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From: Rosemarie
Date: 20 Oct 2010
Time: 05:19:19 -0500
Remote Name: 86.137.241.238
Hi Alisha, Thank you for your comments. In my clinical experience I have seen a wide range in children’s reactions to their stuttering. It is not unusual to see signs of awareness in a child with good language development who begins to stutter severely at around 18months to 2 years. Such children may cover their mouths, say something like ‘I can’t say it’ or ‘say it for me Mummy’ or stop talking in response to their stuttering. I’ve also seen children with only fleeting signs of awareness of around 5 years who have never been very fluent and whose stammering consists of relatively relaxed syllable repetitions. It’s as if these children do not experience the inability to talk in the way the severe ones do and since they have never experienced long stretches of normally fluent speech their stammering pattern is the ‘normal’ one for them. If children have a cluttering element to their stuttering they may have poor self-monitoring skills. So in the clinic we see a range in level of awareness and in the frequency of moments of awareness. I suggest you refer to the papers I cited in my article to see what the research tells about this interesting topic. With best wishes.