Becoming more comfortable with your child's stammer

It's natural to feel uncomfortable if your pre-school child starts stammering. In part three of our How to help your pre-school child who stammers, Kirten Howells, Programme Lead at Stamma, gives some tips on getting past this. For more information, call our helpline free on 0808 802 0002, weekdays 10am-12pm or 6pm-8pm or visit https://www.stamma.org
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Approximate transcription:
So it is really normal! Lots of parents of pre-schoolers who stammer talk about feeling uncomfortable when their child stammers. For whatever reason - whether you're already thinking far into the future, whether your child's speech has changed dramatically in a short space of time, or if your child has stammered from the moment they started talking.

Lots and lots of parents talk about feeling uncomfortable with that. But feeling uncomfortable when your child stammers doesn't make you a bad parent. It just makes you human. However, it's not helpful for your child to pick up on that discomfort.

So you have two choices… you can try to mask those feelings… or you can build up your own resilience to stammering and how you feel about it.

Masking it is really hard. And it also means you're not being honest with your own child. You're really hiding your feelings - and you may be more or less successful at that.

What I suggest instead is that you actively work to build up your own resilience to the sound of stammering. So that, over time, you genuinely become more comfortable with it, and it doesn't bother you. So you don't feel worried, you don't feel anxious when your child gets stuck. You're more comfortable to stay in that moment and wait, and let your child say what it is they want to say.
And how can go about building up this resilience? It's pretty simple. Just start listening to stammering, maybe listening to lots of different people stammering. People stammer in very different ways.

To do this, I'm going to suggest you look at a resource I’ve actually suggested before - it's the Stambassadors videos, which you can find on this link www.stambassadors.org. These are short videos, 6 7 minutes long. Each video is of an adult who stammers talking about themselves, their experiences of stammering and their career. Just working through a few of these can help to get you used to stammering, so that when you're with your child and they get stuck, you're just comfortable to be there with them.