A new study will put those parents greatly bothered with their children stuttering as it shows that it is normal for children to stutter between ages three and four. They will eventually outgrow it by the time they reach age seven.
Sheena Reilly, lead author of the study from the University of Melbourne, Australia, ruled out that parents should worry less about their children being teased or isolated when they go to preschool as they will be emotionally and socially stable despite the stutter.
The researchers has been monitoring over 1,600 children from Melbourne as early as eight months old to see their progression as they grow older-- will they stutter or not, how it will affect their social interaction and emotional behavior, and if they will outgrow it.
The researchers found out that 11 percent of the children began stuttering by age four.
"We will continue to follow the children to learn more about how many recover form stuttering with and without intervention," Reilly wrote in the study published on Monday at the Pediatrics. "We particularly want to be able to predict which children will continue to stutter so that we can target earlier and better intervention at those children. Understanding when anxiety, a feature commonly reported in adolescents and adults who stutter, becomes apparent is another area we will continue to research."
They also noticed that the children who stutter didn't display any difference in the emotional and social behaviors of the non-stuttering children. This indicates that stuttering is not a big deal for the children and their peers.
While most children would usually outgrow the stutter, experts suggest parents to bring their kids to a speech therapist only if the child is already bothered by his condition.
Ellen Kelly, Ph.D., an associate professor of hearing and speech sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said in an interview with Today, "Eighty percent of those kids are going to recover. However, a small percentage of those kids will have chronic stutters that may persist into their teens, or even adulthood. “Those are the people we want to find, and help early.
