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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 10/3/00
Time: 9:01:05 AM
Remote Name: 157.182.12.51
Hi Lisa,
I'd like to try to answer your question about your 4 year-old daughter who has been stuttering mildly for about a year but noticably more in the past months. I would advise you definitely not to wait to arrange for an evaluation of her speech by a qualified speech-language pathologist (SLP). You will need to interview the SLP to be sure that he/she agrees that it is a good idea to intervene and treat young stutterers. (You see, for more than a generation, the conventional wisdom was to "wait and see" because it was believed that anything the parents did to draw attention to their child's stuttering would make it worse. We know that is not true now. In fact, the evidence in becoming very clear that the earlier we treat children who stutter, the better the outcome is likely to be.)
You may decide you would like to try to seek out a specialist. There is a specialty recognition program underway, but it is not far enough along to provide you with a list at this point. Your best resource for now would be to visit the Stuttering Foundation of America Referral List to see who in your area has indicated a willingness to be listed as a clinician or resourse person for those who stutter. The website is: www.stutteringhelp.org
I must tell you with utmost seriousness that nobody can guarantee a particular outcome for your daughter. I must also tell you that there might be extenuating circumstances that would make her case unusual. But given those caveats, you should be aware that your daughter has a fairly good chance of "outgrowing" her stuttering. Since she has been stuttering for more than a year and since her stuttering was probably mild, her chances for what we call "spontaneous recovery" is probably around 40-50%. Even so, there is very, very little evidence that having her evaluated and treated will increase her risk of getting worse. If she is a good candidate for therapy, I would guess that her chances for an excellent outcome are probably above 80% (a complete "cure," i.e., no stuttering at all, is also a realistic possibility). If you wait and your daughter does not recover spontaneously, she would still stand to benefit a great deal from therapy, but the likelihood for a complete cure will be lower. The longer she waits, even with a successful therapeutic outcome, the less likely she will grow up not stuttering at all or even remembering that she stuttered.
My daughter stuttered at that age and, thankfully, completely recovered. Girls do seem to be more resilient than boys in this area. That is no doubt part of the reason there are more males than females who stutter.
I wish you the best. There is good reason for hope!
Ken