Saturday, September 06, 2008

The new stutter

Finn has started stuttering in the last couple of days. He repeats the first word of sentence 5 or six times, sometimes more. It is heart wrenching to hear. I feel bad for him, worried, even a little frustrated sometimes when it takes so long to get out what he is trying to say and that makes me feel incredibly guilty. It is so strange how it all started about Tuesday afternoon. Before that he was spitting out sentences pretty clearly. He has trouble with his "L" and he replaces his "S" with an "F" but you could understand what he was saying and he was stringing a number of words together. I did some reading online about stuttering and toddlers and it is pretty common. Most sites say that all kids go through some form of stuttering as they are going through changes in the amount of words they know and the amount that they can effectively communicate. While it is pretty normal it could also mean that he will continue to stutter. I learned to let him get out what he wants to say without rushing him or anticipating. Then show that I understand him be repeating back what he said: "Maybe maybe maybe maybe get maybe get the truck off the table." "You want to get the truck off of the table?" It helps to have something to remember and reinforce so that I don't just feel helpless. We will wait and see how Finn continues to develop, he doesn't seem to get too upset about the stuttering and he powers through with what he wants to say.