How To Cope With Child Stuttering

Dealing with child stuttering is often challenging for parents because there are so many myths surrounding this condition. Some people mistakenly believe that only unintelligent children stutter. In reality, there is a wide range of stutterers from poor performers to near-geniuses from time to time. Secondly, some parents feel that their parenting style brought about the problem. Truthfully, genetics may play a role in one’s propensity to stutter and stress may be linked to the condition, but many loving parents have raised children who stutter. As a parent, the first step in coping with your situation is doing your stuttering research to separate fact from fiction.

Stammering stuttering is a common type of disfluency that most kids have at some point while growing up and learning their words. Some stuttering in childhood is in the form of stop-and-go speak patterns or periods of quick speech followed by breathlessness. Their little brains seem to be working much faster than their mouths, causing a hodge-podge of verbiage to come spilling out. Some children may begin to stutter in nerve-wracking situations, such as before auditioning for a play, when asking someone on a date or if caught in a lie. Other times, a person who stutters may interject too many “ums,” “likes” or “uhs.” Usually, the stuttering speech disorder clears up or only emerges on rare occasion. However, a child who stutters for more than a few months may be in need of greater attention.

Normal developmental stuttering is common for about 90% of children, but true stuttering only occurs in about 1% of all cases. Parents can identify true child stuttering if they hear their child repeating words/sounds/syllables, uttering hard-to-discern sentences, talking slowly with a number of pauses, speaking at an uneven rate, stuttering excessively when tired or stressed, or avoiding speech entirely in reaction to a stutter. If the child does not show marked improvement within 1 to 2 months, then parents should intervene with some sort of speech therapy.

At home, parents can encourage an end to child stuttering by listening carefully and patiently to what the child is trying to say. Parents should never interject the predicted words the child is attempting to pronounce, or command the child to “speak clearly” or “slow down.” Household rules should be that everyone waits for each other to finish speaking before saying something, which will take some of the fast-talking pressure off the child. Another rule should be that no one is allowed to tease the child who has the problem stutter, as this will undermine his or her confidence. Most importantly, the child must feel loved and accepted, as this will balance out the lost esteem and self-consciousness that come along with stuttering.

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