So how can you tell if your child is going through a normal non-fluency phase, or is beginning to develop a stutter which requires special help? Many parents of young children ask themselves this question. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are professionally trained to distinguish between the two and it is best to seek their advice if you notice any of the following:
Your child shows regular signs of struggle and tension in his efforts to get a word out.
Your child avoids saying certain words or inserts irrelevant or meaningless noises in his effort to say a word.
A rise in pitch or loudness in a sound when he is trying to get a word out.
Signs of tremor in the muscles around the mouth when your child is trying to say a word.
Your child is troubled by his speech.
If you notice that stuttering is more frequent when your child is tired, stressed or excited.
You child shows fear of talking.
Act Promptly
Don't be too alarmed if your child does require the help of an SLP. The good news is that stuttering in children can be cured if the problem is caught before it has taken hold. With early intervention the child is normally able to learn to speak fluently again with no evidence of recurrence. Treatment at a later stage may assist the child in controlling the non-fluency but the stutter is more likely to persist into later life.
Possible Causes of Stuttering
It is unclear why some children develop stuttering but most experts agree the following factors may play a part:
Some children have a genetic predisposition to stuttering, although no-one is sure what triggers it.
Heredity - a child with stuttering in the family appears to be 3 times more likely to develop the problem.
Linguistic ability (the child’s ability to put words or sentences together).
Motoric ability (the child’s ability to move the muscles in his mouth in order to speak).
What is fairly certain is that children do not learn to stutter through imitation. Neither is stuttering the result of bad parenting. And boys are more likely than girls to suffer from stuttering.