Doctor, my 3-year old stutters. What should I do?

Direct stuttering therapy for pre-school children works. "When young children are praised for fluency, corrected for stuttering and otherwise made highly aware of their speech, their stuttering is reduced."¹

The power of direct stuttering therapy is uniquely harnessed by the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention, developed in Australia and now catching on in the United States.

The Lidcombe Program is an efficient, well researched, evidence-based program for treating pre-school stuttering. Using Lidcombe, parents learn to respond constructively to their children's speech to teach them how to speak without stuttering.

Findings indicate that:

1. stuttering can be eliminated, or nearly so, for children six and younger without unnaturally slowing family communications and routine;
2. such a dramatic reduction can be brought about by calling direct attention to the stuttering;
3. success can be achieved with the parents providing the therapy, reinforced by the clinician's council and support;
4. positive results can be achieved in an average of only 11, one hour weekly sessions;
5. after treatment, initially stuttering children's speech is likely to be indistinguishable from that of other children;
6. this approach can also be effective with children 7 to 12, although the Lidcombe program alone may not be as effective for this age group.

Offering Lidcombe Locally

I am excited to be offering the Lidcombe approach in our community. I already held board recongnition to treat stuttering. Then last year, along with 22 other clinicians, I was privileged to receive Lidcombe training from Mark Onslow, Ph.D., Director of the Australian Stuttering Research Center. Since that time I have been using the program with much success.

When to refer a stuttering child to a speech pathologist²

How does a doctor know when to refer? Knowing whether - or when - to begin treatment is not a simple issue when an estimated 74% of children do outgrow their disfluent speech naturally, without therapy. However, because one cannot be certain if an individual child will be among the remaining 26% who do not recover on their own, it is safest to seek the expert evaluation of a speech pathologist.

The speech pathologist will consider the possible predictors of natural recovery, among them: gender, any history of natural recovery of other stuttering family members, and time elapsed since the onset of stuttering. (Severity at onset does not seem to be a predictor of a difficult natural recovery.)

Such an evaluation is best undertaken early because research has shown that treatment is most effective during the preschool years. Furthermore, if the child is to be saved from the trauma of stuttering when starting school, referral should be made well enough in advance to allow the 3 to 6 months required to complete the initial stage of treatment - if treatment is deemed necessary.

Then, the Lidcombe Program would be my treatment of choice due to the high success rate and quality of the outcome, which research has shown to be greater than that of natural recovery.

1. Barry Guitar, Ph.D., University of Vermont
2. Source: Articles by Ann Packman, Senior Research Officer, Australian Stuttering Resource Center.