Re: Stammering

[Guest guest]

My son does this right now too. I have always thought it was b/c he needed

extra time to process what he was saying. He does it mostly when just

talking to me alone. I think he is more likely to express complex thought

with more complex vocabulary with me b/c I am " comfortable " enough to him

for him to experiment with thoughts, ideas, new words, etc. This is why I

have always thought it was a processing issue.

I am interested in responses to this!

Tricia Morin

North Carolina

My oldest has now gotten into the habit of stammering, repeating a

word a few times before getting out the rest of his thought. This is

the kid who originally started talking by jumping to sound out each

syllable. Any suggestions? Is this consistent with Apraxia? One ST

thought it might be nervousness, which might make sense if it is

incrasing tone abnormally to the throat and voice box, but I'm not

sure.

[Guest guest]

Hi -

My 5.5 year old still does this a bit when he's excited. Often if I

interrupt him, it's worse - or if he gets distracted midsentence.

It's part of the planning part - imagine how difficult it was for him

to put all the syllables together - now apply that difficulty to

words. While I know my son has a word retrieval problem, given

enough time and (sometimes, when it's bad) reminding him to take his

time and being very patient (and expressing that with your face and

actions) makes it easier for him to spit out what he wants to say.

Hope this allays your concerns a bit -

Marina

--- In , " fopt " <fopt65@a...>

wrote:

> My oldest has now gotten into the habit of stammering, repeating a

> word a few times before getting out the rest of his thought. This

is

> the kid who originally started talking by jumping to sound out each

> syllable. Any suggestions? Is this consistent with Apraxia? One

ST

> thought it might be nervousness, which might make sense if it is

> incrasing tone abnormally to the throat and voice box, but I'm not

> sure.

>

[Guest guest]

Stuttering and apraxia, is it a stage or overlap? Dysfluency can be part of

normal development in speech in young children -and if our kids can

go through drooling and teething at three -why would it be

impossible for them to go through dysfluency at three or older?

When did I first bring this up on the web...over three years ago

http://cahn.mnsu.edu/profin4/_disc1/0000008c.htm

Tanner today at 7 and a half, I wouldn't describe it as stuttering

anymore. He at times speaks a bit slower, but not always. He

almost always needs to break his long thoughts into shorter

sentences, and pause between each one. He can talk -but it takes

longer to get it out then most of us. You can hear his most recent

talking page update here

http://www.debtsmart.com/talk/tanner.html

Below I cut and pasted some archives on this -but there are many

more. In particular notice the parent observed " stages of

apraxia " that I wrote below. There are that many apraxic children

that go through this " stuttering " thing I call it a " stage "

I say I wouldn't change anything below but I take that back. Now

that I think of it, since our children don't go through normal

developmental stages young -it's OK they go through them older.

With appropriate therapy they will continue to develop past these

stages. At least that's what I have seen in Tanner and some others

in this group. But that's not a fact -just my opinion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Archives

My Tanner's problem today at almost seven is with stuttering on and

off. Today Tanner's doing really well in speech -but as I posted

below -now that he is learning to read and his vocabulary is

expanding and he's pushing himself to speak in longer more complex

sentences -he ranges from having almost no stuttering to hesitation

on many words. For this reason -I just took Tanner to see

stuttering expert Dr. Dale from Florida Atlantic University

who diagnosed Tanner as having 20% fluency issues. Dr.

believes that Tanner's stuttering is not a true stuttering -but a

developmental one. Apraxic stuttering...appears there is such a

thing -so I guess down the road we will hear more about this. Dr.

confirmed that once apraxic children learn to talk -they

are hearing more and more about children with apraxia and

stuttering together. What was of great interest to those of you in

this group who also report hearing stuttering coming and going in

your apraxic child is that Dr. said that " we have done an

injustice as you say to apraxia and have not studied it enough, so

we really don't know how long is " normal " for the dysfluency stage

in an apraxic child -we really don't. We do know that many apraxic

children appear to take longer to go through stages. "

Dr. advised not to proceed with traditional stuttering

therapy for now -outside of continuing with slow and easy speech

practices. So here is the good news for all of us in this group who

have children going through this -Dr. said " I don't believe

this is something that Tanner will be dealing with for life at this

point "

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

I first wrote this over two years ago in January 2002 for inclusion

in The Late Talker as parent observed stages of apraxia viewed

through our grouplist. This list was approved by all CHERAB

advisors

http://www.cherab.org/information/speechlanguage/advisoryboard.html

(but needed cleaning up which I never did)

We ended up not including this in The Late Talker because even

though approved, in the final cut we needed to edit out almost 300

pages for our book, and this included awesome pages that were

already completed. Dr. Marilyn Agin, Malcolm Nicholl and I chose to

leave in only the most critical information for a parent of a newly

diagnosed apraxic child to know.

I still don't want to clean this up, or change from my original

writing from over 2 years ago -so here it is, what I still stand by

and what still needs to be studied in my opinion and what I'd travel

to hear a researcher explain:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

" Just like typically developing speech in a child, a child with

apraxia appears from the members of our large Foundation to have

stages they go through -and some children skip one or two -or pass

through some of them quickly or get stuck in one or more of them.

We don't know if all the member's children were properly diagnosed

with apraxia or not, but this may be worth looking into.

OBSERVED APRAXIA STAGES (?) THAT SHOULD BE EXPLORED FURTHER

Stage 1

non verbal stage

Where the child uses one or two sounds to communicate everything with

gestures, and made up elaborate sign. At this stage, depending on

the infant's or child's age you may not be able to diagnose verbal

apraxia, but neurological soft signs should be looked for, as well

as signs of oral motor problems or oral apraxia. An older apraxic

child who is stuck at this stage will be using augmentative devices

and could be at risk for misdiagnosis of cognitive ability if not

tested appropriately.

Stage 2

simple talk stage

Where the child begins to just like a typically developing child

learn new sounds or words, but unlike a typically developing child,

most (not all) appear to forget how to say the sounds or words

again, so they lose that ability to " build " their speech like most

other children do. This is in most cases the only stage that is

acknowledged by ASHA and described by most of the speech

professionals*. Please see examples above (breaks down with

longer utterances, etc.) An older apraxic child who is stuck at

this stage will be using augmentative devices and could be at risk

for misdiagnosis of cognitive ability if not tested appropriately.

Stage 3

Dysfluency stage

Where the child who seemed to be progressing so well suddenly begins

to stutter. Most speech professionals do not consider

classic " stuttering " only a normal developmental dysfluency.

However with apraxic children this stage is especially frustrating

in that if the apraxic child does go through this stage, they appear

to get " stuck " here. In speaking to members from the CHERAB

Foundation who's apraxic child goes through this stage, there is

frequently another member of the family who is a stutterer, which

may mean there is some type of genetic link. Type of therapy to

provide to an apraxic child at this stage that is appropriate is not

clear and depends on which expert you speak to-in some cases there

are direct oppositional views.

Stage 4

Baby Talk stage

Where the child who is now talking and being understood continues to

mix up past and present tense, as well as sentence structure, and

frequently will leave out the " little words " like " the " and " a " .

This may not have anything to do with SLI as discussed above, an

apraxic child typically does keep sentences shorter than average,

but there may be children diagnosed in the SLI area that are

apraxic, and visa versa -and being there is a genetic link

to both SLI as well as apraxia, a closer look needs to be taken at

this stage. A five year old apraxic child who receives appropriate

therapy, including some of the recent discoveries we will talk about

later, may progress faster than previously stated, however just like

in the previous stage, apraxic children also seems to get stuck in

this stage. An example would be " Me want doe too " for " I want to

go too " or " Mommy me walk store too? " for " Mommy can I walk to the

store too? "

Stage 5

Full language stage

Where the child, teenager, or adult apraxic has learned strategies to

overcome the apraxia enough that it's not noticed by the average

listener. However upon closer observation you will notice that an

apraxic in the full language stage will frequently use less

sophisticated language. An example comes in right here. Instead of

saying " an apraxic in the full language stage will frequently use

less sophisticated language " they may say " an apraxic in the full

langwer' stage will not sound as grown up most of the time " So in

other words, there will still be words that he or she can not

pronounce correctly, and being aware of them, will avoid them and

substitute when they can. They can be highly intelligent, but due

to their lack of expressing themselves using sophisticated language

at times others may not know this. This is perhaps in some ways

just as frustrating a stage as any other. In some cases maybe more

so because now that they are " talking " and talking fine most of the

time, ASHA professionals may not consider them candidates for

further services. The genetic possibilities and medical involvement

needs to establish these stages, including this one, so the

population can understand and accept this disability just like they

do for those with poor eyes or poor hearing. This is an example of

a late talker that unfortunately for all did not " just start talking "

Another strong point that our Foundation has seen that is not

acknowledged by most professionals yet is that a child with apraxia

at two may not have had it from birth. So for this reason,

the " signs " of apraxia always stated may not relate to the parent of

a late talker, and for that reason they may not believe their late

talker to be apraxic

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tanner's therapist tried the therapeutic listening for

Tanner to help stop some dysfluency he developed when he started

talking based on the theory that it would help with the right-left

brain activity.

My experience makes me recommend auditory therapies as part of the

treatment for our children with multisensory communication

impairments. I believe a multi -sensory approach will be proven to

be

most effective for our children down the road -I just don't believe

in waiting, and was thrilled to have an open minded SLP like

working with Tanner.

Anecdotally -Tanner would have trouble speaking clear and getting

his words out -and then within a minute of putting the headphones on

his words would come clear and smooth -not sure why but since it

appeared to help we used it. He had a waist band to wear so he

could wear his CD player around when playing, during therapy -etc.

The only activities we were told not to let him do while wearing the

headphones were watching TV or playing on the computer. Tanner

doesn't use the therapeutic listening program much anymore, however

his speech is also much better now, and he's older and is more aware

of " what's cool " (at 6 and a half can you believe it?!!)

I just want all of you to know you will probably not read the above

anywhere

else

since this is not what the program is intended for. It was just a

theory of 's -but it worked amazingly well for Tanner!

was trained by Vital Links so I was able to order the

special headphones which had the " right " and " left " ear marked -and

the " correct " CDs for Tanner from Vital Links

http://www.vitalsounds.com/ You can not order from this company

without the training code of the professional that took the course.

Supposedly using the wrong CDs can be harmful somehow. (any OTs

want to explain the danger of listening to the wrong CDs?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From: "

[Guest guest]

Singing is supposed to help with stammering. No one stammers when they sing.

http://www.stammering.org/peralm.html

granny

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:18 AM, <northnr@...> wrote:

>

>

> (almost 18) has been stammering some for the last maybe 6 years. It

> really decreases her intelligibility. Speech has worked with her to take a

> breath and think about what she is sayiing. Sometimes it works. Does anyone

> have any sugestions on therapy, techniques or anything to helpKathy

> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

>

>

--

*Not for ourselves, but for the world were we born.*