2 year old stammering - any advice?

[MamaG]

DS, 3 in March, is sometimes stammering when he starts a sentence and it is getting more and more frequent. He will say the first word 3, 4, 5 times, i.e. bit bit bit rather than b-b-bit.

any advice much appreciated.

.

Loads of under 5's do this.

I had a mindee who was a bit like Jim on The Vicar of Dibley - the first word of any sentence was repeated repeated repeated for what seemed like 10 minutes before the rest of the sentence joined it. It lasted a year or two and he doesn't do it any more.

His parents and I never paid attention to it, just patiently waited for the rest of what he wanted to say to kick in.

It was worse if he was under pressure/stress, so my advice is to ignore it and see how it manifests - does he do it more when he's tired/upset/excited etc?

I think he knew exactly what he wanted to say but at that age they're learning new words all the time and I wonder if it doesn't take a wee while to pick the right ones and put them in the best order. Much easier to say "no want drink" than "I don't want water I want a Fruit Shoot, please Mummy."

My DS1 did this for ages, off and on. He's 5 now, hasn't done it for yonks. It's very normal at this age.

Don't fuss, don't correct the sentence, just wait, they will get the words out correctly.

Thank you very much for your advice, its really put my mind at rest

DS1 did this sort of thing - he used to repeat final sounds (still does it very, very occasionally) - so a bus was a bus-s-s-s-s-s (each "s" pronounced individually).

I didn't draw attention to it and made sure that other people didn't either.

I posted a thread about it and people who know about this sort of thing told me that final sound repetition was more unusual, but not unheard of - and that it was normal development at this age and not to worry about it.

I think it's just their brains go faster than their tongues for a while, then catch up again, then speed off again.

My DS1 is three in April so almost the same age as yours.

Really common in little ones, they're just getting the hang of forming words and sentences and before you know it they twittering on for England - rarely anything to be concerned about

Thanks so much - I love MN