The other day as I was ending a session with a young child and his mother, the mother looked at me and asked “Did I cause my child’s stuttering?’ I could see where she might get this idea. Parents of young children who have ‘bumpy speech’ and ’sticky sounds’ are often counselled to slow down their own speech rate and simplify their language. These are just two of the many suggestions that they might be given. So I could understand why she worried that maybe the way she had been speaking to her child, with longer sentences and a faster speech rate, might have caused his speech dysfluencies in the first place.
This conversation stayed with me long after our session ended. I hoped that I had answered the mother’s question and helped reduce the guilt she seemed to be feeling. But I feared that that might not have been the case. Having been caught off-guard myself, I’m sure I didn’t give her a very good answer. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the best way of looking at this would be like looking at allergies.
I suppose one’s genetic makeup must predispose an individual to certain sensitivities (ex; pollen, mold, dustmites, etc.). That predisposition certainly comes from somewhere in the family tree. Research studies have concluded that many types of stuttering have a genetic base. That tendency to stutter or to have an allergic reaction is pre-programmed in the individual. And just like an allergy, certain things make it worse or help to minimize it.
So, in my opinion, when a parent talks slower, simplifies their language, and helps reduce speech demands placed upon their young child, it is similar to a parent with a child who has allergies. That parent takes steps to reduce their child’s exposure to the irritant. So in both cases what the child experiences from his/her environment can have a huge impact on the severity. And in both cases there’s a hope that the child might out-grow the problem.
So the bottom line, do parents cause stuttering – or allergies in their children? Probably just gave them the genes. But what the parent does afterwards might make a big difference in how severe the problem manifests itself.
Does this all make sense? Let me know what you think.
The past couple of years I have slowly been wading into providing some speech-language therapy services thru the internet – telepractice. Granted, there are some limitations, and I don’t think this is the way to go for every client or disorder type.
Even though I have a super fast internet connection, I’ve had a couple of clients that didn’t. That was a problem. I’ve dealt with echos, sound delays, audio & visual freeze-ups, children who couldn’t keep their headsets on or their microphone by their mouth, and parents who were new to computers and the internet.
However, through the use of virtual classroom software, a webcam, and a document camera, I’ve been able to provide reading instruction and some speech therapy to people who would not have had the opportunity to receive such services. It also has challenged me and my brain to learn new technology and to provide creative ways of achieving therapy goals.
Another demand that I have observed is perfectionism.
I had spent some time interacting with a pre-schooler who stuttered and his mother. When it was time to clean up the blocks and the toys, I observed this pleasant little guy carefully stacking the blocks just so. He was making sure that every edge was even and that none were leaning. I looked at Mom and asked if he was always so tidy. She assured me that this was the case, even though she and his father didn’t really emphasize this. She went on to say that he would independently clean up his toys, and wanted things ‘just so’ around the house.
In my many years of working with children who stutter, it is not unusual for their parents to report that the child is a perfectionist. Why? Perhaps someday they will find the ‘perfectionist’ gene. In the meantime, this trait can be a self-imposed demand, stressing developing speech and language.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many toys are on the market that produce sounds – music, animal sounds, environmental sounds, stories, alphabet letters, etc. There are homes and daycares that I visit where there are numerous noise generating toys sitting out. Often there are several playing at one time. In addition to this onslaught of sound, the television might be playing in the background. No wonder so many children seem to have delayed or disordered speech and language skills! Many have early stuttering.
Children need to be able to hear a language spoken clearly in order to learn to speak it clearly. They need a quiet environment to be able to process what they are hearing and to be able to put their thoughts into language.
Every parent has experienced a situation where they are trying to talk to another person on the phone and have a crying, whining, fretful child at their feet. It’s very difficult carrying on a conversation with all of that distraction. So why do adults think a child can do it?
So if you want to help your child to develop good speech and language skills, please turn off the background noise and talk to them.
In my many years as a speech-language pathologist who works with people who stutter, I have learned a lot from my clients. Even the very little ones.
In a previous post I talked about demands/capacities model of early stuttering prevention. And one of the lessons that I have learned is that children have their own perception of what causes them stress and may place a demand on their emotional system.
The mother of one three-year-old began to notice that on some days her son’s speech was very fluent – no bumps or sticky sounds. On other days that was not the case. Using her great observational skills she discovered that her son had fluent speech on days where he wore sweat pants to daycare and had bumpy speech on days where he wore zippered pants. Can you guess what was causing him stress?
Well, he recently moved up to the three year-old class where the common procedure was for independent use of the small toilets. This little guy found that zippers were difficult for him. He silently worried about not making it in time as he struggled to get his pants zipper down. Mom saved the day by dressing him only in pants that he could pull up and down easily. Gradually his dysfluencies went away.
Another little fellow that I know was getting migraine headaches because he worried about getting paste on his finger at Sunday school. He didn’t like the feel of the paste on his finger, and stressed about it all week. Luckily this problem was solved by having a talk with the teacher and the use of a popsicle stick.
As adults, these issues might seem trite. But to our children they can be monumental. Sometimes we can just ask our child if something is making them sad or causing them to worry. Not all children can verbalize their concerns. In those cases parents have to act as scientists – making observations, making changes and observing what happens.
I often see parents of young children who are beginning to stutter. For at least 10 years I have been successfully using with many families the Demands/Capacities Model for Stuttering Prevention (by Starkweather, Gottwald, and Halfond, developed at Temple University) as an intervention approach. The basic principle is “Stuttering results when demands exceed capacities.”
First we look at what is meant by capacities for fluent speech. Since speech is a motor activity, it is affected by muscle strength, coordination, motor planning – all of the elements that might impact your golf, tennis or bowling game. Some of the other capacities include emotional maturity, intellectual or cognitive development, and language skill.
Demands on fluency include demands on the emotional system, demands on the language system and on the motor system, as well as a child’s uneven development.
Demands on the child’s motor system can include such things as fast-paced talking by the adults in the child’s environment and time pressure. Demands on the language system includes command performances, asking the child a lot of questions, lots of distractions while talking, and parents & adults in the child’s environment using long sentences.
Demands on the child’s emotional system can include confusion, volatile emotional atmosphere, instability in the child’s environment, parental fear of stuttering, and trying to pretend that the child’s speech difficulty doesn’t exist.
Intervention then involves trying to reduce demands while increasing the child’s capacities.
Think about it. When you are around someone who is talking fast, in a rush, we automatically feel we must rush. When you are around someone who is relaxed and calm, we begin to slow down.
When we slow down our speech rate while talking to our child they begin to automatically slow down their rate of talking. Talking at a slower pace allows our brain to process what we have heard and to formulate what we want to say. It also gives the muscles involved in speech production a little more time to coordinate their movement.
So how slow is slow? Mr. Rogers on television is a good model. Sometimes a parent just needs to try talking at different slow rates to see what rate is helpful to their child. You probably won’t be able to do this every time you are talking with your child. But find at least 10-15 minutes every day where you can interact with your child and focus on slowing your speech rate. It might be at bath time or riding in the car. Whatever works best for your daily routine. Put up a couple of signs to remind yourself to do this.
Remember: You are never telling the child to slow down. You are just slowing down yourself. Give it a try and see what happens.
When a young child is just learning to talk they need to practice a lot in order to learn to coordinate the movements of all of the body parts to achieve clear speech. With practice improvement should occur. When a person has learned to make sounds incorrectly they have already constructed neural pathways that have to be altered in order to improve. Again practicing the correct way creates new neural circuits and lets the old ones fade away.
If a client comes to me for help with their speech and they fail to do the necessary practice they are setting themself up for failure and frustration. They are wasting time and money. So if you want speech therapy to help you or your child make it a priority and do the necessary work out of the clinic.
One of the things that I often tell clients and parents is that “Speech is a motor activity like golf or tennis. ” What does this mean? Speech is only one method of communication. It is the physical process of taking a thought and coordinating the movement of many body parts to produce an outcome -in this case sounds. In sports our thought is to hit the ball in a certain way direction and intensity. Neuroscience is showing us that when we repeat an activity over and over we are actually strengthening neural connections in our brain. It’s like wearing a path across a yard.
Recently I became aware that a number of my school-aged clients were unable to locate the United States on a world globe or map. The age of these clients ranged from elementary to high school. Needless to say I was shocked! How could this be? With globalization and so many high-tech and low-tech ways of learning that weren’t available when I was their age how could they not know?
Not being one to dwell on the cause but seek a solution I have begun including map work and geography into my reading and speech therapy sessions. Reading a story or newspaper article and finding the location on a map or globe adds interest and meaning. Reading and pronouncing the name of a city or country can challenge ones articulation skills.
My goal is not only to have my clients read better and speak more clearly but to become better informed American citizens and global citizens.
Stuttering Prevention | admin | 
October 11, 2010 8:05 pm | 
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