Toddler with a sudden stammer

[StepfauxWife]

DD is 2.5 and has been chatting for at least 12 months. She has a wide vocabulary for her age according to nursery staff. I've noticed over the last couple of weeks that she has started stammering - "m-m-m-m-mummy" and so on. You can see that she is really trying to get the words out, it's heartbreaking to see.

It's almost like she is overwhelmed with all her thoughts and just can't get them out fast enough. I've not drawn attention to it and let her speak in her own time but wondered if I ought to be making more of a conscious effort to do something about it.

I was wondering how common this is and whether I ought to see a speech therapist? From some initial Googling, it seems that this could be a developmental thing. My instinct is to see how long it continues before making a decision. DC2 is due in a couple of months so I'm wondering if this impending change has manifested itself in a stammer.

[sleepyhead]

Ds1 had this for a while. Cant remember when it came on or went away but it was a few months. I think it's fairly common and the hypothesis is something like their brain takes a bit of time to coordinate the making of the sounds physically and mentally as everything is exploding so fast at that stage (or something!)

[JassyRadlett]

Very common apparently - happened to DS1. The best advice we had was to slow down our own speech - that made a huge difference.

[Ellieboolou27]

My daughter went through this stage too, it lasted a few months, she's 3.5 now and not done it for over a year. I was really worried but the childminder she was with at the time said it's quite common and to just ignore it, I did and after a while it went.

[Mouthfulofquiz]

My DS had this when he had just turned 3. I was really worried, it really came on suddenly and was quite a severe stammer. I referred to a speech therapist who told me he had a great vocabulary, and it was common (but to keep an eye on it). He is now 3.5 and hasn't stammered for ages. She was right!
I did a few small things to help like bring his bedtime forward a bit so he wasn't tired, and found some really good advice online which I also gave to his nursery to share with the staff. The nursery were fantastic and very supportive. If I were you, I'd have a chat to your health visitor and perhaps see if you can get a referral to get her checked out, but it does sound like a phase

[OMGtwins]

Our son did this too, started about a month ago almost overnight. Worse first thing and last thing, but it's on the way out now. HTH :)

[StepfauxWife]

Thanks all, really helpful to hear some stories. I'll take a look at some of the online advice and will keep an eye on how things progress.

She doesn't seem to conscious of it so I don't think it's worth worrying about too much. But I will speak to nursery to make sure we're all doing the same thing.

[waitingforsomething]

This happened to my dd twice once at 2.5 and again at 2.8. Lasted about 7-10 days each time and was really bad, I freaked out! It stopped on its own and then was followed immediately by huge leaps in language! Keep an eye but a SALT friend said it is very normal as their brains run ahead of their mouths while language develops.
The advice was to draw no attention to it , don't mention it to her and let her finish her sentence even if it takes a long time

[Mouthfulofquiz]

Yes, good advice about letting them finish in their own time and not making a big thing of it.
The only negative with nursery was when I heard someone mimicking him (while talking to him - and I do honestly believe it was not meant badly. The nursery worker was very young, and normally very very nice) but I did feel that it was worth a mention to them!

[originalmavis]

Does she stutter if she's speaking on the phone?

[KondosSecretJunkRoom]

This happened to ds1 at 2.5 and lasted about a month and preceded an enormous explosion in speech. Of course in that time I had convinced myself that the arrival of ds2 had caused him to become a nervous wreck, turned out that was just me.

[StepfauxWife]

Ah thanks everyone, that has really helped to put my kind at ease. It seems to have come from nowhere in the last three days or so.

The nursery staff said today that they were encouraging her to slow down but I think I prefer the say nothing approach.

I'm so interested to know whether it'll be followed by a huge leap in speech!

[Sansfards]

We had this too, came on suddenly and after a few months was gone. If we didn't have it on video I think we'd have forgotten about it as he has always been a good talker but it was a strong stutter.
We did decide to talk to him about it, having read that it's a common development point, and would ask him if his words were sticking. It gave him time to rest and start over but we never made it a problem. Not sure if it made any positive impact on the stutter going but it was hard to hear him struggle so we wanted to let him know we understood