3.8 year old developed stutter

[Ingridla]

Hi all, any advice much appreciated. My 3 yr 8 month old son has developed quite a pronounced stutter within this last week. It literally seems to have come from nowhere. He goes to a fab nursery 3 full days a week and I'm a single parent, he sees my ex, his dad EOW and one weeknight. I'm totally befuddled as to where this has come from.

How well can he speak? Sometimes children stutter at this age because their language development isn't on a par with how fast they're thinking.

When his spoken language improves, it's likely it will stop.

He speaks pretty well and is a real chatterbox but does babble and slur as he goes when he obviously can't articulate his thoughts into words, yes I think you're right, someone else said that his brain is working faster than he can get his words out, thanks

Both my DCs stutter, the eldest has had SLT for her stuttering. It's a very frustrating issue. The SLT specialist said they don't really know why some children stutter, although some children stutter at a young age around 3yo, or times of greater language acquisition or if acquiring more than one languages at a time. There seems to be a genetic component, so is there anyone who stutters or stuttered as a child in your wider family?

In a sense it also doesn't matter why children start to stutter because it is very difficult to predict what a stutter will do. Sometimes it goes away all by itself, only to come back and go away again. Both my DCs have had periods of stronger stuttering and periods where it disappears. Sometimes this is linked to emotional upheaval but not always.

There are some strategies but they mainly support everyone. Families should model slow talking, never hurry the children and not make a big deal out of stuttering by becoming anxious about it. SLT can help a lot of children, but mainly with how to deal with the stuttering. My DD was taught breathing techniques, how to cut words up in smaller bits, how to get a word started, etc. all of which has been helpful.

Both my children stutter are bilingual but only stutter in one language which is another interesting thing. It helps my DC2 that DC1 stutters as he when he started stuttering he just took it in his stride as something DC1 does. DC1 was unaware of her stutter for a long time.

@Booboostwo really useful information thank you for your help.

I have copied this from another thread that I just commented on but the advice is still applicable!

Yes! At that exact age - the advice we got was that kids brains are often work so quickly that they can't get the thoughts out clearly so :

Don't interrupt them
Don't try to finish their sentences to get what they're saying out quicker
Let them finish what they are saying in their own time even if it takes ages
Once they've said what they wanted to say you repeat the sentence back to them at normal speed - so if they say ' Can we go to the park to play' but stutter and stammer you repeat back at normal speed " you want to go to the park to play? Okay we can do that'

And you keep doing that, and try not to worry too much because it's very common. It took our DS about 4-5 months to improve once we started doing this.

And it's important to let other family members and carers know this technique, and keep it all no fuss, casual so as not to create anxiety for your DS which will make it worse.

Good luck.

DS also developed a stutter out of nowhere a few months before he was due to start school. The advice I received was similar, his brain was faster than his mouth.

The stutter disappeared before he started school and has never been seen again. He is in his 20s now.