5 replies to this topic

[Carolyn C]

We have a child with quite a noticeable stammer (we had another one last year) and I found the British Stammering Association very helpful, with a good website. Thought I'd let everyone know about it. They sent us some free, very reassuring leaflets (useful to pass on to worried parents) with practical suggestions for ways to handle it. Website is

http://www.stammering.org/

Carolyn

[Steve]

Thanks for that useful link Carolyn. I'll put it in our resources page! :)

(And welcome to the Forum, by the way - too many others had already replied to your introduction by the time I saw it yesterday :D )

[Helen]

Hi Carolyn,
Welcome to the site from me too :D
Thanks for that link; it's reminded me to find out a bit more, as we have a child in our nursery who is showing the first signs of stammering. Thanks again. :)

[Beau]

My own son had quite a bad stammer when he was little. I had a real battle with the health visitor before she agreed to refer him to a speech therapist. I wish at the time I had been able to access more useful information like this - this was before I even had a computer. Can you imagine that??? His stammer was linked to his learning difficulties but I'm glad to say he has no hint of a stammer nowadays.

I'm sure he'll still remember his 'special 5 minutes'. The other advice I recieved was to do with reducing the number of questions. Children are often bombarded with questions when they leave a childcare setting/school. A trick is to say things like "I notice the sand tray was out today" and wait for your child to respond if they want to. This takes the pressure off them having to reply.

Thanks for that Carolyn. :)

[hali]

Thank you Carolyn :D

[Linda McDowell]

We had a little boy some years ago with a stammer. He developed it when he was about three and the speech therapist thought it was because he had been given too much language. Apparently he had learnt to talk very quickly and was a very articulate speaker from an early age. So Mum expanded his vocabulary with things like, if they saw a dog she would tell him what breed it was. With cars it wasn't just a car it was the make and sometimes the model. So he had so much knowledge and language that he couldn't transfer it quickly enough into speech-hence the stammer. We had to make his language very simple and as you have said Beau limit the amount of questions asked.
Linda