Stuttering Devices

A speech-language pathologist should treat children who stutter as soon as possible. Children with normal dysfluency have little or no frustration or awareness of their stuttering.

Children with mild stuttering often present with similar repetitions in speech as those with normal dysfluency; however, the repetitions are more frequent and may be accompanied by secondary behaviours.

Child psychiatrists showed a demand for more information about the efficacy of therapeutic approaches and should require extensive collaboration with speech pathologists. For children under six, stuttering therapy is usually 100% effective, so anti-stuttering devices are unnecessary. However, if a child sees his speech-language pathologist for only ten or twenty minutes once or twice a week, the speech-language pathologist could train the parents to supervise their child practicing with a DAF device at home every day, to increase therapy time. We have had many parents of children who stutter interested in auditory feedback devices.

It is also possible that overuse of an anti-stuttering device could cause a child’s auditory processing to develop abnormally. Some children stutter when they are learning to talk and resolve the issue within a year or two.

If you want to reduce stuttering in an adult, the best place to start is by addressing stuttering issues in children. By far, children who are treated for stuttering are much more likely to reduce stuttering in adulthood or to eliminate it. In fact, pronounced stuttering in the younger child, as young as three, qualifies the child for speech language services and special free preschools or therapies.

Unfortunately, not all children get needed treatment to reduce stuttering when they are young. While stuttering can cause speech-related fears and anxieties in adults and older children, stutterers are, on average, psychologically normal. An unknown factor or combination of factors causes some children's speech to develop abnormally.

As the child grows what appeared as a minor dysfunction can develop into a major disability. Theories proposed since the 1930s that stuttering was caused by parental behaviour, such as parents reacting negatively to children's normal dysfluencies, have been disproven.

Brain scans of adult stutterers show several neurological abnormalities, but it is unknown whether these neurological abnormalities are present before a child talks, and cause stuttering; or whether stuttering causes children’s brain to develop abnormally.
The prevalence of preschool children stuttering is about two. The incidence is about 5%, or 1 in20 children stutter at some point in childhood. Only 18% of children who stutter five years recover spontaneously. By age six, a child is unlikely to recover without speech therapy.

Some paediatricians tell parents to "wait and see" if a child outgrows stuttering on his own. All children experience normal dysfluencies as they learn to talk, which they will outgrow.