Ronda Rousey's Childhood Apraxia Of Speech Disorder, Explained
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Ronda Rousey’s career has been filled with ups and downs. In the UFC, she was the most dominant fighter, man or woman, anyone had ever seen, and for a time she was arguably the most popular athlete in America. After she finally lost in shocking fashion, her MMA career began to spiral.
A move to WWE was a huge deal, but with her wrongly cast as a smiling babyface and her lack of skills on the mic, it held Rousey back from being the best in the women’s division. Now that her character has changed to more of a badass gimmick that fans love to see from her, Rousey’s confidence has grown, and her promos have improved tremendously. It’s no surprise that Rousey was able to overcome her flaws. She’s been fighting since she was a child, when she could barely even speak.
Childhood Apraxia Of Speech Affects The Pathways Used When We Talk
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a rare disorder in which a child struggles to make accurate movements with their mouth, tongue, and jaw when speaking. There is nothing physically wrong with these parts of the body. The disorder comes from the brain having trouble sending the signals that make the movements possible. It can make it so that a child doesn’t first speak until later in life, or that when they do, their words are limited or unintelligible.
To fix CAS, the brain has to be trained to accurately tell the parts of the body involved in speech how to move to form words. This is mostly done through rigorous speech therapy with a trained speech therapist.
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Ronda Rousey Had A Hard Time Communicating As A Child
For the first six years of Ronda Rouey’s life, she struggled to form intelligible sentences. While at the time she was not diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech, as the condition was extremely rare and not well understood, Rousey did take speech therapy lessons as a child.
She told ABC News about it in 2015, saying, “At first I was tested for deafness. They thought maybe my pronunciation was off because I was hearing things differently. But it was really I had all these words perfectly arranged in my head, it’s just when they tried to come out of my mouth they sounded different. It was kind of like there was a divide between my brain and my mouth."
Ronda Rousey and her family believe that it may have been the fact that Rouey was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck that caused the disorder. It’s ironic that someone who became known for choking out opponents was almost choked out in birth. It’s almost as if it was fate. Ronda was born a fighter, so she became one professionally as well.
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Ronda Rousey Overcame Apraxia
It was actually a fan at a book signing in 2015 who told Ronda Rousey about CAS. The fan was a speech pathologist who gave Rousey a pamphlet about the disorder. Rousey said, “I actually ended up reading through the whole thing that night and was like, ‘Oh my God, this is all exactly it. This is exactly what it was.’ I didn’t know it was actually apraxia until that moment.”
She has been an advocate for awareness for CAS then, getting the message out whenever she can. Though she herself overcame it, Rousey admits that it still sticks with her. When fans make fun of her promo ability, Rousey is already aware, calling it the most difficult aspect of wrestling.
She told USA Today, “I’ve always had problems slurring or mispronouncing my words. In the ring, it’s so important that you speak so clearly, and you’re easy to understand and that you don’t falter at all, that it makes me more nervous and more likely to actually mispronounce things. It’s been really great for me to be able to work on it and overcome those fears that I’ve had since I was a little kid.”
So the next time you feel like making fun of the Baddest Woman on the Planet when she makes a mistake during a SmackDown promo, cut her some slack. She’s been through and overcome more than many of us ever will.
