stutter

I don't think I've mentioned this here before, but Daniel stutters. I can't remember when we started noticing it, but it might have been around the time he turned three. At first it would come and go; some days he'd struggle with words, then for several days or weeks at a time it would go away. It was more pronounced when he'd have a surge in vocabulary. Now it's nearly all the time, though the extent to which he is "disfluent" (a term I have only very recently become acquainted with) fluctuates according to a variety of factors, like how tired he is or how complex the idea he's trying to express.

So far, this doesn't seem to bother Daniel much. He has plenty of friends from preschool and is comfortable talking to just about anyone. One morning last week, for example, a woman was loitering by her car outside our house, and he ran outside to introduce himself and tell her about his best friend across the street. It turned out she was a real estate agent waiting for the new owners of another house across the street to show up for the closing. She was very kind and patient. In fact, I've noticed that most, if not all, of the people Daniel interacts with are kind and patient - or even oblivious, but it amounts to the same thing - and thus he is so far uninhibited in his social interactions.

I'm worried this will change and that he will grow self-conscious and unwilling to communicate. Many children who begin stuttering in very early childhood grow out of it, and I certainly hope this is the case with Daniel. We've got family history on our side; Stuart stuttered for a time when he was young, as did one of my uncles, and both of them grew out of it well before adulthood. But what if this keeps on? It's so hard for me to watch, helpless, as he struggles, sometimes a little, sometimes mightily, to get those words out.

In any case, I've decided to take action, as far as I can. My youngest cousin just finished a degree in speech pathology, and she sent me a questionnaire and offered to do an evaluation when the extended family gathers for a wedding next month. Our time may be limited, what with the wedding and all (her brother is the one getting married!), but hopefully she can give us more information and some suggestions. Maybe speech therapy is in our future, or maybe we have to wait it out. The best thing for right now, difficult as it may be, is to be patient.

Comments

The Boccias said…
I don't have any advice but I do have a couple of friends whose sons both started stuttering at around age 2-1/2 or 3, mostly when excited. Each mom expressed the same helpless feelings that you have, and each would feel sad while listening to her son try to seemingly get his mouth to catch up with his brain, especially when he would get frustrated. Hopefully this will soon be a thing of the past for Daniel, but while you're in the thick of it, know you're not alone!
Sending you good thoughts and thinking of you!
Jessi said…
I don't really have advice for this. We've struggled with Brynna's speech issues for two years now. So often people make rude comments to her "correcting" her pronunciation or telling her to "quit talking like a baby," so I think you are very lucky. It's definitely affected her self-esteem and I hope that you can avoid that. Let us know about the outcome of the evaluation.
Animal said…
No advice either, but you made me think of my Uncle Jim, who was a lifelong stutterer. Thing is: his stutter was exponentially MORE pronounced when he was in relaxed family company. There would be times I'd be sitting on the front porch chatting with him, and he'd take something like 15 minutes to have what would - under "normal" circumstances - be a 5 minute conversation. He never seemed bothered by it. BUT: as a band director, he could stand on the podium, at Festival, and call out instructions to the kids without stuttering for the whole time he had…probably 5 or 6 minutes. Weird, huh?

Don't sweat it; like you said, it's probably a temporary thing.

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