Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Stuttering

I know a lot of kids go thru a phase of stuttering and most of them stop almost as quickly as it started but I was suprised when Payton started doing this. I really think her mouth is trying to move faster than her brain (this happens to me!), so she will say "I-I-I-I-I-....." for about 30 seconds or a minute until she can complete her sentence. I didn't say anything to anyone about it at first cause I didn't know if she was actually stuttering or if I was the only one noticing it. Sure enough, my dad said something about it and then my sitter said something to me about it yesterday. She was worried about her because she talks so smoothly all the time and now all of a sudden she can't get a sentence out. However, it's not all the time. Just part of the time. I don't know if I need to talk to her speech therapist about this or if it's just a phase that will work itself out as time goes on. She doesn't seem frustrated at all about it and in my opinion, it's kind of cute :) (although I realize to others it may get kind of frustrating).

7 comments:

Michelle said...

Tara,
Ari does this same thing...it's more of a stall than a stutter. It's like they get your attention -and then find the words for what they want to say...Now that you've mentioned it I can say Ari isn't doing it as much as she used to. Now she'll get your attention, look as if she's concerntrating and then spit it out...it's tied into the whole "word finding" thing as well. At least that's what we experience here.

Heather said...

Tara, I do remember Caleb doing this, and I always said that his mind was moving too fast for his mouth. Now it's the opposite! :)
Yeah, It was 'that day' yesterday, but I didn't want to celebrate.

Nicole said...

Hi Tara,

This is so common with preschool age kids. I get this question all the time from my friends about their kids. I would definitely bring it up to Payton's Speech Path so that she can keep an eye on it. The biggest thing for you guys is to not make a big deal about it. Even if she is saying "I" for 30 seconds, not to say a word. Let her always finish her sentence. You will have to let all people in Payton's life know this as well. The worst thing to do is to interrupt her, tell her to "slow down", "stop", "take your time", or finish her sentence for her. When she is disfluent, maintain eye contact and be patient. The other thing to do is for you and Rob to model slow speech. You don't tell Payton that you are doing this, you just start talking slowly. This is really hard to do and will take a bit of effort.

There are many theories out there about how a person becomes a stutterer, but the main one is that a preschooler starts with normal disfluencies and then eventually attaches a psychological response to the frustration.

So I know this is a super long e-mail for something that is very common (lots of preschool kids are disfluent). But I still think that it needs to be handled delicately. Hope this helps.

Tes said...

Tara,
Lila goes through spurts of this and we were given the same recommendations Nicole presented.
Take care,
Tes

Penny said...

hmmmm, I have never heard of anyone saying that before. I wonder if anyone in her class stutters?

Interesting....I forgot that Nicole is a Speech therapist. What a great resource for you on that!

Michelle said...

I don't have any experience with this so no advice...except maybe talk to the ST about it to see if she has any ideas what brought this on all of a sudden...maybe she's mimicking someone in school?

Unknown said...

Ava Jewel is just starting to put 2 to 3 words together, no senstences yet, so I don't have any advice but did learn alot from Nicole's post, thanks! Keep us posted, like to hear more.