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| Considering the fact that there are many types of stuttering, it is vital to emphasise the physiological one from which, if not adequately treated, usually develop all the other more severe forms of stuttering, except the abrupt (traumatic) one. The physiological stuttering consists of repeating the initial sounds, syllables or words while speaking. It occurs at the age of 2-5 and is solely connected to the speech development period. The stuttering that occurs at this age are only the physiological reflections of the condition on the overall thinking, linguistic, and verbal plans. Thus this type of stuttering belongs to the developmental i.e. physiological stuttering. Within the initial phase, the physiological stuttering is identified to the non-fluent speech. The children’s speech itself is not fluent in this period due to the numerous, ongoing developmental processes. They are confronted, for the first time, with a large number of new words and their diverse meanings, with abstract terms whose meanings must be firstly comprehended so as to be adequately used in speech. It is also the period of hasty development of the sentence and grammar, of some sounds being yet in the phase of formation, of insufficiently differentiated mobility of speech organs, of thinking disparity i.e. rapid shift from one thought to the other along with the insufficient following the main idea. The appearance of the associations and the new environmental stimuli disrupts the main thought, thus producing the poor concentration on the important, resulting in the disordered verbal performance. It is also the period of the insufficiently developed attention and concentration, followed by the impulsive behaviour, not rarely accompanied by the forms of passive negativism (when a child refuses to obey the parents’ and teachers’ instructions) and the active negativism (when a child does quite the opposite of what is sought of him). After stating only some of the developmental processes which a child undergoes at this age, it is evident that we are dealing with a developmental chaos during which a child attempts to adequately use a sound, word, abstract term for the first time giving much thought and insecurities to it, as well as to achieve the speech and the sound pronunciation of the parents’ speech models. Stabilising the above-mentioned functions, the speech itself is stabilised. However, it is necessary for the parents to know how to treat their child properly in order to exit this phase swiftly and without possible following complications. The role of the family and the behaviour of the other people are decisive for the faster disappearance of the physiological stuttering. Many parents and teachers are wrong to pronounce this type of speech as stuttering. They speak of it in front of the child, they correct him; force him to correctly repeat the words and sentences, make jokes about the child’s speech. The child is exposed to the embarrassing imitation of his speech and is being laughed at by the children of his own age. And this is exactly where the mistake is, when owing to all these irregular actions the physiological stuttering does not subside, but becomes permanent and develops into a real stuttering expressed through more severe forms. Every remark on the child’s speech itself disrupts the spontaneous thinking and linguistic processes, and the child, not having been aware of his own stuttering, really begins to stutter. It is important to state that if a family seeks speech therapist’s help right after the onset of the symptoms of stuttering (within the first two weeks of stuttering), the process can be stopped and the speech normalised again after relatively short period of time. |
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| Ružica Todoroviæ Speech therapist |
English translation by:
Milan Jovanoviæ |
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