Managing Negative Emotions Related To Stuttering In Children

Children can display a  wave of emotions with their disfluencies or stuttering. This can come in the form of anger, embarrassment, frustration, etc., especially during these formative years. These emotions can exacerbate their stutter, making it even more challenging to get their thoughts across to their friends, teachers, and loved ones. This can lead to the child avoiding things they may enjoy. Ways to help our kiddos are to help them understand and address any negative emotion.

​*Steps to Follow*

1. Ask and Listen: Never assume to understand what they’re going through and/or how their stutter is affecting them.  Ask questions and listen.  Don’t negate their feeling or try to correct their view point; however, its best to empathize and listen.
2. Cognitive Restructuring: Help your Kiddo reframe their negative thoughts and beliefs into more empowering ones.  Guide them through discovering the truth about their stuttering and how it affects their lives. Education is huge. Helping them understand why and what techniques can help to improve their stuttering by training and practice.
3. Desensitization: As they are ready, help them overcome fear of stuttering by stuttering on purpose.  Start with the least-stressful way possible, such as stuttering to yourself where no one else can hear.  Gradually over time, increase the difficulty level.  This should be done under the guidance of a trained speech-language professional.
4. Self-Disclosure: Help your Child find ways to talk about his/her stutter that feel good to him/her.  Help them build a script for what they can say when they want to tell others about their stutter.

Allow Arbor Therapy to assist your loved one with disfluencies or stuttering. We have Skilled Speech Therapist that specialize on techniques that can reinforce and mitigate these communication issues.