Does your kids repeat phrases and words again and again? This doesn't mean she has a stutter.

Learning how to speak is usually a remarkable feat. Additional wonderful is that it's obtained during the initial few years of life. But as with mastering any new task, speech can have its stumbling blocks. Normal non-fluency is one of them. Even while to the untrained ear it seems similar to stuttering, it is really different. Speech & language pathologist Donna Seedorf-Harmouth points out that normal non-fluency happens when babies "are attempting to show so many ideas about all of the things they're learning."

At times their muscles usually are not coordinated to say words as easily as their mind is thinking them, and when this occurs it's called normal non-fluency, which means, for instance that "they may trip up on tiny words in their sentences, or they simply get words stuck on the tip on their tongue and they're not able to get them out as easily as they would like."

Though children outgrow normal non-fluency, Donna says parents still need to be patient whenever it happens. "If you hear normal non-fluency in a young child, its essential to maintain eye-to-eye contact to ensure that you can say to your child with your body language that you're still interested with what he's saying and that you'll wait as long as it takes for him to convey his ideas to you. With this you are providing him is the gift of all of your interest so that they know you value his ideas that they've got to share with you.

Regarding stuttering, it may be suspected "when we see your child starting to struggle with speech, break his words up, fragment his speech", says Dr. Bob Kroll, a language fluency expert. Kroll states there is a distinct difference between the child going through a phase of normal non-fluency and a child who stutters. "Instead of hearing the repetitive "mommy, mommy, mommy" we may hear things like "m-m-mommy, m-m-mommy, c-c-can I have some juice". That could indicate a lot more of a struggle and tension with the speech process."

If you suspect your child may be a stutterer, consult your children's doctor so that a referral to a speech and language pathologist may be made. Kroll explains that a speech pathologist "might look to find out how serious that problem is, should it be just an episode or occurring on a daily basis. The greater chronic it is the greater concerned we get, and the more likely we are to labeled it as stuttering."

Del Ferro