Toddler stuttering

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Hi I wondered if anyone has experience of this? DD is a few months away from 3. She talked from quite a young age, had a wide vocabulary quite early on and generally is a chatterbox. She has had a lisp of sorts, it seems to come & go.
In the last month we've noticed she's started stuttering, very mildly at first but in the last two weeks it has become much more obvious. We don't mention it & we let her finish what she saying. This last week she seems to have noticed it herself & is becomingfrustrated with it, she's started putting her hand up to her mouth when she has a prolonged stutter. It's not curbing her chatting but I'm worried that she's worrying about it.
To set the scene a little, I'm pregnant with DC 2 & I have hyperemesis, it's getting better but for the last 2.5 months I've been quite useless as a mum, DH has been great, but I know DD is 'missing me' she now gets very upset when im being sick & I suspect all of this is making her anxious.
My question at what point do we need to seek help? Do we just continue to ignore? I probably would just leave it but the fact that she seems to be aware of it now worries me a bit.

Stuttering and stammering at this age is very common and seldom needs anything to be done. It seems to be that their brains are going faster than their mouths...and it's a bit like a record getting stuck. Funnily enough it is often the "good" talkers who exhibit this.

Try "not to notice", ie keep on doing what you are doing and respond once she has finished talking
if she is getting frustrated it is most likely that she has noticed a reaction and become aware...you could try handing her something (toy/hanky/your bag.) As a good talker she probably needs to concentrate less rather than more and physical movement can help.

Thanks distraction sounds like a good idea. It's funny listening to her chatting in bed with her toys, her speech is perfect, not a stammer to be heard. Hopefully she'll relax again and become less anxious about it. We'll just continue to ignore & give her the time she needs.

I rang the HV all horrified when DS2 started doing this. She said it was a phase, as if the brain is working quicker than the mouth like fool said.

IIRC she said don't worry unless it's still happening come school age.

I can reassure you here: DS1 did this on and off (and sometimes it was quite severe) between the ages of 2-and-a-half and 5. He had regular SLT checks and each time they said it was because he was using very complex language and it was his mouth not keeping up with his brain. They told us to ignore it, to give him plenty of time to talk and to slow down our own speech.

We followed the advice, and relaxed about it. It went away and came back and went away and came back. One of the times it came back it used to take him so flipping long to get the sentence out I thought it would really affect him. But if hasn't: he had a little phase of stammering in reception, but he seems to have grown out of it now.

It's worth going to your HV, as a SLT may be able to check there isn't more of a problem than it seems.

Thanks that is reassuring. I think I'll give her a month or so, see how she's doing & if it gets worse or is prolonged I'll speak to the HV.

Hey! I know this is an old thread but I found these comments so helpful when I was going through something similar that I wanted to leave a comment for other parents who might be going through a similar thing!

My son aged 2y8m has an excellent vocabulary for his age. We notice one a Tuesday that his words had expanded a lot and thought he must be having a period of language development. Anyway woke up on the Friday morning and he had developed a stutter - it started as prolongations and repititions at the beginning of words AND mid sentence - on the Saturday it was so bad that he started to whisper because he just could not get the words out - this went on for 2 weeks and I was very upset - I cried a lot - spoke to the dr and health visitor who weren't much help. - looked at forums and other parents were very re assuring! -anyway another week passed and it got very severe - he started to sound like he had a problem in his brain he literally could not get one word out - he started moving his head around and shouting to try to force the words out - he also was covering his mouth with his hands and having blocks and giving up. It was very sad. -anyway another week has passed and I'm pleased to say that it's almost gone (4 weeks in total) I mean he still does a bit of it maybe once every 10 sentences but it's definitely a lot better. I just wanted to write this so that other parents might feel some re-assurance at a scary time.