Tamara Kasper is a Speech-Language Pathologist as well as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and an expert on apraxia and autism. Tamara began her career as a speech pathologist, where she worked in a residential facility for children with emotional disturbances. Pretty quickly she became known as someone who worked well with children with problem behavior, so even as she moved on to a pediatric clinic, she continued to work with individuals who struggled with problem behavior. She quickly realized these behaviors were also connected to their autism diagnosis. As her clients struggled to communicate, their behavior got off-track, which caused them to end up in a negative feedback loop.
The first time one of Tamara’s clients had a behavior analyst on the team, was an eye-opening experience for her. In three hours, the behavior analyst taught her client with autism more than Tamara had in three months, and she knew that she needed to understand ABA therapy more. Today, Tamara trains other professionals on how to teach children with autism to speak using speech pathology and ABA techniques.
Apraxia is a neurological disorder that results in a motor planning deficit which means that kids have difficulty producing and sequencing sounds to form syllables, words, or longer utterances. Apraxia can be more difficult to diagnose in kids with autism, but Tamara argues that it doesn’t matter if apraxia is misdiagnosed. Treating children with autism for apraxia, with an eye on their unique circumstances, can only help them learn to more carefully form sounds and communicate better.
Because apraxia is about poor oral skills, we talk about some of the challenges around sippy cups, pacifiers, and bottles, which are often used by parents or teachers to keep a child quiet when they’re struggling to communicate, but which promote poor oral patterns that prevent speech.
I’ve met Tamara several times and have listened to her at conferences and I just knew I needed to talk to her about the challenges of helping children with apraxia. She is so generous with her knowledge, and I hope you can learn something new from her today.
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