Book on stuttering in children is now available at local libraries

The book, “If Your Child Stutters: A Guide for Parents,” is available at local public libraries for guardians with stuttering children to reference.

In the past, experts said they believed that paying attention to a child’s stuttering would exacerbate the condition. They thought that offering the child therapy “would arouse the child’s awareness and cause more stuttering,” said Ehud Yairi, speech-language pathologist and researcher at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Tel-Aviv University.

Research by Yairi, published in the ”Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research,” revealed that children may be aware of the differences between fluent speech and stuttering as early as age 3 and that many of them have displayed a social preference for fluent-speaking children by the time they are 4 years old.

“These findings should provide support to the important idea that we should shift from a hands-off approach to more direct therapy techniques and even more so, with school-age children,” said Barry Guitar, Ph.D., of the University of Vermont.

“Any time parents are concerned about a child’s fluency,” said Jane Fraser, president of the 65-year-old Stuttering Foundation, “They should educate themselves about the disorder and the many ways they can work to prevent stuttering from becoming a chronic problem.”

The book, which is also available in Spanish, includes answers to some of the questions parents and teachers may have about stuttering. It also describes the difference between normal disfluencies and stuttering and provides ways for parents to help their children, immediately.

Some of those ways are as follows:

- Speak with the child in an unhurried way, pausing frequently.

- Reduce the number of questions asked of the child.

- Use facial expressions and other body language to convey listening to the content of the child’s message, rather than how she or he is speaking.

- Set aside a few minutes at a regular time each day to give the child undivided attention.

- Help all members of the child’s family and friends learn to take turns talking and listening.

- Observe interactions with the child.

- Convey that the child is accepted as she or he is.

Books and DVDs produced by the Stuttering Foundation are available to any public library at no charge. In order to receive a copy, library employees can contact the foundation at 1-800-992-9392, email info@stutteringhelp.org or visit www.stutteringhelp.org or www.tartarmudez.org.

The book is available at the Blount Library in Franklinville, Gowanda Free Library, Memorial Library of Little Valley and the Olean Public Library.