Stuttering

Many children stutter when they speak and are often teased by peers. But did you know that stuttering is a disorder? Stuttering is a communication disorder which is called Childhood-Onset Fluency Disorder (Stuttering). The benchmark for the disorder is disturbances in the normal fluency and time patterning of speech which causes anxiety about speaking. The child should display one or more of the following:

• Sound and syllable repetitions

• Sound continuations of consonants as well as vowels

• Broken words (e.g., pauses within a word).

• Audible or silent blocking (filled or unfilled pauses in speech)

• Circumlocutions (word substitutions to avoid problematic words)

• Words produced with an excess of physical tension

• Monosyllabic whole-word repetitions (e.g., “I-I-I-I see her”)

You can get help by taking the child to a speech therapist or using behavioral techniques to identify thought processes that are triggering antecedents to stuttering. Parents and teachers should boost the child’s self-confidence by providing reassurance to relieve the stress of stuttering.