Stammering – or ‘bumpy talking’ – is an issue many parents become concerned about, but this type of normal non-fluency is a common part of a child’s development between the ages of 3-5.
The good news is there are lots of small environmental changes parents can make to help with positive fluency – and all without your child even noticing.
Our founder, Sidonie, has recently had some effective and successful initial sessions with several different families with children aged around 3 to 4 who are experiencing ‘bumpy talking’. Like all our therapists, she likes to take a holistic approach to helping a child with their communication – any difficulties a child faces are rarely just about the act of speaking itself!
Here are her tips and considerations when helping a child to overcome this issue.
Our starting point is always to try to understand each individual family’s situation and pressure points. Routine is important for children and any disruption can cause confusion, affecting their ability to understand and communicate, so it helps to understand if there are particular situations in which they experience disfluency.
For example, in one family, the parents had recently split up. Working with them on keeping a clear routine and making any transition times smooth helped maintain stability for the child.
Sometimes in our haste to encourage our children to talk, or improve language development, we focus on asking questions: ‘What did you do at nursery today?’, ‘Who did you play with?’, ‘What did you have for lunch?’
Try to slow down a little. Often children will give you this information in their own time, maybe after some chill-out time, a snack, or maybe not until bedtime.
Changing from open-ended to simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions are often easier ways to promote fluency as children find them easier to answer – e.g., ‘Did you play with Dylan?’
Parents can feel pressure to turn every interaction into a learning opportunity – ‘What colour is that?’, ‘How many monkeys are there?’ This is a common theme in many families as we are just trying to show an interest.
We reassure clients by helping them find ways to have guaranteed special quality time with their child that doesn’t have to be ‘educational’ – simply chatting, commenting and playing is hugely beneficial for speech and language. Join in an activity such as colouring in or building Lego, and comment on what you and they are doing, but avoid questioning. Or just read to them, watch a film, sing nursery rhymes or count together - often these rote-learned things are much easier for the child to experience fluency!
Many parents leave sessions feeling much more relaxed and able to enjoy time with their child, knowing that normal everyday chat and interaction has a positive impact.
If children are experiencing bumpy talking, try to avoid asking them for an immediate response e.g. ‘Say goodbye to Grandma’ or ‘Say thank you to Auntie Sarah.’
Some parents might be concerned about their child appearing rude, or not demonstrating good manners in these types of social situations. But we explain to parents that working with other family members and helping them understand the importance of temporarily reducing the pressure to talk can be really useful – usually, Grandma or Sarah are more than happy with alternatives to speech, such as a wave goodbye or a thank you card.
We like to delve into relations with siblings in our sessions - is there a brother or sister who tends to talk more so the other child can’t get a word in edgeways?
In which case we suggest fun ways as a family to help encourage the children to take turns to talk and not interrupt, as subconsciously these things all add a degree of pressure to a situation.
When your child is tripping over their words and struggling to speak fluently, it’s so tempting to say this to them. But this draws attention to the fact that there might be a problem and can make them feel self-conscious.
Similarly, don’t finish their sentences for them; just give them time and space and relaxed eye contact.
Also, think about the way you and your partner communicate. Sometimes in the sessions we discover that mum or dad speaks very quickly. Children always try to mimic the speed at which the adults around them speak and going too quickly means a greater chance of bumps. So we often send parents away with a challenge to slow things down.
We always send families away with an advice sheet but we also suggest parents record their sessions so they can listen back to advice. There’s a lot to take on board in our sessions and there could be a real golden nugget moment that you don’t want to forget. Having a recording can help ensure you remember all the key advice and tips that can make a difference to your child.
We love working with families in these initial advice sessions – the majority of the time, they never have to come back again once they have understood the advice.
Sometime the environmental changes alone don’t help alleviate the problem but we can reassure parents that there are other more direct approaches for teaching helpful strategies to the child, if required.
Please ring and chat if you want further advice on your child’s bumpy talking.
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