Is Stuttering Therapy Beneficial For Children?

The astonishing development in specialised stuttering therapies has been well documented within the media and even Joe Biden, the US presidential candidate, has managed to join the debate by stating that he has also managed to overcome a stutter. So what about children who have a stutter, is this stuttering therapy of benefit to them as well?

If you ask one hundred people who are in their forties and who have a stutter, this question:

Which period of your life has been the most difficult due to your speech impediment?

The majority of them would answer that their childhood was without doubt the worst part of their life. Having a stutter can make growing up very difficult especially when you go through those teenage years.

Is stuttering therapy of benefit to children? Well all I can say is that I would have loved somebody to offer me the chance to achieve fluency when I was fourteen years of age, unfortunately this type of specialised stuttering treatment was not available back then.

To achieve fluency takes a lot of hard work and dedication; that goes without saying. Not all children are willing to put in the required effort to totally overcome their stutter; this may be through laziness or just a lack of maturity. With their parents help and guidance the therapy will however be of great benefit even to these people as it will at least give them options and make them aware of what they should be doing to speak fluently.

The majority of children would walk to the other side of the world in order to achieve fluency and therefore are more than happy to work very hard towards eradicating the stutter. Specialised stuttering therapy can quite simply change these types of children's lives.

Steve Hill is a speech coach from Birmingham; he has a number of websites including:

http://www.stammering-stuttering.co.uk

Article submitted Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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