Factors That May Place Your Child At Risk For Chronic Stuttering

Factors That May Place Your Child At Risk For Chronic Stuttering

 

If your child has difficulty speaking, repeats sounds or words or tends to hesitate, your child may have a stuttering problem.  However, many children go through periods of stuttering that they eventually outgrow.

There are several risk factors that have been found to put children at more risk for chronic stuttering. 

1.    Family history:  About half of children who stutter have a family member who also stutters.  Your child is at less of a risk if that family member outgrew stuttering as a child.

2.    Age at onset:  Children who begin stuttering after the age of 3 ½ have a greater risk of continuing stuttering. 

3.    Time since onset:  About 80% of children who begin stuttering start to improve within 12 to 24 months without any intervention.  If your child has been stuttering for 6 months or more and the stuttering becomes worse they may be less likely to outgrown it.

4.    Gender: Girls are more likely to outgrow stuttering than boys.  About three boys to every one girl stutters.

5.    Other speech and language factors: If a child has speech with few articulation errors they are more likely to outgrown stuttering.  Advanced language skills are an indicator that stuttering may persist.

 

If your child has one or more of these risk factors, you may benefit from a visit to a speech-language pathologist to determine if your child qualifies for therapy. There are no cures for stuttering, but there are a variety of successful treatment approaches that will help your child make significant progress toward fluent speech.