postr/StutterFebruary 23, 2025

Advice for my 4.5 year old with hard blocks starting a sentence

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Content

Advice for my 4.5 year old with hard blocks starting a sentence I came here for advice from those who have had hard blocks as we haven’t yet been able to find a qualified speech therapist for my 4.5 year old. Our current therapist doesn’t deal with disfluency, just helped with articulation issues that are currently improving greatly. Just looking for some practical advice in the meantime as for now I am just completely ignoring it. About two months ago my daughter started stuttering the ‘wh’ sound only when excessively tired and zoning out, and after a week she stopped that completely. Then last month she would get her mouth stuck open trying to start a sentence. She would break out of it by saying ‘heeeeey mama!’ Which I now realize may have been an ‘easy onset’ that she figured out on her own. It decreased a lot in length and frequency and then came back two days ago, but now she bows down trying to get the word out while her mouth is stuck. She never ever seems upset about this and usually just gets the sentence out perfectly after about 5 seconds of bowing. I guess I’m concerned she’ll keep finding very noticeable large movements to cope with the block. Any tips of well known strategies that minimize a block when starting a sentence? Would love to suggest something to her, but also don’t want her to feel bad about it. Advice on how to broach the subject would be appreciated, too.

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceSpeech & Stuttering

Subthemes

Feared Words & NamesAvoidance & SubstitutionOverthinking & MonitoringBlocks & StoppagesRepetitions & ProlongationsPhysical Tension