Carl J. Schweitzer is an active 5-year-old who loves NASCAR, Legos and corn dogs.

On any typical day, the child can be found running around his Weatherly home with his dog, playing on his iPad or giggling at the things he finds funny.

His parents, Amber and Carl M., melt every time they hear him call out their names.

To the outside world, Carl looks just like any other child and has the endless energy to match.

But he is also keeping a secret that his family is working to unlock. That secret is his voice.

Carl has childhood apraxia of speech, a neurological speech disorder that affects a person’s ability to produce syllables and words, and has been nonverbal for the majority of his life.

Silence isn’t golden

When Carl was 2, his pediatrician voiced his concerns to the Schweitzers because their son was not talking.

“Two-year-olds should have a vocabulary of 50 words and he didn’t,” Marie Schweitzer, Carl’s grandmother, said.

The family took him to neurodevelopmental specialists at Geisinger in Danville, and he underwent numerous tests over a two-year period before doctors reached his diagnosis.

During that time, he received weekly early intervention speech therapy, and after two assessments following his diagnosis, was accepted into the preschool program at the Helping Hands Society in Hazleton, a nonprofit organization that specializes in providing educational and therapeutic services to special needs children.

“I can’t say enough about Helping Hands,” Marie said. “He was a shy little boy who couldn’t talk at all. They brought out his social side.”

The first year, the speech therapist at Helping Hands said she didn’t know if Carl would ever break through his shy exterior because he wouldn’t imitate things that she did, but by the end of the year, he started warming up to her.

“Now he loves schools and can’t wait to go. They are working miracles on him socially and giving him confidence,” Marie said, noting Helping Hands works on both Carl’s social and verbal skills in ½-hour increments four times a week while the Health and Wellness Center in Hazleton sees him twice a week for additional sessions.

Breaking the silence

Amber said that the doctors told them that there was no guarantee that speech therapy would help Carl find his voice. But the little boy’s determination to break his silence was stronger than the CAS, and today, he can say yea, no, dog, Mama and Dad.

“It was a breakthrough recently,” Amber said.

“Every word we hear is a big weight off our shoulders,” Carl M. said. “It seems like every day he says a new word.”

Amber and Carl remember the first time they heard their son say Mama and Dad.

“It was wonderful,” Amber said, hugging her son while he blew raspberries on her arm. “That little voice.”

“It felt really good,” her husband said.

Carl currently communicates his needs using a special program on his iPad that speaks for him using a picture system, as well as through sign language and a homemade picture communication book his family and Helping Hands put together.

These tools are helping to prepare him for his next adventure — kindergarten — which he will begin in the fall.

A helping hand

Carl was nominated as this year’s ambassador of the Helping Hands Society’s upcoming telethon on April 23. The telethon will take place from noon to 11 p.m. at the Health and Wellness Center in Hazleton.

To help the cause, the Citizens Fire Company auxiliary is hosting a two-day fundraiser for the telethon on April 9 and 10 at the firehouse, located at 107 Spring St., Weatherly.

According to the event’s Facebook page, the auxiliary chose to help because “We would like to help Carl and his wonderful family.”

Various activities will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 9, including a Chinese auction, 50/50 chances and a T-shirt sale. On April 10, activities will take place between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. and include a spaghetti dinner with dine-in from 4-6 p.m. and takeout available from 1-6 p.m.

All money raised from the fundraiser will be presented by Carl at the telethon.

If people cannot make the fundraiser and would like to give to the Helping Hand Society, visit helpinghandsociety.com or send donations to Helping Hand Society, 301 Rocky Road, Hazleton, PA 18201.

About childhood apraxia of speech

Childhood apraxia of speech is a neurological motor speech disorder that affects a child’s ability to produce syllables and words because the brain doesn’t communicate with the muscles of the mouth, face, tongue and jaw, which are needed for speech.

Children with CAS know what they want to say, but their brain has difficulty coordinating the muscle movements necessary to say those words.

The cause of CAS is unknown because most often, no specific cause is found.

Not all children with CAS are the same, so it is important to have a child evaluated by a speech-language pathologist to rule out other causes of speech problems.

General things to look for include:

A very young child

• Does not coo or babble as an infant.

• First words are late, and they may be missing sounds.

• Only a few different consonant and vowel sounds.

• Problems combining sounds; may show long pauses between sounds.

• Simplifies words by replacing difficult sounds with easier ones or by deleting difficult sounds.

• May have problems eating.

An older child

• Makes inconsistent sound errors that are not the result of immaturity.

• Can understand language much better than they can talk.

• Has difficulty imitating speech, but imitated speech is more clear than spontaneous speech.

• May appear to be groping when attempting to produce sounds or to coordinate the lips, tongue and jaw for purposeful movement.

• Has more difficulty saying longer words or phrases clearly than shorter ones.

• Appears to have more difficulty when he or she is anxious.

• Is hard to understand, especially for an unfamiliar listener.

• Sounds choppy, monotonous or stresses the wrong syllable or word.

Potential problems

• Delayed language development.

• Other expressive language problems like word order confusions and word recall.

• Difficulties with fine motor movement/coordination.

• Hypersensitive or hyposensitive in their mouths. (May not like toothbrushing or crunchy foods, may not be able to identify an object in their mouth through touch.)

• Children with CAS or other speech problems may have problems when learning to read, spell and write.

Sources: American Speech-Language Hearing Association and Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America