help my 3 yo has just developed a really bad stammer

karmafi

and ive got no idea what to do. he spoke fine until last friday when he bumped his head and since has been stammering really badly sometimes he has to stamp his foot on the floor to get the words out.we have an appointment for the docs tomorrow and cant get a speech therapy appt till late march early april - so i suppose what i need help with are what should and shouldnt i be doing to help him ????
thanks in advance

Esel

I would say that, until you see doctor/therapist, the best thing you could do is to completely ignore it. Might be hard to do, as I know you must be very concerned, but paying any special attention, advising your child to speak slowly, etc etc will not help and might only re-inforce the stammer.

Was the bump on the head a bad one, and what part of the head was it?

kaa

i had a stammer when i was younger. and i did go 2 speech therapy, it did help alot. it used to take me ages when i got excited to say what i wanted. what my mom did is make me calm down and then get me to get say it again slowly and then i would. so maybe you should do the same and just see does it make a difference. cos the therapy will help and do all the things to help anyway. mine is gone now and im 22.

it might not be the bump that made it happen but before i did get my stammer, my mom did say i bounced of the bed and hit my head when i fell. so maybe thats what caused mine or it just happened. so dont worry.

Esel

kaa wrote: »

....what my mom did is make me calm down and then get me to get say it again slowly and then i would. so maybe you should do the same and just see does it make a difference.

Just be very careful if you try this. Be very casual about it. The last thing you want to do is to make him self-conscious. Any update from the doctor/therapist?

The doctor might be inclined to make light of the situation, but do your very best to get your son the help he needs/deserves. If the stammer becomes established, it could bring a lot of emotional pain to your son's life.

karmafi

hi all ,
thank you for your replies.
had him at the hospital yesterday he had an xray of his head and luckily nothing wrong there - they also wanted to do a ct scan but the doc i was with said that to him it seemed more of a nervous thing so i said no to the scan as that would have traumatised the child even more - but today the stammer has almost vanished only getting stuck in a few words.

thanks again everyone !!

nifferdoodle

karmafi,

SO glad to hear your child is doing better. If you continue to be concerned for his stammering, and can't get a public speech therapist assessment, you can go the private sector if you need to. www.iasltpp.com lists slt's in all areas of Ireland.

Best,

Jennifer, SLT, www.release.ie

BrightWilla

Hi Karmafi, I was wondering how about the stammer of your child after that.Did he become fine?How long did he stammer?

Now,my son has the same problem with your child.he fell down on the hard and slippery floor (ceramic tile) when he run into kitchen,Everything was fine, until 2 days later when the child started to stammer. The stammer became worse these days and really bad today. I am really afraid this stammer is linked to his falls. I took him to 2 GPs. They both said it was merely a coincidence that the fall and stammer occurred together like that, this is a normal stammer during 2-5 years old. He would grow out of it. But I still really worry about that, so one of the GP gave me a referral of head injury Pediatrician. In addition, I searched this situation on line. A lot of cases like this. Thus, I feel extremely anxious. I cannot sleep everyday.I am crazy now.

Could you please tell me how about your son after that?Did you find any results of this?Is the stammer linked to his falls.
Thank you very much.

wylo

I dont want to give any false hope here, and treat this just as another account..
but my niece (who used actually fall quite alot as well) developed a strange stammer for several months, but it faded away. She would repeat and repeat a word over and over and not be able to finish the sentence. Her mother began to get really worried, but it just began to fade away as she got better at speaking.


She was 3 or 4.

It was like her intelligence in terms of what she wanted to say was developed faster than her ability to talk. Probably common.

Marseepan

Hi Wylo,

I'm a speech and language therapist, and what you're describing there sounds like what's called 'Developmental Dysfluency' (there's lots of information on the internet about it). Basically, what happens is a child goes through a 'spurt' of language development, and may have difficulty putting across his/ her thoughts or ideas, or telling a message. This is generally just a phase that children go through, but a few warning signs would be:

• The stutter or stammer persists for a long period of time without lessening
• Your child begins to get frustrated and may start to hit his/ her head, stamp his/ her feet, or twitch/ blink forcefully when they stammer
• Your child begins to become self conscious about speaking and becomes withdrawn

The best advice about Developmental Dysfluency is to ignore it. Whatever you do, don't draw attention to it, or say 'Slow down and try it again' or something like 'no, it's not b-b-b-all, it's ball, try it again'.

As with anything else to do with speech and language development, if you are worried, speak to your PHN/ GP and ask them to make a referral to the Community Care or HSE Speech and Language Therapist.

Hope this is helpful!