2.5 year old with stammer

[Geepers]

My 2 and a half year old daughter has always been an excellent talker and even strangers had very little difficulty understanding her.

However, over the last 2-3 months she has developed quite a pronounced stammer/stutter at the start of almost every sentence.

For example she has just come to me and said 'Whe-whe-whe-whe where's baby gone?' and when I told her she struggles again and says 'She-she-she's not'. In fact I think the only time she doesn't do it now is when she is singing.

At first I thought she was just copying her older brother whose stammer can get quite bad now and again but I don't think that is the case now.

Shall I just monitor it? Hope it is a phase and goes away or contact the health visitor?

My 8 year old needed speach therapy for his stammer, and my 5 year old needed it due to poor pronounciation. I'm starting to think we are doing something wrong

no-one have experience of a stammer this young?

geepers...its nothing you're doing i'm sure.
here, have a hug ((((()))))

my little boy started to stammer terribly when he was 5...straight out of nowhere...no warning, no build up, just from normal speech to not being able to say two words in a minute. it was awful. by the time his appt with a speech therapist came through, almost 18months later, his stammer has gone, as quickly as it started..

there was no reason for it, no explanation, just one of those things....

is it that your dd is thinking quicker than she can talk? has something changed at home?

give her patience, give her confidence, and allow her time to speak....i'm sure you know all of these things.

can you give your hv a call and get her referred now, given the history with her older brothers? i hope it gets better for you all.

My 3yr old daughter went through a stage of stammering exactly like that a few months ago and i know of another little girl in my ante-natal group who does the same thing. I have to admit i wasn't concerned at the time (although my husband was) as i thought it was more a case of an inability to articulate the 1001 thoughts racing in her head then a speech impediment. Needless to say she doesn't do it anymore and speaks better than ever.

Ds1 had exactly the same sort of stammer a few months ago. He's 3.6 so abit older but a friends ds also had a stammer around the same age as your dd.

I found this site quite helpful even if it was just to reassure me that stammering is actually quite common/normal and nothing to do with anything i had or hadn't done.

Anyway, they both grew out of it and it disappeared as suddenly as it developed. ds1 also has speech therapy, as it turned out he suddenly stopped just before one of his appointments. I mentioned it to the speech therapist anyway and the main things she said were that it was a common thing especially in toddlers/preschoolers and can happen when their brains are working so quickly their mouths can't keep up, also that we didn't cause it, and to ignore it as in don't 'help' them finish their sentences etc.

If you are worried there's no reason you can't mention it to you hv or get a referal to a SALT, you can always cancel later if you need to.

Thanks everyone. My gut instinct is to just ignore for a few months and see what happens, but my husband worries about it more than me.

I'll see how it goes.

Just to add my ds1 did this when he was 4 because he was thinking faster than he could get the words out, being 4 he kept laughing at himself doing it.

He also sometimes couldn't think of the right word and as adults we would said "errrrrr" he just stuttered and then sometimes came out with a completely different word. Lasted about 6 months.

Hi Geepers It's nothing you are doing but they do say that stammering can run in families. My DS1 is 10 and he started stammering at 2 and has done on and off since. He can go a year without and then it starts again. We have done the lidcombe program, which has great success rate albeit not in our case. We are also due to attend the Starfish program next year. I would say keep a very close eye on things and if no improvement you may want to look at the lidcombe program as I blieve the sooner they have this therapy the easier it is. How is your 8 year old now? If he is ok then that should give you the confidence to know that DD will also be ok going forward.

Hi
we had this with our ds,and its common in fluent early talkers.
The tips are
-make statements instead of asking questions[everyone in regular touch with her]
-slow down your speech when talking to her,and wait quietly for her to speak
-only one person speak to her at once
-don't interrupt her
-if its quite bad,try to have less talking for that day

• smile and look relaxed or carry on as normal even tho its a bit painful to watch and listen to at times!

explain to her that talking can get stuck sometimes when you're little,its ok and you are listening to her and she will grow out of it

HTH