Stuttering

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My son has been stuttering a lot lately. At first, I thought he was just having fun or imitating someone else. But, it's been months now and it doesn't seem fun anymore. It seems frustrating. He either repeats a consonant or holds it out a long time.

If it's related, he also has tics from time to time.

Forgot to ask a question.

Do any of you or your children stutter? What has helped?

My kiddo is a stutterer. Started at 5, still stutters now and is a teenager. IEP at school now and is in speech therapy. It helps a little. There is no quick cure for stuttering. I have noticed that any time the body is in physical stress the stuttering is distinclty worse, ie teething, illness, travel, etc. Good luck to your son and you.

One of my sons had a stutter, wasn't real bad though, mostly when he was stressed. I, on the other hand, had a terrible stutter pretty much from the time I could speak until I was around 10-11yo. Still will do it if I get overly stressed or very tired.

Speech therapy may help some; I found that breathing exercises helped a bit.

What my son does, sometimes, is technically a stutter, I guess, but it happens when he has to say something that is very far afield from any of his scripted/constantly repeated phrases/favorite subjects and he has to think. He uses it almost how someone else would use umm or uhh, which he does not do.

The speech people never brought it up, and I never did either, mainly because I would forget b/c we had other things going on at school that were more urgent. I don't know what frequency officially makes it stuttering from the ST point of view.

With a quick google, I found that stuttering and tourette's may be linked. http://www.stutteringhelp.org/stutterin ... s-syndrome
I know you didn't say your son has tourette's- just that he has occasional tics- but regardless it might be something to look into.

My verbal son stutters. Little has been done because he has so many speech problems. He does receive speech therapy, but I don't think it has helped much with the stuttering. They do suggest breathing exercises. My husband also stutters and he's done loads of reading on it, but he still does...so it might just be something you learn to live with.

The main thing I do, and this probably sounds pretty stupid, is I try to model to my son that he can be loved and listened to even if he is hard to understand (both with interactions with him, and my husband, which he may be watching). I'm hoping that if my son feels comfortable, his stutter won't have as great of an effect because his self-esteem will be higher.

There is treatment for stuttering, I just don't know what it is. Like anything else you probably need to find an SLP who does a LOT of work specifically with stuttering. I do remember when I was in 3rd grade a boy in my class was made to speak everything long and drawn out, almost like singing, for a few months. The teacher and SLP made a big deal of explaining it to the class so we wouldn't make fun of him. No idea if that treatment is still being used or not.

I've stuttered pretty much my whole life (when I was able to speak)

Treatment for stuttering seems to be similar to treatment for autism in the sense that there are many different strategies and there are people who had great success with each one, as well as many people who had minimal or no success with each one, some who swear by a combo of strategies, etc. There is no one treatment. For some reason, people who stutter can often do certain things without stuttering; singing is a common one. My husband can sing without stuttering too.