Stuttering - Omaha, NE

Theatre! This helped me as well as my child. As soon as I could enroll him in a theatre class at age 6 he has totally stopped stuttering! He sings a lot and I think this has helped. I have spoken with a developmental therepistand she told me that theatre requires a lot of practice and fore-thought so a person who stutters has to stop and think before they speak. It is really amazing. there is a whole theroy based on theatre therepy and I swear by it!

C.-
My daughter is just a month older than your son and I just asked the pediatrician the same question yesterday. From what it sounds like what he is doing is "normal" stuttering. She said they go through a time where there brain is processing information faster than they can say. She gave me some warning signs of things that are not normal: 1) they notice it and are upset, 2) it lasts through multiple words (the whole word) instead of just the first part, 3) they make a face like they are having a hard time getting the words out. She also said to make sure you do not mention anything about it and just act like normal. She said it passes very quickly. I was worried about it myself too, hope this eases your mind.
Brekka

C. - You might want to contact Community Resource and Referral. They are at ###-###-####. They can have a preschool readiness evaluator come out to your home for free and evaluate your son. If he needs some speech therapy to stop the stuttering, they can get him into a program to do that before he goes to kindergarden. If not, they can give you some ideas about why he started stuttering and how to help him work through it. HTH K.

I am a preschool teacher and I have been told that it is mostly impossible to know if a child of that age is actually stuttering or not. Sometimes they just get hung up and instead of pausing to collect their thoughts, they just keep repeating what they've already said. I have also heard something about their limited vocabulary being a cuse of the "stuttering" that we hear, but again it isn't really stuttering. Contact your school district for a referral...it wouldn't hurt! Best wishes!

Hey C.. I did not personally experience this, but my preachers wife did with her oldest daughter. The nursery teacher noticed that her daughter only stuttered when she came around. Of course whe was mortified that she had given her daughter a stuttering problem. She was putting so much pressure on her daughter to say complete sentences perfectly, that her daughter could not handle at the age she was. She took herself and her daughter to a speech therapist and the therapist had her take all pressure off of speaking and she went back to one word answers and questions. I am totally not saying that you did this to your son, but it sounds like there may be some sort of pressure from someone else since he does not stutter all of the time. Maybe you can figure out who or what situation triggers the stuttering and try to adjust the situation to have no pressure. I hope that helps.

My son would stumble over his words too at that age and get so frustated. Especially when he was mad and he would get even mader saying "you don't understand" Well he is almost six now the stuttering is gone but when he mad he still only says half the words he is think and then says 'ya, know" and looks at me with those big eyes like mama is suppose to know everthing! He was just feeling pressure to get the right words out and then have to start over again and again. Just use lots of love and patence.

Hi C.,

Both my son and two of my nieces went through this same phase at about the age your son is now. All three children's doctors said the same thing: it's a phase; it will come and go; eventually it will pass. Developmentally, his brain is working faster than his motor skills will allow his mouth/tongue/etc. to keep up. The best thing we found was to just be patient and allow our son to stutter until he could get his thoughts out. The last thing we wanted was for him to become self-conscious about it. The nice thing is that at age three, other kids don't even seem to notice.

I hope that helps.
J.

[edited to add] - I just remembered something else. Our son's stuttering really came and went - it seemed to coincide with growing phases, like when he needed more sleep or was eating more than usual, his stuttering would also show up again. I'd say after a total of about six months it was gone completely.

My step-daughter does the same thing. When she gets really excited she stutters quite a bit. She only does it every now and then though. My husnbands mom said he did that when he was little too and they will just grow out of it eventually. My step-daughter only stutters on words though, not letters. For example if she is really excited she does something like, hey, guess guess guess guess guess guess what!