Conference moira::parenting_v3

You may also get some assistance from these topics in PARENTING_V2:

   464         CISM::SALMON       16-MAY-1988    19  Stuttering
  1911       NUGGET::BRADSHAW     29-JAN-1990    34  Stuttering 3yr old

    
    Thanks, Neil.  I already read through those strings but since there
    wasn't a topic in this version and those notes addressed stuttering
    in older children (3.5 and 6 years old), I decided to start a new
    note.  
    
    Carol

    Carol,
    
    My neice started stuttering around the same age as Jason.
    My sister in law was quite concerned also.  I spoke to
    my sister (who is a speech therapist) and described the
    context in which my neice was stuttering (which sounds
    similar to Jason) and my sister said this was normal.  I 
    think she said something about the child thinking so
    fast that she was having difficulty getting the words
    out as fast as she was thinking.  Does this make sense?
    
    My neice is almost 4 now, and I haven't heard her stutter
    in a long time.  I'm inclined to say the stuttering stopped
    before her 3rd birthday.
    
    ...as usual, it wouldn't hurt to talk to your pedi about it.
    Personally, I don't think the events of the weekend are related
    to the stuttering, but that's only my opinion FWIW.
    
    Linda
         

    My oldest stuttered around age 3 - it didn't last long, but I can't
    remember exactly when it stoppped.  My four year old stutters now.  He
    has been doing it for the past few months.  I have noticed a marked
    improvement in his speech in the past few weeks, so maybe he's on the
    verge of correcting it himself.  I feel bad for the child, but stress
    to those around him to be patient and he will get out what he has to
    say.  Most important, even if you know what he is trying to say, don't
    finish his sentences for him.  Let him work this one out.  My son got
    frustrated when he couldn't think of the words he wanted to say and
    would tell me to "just forget it".  Now, when he said "just forget it"
    he would say it clearly and cleanly!  Hang in there.  It can go on for
    awhile, but if you are concerned, talk to the pedi.
    
    -sandy
    

    My daughter stuttered around Two also.  I think it lasted about 6
    months.  At first I was a little concerned too, but it went away.  I
    was just reading the book "Your three year old", by Ames and he
    mentions that children go through a disequalibrium every 6 months. 
    Part of this disequalibrium is stuttering (also tripping).
    
    He has a series of these books 1-14 years I believe.  Anyway, it might
    be worth it for you to take a look.
    
    Joyce
    

        Isn't stuttering more the inability to complete a word?

    I would think that repeating complete words is not stuttering. My son
    did and does this occasionally. I don't believe it's anything to worry
    about.
    JR

    My son, Daniel, started stuttering just after his 2nd birthday.  He would 
    only stutter the first word of his sentence: "W,w,w,what's that, mommy?"
    I think we felt more frustration from it than he did.  We took the 
    advice of books we read and his daycare teachers, who said to just
    ignore the stuttering and it will go away on its own.  
    
    Also, because Daniel had no history of speech disorders and his doctor 
    remarked at his 24 mo. checkup that his speech was advanced for his age, 
    we felt we didn't need to worry that this was anything more than a phase.
    
    We let Daniel finish his own sentences and we waited patiently for him
    to finish.  We didn't remark about the stuttering to him.  We also
    made sure to tell visitors about the stuttering and how we wanted to 
    handle it, so we would be sure that no one else would bring undue
    attention to it.
    
    In less than one month, the stuttering disappeared as fast as it came! 
    
                                                

    I divorced when my son was around 3 and he also ?stuttered?.  I also
    didn't really consider it stuttering because he'd repeat the same word
    like "I, I, I, I, I want something to drink".  He also outgrew it in a
    short period of time.
    
    Marie

There's stuttering and there's stammering.  I don't remember which is which,
but one is w-w-w-when you have a h-h-h-hard time completing a word, and
the the the the the other is when you repeat a word over and over again,
as in these examples.

Carol, I'm sorry.  I've known people who stammered or stuttered into adulthood
(I even have a couple of customers who do), and we parents always fear this
will happen with our children.  Unfortunately, I don't know enough about it to
give advice. It's also possibly that this may be one of those things where the
popular advice varies over the years (doctors recommending different things now
than they did in the 70's, perhaps).  Oddly enough, I have caught *myself*
having this trouble occasionally in the last few years, though it hasn't
seemed to interfere with anything, and it happens very infrequently.

I also think you might gain some peace of mind talking with your pediatrician,
preferably when your son isn't around.

     Hugs,

        Carol

    First, this is just a very candid opinion only, but I would think that
    if you ignored, or pretended not to notice would it not go away?
    
    Now my question regarding speech itself.  We had AJ totally evaluated
    for intellect, ADHD and speech a year ago.  The intellect was beyond
    his age, the ADHD was not an issue, but his speech was found to be
    "slightly" delayed.  Estimated to be about 3 t 6 months behind his age. 
    Today the woman, from our public school department, called and asked
    that since it's been a year did we want his speech reevaluated?  At
    this point I really can't answer, and would like some opinions from the
    parenting world.
    
    We are having him retested later this month for intellect and ADHD, but
    we know in advance no great amount of time will be done for speech
    evaluation.
    
    Any advise would be appreciated.  He will be 5 early January, and will
    be entering kindegarten Sept. '92.
    
    Lyn

    Carol,
    
    Our Jason had been talking for about 3-4 months when he suddenly
    started with a *VERY* bad stutter.  He would eventually say what he
    wanted to, but it sure took a while sometimes.  I mentioned it to the
    pedi during his regular checkup, and he said that it was exactly the
    right age for this to happen (especially in boys), the age being a few
    months after starting to really 'talk'.  What the pedi said was
    happening is that he was so anxious to talk and use his new words that
    his brain was working faster than his mouth.  He said to ignore it
    COMPLETELY.  DON'T say the word for him, DON'T tell him to slow down or
    anything - let HIM figure out how to deal with his speech, and it will
    go away by itself.  It did - I have no idea when and haven't thought at
    all about it.  Just one of those things that you don't notice are
    'gone'.  He's 3 1/2 now - I think it lasted a few months.
    
    What might be related to the w/end might be if, with all that activity,
    he's been stimulated more, or his language has been, and he's just
    trying to use it.  My pedi was quite adamant that this was QUITE normal
    and to de-emphasize it as much as possible and it'd go away.
    
    Call your pedi if you're still not sure, but I'm sure it's nothing to
    worry about!
    
    Patty

     
    An update:
    
    Jason is still stuttering; but either it isn't quite as bad as it 
    was or we're becoming accustomed to hearing it   :-)
    
    Funny thing we noticed yesterday.   We were listening to him on 
    the baby monitor during his nap.   He didn't want to sleep yesterday
    but stayed in his crib a good 45 minutes or so having full, detailed
    conversations with his toys and animals.  He didn't stutter _AT ALL_
    during this conversation with himself!    Weird, huh?
    
    Carol
    
     

    A question of "definition" of stuttering, with some concerns:
    
    Lately AJ has not be stuttering as described here, repeating a sound or
    one word beginning a sentence, but has been repeating two or three word
    phrases several times and having difficulty completing his thought.
    
    You almost want to just reach in a pull out the words, or complete the
    sentence for him, which we WILL NOT do.  He usually does this when he's
    excited about something he's trying to relate to us.
    
    This is a recent thing, he's 4-3/4 now, and there's been a little more
    stress and "organized chaos" than normal in the house.
    
    Can someone help me on this?
    
    Lyn

    re .14
    
    Sounds perfectly normal ...
    
    What's happening is that the child's brain is running far faster than
    his mouth, so what happens is he starts to say something, his brain
    races on past where he is currently speaking, realizes he doesn't know
    what he was actually last saying and does a reset and starts again.
    
    The easiest thing you can do to help him is after he's tried a couple
    of times is to encourage him to slow down, but avoid completing his
    thoughts .. he'll get em out, but it might take a little while.
    
    This tends to be self correcting as all the excitements of new
    experiences and other thrills settles down a little.
    
    Stuart

    Gee, this note is extremely timely for us also!  Marc has just started
    to have the repetitive-word problem also.  Like "Marc Marc Marc Marc
    want more milk".  Or "Where where where where is the pussy cat".  I'm
    glad that everyone says this is completely normal for 2-yr-old, so
    we'll just ignore.

re: .15

>    What's happening is that the child's brain is running far faster than 
>    his mouth, so what happens is he starts to say something, his brain
>    races on past where he is currently speaking, realizes he doesn't know
>    what he was actually last saying and does a reset and starts again.   

Thanks Stuart.  I think that first phrase is the conventional wisdom, but the
second phrase, about "racing ahead" is the real answer.  It seems to be that
just about _everybody_ can think a lot faster than they can talk.  IMO, what
kids that age lack is the ability to coordinate the thinking and the
speaking.  

>    The easiest thing you can do to help him is after he's tried a couple
>    of times is to encourage him to slow down, but avoid completing his
>    thoughts .. he'll get em out, but it might take a little while.

I disagree here, but recognize that there isn't a clear answer.  I think you
should do _nothing_ to call attention to the speech problem, and that means
don't say things like "slow down" or "calm down" or the like.  Since the
problem seems to be the mismatch between the the brain and the mouth, slowing
down the mouth only increases the mismatch.  It seems to me what you should
say is "Think more slowly", but of course that's absurd.  

As I mentioned in V2, one of the major disagreements that I had with our
son's daycare provider at the time was how to treat this problem.  She
insisted on saying "now Gary, slow down", and the result seemed to be that
it made him more self-conscious, and the problem became worse.  She
eventually agreed to say nothing (of course there's no way for me to know for
sure what she did when I wasn't there), and the problem went away soon.

I didn't find refraining from saying anything to be difficult.  But
controlling my "body language" was very difficult.  It's very difficult to
avoid tensing up yourself, or "mouthing" the words you know the child wants
to say.  And of course if you say "slow down" while your body says "I'm
tense", the body language message will probably come across more strongly.

Clay

    We had this difficulty with Joshua when he was about 27-28 months old.
    Although it *is* very normal, it can also be related to stress, and
    this was a big factor in his case. In a nutshell, between the time he
    was 26 and 28 months, the following happened:
    1) I lost my job, got interviewed by DEC, and accepted a position.
    2) spent two *frantic* weeks readying our house in Syracuse NY for sale
    3) packed up everyone in a plane and flew to Worcester, MA (everyone
    consisted then of me, my wife, Josh and his 5 mon. old sister)
    4) spent 1 week in a motel, dragging every one from house to house
    looking for one to buy. Ate all meals out.
    5) spent next week at my parent's house, during which time Thanksgiving
    occurred.
    6) My wife and children flew solo back to Syracuse on a nightmarish
    adventure that began with the pilot having a heart attack just before
    take off, continued with cancelled flights and no way to contact me,
    and ended with them going back to Syracuse by way of teeny tine puddle
    jumper planes. They stayed there alone for 2 weeks 
    7) Came back to Wrocester and lived in tiney apt.  During that first
    week, both kids and my wife were sick, and she had no car, casue mine
    broke down and I needed hers to get to work. We did manage to get our
    Christmas tree up only to....
    8) take it down right away to move to another apt. (bigger and nicer)
    after only one week in the first one. Three days after moving in ....
    9) we drove back to Syracuse to spend Christmas with my wife's family!
    
    Now, given these circumstances, we were nearly stuttering and
    stammering! It was no wonder Josh was! He repeated whole words, initial
    letters to words, phrases....the works. *BUT* it never seemed to bother
    him!
    We ignored it for the most part. We never second guessed him or
    finished his sentences. Our pedi advised it was normal, particularly
    given the circumstances in his life! I would say it took him about 6-9
    months to get over most of it, and another 3-4 for it to stop
    completely. He is now extremely artiuclate, and never (that I notice)
    stammers or stutters at all.
    
    About the 4.5 year old stuttering. Our daughter is 4 yrs. 4 months old
    and does this same thing. Drives me nuts! She will start a thought and
    just keep repeating the same initial phrase over and over while she
    tries to remember what it is she was going to say next. Never seems to
    bother her one little bit. She just sits and muses, repeating endlessly
    until the thought that she'd gone by pops back into her head and she
    gets on with what she was saying. You *do* feel as if you want to
    "reach in and pull the words out". What's even worse is when it goes
    something like this...."Daddy?", "Yes, Carrie?", "Um, Daddy......",
    (pause) "Yes, Carrie?", "UMMMMM, Daddy.....", (pause), "What,
    Carrie????", "Ummmmmm, Daddy....." (internal scream on part of daddy!),
    "Ummmm, daddy......I forgot what I was gonna say!"
    (AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!)
    And then 30 seconds later she'll say, "oh, yeah, I remember" and out
    will come the whole thing. Frustrating as anything for me, and totally
    unconcerning to her!
    
    Hang in there!
    
    --dave-- 

    re .17
    
    You are right Clay about telling them to slow down ... what I guess
    I experienced, and why this is relevant, is that the repetition was
    worse was when the child has just come tearing into the room at
    break-neck speed, full of things to say ... under those circumstances
    "slow down" is valid.
    
    Stuart

Moderator note:

Since the very important distinction between "stuttering" and "stammering"
has been mentioned, I've changed the title of the note.  .0, I hope you don't
mind.  If someone has some reference that has a more precise definition of
the two terms, and the implications of stuttering as opposed to stammering,
I'm sure it would be of interest to many of us.

re: .19

Gotcha.  What happens with us sometimes is that they talk perfectly clearly,
but faster than MY brain can function, particularly when I arrive home from
work.  To me, it sounds like "motormouth" of the Federal Express and
MicroMachines commercials. 

:^)

Clay