fluency

The way you speak to your child can have an impact on his or her speech and stuttering behavior. Children who stutter tend to stutter more in stressful speaking situations or when high speaking demands are placed on them. You can decrease the communication demands placed on your child by modifying the way that you speak to them.  

“Stuttering results when demands for fluency from the child’s social environment exceed the child’s cognitive, linguistic, motor, or emotional capacities for fluent speech.”- C.  Woodruff Starkweather

Demands: Can be placed on a child by his/herself, or by other listeners

    Examples of Demands:

• competition for talking time (lack of turn taking)
• time pressure
• negative listener reactions
• excitement/extreme emotion

Capacities:  Inherited tendencies, strengths/weaknesses, and perceptions which may influence the child’s ability to speak fluently.

Implementing the following twelve strategies to create a fluency facilitating environment for your child:

1) Speak slowly

2) Use a soft voice

3) Pause frequently in conversation

4) Use simple vocabulary and grammar

5) Avoid asking lots of questions, instead, use comments

6) Try not to place too many requirements or expectations on your child, especially during challenging or stressful activities (e.g., potty training, or school work)

7) Be patient, don’t interrupt your child or finish your child’s sentences for him/her, instead establish good turn taking rules

8) Allow time to pass between speaking turns, don’t rush your child

9) Maintain natural eye contact, even during a moment of stuttering

10) Avoid criticizing your child’s speech or using language like “slow down!” or “You’re taking too fast!” Instead, try to focus on the message your child is attempting to deliver

11) Talk openly about stuttering with your child and acknowledge that it can be difficult. You can use language like “sometimes speech is bumpy” or “that was a hard one.”

12) Listening Time: Set aside 15 minutes of time each day that your child can speak to you without time pressure. Your role is to listen to your child.

Many children who stutter have negative feelings and attitudes about communication and suffer from anxiety because of this. Fluency disorders often times have three components, called the “ABCs” of stuttering:

A: Affective

B: Behaviors

C: Cognitive

The B, or stuttering behaviors are the only part that others can see, while so much is going on in the mind of a person who stutters (A- affective and C- cognitive), making stuttering a much more complex disorder to evaluate and treat.

Yoga can be very beneficial to children who stutter. Coupled with speech-language therapy, yoga can improve speech fluency in children who stutter, by taking all three components of the disorder into account.

1) Respiration:

Breathing is also a very important to fluent speech. Yoga teaches children to learn to breathe from their bellies (“diaphragmatic breathing”) rather than from their shoulders (“clavicular breathing”). Diaphragmatic breathing allows for more substantial breaths and adequate breath support for fluent speech.

2)Positive Thoughts:

Meditation is a part of yoga, which teaches us self acceptance, the ability to let thoughts go, being in the moment and thinking in new ways.

3)Relaxation:

Yoga promotes overall relaxation, reducing anxiety and tension. Many children who stutter are anxious and tense. In a moment of disfluency, it is much more effective to relax and ease out of it, rather than fighting through it. A good example of this is a “finger trap.” The only way to escape a finger trap is by relaxing and gradually pulling your fingers out of it. The more force you use to pull, the more impossible it is to get out of it.

Yogarilla Cards make adding Yoga to your child’s Speech-Language therapy program easy and fun! There are 55 cards in each Yogarilla set. Each card highlights a different yoga pose, various modifications and additional challenges for each pose. Children love the adorable and friendly gorilla who demonstrates each pose!

It's amazing to learn that 50-75% of children who exhibit early stuttering will recover without direct intervention. Spontaneous recovery usually occurs within one year of onset. If you have a child who is exhibiting disfluncies, here are the factors that will help you determine if intervention is required:

7 Risk Factors for Persistent Stuttering:

1) Greater than 60% of child’s speech is dysfluent

2) Dysfluencies persist longer than 12-18 months after their onset.

3) Family History of stuttering: Almost 50% of people who stutter have a family history of stuttering

4) Sensitive temperament or negative reaction to dysfluencies (awareness of stuttering).

5) Concomitant speech and language difficulties or advanced language skills.

6) Late onset (after 3 years of age).

7) Gender: Male

 

7 Factors Associated with Spontaneous Recovery:

1) Early onset of dysfluencies (before age 3).

2) Typical speech and language skills

3) Decrease in dysfluencies during the 12 month period following onset.

4)Less than 50% of child’s speech is dysfluent.

5) Gender: Female

6) No family history of stuttering, or relatives who have recovered from stuttering.

7) Outgoing and carefree temperament.