Why do people have stammers

This is known as 'early intervention'. Speech therapists, who provide treatment for stammering, are based in local health centres and hospitals. You may be able to refer your child directly or you can ask your doctor or health visitor to do this for you.

It is reasonable to ask if the therapist specialises in stammering and what can be expected from therapy. If possible, see a specialist who works regularly with stammering and keeps up to date with the latest approaches to therapy. If there is no specialist available in your local NHS speech and language therapy department, it may be worth asking if you can be referred to another department nearby.

If you are told to wait to see if the stammer will go away, because your child will probably grow out of it, the person is unlikely to be experienced in stammering. It is true that the majority of children recover naturally from stammering, but you should still be given guidance on how to support your child, and they should be actively monitored.

Treatment programmes for children involve further ways to help your child feel more relaxed and confident when speaking. There are many different treatments for stammering. The choice of treatment will depend on the age of the person and their individual difficulties and needs.

The different types of treatment for stammering include:. Without treatment, about 1 in older children, teenagers and adults will have developed a persistent stammer stutter. Many people with a stammer learn to control the stammer but still have problems if they feel stressed or speak in public.

EMIS would like to acknowledge the contribution of the British Stammering Association in the authoring of this leaflet. Am Fam Physician. Ashurst JV, Wasson MN ; Developmental and persistent developmental stuttering: an overview for primary care physicians. J Am Osteopath Assoc. Howell P ; Signs of developmental stuttering up to age eight and at 12 plus. Clin Psychol Rev. Epub Dec 6. It all comes back to the brain.

How much do you know about your brain? There are even some tiny differences in how some bits of the brain look. Scientists have found this out by taking really good pictures of brains using a brain imaging machine or scanner. They have found the same sort of thing with kids who stammer who were only 3 years old!

Can you imagine having to lie really really still while the scanner takes pictures of your brain? It takes a bit of practice!

One thing that scientists have discovered about the human brain is that the bits of it that we use get stronger a bit like muscles getting stronger when we use them. This is called plasticity and it means that our brains can actually change! Genetics means the way that some things like what colour eyes you have are passed down, or inherited, from a person to their children.

Young children who stammer are not more anxious than those who do not stammer, however anxiety can develop when young people have experience of people reacting negatively to them stammering. Some, but not all adults who stammer experience high levels of anxiety in situations where they feel that they will be judged by how fluently they speak.

Where this is the case it can be an important aspect to explore in therapy. If someone has any difficulties with language skills, for example difficulty thinking of the words they want or organising their ideas into spoken language, then this can disrupt the natural fluency of speech.

Using more pauses can help give you more planning time if this is the case. Sometimes people start to stammer later in life when they have never stammered before as a child. When this happens it is because of either a neurological issue i. A speech therapist can be involved in the multi-disciplinary care of individuals with an acquired stammer. I want to get help. I want to find out about therapy.

Sometimes you just need someone to talk to. Breathing control — as the patient practices prolonged speech, they also learn how to regulate breathing. The aim here is to modify the stuttering so that it is easier and requires less effort, rather than eliminating it.

This therapy works on the principle that if anxiety makes stuttering worse, reducing the effort needed will alleviate the stuttering. Some patients respond well to this type of treatment, but others do not. This uses the so-called altered auditory feedback effect. In some people, this can relieve the stutter. People who are not used to talking to somebody with a stutter might be unsure about how to respond.

Sometimes, the listener will look away whenever the stutterer stutters, or try and help by completing their missing words or phrases — or simply to try to avoid people who stutter altogether. It is important to remember that a person who stutters is interested in communicating just like everybody else. Focus should be on the theme of the speaker and the information they are trying to get across, rather than how it sounds. A stutterer is very aware of what their speech is like; they know only too well that they can take longer to utter phrases.

In fact, this awareness sometimes makes the stuttering worse. It is important that the listener gives out a feeling of patience, calm, and peace.

An impatient listener, or a listener who seems impatient, may make it harder for a stutterer to speak. Attempting to fill in the gaps saying the missing words, for instance is often an attempt to help, but it can be perceived by the stutterer as impatience. Telling the stutterer to relax, or to take a deep breath, may have helpful intentions, but could stress them out even more it may help some, though.

Stuttering is not simple to overcome, and cannot usually be easily sorted out with a few deep breaths. If you are really not sure how to behave, and you are talking to a person who stutters and nobody else is around, it might be helpful to ask them what would be the best way to respond. Motor neuron disease MND affects the nerves that enable movement, causing muscles in the body to deteriorate. Learn more here.

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