Is this a stammer/stutter that my 5.5 yo dd has or something else?

[peggotty]

She doesn't do it all the time, but can sometimes do it a lot and it is quite pronounced when she does it. She will repeat words or phrases in a sentence over and over e.g 'I went..I went.. I went.. I went to the shop and..and...and ..and got some sweets'. From what I've read a stutter/stammer is more getting stuck on the first sound of a word or long gaps between words. She was an early talker, is very articulate. This is a recurrence of a problem that she had when she was around 4 that did eventually stop but it's now worse then ever. I never refer to it or correct her or anything but I'm a bit worried about it affecting her at school. It can take her ages (or so it seems) to get a sentence out. Yet on other days it hardly seems to happen. Her teacher hasn't mentioned anything about it but there is a parents evening next week so I'll ask then. Any advice?

hi peggotty,

My ds (just 6) still does that now sometimes. I think it's a case of his thinking process not being quite as fast as he wants to talk , so instead of going 'ummmmm' as a stop gap he just repeats some stuff over and over, sometimes with a pensive or blank look on his face, and then suddenly gets to the end of the sentence :). It can be a bit frustrating at times as I just want to say 'spit it out boy', which of course isn't exactly productive LOL.

So I don't think it's something to be overly worried about (though of course if you are go see a paed :) ).

My ds (3) does this from time to time. He has seen a SALT in the past who said it's not a stutter. She said that children learn that to hold a conversation/your attention they have to keep the conversation flowing so its their way of doing this. It's their way of keeping your attention while they think through what they want to say. She said to just ignore it.

My ds tends to do this around speech spurts.

Ds does (more did, now, he's 11) this and his best friend does it more noticeably. In both case they are v bright boys with physical co-ordination difficulties (his friend is diagnosed dyspraxic, ds is borderline). Ds's speech at 11 is still lispy and it is v noticeable to me that he uses his mouth lopsidedly - presumably one side is easier to form fine movements with than the other.

So, with us, it is intellectual ability being ahead of physical ability in two ways - both in what they want to say, and in how they can make the sounds. Ds's friend's difficulties also have something to do with finding breathing co-ordination tricky - he often has to breathe halfway through a word, which obviously makes for dysfluency.

How's dd's breathing?

The main thing we did with ds (which was also SALT advice) was let him have another go at whatever he wanted to say. "Ds, that sounded interesting, but I'm afraid you lost us halfway through. Take a breath, think it through, and tell us again." He can be really quite coherent nowadays - sometimes!

Both mine do it...they're 6 and 2...I worried for about 3 seonds then realised its just them thinking about what they're saying.

Hello all, thanks for the replies! It being her thinking process running ahead of her speech makes a lot of sense. So it's almost like a sort of tic she has when thinking through what to say? Bink, he breathing seems fine. She could talk the kind leg off a donkey, and has such funny quirky ideas. She's a very sensitive little thing so I don't want to draw attention to it, but neither do I want it to perhaps make her a target at school or think that other children avoid her because it takes her so long to say things sometimes . THere's no indication that's the case at all, so I think I may be worrying about nothing...

I read that its common for temporary stuttering to occur at 2.5 and again at 5.5 yrs. I'm sure you know that you should be ignoring it, not trying to finish sentences for her, or making too much of an issue etc is best in terms of it just being a phase that goes.

My DS did this when he was younger and it seemed to be triggered by a change in his life, when we moved house and when his new brother arrived, but also by something we would not have considered a big change, like some family staying with us for a few days. I don't know if there have been any changes in your DDs life, but even just starting in a new class with a new teacher might be enough. It was fairly short term with us but did reoccur three or four times.