Devices to Cure Stuttering
- If you find yourself scolding or criticizing your child when he stutters, change your behaviors and attitude toward the stuttering. Treat the condition as something that will change gradually over time. Focus rather on the things your child does well, like when he has a streak of fluency. Praise your child for his victories and encourage him through more difficult periods of treatment. Soon your child will begin to work hard to gain fluency in order to receive praise.
- Encourage your child to speak as much as possible. Provide a comfortable home environment in which your child will be happy to speak, especially if he is excited about something. Set times during the day to talk to your child to give him practice. Be patient if the stuttering gets worse before it gets better. Give your child prompts, such as asking how his day at school was or asking him to tell you his favorite story.
- There are speech therapy techniques available for individuals who stutter. Some techniques that therapists will perform with your child are slow-speech exercises, deep-breathing exercises and single-syllable exercises. Self-help groups, electronic devices to monitor speech, and anxiety therapy are also alternative methods to help a person who stutters to gain more fluency in speech. These techniques all take time and patience, but can help minimize the stuttering over a number of years.
- Though there are no FDA-approved drugs on the market for stuttering as of 2011, drugs for other conditions may ease other conditions aggravated by the stuttering. Drugs used for the treatment of depression, anxiety and and even epilepsy have been used to ease stuttering. However, the use of these kinds of drugs over long periods of time is not recommended because of the side effects that result. Trials of drugs specifically targeted towards stuttering are underway, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
