STAMMERING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 18 December 1926, Page 17

STAMMERING.

HOW TO CURE IT. Stammering starts at about seven or eight, and usually in boys, and because he has just gone to school parents are apt to say, 'He has picked it up from another boy,” and leave it at that. Stammering may he acquired by mimicry, hut no healthy, emotionally well-balanced child will ever mimic a stammer long enough to become a confirmed stammerer himself. The problem is not the removal of the child from the society of a stammering schoolfellow, but the correction of the emotional instability which constitutes the background on which the evil association can work.

There arc three ways of dealing with the stammering child. The first achieves its result by ignoring the stammer completely and* concentrating upon the physical and mental factors which, one believes, have contributed to the development of the unfortunate symptom. Good food, fresh air and sunshine, long rest periods and a serene psychic environment are the essentials of this mode of treatment. The child’s environment is unobtrusively scrutinised in order that any disturbing mental factors, .especially of the kind that make the child feel helpless and inferior and tend to develop in the child feelings it is impotent to express, may be recognised and removed. A tyrannical companion before whom the child becomes inarticulate may be the whole source of the trouble, though commonly the causes are a little more subtle than tha/t.

The second method concentrates itself almost entirely on the stammer. The parents speak slowly, distinctly, and articulating each word separately. Very tactfully, indeed, the child is pacified when he tries to speak excitedly; his agitation is ignored or treated lightly. He is, furthermore, taught to recite little poems, and every gain in clarity is greeted with unobtrusive appreciation. This is a good method, but it demands unswerving purpose, unruffled serenity and indefinite patience.

The third method succeeds best in the case of the "exhibitionist child,” whose stammer ip just one way of calling attention to himself. One ignores every remark made with a stammer. One simply doesn’t understand what he is talking about. He may be asking for his toys, or perhaps he wants to tell you something he is very anxious for you to know. But until he Bays it without a stammer you just don’t understand. This is a hard way, but in the right kind of case, and carried on unflinchingly, if often has brilliant success.