Preschool stuttering therapy evaluation

Many parents ask when is a good time to start therapy??

Typically, the general rule of thumb is to wait 4-6 months to start the stuttering evaluation/therapy process since more often than not, it ends up being developmental. But what is developmental stuttering really??

When a child starts to develop their expressive language skills at a rapid rate, what starts to occur is what we call “capacity vs. demand”. All that means that the mouth is motorically having trouble keeping up with all the messages that the brain starts to fire for the mouth to say, leading to frequent word and partial word repetitions. The child is generally unaware of what is going on at this point and goes about his/her business to express what they want to the best of their ability.

The red flag signal which parents should look out for would be: struggling to speak, demonstrating physical difficulties (e.g., tapping foot, making noise prior to speaking, etc.) to help themselves to get the words out. In addition, a family history of stuttering is something that needs to be kept in mind, as well. There is a huge genetic component when it comes to stuttering. Please consult a speech-language pathologist, specializing in stuttering for further assistance.

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