“Wait and see” was the standard advice for parents of preschoolers with emerging stuttering for many decades. Although we now understand so much more about stuttering and its complexity, echos of this (very much outdated) advice are still too common. The truth is, fluency development plays out very differently from one child to the next. While one child may go through a brief period of disfluency and spontaneously recover, another child may not. Timing of intervention is important — the longer a child stutters, the more likely the stuttering is to persist.
In an evaluation, speech-language pathologists examine a wide range of risk factors (based on the most current research) to determine an individual child’s likelihood to continue to stutter vs. spontaneously developing “typical fluency.” These factors are complex and dynamic and speech-language pathologists are uniquely specialized in examining them and helping families gain insight into their child’s fluency development. If your child is deemed to be at a higher risk to continue to stutter early speech-language therapy (with a clinician well versed in working with preschoolers who stutter) can go a very long way in establishing great ease of speech in a young child! So when in doubt — have your child evaluated!
Here is what to expect:
A preschool fluency evaluation will focus on addressing the following questions:
– Does my child really stutter?
– If so, what is the likelihood that she will continue to stutter (vs. spontaneously recover)?
– What should be done next?
If you are concerned that your child may be stuttering, please don’t wait to reach out. Our team can help you evaluate whether treatment would be appropriate at this time.