraxia can occur in the mouth and face, in the arms and legs, and more importantly in the speech muscles including those that are involved in respiration. A child with Apraxia will be able to produce involuntary or reflexive movements in a natural setting, such as waving goodbye, kissing your mother and using sporadic words; however when asked to imitate such movements or word the child will not be able to do so. The difficulty arises…