A child stutters: causes and treatment

Sometimes it happens that the baby suddenly begins to speak with hesitation. At this moment, parents become anxious; bleak pictures of the unborn child flash through their imaginations. After all, stuttering complicates the lives of children and creates a lot of complexes in them.

The child began to stutter: what to do?

Experts consider stuttering to be speech disorders that occur against the background of convulsions of various origins: respiratory, articulatory or vocal. First you need to determine whether the child really stutters or whether he simply stutters due to the fact that his thinking goes ahead of speech possibilities.

This can be understood by two criteria:

• Pay attention to whether the child has cramps in the neck or near the mouth at the moment of “stumbling” speech.
• Ask your baby to speak more slowly and smoothly. If it really is stuttering, then the child will not be able to comply with your request. His speech will only get worse.

After this, remember what events caused the child’s speech to deteriorate. Perhaps the malfunctions appeared at the moment when the baby was trying to pronounce a new long word and was in an excited state. Tension in children manifests itself externally: they begin to tug at their hair, bite their nails, blush, and hesitate to pronounce words. Stuttering can be hereditary. Perhaps one of the relatives stuttered, and this predisposition was passed on to the child.

Stuttering in children: causes

There may be several reasons for a child’s illness:

• As noted above, stuttering can be hereditary. The disease manifests itself especially often in children whose parents had nervous diseases. Speech problems often occur in babies who have been exposed to an intrauterine infection, were born prematurely, or were injured during childbirth.
• The illness may result from an infectious disease that affects the brain, such as meningitis or encephalitis.
• Brain damage as a consequence of trauma.
• An infection affecting the child's ears or upper respiratory tract.
• Stress, fear or other psychological trauma.
• Incorrect development of a child’s speech under the influence of parents.

If parents stutter, then the child’s speech will be formed incorrectly as a result of his imitation of the parent’s manner. Sometimes a child, while talking to his parents, begins to stutter involuntarily. In this case, communication with other people goes well. But the case is different when a child’s speech is formed as an imitation of his parents. Then stuttering will also occur when communicating with other people.

How to treat stuttering

For stuttering treatment to be successful, the child needs a calm environment in the home. Only in an atmosphere of love and trust will the baby be able to get rid of the disease. Parents in the presence of a child should behave calmly and harmoniously. No showdowns are allowed. Show your baby only your love and trust.

It is very important to maintain a daily routine in addition to a calm home environment. The child should be fine get enough sleep, walk a lot in the fresh air, communication with strangers should be limited.

Watch how you speak in front of your child. Your speech should be smooth and clear, try to speak expressively at a moderate pace. This will help the baby tune in to the correct pronunciation on a subconscious level. Correct his mistakes gently so as not to frighten the child.

For therapeutic purposes, you can use moments when the child is passionate about play. Try to create play situations where the child will have to speak. For example, a baby can pronounce words on behalf of a toy, repeat phrases from a rhyme or song.

Breathing exercises promote the formation of correct speech. Encourage your child to take a short inhale and a long exhale, during which it is necessary to pronounce a phrase or individual words.

To develop speech, it is useful to show creative abilities. It is known that speech and finger motor skills closely related. Therefore, practicing appliqué, modeling and drawing will help fight stuttering.

The help of speech therapists is also necessary. He will comprehensively examine the problem and give the right recommendations for the baby’s speedy recovery. During classes, the speech therapist teaches the child proper breathing, relieves tension in the muscles of the speech apparatus and trains them. Be prepared for the process of stuttering treatment to be lengthy. It will take about a year to completely improve a child’s speech.

Prevention of stuttering

The most important rule for preventing stuttering is a calm atmosphere surrounding the child. He should grow up in a healthy environment, surrounded by the love of his parents. Conflicts and scandals should not concern the baby.

Parents should talk to the child correctly, without imitating baby talk and without cooing with him. Do not try to give your child a lot of difficult words, do not force him to memorize poems. At this age, children perceive the rhythmic coloring of poetry well, but do not always understand their meaning and distort the words. Therefore, it is necessary to choose literature for children according to their age.

Do not intimidate your child in an attempt to calm his behavior or get what you want from him. Good health, physically and especially psychologically, is important to him.