Stutter/sibilance on certain sounds

[Torvy]

Hi all,

Our eldest has started to elongate words starting with an s, or that have an st in them.

I can't quite work out whether it has happened over the past few days or whether I have just started noticing it.

He does have a habit of repeating words and phrases that feel good when he is stressed or cross, we think it's a bit of a stim. I asked him why he was doing it and he just did it more pronouncedly because he was in that kind of mood. I thought he might be copying hissing that he had seen at the pantomime (which he hated).

Should we speak to him about it? Ignore it? Mention it to his therapist? Something else I haven't thought of?

If we talk to him about something it often result in him realising he can use it as a bit of a push button, but I don't want to ignore something that could be a sign of his distress or a developing stutter or stammer.

You could request speech and language input. Has he ever had that? Many adopted children need SALT - it's because they weren't babbled to as children apparently. My daughter was diagnosed with a clinical speech and language disorder aged 10 and we had no idea! Not saying your son has anything like this, but SALT input can be incredibly helpful for lots of reasons and his current speech issue could be a way of getting into the system.

I’d second getting SALT input, if it is a developing stammer or stim they’ll be able to help with that.

we saw SALT for similar issue it very much came & went for our son so they didn’t need to do any work with him following assessment but they enabled us to access a course that gave really useful info for us on how to manage.

Mainly don’t draw attention to it, at the time, don’t interrupt, allow plenty of time for answers, don’t bombard with questions needing answers so reduce pressure. Encourage relaxed conversation about it when less pressure eg in car or when engaged in drawing etc to see if they want to talk about it eg, I’ve noticed it’s been tricky getting your words out today is there anything you wanted to tell me about? or I’ve noticed a lot of bumpy words today I wonder if that is frustrating for you?

ours was reception age when we did this, a few years on from this now & it has pretty much settled. Interestingly he only ever did it with us so school never saw it, which is apparently not unusual but did surprise me

was a self referral and I think it is in most areas, fairly quickly had a chat with a SALT on the phone who gave basic advice then had to wait couple of months to see someone but guess this will vary on area.

All the best