Does your child get made fun of because he or she stammers? Do you get frustrated because you don’t know what causes the stammering?
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine claims to have found three specific genes that may cause stammering, which affects about 1% of adults worldwide.
That number may not seem like much, but stammering affects an individual’s confidence and self-esteem, especially among kids who are more likely to get ridiculed and bullied at school.
Early intervention can help your child overcome his or her stammering. Waiting too long to start intervention could prolong and worsen the stammering.
According to Norbert Lieckfeldt, the director of the British Stammering Association, stammering is…
Just the latest in a string of recent discoveries highlighting the fact that the cause of stammering is physiological – a symptom that, for whatever reason, the brain’s neural circuits for speech are not being wired normally.
Although the root cause could be physiological, other factors could increase your child’s stammering. The nonfiction book There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz tells a story of two brothers living in the inner-city. In the book, the younger of the two develops a stammer because of all the violence that he sees, and the stammering lessens during periods of less violence.
Be aware of other factors that could influence your child’s stammering, and get your child help as soon as you can to prevent other problems (like low self-esteem and confidence, and ridicule) from arising.
Is stammering a problem for your child? How do you and your child deal with it?
Genes Behind Stammering Uncovered [BBC]
