advise needed please re stutering child!

[sarahstanbridge]

hello, today when "J" (3 years) was dropped of to me her mum mentioned that she was sturrering at home when talking and had i noticed it her. i hadnt but today i looked for it and she was stuttering with words begining with "W" for example she said "WWWhats that!" or "Wwwwwheres dolly" . i said parden a few times thens she tells me quite clearly "i said wheres dolly" without stuttering. have any of you had this a child before as i havent and am not sure what to recommed to mum or do to help her. will she out grown it?. i think mum is quite worried about it. shes not doing it at pre-school but she doesnt talk much there really as she is still quite new. as far as i know nothing is any different at home that could be stressing her. any sugestions would be great. she has been coming to me since she was 6 months old and i feel bad that i had not noticed it. she diodnt do it at all this afternoon once the other 3 year old came into the setting. thanks

[Pipsqueak]

lots of children go through this and its fairly common.

the best way to counter it is to allow the child time to get out what they want to say, get them to slow down, take a breath and make sure they have your attention.

often its their brain going a zillion miles an hour and teh mouth doesn't catch up, they are unsure of their words, or unsure of the situation.

try not to make a big issue about it the biggest and best thing you (and anyone else can do) is allow the child time to communicate with full attention, not over correcting or drawing attention to it or allowing anyone to make fun...

my 4yr old mindee stammers at times and it often when he is very unsure or tired

[sarah707]

The advice we were given when I was being trained (but this was 20 plus years ago) was to wait for the child to talk.

Do not correct the child, do not ask the child to repeat it so long as it is understandable, just give him / her time to say what s/he wants to say.

If it's just started it could be copying someone else or it could be for attention. The mistake many parents make is to panic and try to get the child to say things 'properly' which puts all the emphasis on the stutter... the child then gets attention for it and does it more.

Of course, if it is a language problem or if parents suspect that the child has psychological issues around the stuttering, then you should urgently refer to a speech therapist who is trained in such things.

I was trained as an audiologist not a speech therapist, we just did some of the same stuff.

hth :D

[Hebs]

she needs refered to a speech therapist for help, to teach her to slow her brain down as like pipsqueak says its all down to her brain working faster then her mouth can talk.

My daughter started stuttering at 2 and a half, got really bad when she started nursery, asked health visitor for help and she told me she would "grow out of it"

apparently this is a myth and children up to a certain age can be helped, after this age they will have it for life.

I contacted the british stammer association for help who actually got an appointment for my daughter at the local hospital, 3 weeks later she started speech therapy, and within 6 months she'd stopped stammering and hasn't since i was told if i hadn't done this she would have had the stammer for life, quite saddened to think the health visitor had fobbed me off.

please get help for her xxx


http://www.stammering.org/


:thumbsup:

[sammy]

its best to see how she goes over the next month or so (just to see if its a continuous problem) it could either be that she is thinking of too many words and cant get them out quick enough so she is stuttering or she could be showing signs of stutter/prolongation of words. Also it is more common between ages of 3 and 5 (also 1 in 5 boys will have a stutter between ages of 3 and 5)

Im not a speech therapist but i did go through from start to finish the whole course for my son when hes speech therapist was helping him. As he started to "bumpy talk" when he was 3 and even now hes nearly eight he can still sometimes repeat the first letter of the word hes about to say.

We followed the lithcom programme (cant remember how to spell it) but it started off with having special time with the child and no interruptions, where you would play with them (not mentioning there speech at at all) but also telling them that its there special time and that its lasting for 5/10mins. then after doing this for a few weeks, start to say that was good talking, or that was bumpy (but about 1 neg to 5 praises) and to spread it out.

Then after a few months in our special 5 minutes, i would say "that was bumpy, can you say that again" to which he would copy and would normally say it nice and clear (he never got upset by me asking him this, some children can though) then i would do it during the day and mark down how many bumpy words he would say and then feed back to the therapist, then we would give the bumpy talk ratings during the day and eventually hes score was low, which meant he wasnt doing it so much, he then started to get parts in the play at school where he could speak and he did really well. I found the words he got stuck on were "and, your, "wh....." i remember once he said "and" 30 times before he got the next word out, so i did ask him to use an alternative word, and that worked well so stopped him saying "and. Anyway sorry to waffle on, but if she is really concerned then contact a speech therapist, it could take months to get an appointment, so best to contact them asap then she can always cancel if things get better.

[singlewiththree]

My daughter woke up one day when she was two years old and said "mmmmmummy I wwwwannnt ssssoooommeee mmmmiiillkk" I was gobsmacked she was fine the day before, I thought maybe she had fallen out of bed, I even asked my husband if he had dropped her the day before :blush:

The HV refered her and I attended group sessions with other parents. The advice they gave was there are some links to it being genetic. (ex-hubby pauses before saying anything which is a sign)

To only talk to the child in 2 more words than they use so if they have 7 word sentances don't go over 9 words with yours in return.

Not to finish their sentances or try to guess what they are saying.

They said a child could be doing it as they have so many words in their head that their brain is trying to order them and they stammer on the first word, or middle or even last words while their brain gets it together, most children outgrow it. My DD has, she is 7 now and when she is tired or upset it comes back but not probably noticeable to anyone other than me who panicks that it will come back (illogically)