Stop Stuttering - Ways to Treat Children and Teens

Of the millions of people who suffer from stuttering, the child and youth population are the ones which are affected the most. This speech disorder can have great impacts on the life of a child so stopping it as early as possible is a necessity. There is a step-by-step procedure in order for a person to stop stuttering.

The first step is to properly diagnose the disorder with the help of a speech-language pathologist. Referring to a health professional specializing on the field of language is very important because stammering is mostly confused with simple disfluency. Simple disfluency, however, is simply outgrown by those who have it and if children with stutters are diagnosed with this, their speech disorder may be left untreated until it is already too late.

Generally, stuttering has been connected with abnormal breathing patterns so doing breathing techniques are sometimes recommended by professionals. After it has been diagnosed, the next step is to determine the best method which can help stop stuttering.

For children, one way to stop stuttering is by practicing their speaking abilities with every chance possible. The parents should also provide children with this disorder a good environment in which they will not be stigmatized just because of their stammers. There are also some therapies which can help stop stuttering for the case of teens. Most of the therapies are centered on providing different ways to focus on speaking. Therapies such as this include exercising single-syllable responses until the person can already respond with complex sentences without the stutters.

There are also some drugs which can help stop stuttering. Even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not legalized the use of any drug to treat stammering, there are medicines for other health problems like epilepsy, depression, and anxiety which are said to be effective in treating stuttering. Using drugs, however, are highly prohibited because they cause some negative side effects making them harder to use for long periods of time.