Advice needed

greengoddess

Hi

I am the mother of a ten year old boy. He was seen by speech therapy when he was 4-5 due to a dysfluency. We were advised to spend a lot of time on one-to-one activities with him, his own "talk time". Seemed to work, and he was discharged from sp th without any direct intervention.

He, like I say is now ten and his dysfluency has returned out of the blue. I havent noticed any social/ emotional upheaval in his life, and it came back smack bang in the middle of the summer holidays.

Im looking for advice as how to best help him. Havent mentioned it to him as I dont want to draw his attention to the fact. Not sure if speech therapy will only make him more aware of the problem.

Thanks in advance

sadie9

Is it stammering/stuttering or what form does the dysfluency take? My son had a period of disfluency aged 2.5yrs and again aged 4yrs. It had disappeared again by the time his speech therapy appointment came around. She said it may appear again from time to time. It may disappear again for your son. Don't draw attention to it. It may be his brain is just going through some language development changes, apparently this can affect fluency. Some other advice here:

http://www.stuttersfa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=7

I'd give it a little longer if it's not a problem for him. Maybe speak to his teacher alone and see if s/he has noticed that he's having any problems at school with reading or answering questions, or reluctance to speak in front of others.

Esel

Is it possible that he may have had a somewhat traumatic experience, along the lines of: being mugged, or being involved in a minor accident on his bike, or being knocked down by a car etc. that he has kept secret from you? You could consider having a discreet chat with his friends' parents, who might be able to elicit some details from their own kids about any possible occurrences like this.

Just a possibility anyway. Something has caused this, imo, although as sadie9 said above, it may just be a developmental thing.