Hi everyone, our daughter is 33 months old and for context, we moved house 6 weeks ago and she has settled in so well, as have we. She has always been a good talker, lots of words, talking in sentences, very understandable etc. and lastly, she has had a dummy just for nap and night time for a while now.
On Monday so 5 days ago, we had a visit from the ‘dummy fairy’ which she was very excited about. We did this because in the new house she doesn’t lots of dummy associations so she never asks for it in the day here, and she’s starting a new nursery next month so we thought if we can, we should try and remove it by then. She excitedly put her dummies into a little box and magically a few minutes after leaving them on the doorstep, a little present appeared in their place which she was thrilled with. Bedtime rolled around and obviously she was hit with reality and was really upset by the lack of dummies. On Tuesday she didn’t nap because of the lack of dummy, but bedtime was a little better. Starting on that Tuesday we started to notice a stutter. It wasn’t bothering her too much but it was pretty regular. On Wednesday, the stutter was severe, causing her a lot of distress and she was often struggling to get words out at all and giving up (heartbreaking). On Wednesday night I ‘found’ a dummy and gave it back to her - I’ve never seen her so upset (upset caused by the stutter), she was utterly exhausted, needed desperately to sleep but couldn’t and had spent the day distraught from the stutter, we’ll address the dummy at a later date when she drops her nap I think.
She’s been sleeping better since having the dummy back which has taken the edge of her frustration, but she has reduced her speech to just 1-2 words at a time, a coping mechanism I think to avoid the stress of the stutter. It’s really hard to see her suffer and to have her speech change so quickly.
I feel so gutted and guilty that the emotion from the move and then the dummy removal has caused this in her (at least I think). Stutters run in both of our families, and I’m so worried that this is going to stick around and cause her ongoing difficulty :( Any experience or advice would be so welcome. Thank you xx