7-25-06

Stuttering

Parents should not panic if their preschool child is stuttering. It can be overcome with medical attention or therapy.

When a preschool child starts to stutter, parents often become worried and confused. Stuttering is a speech disorder, in which the normal smoothness of speech is disrupted, says Dr. Tracy Milbrandt, assistant professor of pediatrics at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield. She explains various stuttering patterns.

SOUND BITE: " . . . the repletion of the beginning sounds, the prolongation of a beginning sound, the feeling of pressure of not being able to get out their sounds, even the filling in of a lot of ahs and ums could be considered part of stuttering."

Stuttering usually begins between 2 or 3 years old, when the child is progressing from 2 and 3 word phrases to the more complex composition of sentences or putting sentences together. She says it is caused by a sensory motor, so part of the brain and the muscles are not moving fast enough to produce fluent speech. Dr. Milbrandt says it's a developmental process, which sometimes takes care of itself.

SOUND BITE: "For those children, where the disfluencies do not disappear, they can develop either mild or severe stuttering. Mild stuttering, where we consider that it's less than a third of the speech they have, can go away on its own. Severe stuttering tends to not, which is more frequent and more severe stuttering tends to not go away on its own without some intervention."

If stuttering problems have continued for six weeks or more, she recommends seeing a pediatrician or speech therapist for evaluation and possible treatment.

This is Ruth Slottag at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield.