postr/StutterJune 3, 2024

Advice for our 7 years old child?

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Advice for our 7 years old child? We have a 7 years old child who stutters for over a year and a half now. Before this, the only speech issue he had was that some sounds weren't exactly correct (which is normal to happen in our language, but that was fixed with speech therapy), otherwise he was very talkative and had a rich vocabulary. Then it started happening, over a period of 6 months or a bit more: at first you could barely notice some pauses here and there, then he started occasionally repeating a word he just said (kinda like double checking for himself that he said it right, in a lower tone of voice), then it was a full blown stutter: jaw and tongue clenched, kinda out of breath, trying to push out even the most basic "yes" and he managed was "y....y.....y.......yes". Probably due to this he's now very brief in communication, uses only short sentences and also came up with clever ways of masking his issue, like pretending to spell the words every time. We took him to evaluations: psychologist, psychiatrist, neurology, speech therapy... multiple times. Apparently there's nothing physically wrong with him. Also no obvious mental issue, no autism, no ADHD. We're being told the stutter has an emotional cause, but no one can tell us what it is. He seems to be a bit defiant, anxious, has difficulties doing play pretend (refuses to) and recently it was pointed out to us that he seem to have some sort of sensory input processing problem (he seems to seek extra physical stimuli and he also has difficulties calming down once he gets overstimulated), but nothing obvious that could explain it. Probably multiple factors, maybe the pandemic and isolation, maybe the stupid kid from kindergarten which told him daily about scary monsters, maybe something we (the parents) do or don't do and we're completely oblivious to. He's been in therapy for at least 8 months and also speech in therapy more recently, but... there's no obvious progress when it comes to the stutter. There are bad days, but most of them are so and so. And we even have a few good ones, like how it was before this whole thing started. We're also in therapy, working on ourselves and trying to fix whatever issue(s) could have done this to the child. It's hard not to think you're the cause when the child stutters mostly at home and/or in our presence, but he's ok with strangers. So, I don't know... anyone else been through some something similar? Any advice, anything else to try?

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Parent & CaregiverCauses & VariabilityTherapy & Professional

Subthemes

Early Concern & OnsetTrauma & PsychologicalTherapy ExperiencesHome Support