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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 19 Oct 2004
Time: 08:07:25 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.12.221
This is an ongoing challenge for parents and others when a child begins to stutter. Wendell Johnson believed that it was misdiagnosis normal disfluency that transformed a child's normal disfluencies into stuttering. Parents and others were told to ignore the stuttering and (hopefully) it would go away. His advice followed a tradition of thinking about stuttering as either primary, when the child was unaware of the stuttering, to secondary, when the older child or adult had become aware of stuttering and engaged in tricks or "secondaries" to attempt not to stutter. The rationale was that since most young children are primary stutterers--something we know now is not necessarily true--attention should not be brought to their speech. Johnson did not know that 80% of the children would remit without treatment anyway, so he assumed that his advice to ignore the stuttering was the critical factor in so many recoveries. As I mentioned, we now know that stuttering often does not progress in a uniform way from unawareness to awareness. Awareness of stuttering in children, like awareness of a sore thumb, comes and goes. We also know that a sizeable minority of young stutterers start out quite severe and get better over time, even if they continue to stutter. Additionally, we know about the influence of spontaneous recovery. And finally, we now know about something Starkweather called the "conspiracy of silence." The more something is not mentioned, the more "unmentionable" it becomes. Interestingly, if not talked about, stuttering is something that children as young as the age of 2 or 3 intuitively seem to pretend does not bother them--even when it does. So the best advice I can give to parents and clinicians about mentioning stuttering to young children is as follows. Don't make a constant issue of stuttering but let the child know from time to time--especially after an unusually difficult stutter--that you know he/she is having a hard time. The comments should not communicate any fear but simple, honest concern. At that time, tell the child that you will listen carefully and that it is OK that he/she sometimes has difficulty getting the words out. I hope this answers your question. Ken