Shelby Township boy with apraxia of speech connects with author

SHELBY TOWNSHIP — A local boy has made a special connection with an author who will be coming to the Shelby Township Library to speak about his lifelong struggle with a speech condition called apraxia.

Children’s author Jordan Christian LeVan will be coming to the Shelby Township Library at 1:30 p.m. July 22 to speak about his book and to meet 7-year-old Jack Geyer, of Shelby Township, who has a similar condition.

This is part of a national tour: LeVan is coming to Shelby Township at the local apraxia community’s request. At press time, 160 people had registered to attend LeVan’s program.

The book is called “The Boy Who Couldn’t Speak, Yet.” It is part of a trilogy of books called “Jordan’s World.”

The book is about Jordan, who — as a boy in elementary school — couldn’t speak yet, so he was trapped inside his brain in Jordan’s World. Jordan has verbal apraxia, also known as childhood apraxia of speech, which is a neurological speech disorder. He knows what he wants to say, but his words don’t always come out.

Jordan’s mom comforts him and takes action at school to teach Jordan and others that it’s OK to be different, according to the book’s back cover.

“Jordan later comes to a point in his life of self-love and radical self-acceptance. He acknowledges being different isn’t a bad thing. After all, we are all made in our own original way. Jordan’s journey has just begun,” the back cover states.

LeVan, 26, has apraxia, a lifelong speech sound disorder that kept him from talking until he was 5 years old. According to his biography, he spoke his first complete sentence at the age of 12, and today he’s the author of Jordan’s World, a nonfiction children’s book trilogy about his experiences growing up that he wrote to help kids with the disorder.

LeVan graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology — focused on mental health — from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. LeVan runs a blog called Fighting for my Voice: My life with Verbal Apraxia, where he gives people an inside view on what it’s like to live with verbal apraxia.

Apraxia is a condidtion that 1-2 children per 1,000 have.

Erin and Darin Geyer are the parents of Jack, who has had apraxia of speech since he was born.

Erin Geyer said that they took Jack to speech therapy at the age of 3 and the private speech therapist was able to get him to talk at the first session. She said the therapist thought he had apraxia, and that began the family’s research on the condition. Jack is the Geyers’ first child.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Boys are late talkers. He’ll talk when he’s ready,’ and all these things, which they are well-meaning, you know. But with the case with apraxia, they can’t talk, so they have speech therapy. Of course, we regret not getting him speech therapy sooner. We tell people all the time, getting your child evaluated and going to speech therapy if they are not talking by the normal 18 months to two years, just go; it’s not going to hurt them. They might just need a little help or something like what our son Jack has and need more help,” she said.

Over the years, the speech therapy has dramatically helped Jack.

“He has made lots of progress, because at first the speech is not intelligible speech and it’s hard to understand them, so that was his speech for a while. He talks in whole sentences and fully communicates. He may have to think about a certain word for a while,” she said.

Erin Geyer discovered the author when she came across his videos online. She asked him questions to try to understand what her son was going through. She learned to try to understand what her son was trying to say and then think of the word to try to help him. She said the only way to know if a child has the condition is to get a professional opinion.

Jack explained via his mom why he’s going to see LeVan next month.

“Because I love Jordan and he has apraxia like me. This is my favorite book,” he said.

His mom then asked him how he feels about being able to talk now. Jack said, “Happy.”

This past May was apraxia awareness month.

Jennifer Tear-Shelton is Jack’s speech-language pathologist. She works with children who have both speech-based and language-based communication deficits.

“One of the many things that make Jack such a wonderful and unique student to work with is that he works so hard to overcome his communication deficits that result from apraxia of Speech. His family is very committed to Jack’s speech therapy services and his progress has been amazing to watch over the past two years I have worked with him,” she said in an email.

“Not many people outside of (speech-language pathologists) are aware of what apraxia of speech is, which is why I am so excited about Jordan’s book tour. Apraxia results from a disruption in the message from the brain’s planning of motor movements for speech, to the muscles in the mouth. This causes children to have difficulty with moving smoothly from one speech sound or vowel, to the next, when speaking,” she said.

She said it can be difficult to diagnose at a young age and is not a common speech diagnosis.

“I am so thankful to Jordan for sharing his journey and building awareness of this complex speech impairment,” said Tear-Shelton.

LeVan’s books can be found on Amazon and were published in September 2022.

LeVan said the fact that Jack can see himself in the book series and relate to LeVan’s character brings him joy.

“I have to thank the Geyers for not only welcoming the book series into their home but also welcoming my childhood stories to resonate with their son. If we can make one child not feel alone in their journey of apraxia, all of my adverse childhood experiences are worth it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” LeVan said via email.