2023

Counseling Parents of a Child with Normal Disfluencies

If a child appears to be normally disfluent, parents should be reassured that these disfluencies are like the mistakes every child makes when he or she is learning any new skill, like walking, writing, or bicycling. Parents should be advised to accept the disfluencies without any discernable reaction or comment.

Although the etiology of stuttering is not fully understood, there is strong evidence to suggest that it emerges from a combination of constitutional and environmental factors. Geneticists have found indications that a susceptibility to stuttering may be inherited and that it is most likely to occur in boys.1,2,3 Further support for inheritance comes from twin studies that have demonstrated a higher concordance for stuttering among both members of identical twin pairs than fraternal twin pairs.4,5 Congenital brain damage is also suspected to be a predisposing factor in some cases.1 For a large number of children who stutter, however, there is neither family history of the disorder nor clear evidence of brain damage.

We have compiled a list of resources on stuttering therapy, teasing, and building self-esteem in children. The list includes resources for children, parents, teachers, and speech-language pathologists. You may also call the Stuttering Foundation at 800-992-9392 for a list of support groups.

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If you stutter, who can help you?

Library Resources

SFA publications are provided free of any charges to public libraries.

If your local library doesn't have our newest materials, please give them a library request card. Click here to download it.

See what one Indiana library is doing to help those who stutter. 

My Disability Lesson

By Andrew Feese
2010 FAME Essay Winner

This is a new age for people who are disabled. There are electronic aides, there are therapists, and there are exceptions.

What should I do when my child stutters?

The most important thing to do when someone is stuttering is be a good communicator yourself.

Stuttering. This often misunderstood disability affects over three million Americans. And despite decades of research, both basic and clinical, the causes are still largely unknown.

by Rick Arenas, M.A. (Fall 2010)

Stuttering may be the result of a glitch in the day-to-day process by which cellular components in key regions of the brain are broken down and recycled, says a study in the Feb. 10 Online First issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, led by researchers at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health, has identified three genes as a source of stuttering in volunteers in Pakistan, the United States, and England. Mutations in two of the genes have already been implicated in other rare metabolic disorders also involved in cell recycling, while mutations in a third, closely related, gene have now been shown to be associated for the first time with a disorder in humans.