When Michael Barone was about 2, he started speaking a few words, including "Mom," "Dad," and "Mallie," the name of his boxer.

"Then, when he was about 2 1/2, we started realizing he wasn't saying those words anymore," said his father, Joe Barone, a Post-Gazette employee from Whitehall. "He'd grunt and point. ...

"When that became his sole means of communication ability, we began realizing something was going on here."

Just what was going on wasn't diagnosed until after the Barones took Michael to see speech pathologist Claire Vatz in Mt. Lebanon when he was 4. She diagnosed Michael with "childhood apraxia of speech," a disorder also sometimes called "verbal apraxia," "developmental apraxia of speech," or "verbal dyspraxia."

A child with the disorder is unable to turn the mental plan to speak into the physical movements necessary to sound out words.

"It's a pediatric, childhood speech-sound disorder where the brain messages coming from the speech centers of the brain to tell the muscles what to do are distorted, off-track, mixed up," said Dave Hammer, a highly regarded speech pathologist based at Children's Hospital Pittsburgh North.

"So it's really not a weakness in the muscles, but it is a problem within the messages being sent to the muscles of speech. That would be the lips, tongue, jaw and your palate."

It is a fairly rare disorder, Mr. Hammer said. Some 10 percent of the general pediatric population have speech/language deficits, and of that 10 percent, 3 to 5 percent of the children with speech deficits have apraxia, he said.

Cause in most cases is indeterminable.

"We don't know what causes it for children who have not had any brain trauma and even for those who have," Mr. Hammer said. "Apraxia is not as likely as other speech disorders that stem from brain trauma, so the likelihood of brain injury leading to apraxia is not that great. ...

"[With] most of our kids, it's really an unknown cause, and even a sophisticated brain scan may not see anything."

Determining the cause of Michael's apraxia was made harder because of problems that accompanied his birth 11 weeks premature. He weighed just 3 pounds, 1 ounce and was, his doctor said, in "grave condition." He spent 86 days in Allegheny General Hospital's neonatal unit, a month of it on a respirator. He had seizures and a heart murmur.

"But they all healed by the time he left the hospital," said Mr. Barone, adding that he and his wife, Rachel, believe all the prayers of people in his and other churches played a role in those recoveries.

However, as Michael grew older it became obvious that along with the apraxia there are developmental problems with his gross and fine motor skills.

"We still don't know whether the apraxia is due to his being born prematurely or whether it would have happened at 40 weeks [gestation]," his father said. "He didn't walk until he was 2."

Now 9, Michael still runs very slowly -- his fastest gait is more of a jog -- and he can only jump about an inch off the ground. "He has trouble with a spoon, and his handwriting is kind of behind," Mr. Barone said.

But he can talk -- and pretty clearly at that.

"He's probably 75 percent intelligible to those who don't know him," Mr. Barone said. "We understand him about 95 percent of the time."

He started speaking again at age 6 -- after several years of therapy that began when he was still 2 and continues today.

Mr. Hammer said many of the children with apraxia need years of therapy, though it may get less intense as they get older.

The challenge for the pathologist, he explained, is finding a way to take the drudgery out of countless repetitions of "simple-to-more-complex sound sequences" -- not just in therapy sessions but at home.

"I consider even as intense a therapy as we make, providing it three to five times a week, we still are spitting in the ocean as to how much practice they need," Mr. Hammer said. "We must partner with parents or caretakers to get optimal results from the kids."

The Barones have been active participants in helping to teach Michael language. Along with practicing his speech therapy, they learned and then taught him 40 to 50 words and phrases in American Sign Language. They also programmed a DynaVox, a handheld communications device, for him to use.

Michael's first outside teachers were people from the Allegheny Intermediate Unit who went to the Barone house to help with both physical and speech therapy.

When he turned 3, the AIU got him started at the DePaul School for Hearing and Speech in Shadyside, where he spent two years.

Then came a year in a speech-intensive, preschool classroom in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District.

When it came time for Michael, at 6, to start kindergarten, the Barones found an AIU speech-intensive classroom with a regular curriculum at Hoover School in Mt. Lebanon.

"Kids came from all over the South Hills," Mr. Barone said. "It was a full-day kindergarten, and the teacher-speech therapist was a woman named Noreen Nalitz.

"She was like a gift from God," he added. "There were like 10 kids, and they got as much attention as possible. She worked on pulling words from the kids while teaching them their ABC's and counting."

That same year, the Barones decided to go ahead with surgery on Michael's uvula, the tissue that hangs from the palate. Michael's wasn't sealing when he tried to say certain sounds. Doctors repaired it so that it is always closed.

It is difficult to say what helped most, but right before the end of that school year, Michael's efforts to speak changed.

"He was starting to say things he hadn't said before," Mr. Barone said. "We felt he's going to speak some day. At times we had lost hope."