What is Stuttering?

hey everybody today I'm going to talk with you about stuttering what causes it and what can we do to help ourselves stop so like I said today I'm going to talk with you about stuttering and actually and I have my handy-dandy DSM as always and my notes so that I don't forget anything we don't actually call stuttering stuttering when it comes to the DSM it is called child onset fluency disorder otherwise known as stuttering and there is a great website I found for any of you who are looking for more help if you struggle with

stuttering it's called stuttering help org they have a lot of information a lot of the information that I have I found from there as well as the DSM and other research that I did online through the Mayo Clinic there's a lot of information out there so if you have someone in your life who suffers from struck stuttering or if you yourself are struggling and you want to help others understand your situation I would check out some of those sites do some research there are some great printouts you can hand out to people to help them

better understand so just like my Tourette's video where I talked about how it was a neurodevelopmental disorder stuttering falls under that as well and if you remember a neurodevelopmental disorder is something that occurs when we're very young it's when we struggle with something early on in life in our developmental years and they say neurodevelopmental because it has to do with our brain now I have some interesting statistics and information about stuttering and stuttering for I believe said yeah eighty to ninety percent of people have it by the age of six now it doesn't come on

all of a sudden like boom I just start stuttering I can't stop and I don't know why and all of a sudden just happen it's usually something that happens gradually and children don't usually realize they're doing it right away because they're just learning to talk anyways they say that the mean range of age for people to start stuttering between the ages of two and seven so that's when we're really just developing our language our ability to communicate with other people and so we won't even notice right away it starts with a few words it starts

with a few phrases certain things we say but they find as we age if we struggle with stuttering that we will try to get out of public speaking we won't want to do it there'll be certain words and phrases and sentences we stay away from because we know that those words and sentences or phrases cause us to stutter and can be embarrassing for people and so it's good to know that you're not alone over 3 million Americans and that's just in the United States and we know the world is much larger but in the States

alone three million people struggle with stuttering and the good thing to know is that 65 to 85 percent of people who have it do recover from it now I know that's quite a range when I read that I was like 65 to 80 that's a big discrepancy but that's good to know that people most people majority over 50% is a majority do recover from it so okay we have we stutter we struggle with it how did we get it why do we have this why doesn't everybody else have this and obviously when it comes to

neurodevelopmental disorders a lot of what we know is just from studying it and researching it and following people along but we don't actually know what causes things like I said before a lot of this is theorized because we can't actually look into a human brain probe in there and see what's causing something because it's a living person and getting in the brain can be really dangerous and we can injure someone and you know take away their memory or take away their speech and so people don't sign up for that obviously but things that we do

know that affected our genetics if you have someone else in your family who has any type of language disorder there are so many in here speech sound disorder the language disorder is like a whole there's stuttering there's a lot of different things tic disorders anybody who falls into those neurodevelopmental disorders if you have that in your family you're three times as likely to struggle with stuttering yourself so number one is genetics of what causes it number two is child development if you also have another language disorder I know a lot of kid we're younger like

my brother went to a speech therapist to better enunciate his s's and T's in the discrepancy between those and if we're struggling with something already having that makes us more likely to stutter as well the third and there are only four options of what they think causes it the third is neurophysiology which really means that it's a change in our brain they've noticed and been able to tell through I don't know if it's cat scans or PET scans or what but by looking at the brain they recognize that those who struggle with stuttering in their

brain it processes language differently than someone's brain who doesn't stutter weird huh so it's almost like our brain is just wired to stutter and so most the people that have this certain you know neural physiological change in their brain will struggle with it the fourth is family dynamics and this is one that we can work on as parents as people in a child's life as a teacher and that's when you have high stress or expectations on a child use of a very fast-paced lifestyle that was a lot of anxiety because we know stress and anxiety

don't cause stuttering a lot of people think that it does and that's a common misconception but it can definitely exacerbate the problem so if we worry about stuttering and we are learning to speak and our mom is like get it out what do you need we got to go we're running late what are you doing that can cause children to stutter can make it really hard it's really stressful they feel a lot of expectations to just perform and speak quickly and get it out because we relate and that can cause stuttering as well so those

are the four main causes that they theorize for stuttering okay so we have it we realize that we stutter we know it sucks it's embarrassing we avoid certain words we're afraid to speak in public it's hard for us to maybe meet people maybe you know people have teased us growing up there's a lot of things that can be hard with this so what do we do about it and there are a ton I believe I think it's the stuttering help tour gives like twenty ideas of things you can do but over the ones that overlapped

with the research I was doing the things that they recommend that Sam the first one is obviously relaxing because even though stress and anxiety don't cause stuttering it can definitely make it worse so making time for yourself doing yoga meditation practicing relaxation techniques for you clench your muscles and your relax your muscles and you tense your muscles and relax your muscles and that progressive relaxation can really help and if you're going into what you think is kind of a important work meeting or something it could be stressful maybe do some of these things ahead of

time do some breathing techniques anything to help relax your body now the next one and this is something that I remember my brother having to do when he was doing speech therapy is practicing speaking to yourself in front of the mirror it sounds weird and I know a lot of you are like Kati I don't want to do that that sounds weird and I'm going to be embarrassed and I'm already embarrassed and blah but the more we practice with those difficult words those bizarre sentences that always caused us to stutter I know my friend Adam

struggles a stuttering in there a couple words that he always says he stutters on like saying breakfast instead of breakfast it's but bruh you know Burke breakfast so there's a word that catches you every time and you just can't get away from it start incorporated into some sentences you write out and practice now they say 30 minutes a day I know that's a lot of time but it's not something you have to keep doing it's something that you can do to help yourself stop stuttering okay so we're going to relax and we're going to practice

in front of the mirror now the third one is read books out loud I know that sounds kind of silly you're like why but it's the same type of thing we're practicing and the cool thing about reading books out loud is that the sentence structure and the sentences and the words they put in them are completely random really it's not like you're picking them you don't know which ones it'll be whatever a normal conversational book would sound like and you're just going to try out different words you're going to practice speaking so reading out loud

can really help you overcome that stuttering urge and the fourth is when you do stutter let out some tension between those blocks when you start stuttering go ahh in the middle of it and then keep going start again because that buildup of tension a lot of people online that we're talking about it said they feel this buildup of tension like it is so frustrating let that out huh yeah and then start again keep going and that will help you stop the stuttering from reoccurring because a lot of people said that also when they start they

find themselves continuing to stutter as they continue to speak like it's once it starts it's hard to stop it from you know keep on keeping going and popping up in other words they never used to stutter with before and the last the fifth tip is being gentle with yourself and this is the most important doing this is going to take a lot of time it takes a lot of practice but like I said most people recover from it we just maybe have to put in a little extra time if we're older and we're still stuttering

because they said that most people kind of grow out of it but not all of us do right there's still a good twenty to thirty five percent of us that don't and so what do we do we have to practice we'd be gentle with ourselves we know this the process it's not perfection this isn't something that all of a sudden we created this isn't any error in you this is just something that your brain is struggling to process in the way that it's supposed to and so we have to teach it and that's a great

thing about being a human is we're teachable we can learn we can do things better so work with me share these tips you know that someone out there in your life struggles with stuttering share this video spread it around the more we know what causes it and what doesn't cause it in ways that we can help but the less people will feel alone and embarrassed and avoid speaking engagements even though people who stutter are not stupid they're not weird they're just as intelligent and just as wonderful and capable of just as much as anybody else

and we need to hear from them need to speak up and on stuttering help I think it's called stuttering help torg than i mentioned earlier they list a lot of celebrities and different actors and actresses who used to stutter and who who worked on it use these tools to get better because we can overcome and that's the amazing thing about the human experience right and don't forget to like this video mental health topics are important we need to let everybody know and we're community so leave your comments below and don't forget to check out katimorton.com