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Dr. Hive...Speech/Stuttering issues


momto3innc
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I've got some concerns with my middle son's speech and would love some input.

Both of our boys have had some issues with speech since they were younger, but this son has typically been the "easy" one regarding speech.  He says all sounds correctly, never had trouble with that.  His only trouble  for the most part has been that he speaks super fast and kind of smushes his words together.  Speech therapists have really never been concerned.  They've just said his brain is working fast than his mouth and he's just trying to get it all out quickly. 

 

He's now 8.5 and we started back to speech this spring, more for our other son than for this one, but we wanted to work on his speed/articulation a little more because it was not getting better and he's getting older.  When we did his evaluation, it was fine and the speech therapist thought giving some focus to it for the summer would probably be very helpful.  The speech therapist is great.  Super nice, and the boys enjoy her.  They both don't mind going or doing their homework stuff with me during the week.  So my middle son has been having therapy for probably 2 months when about 10 days ago or so, he started stuttering.  A lot. Whole words or phrases, not just sounds, mainly at the beginning of a sentence.  It generally is accompanied by facial grimacing/closing his eyes as he's trying to get the words/phrases out.  He has stuttered a little in the past, a little more when he was 3 or so (even then not a lot and we did speech back then too) but it went away as he got older.  He would stutter maybe once every few weeks or months just slightly if he were excited, but no grimacing or blinking. 

 

This is different.  It's many, many times a day.  He says he is frustrated he can't get it out.  We have not had anything unusual happen in the last few weeks.  It's been a normal summer with lots of sleeping in/pool/playing with friends/etc...  When we went to speech last week, the speech therapist definitely noticed the difference.  She recommended quietly placing a hand on his arm to remind him to stop, take a breath, think about what he wanted to say, and starting over.  He does generally do better if he does this, but not always.  And he does it so often, I feel bad stopping him all the time.  And he does not like to be stopped.  I made an appt. for the pediatrician this week...can you think of anything medical this could be? 

 

We are trying to be very calm about this with him.  We don't want him to think we're worried about it (though we are!!).  Has anyone had anything like this happen?  Thoughts, ideas?  Things I should be thinking about?

I think I'll cross post this on special needs as well.

Thanks!

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Mine did this quite regularly (whole word repeating, usually at the beginning or middle of a sentence ("the the the the sky is blue" or "I want a a a a a a blue popsicle") and it was a "searching for the right words" issue.  He also had some expressive and receptive language issues.

 

Our son's speech therapist gave him some ways to self regulate in addition to us giving him physical and/or verbal "slow down" cues.  Things like "gather your thoughts before answering," "wait 5 seconds before answering" or say "may I have a moment to think about that?" before answering, etc.  I believe she also instructed us to model such things ourselves, to give more time to answer, etc.  This was several years ago when he was in the 6-8 year old range.  I don't remember how long it took to remediate but I do remember my husband and I having this sort of "lightbulb moment" when we realized he wasn't doing it any more.  He is 13 now and it happens very rarely - when he is extremely tired or overexcited.

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I would be willing to bet it's just a phase but thought I would throw out the medical idea of an infection such as strep - I thouht I saw something about stuttering (maybe as a type of tic?) in my recent reading (my ds has PANDAS, which is very controversial).

 

I was wondering about this.  I have only heard of PANDAS here (and know almost nothing about it), but when I was googling sudden onset stuttering, this came up several times.  I don't believe he has had strep since he was little, but definitely want to get him checked out this week in case I'm missing something.  Anything you'd recommend for reading about PANDAS?

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