stuttering parents

[mayaB]

I'm a 30 year old first time parent of a 4 month old, and I am a stutterer. I'd like to hear from other parents in this forum who stutter and share how you are dealing with this situation. Since getting pregnant and then breastfeeding I've been off a medication that was helping me w/ my stuttering. I also changed country in the meantime and speaking languages that make me stutter more ( I was raised speaking 3.5 languages.... part of the reason I stutter??) so my stuttering feels pretty bad these days.. What have your experiences been with raising your child? I'd like to be proactive and be ready to grow my child to enjoy communicating. (not like mommy that has such a fight with it!) Thank you for sharing!!

[Standingtall]

I am also an proud parent and I have seen pics of Elliotts kids and they are adorable. All babies and kids are. I have twin girls, turned 5 last month and they both stutter. They were also born with an slight skull deformity. Not only they will get teased from their stutter, they will get teased from the way they look at one point in their lives. I think you are doing great and with your attitude, your 4 month old will grow up into an wonderful person. Maybe like an artist, like you and I are. Good luck friend.

[Keny]

i stutter, my dad stutters. stuttering has been hypothesized to be genetic. you should give your kids speech therapy as soon as you suspect that they also stutter, so they wont suffer when they grow up. i wish my parents did that for me.

[happy7117]

None of my family members stutter, so I often wonder where it originated from??

Also, my Grandma before she sadly died back in 1995 used to tell me to "tap my leg" when I stutter to help??

Did she mean well or do you think she was doing the right thing???

Also every time I would stutter, she would put her hand over my mouth, while saying "stop that!"

I was not sure how I should have taken that, so I did not say anything to her, but needless to say she was a great grandma....

As to her putting her hand to my mouth when I started to stutter, and saying "stop that!", was that good or bad of her??

What's your thoughts??

[mayaB]

None of my family members stutter either. I've asked about distant family members too.. but I seem to be the black sheep. I remember my elementary school teachers telling me that I stuttered because I was stressed w/ too much to do. I went to english school and then japanese school in the weekend and summer. Took Italian and french in school. ( I live in Italy) plus piano conservatory and ballet school. haha! My parents took parenting pretty seriously!! Still, who knows why and how I started. I just would like to make my son's environment as healthy as possible to promote him to be fluent. I've accepted my situation and am confident of my powers to enjoy life with this characteristic. But I would love to hear my son babbling away about nonesense w/out the struggle I have. !!

[mayaB]

AGOFCR hello! How are your 4 and 6 year old doing? What do they think of your stutter? Do they have a stutter too?
Standingtall, what sort of skull deformity? what is it due to? How and when did you see them start stuttering?

[mayaB]

Elliott, hello! I'm glad your kids are doing better w/ talking. What type of things do they do in speech therapy. Do you think they picked it up because of hearing you? When you go out with them and say you have to ask someone something and you know you are going to have a hard time, do you prefer to not have your children hear you? How do you handle those situations? What does your wife say about all this?
My husband and I have been together a very short time. barely two years. It was a blow away love at first sight sort of thing. I dont think he understands the magnitude of emotions involved in stuttering. So he doesnt really understand why I'm worried about my son having this problem..

[Standingtall]

Standingtall, what sort of skull deformity? what is it due to? How and when did you see them start stuttering?
The skull deformity is genetic, on the mother side. The left side of the skull closed and the left eye would look away. It has since been repaired. The skull can expand with the brain now. My girls were also born with an cleft lip and palate and there is no evidence of that in both sides of the family. It has been closed, but the speech development has been slowed. The stutter comes from me and my mother side of the family.

My dad and grandmother, who raised me, never made an issue out of my stutter. We are doing the same, but somedays the wife runs short on patiences. It is an blessing to have twins, because they are constantly talking to each other in their games. They are doing an lot of role playing now, with their dolls and play with their trains set with their daddy. I have always giving them the thumbs up, to reassure them that everything is going to be okay. Hold their hands when they come out of their surgery.

The girls have not had any therapy yet, but we are working on getting it for them. We are currently trying to find an way around some jurisdiction crap. I did grow up with an set of twins who stutter and they still do. None of their siblings stutter. Well, good luck with your son.

[beyourself]

I'm a 30 year old first time parent of a 4 month old, and I am a stutterer. I'd like to hear from other parents in this forum who stutter and share how you are dealing with this situation. Since getting pregnant and then breastfeeding I've been off a medication that was helping me w/ my stuttering. I also changed country in the meantime and speaking languages that make me stutter more ( I was raised speaking 3.5 languages.... part of the reason I stutter??) so my stuttering feels pretty bad these days.. What have your experiences been with raising your child? I'd like to be proactive and be ready to grow my child to enjoy communicating. (not like mommy that has such a fight with it!) Thank you for sharing!!

I am a parent who stutters and has kids.

None of my kids have a stutter. BUT, my first child, when she was about 5-6 years old started to
develop a block on some words whilst she repeated the syllabal of others.

She did it consistently enough that it could become a
stutter. I guess the problem was that she liked me a lot and so wanted to emulate my speech as well.

I did some research, and found that there was a
programme develpoed in Australia called the Lidecombe Programme for pre-school kids ages 4-6 years.

The general of this program was to correct your
child's speech when they stuttered. What I used to do was tell her that we were both going to play a game to see if we could catch each other out if we stuttered. Whenever I did catch her stutterring I would ask her to repeat the words again without stutterring - which she could always do.

We only had certain periods where we would play this
game. If she did not stutter during that 30 min- 1
hour period I would reward her with a cartoon sticker.
she really enjoyed that.

Interestingly she was not anxious about me drawing
attention to her stutter. This was the reason why the
Lidecombe programme targeted kids from the ages 4-6
years. Once the child became 7, it was thought they
had enough awareness to actually be too conscious of
their speech and this additional drawing attention
could be detrimental.

I had no problems with my other kids.

So keep any eye out and remember the Lidecombe
Programme. I think it was a "life saver" for my
daughter.

Please get in touch if I can be of any further help -
Good luck and happy parenting!