November 4, 2014

It can be very upsetting and confusing for parents if their child begins to stutter, which affects approximately 5% of all children. Most children who develop stuttering are preschoolers between the ages of 2 ½ to 4, although some children don’t begin to stutter until they are in elementary school. Parents are often not sure what to do, and may be advised by their friends, relatives, pediatrician or physician to wait and see if the stuttering will simply go away without any intervention. The good news is that about 75% of preschool children will outgrow stuttering on their own, and usually within 6 to 12 months from the time that the stuttering behaviors started. Sometimes, recovery is even observed 2, 3 or 4 years post-onset.

However, what about the 25% of children who don’t outgrow stuttering? Which children will outgrow it and which ones won’t?  We know that worldwide, there are more than 68 million people who stutter and in the United States, stuttering affects approximately 1% of the population, or more than 3.3 million people.

But enough of the bad news as there is much encouraging research of late i.e. more good news! There have been amazing advances in the understanding of stuttering, its causes and how to treat it effectively over the past few years! Much has evolved since the time of King George VI, whose story you may have seen in the movie, The King’s Speech. Many of these advancements have occurred as recently as the past few years. A speech-language pathologist will be able to assess your child and determine whether therapy is needed, based in part on which risk factors may be present.  But for the purposes of this blog, the most important risk factor is time! If your child has been stuttering for 6 months or more, it’s time to pick up the phone and arrange an assessment. That is, “Keep Calm and Call A Speech-Language Pathologist”! Therapy will help to minimize the likelihood that your child will become a chronic stutterer, and treatment is faster than waiting for spontaneous recovery. And what a beautiful lifelong gift to your child that would be. Stuttering is a complex subject and there is much to say about it. I would love to share more about stuttering in later blogs.  Please share this post; you never know who you might be helping!

Thanks for reading!

Cindy McCallum, M.Sc., R.SLP, SLP(C), CCC-SLP

Registered Speech-Language Pathologist

Founder, WiseOwlSpeech

Sources:

www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/stuttering/

www.WeStutter.org

www.stutteringhelp.org

Yaruss, J.Scott. Practical Treatment Strategies for Preschool

and Young School-Age Children Who Stutter: Ages 2 to 6. Denver: Colorado

Children’s Hospital, 2014