Stuttering article

I reviewed the article "Peer Responses to Stuttering in the Preschool Setting" from the Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. The purpose of this study was to see if the effects of stuttering in preschool-age children has negative consequences on them.

They began the article by discussing what parents have discussed concerning their children being bullied and picked on. They go on to talk about why play (both real and pretend) along with social interactions are imperative for young children. For this study, they decided to focus on when the children are engaged in "free-play" which is just playing for playing's sake.

They chose four preschoolers who have issues with stuttering, three boys and one girl. They videotaped the children playing outside, since they said that indoor playing would be too confining and guided.

The results were pretty outstanding. They were not what I was expecting at all. In most cases, they peers of the children who stutter did not have negative responses to them. In one case, there was only one negative response out of 36 responses. In another, there were eight out of 28, so it was a little higher but still not what I thought it would be.

This will help me because I will most likely be working with kiddos who stutter and it is good to think about all aspects of their lives and not just what I see when they come in for therapy. They don't just stutter when working with us. They stutter all the time and sometimes we might forget that.