Stuttering is a fairly common childhood communication difficulty, with up to 8% of children stuttering at some point between the age of one and five. Stuttering involves the involuntary disruption to the flow of a persons speech, and when it occurs in early childhood, it resolves without intervention in up to 75 percent of instances. If you would like to know more about stuttering, we have an in-depth post all about disfluency you can see here. As a parent, it can be difficult to know how to interact with a child who stutters. Should you help them by finishing their sentences or give them time to finish? Should you talk to them about their stutter or ignore it completely? Below are some of our best tips for interacting with and responding…

What is stuttering? Stuttering is a communication disorder characterised by involuntary disruptions to the fluency of a person’s speech. Children who stutter may experience one or more of the following types of stutter: Repetitions: sounds (e.g. I w-w-want a drink), words (e.g. I want-want-want a drink) and/or parts of phrases (e.g. I want-I want-I want a drink) are repeated one or more times. Prolongations: sounds are elongated (e.g. mmmy) Blocks: speech airflow becomes blocked and no sound is made Involuntary movements: involuntary movements of the head, facial features or other body parts What causes stuttering? Currently, the cause of stuttering is still unknown. While research continues in this area, the current theories on stuttering tend to agree that it may be caused, at least in part, by some neurological differences that…