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When a child starts to develop a stutter, it comes as a shock to everyone involved. It can be a very stressful time for both the parents and for the child.

I myself developed a stutter at the age of four or five. My mother had left work to look after me when I was born and I started to talk as normal. Everything was fine until I started school. My mother – who now had more time on her hands, decided to re-start work and I would now be going to a friend of the families after school. This friend was called Jean and she had a son my age called Graham. On the first day I spent at her house everything was going well until Jean called us in for our evening meal. Meal times at my own house were a very relaxed affair, we were able to eat our food wherever we wanted to in the house.

At Jean’s house they ate in a dining room around a dining table. There were a lot of people around the table who I did not know very well and eating in front of them all, made me feel quite uncomfortable. During the meal people were asking me various questions and for whatever reason, I found it difficult to answer and started to stutter. This was the first day of my life as a person who has a stutter.

My parents a few months later took me to speech therapy, the speech therapist advised them that most children will grow out of their stutter. I continued unfortunately to stutter until I was twenty two. At this stage I decided I had had enough and that it was time to overcome the stutter.

I decided to try and find my own stuttering solution. I went about this by reading books about self confidence as I certainly had a low self esteem. I also studied people who I believed were very good talkers and tried to work out how the spoke differently than me, for example the way they breathed.

After nearly a year I was proud to be able to class myself as fluent and as a career I now help other people to achieve fluency.

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Some parents have the shock of hearing their young child start stammering as a toddler. I am somebody who runs a speech centre in Birmingham, England, I now help people to achieve fluency.

I met a lady who was thirty and her little boy aged four had been stammering for quite a while. She had taken him to speech therapy and was extremely anxious as to why he was stammering. It had possibly started because the toddlers father had quite a severe stammer, the boy may of picked up the bad habits this way.

Many other people contact me asking why their toddler has developed a stammer and asking what forms of stammering treatments are available.

I always suggest that they keep as patient as they can and try to play games, speech games with their child. They can challenge the child to say the word fluently, they show their child how it should be said and then bet them that they can’t do it themselves. When they do manage to say that particular word fluently they then heap lots of praise onto the child, telling them how clever they are and how proud mommy and daddy are of them. I even advise giving them an award like a small chocolate bar.

If instead of being patient parents or relatives are aggressive, saying things like: “Get your words boy” “Spit it out!” These types of comments can have a very negative effect and make that child withdraw into their shell. This may to some people seem very obvious to say, however you would not believe the amount of people who have told me this is what they were told as an infant.

Stephen Hill

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I speak Swedish and my husbands native language is English. When we had our two children, we had no doubt that we wanted to raise them with equal access to both languages. Now, years later, when Ive made promoting multilingual child-raising not just my avocation, but my vocation as well, people ask me for the straight story, warts and all. What is the difference, raising bilingual children? What do you wish you knew before you got started?
Its clear to most of us that speaking multiple languages is a good thing, and learning multiple languages in the early years is a nearly effortless means to fluency. Your multilingual child will have a head start in schools during a time when more and more of them are requiring a foreign language. And once your kid knows two languages, the move to three, or four is much easier.
Counter-intuitively, the effects of growing up bilingually include superior reading and writing skills in both languages, as well as better analytical, social, and academic skills. Parents who are themselves involved in high level careers are already well aware that professional prospects abound for those with fluency in multiple languages. So, that all sounds well and good, but what are the real drawbacks?
1 Delay. Multilingual children tend to speak a little later than their peers. Although there is no solid scientific evidence to suggest a delay in speech, anecdotally there is a real sense among parents that multilinguals start talking three to six month later than monolingual children. If you think about it, it makes sense that a child learning two or more language systems might take more time, since they are actually learning twice as many words. But rest assured, even if your child did not walk at nine months, eventually he ended up walking just as well as those precocious ones. The same thing holds true for language, even when you are talking about more than one. Guaranteed!
2 Mixing. Children learning two languages often slip back and forth between them, mixing up their words. This can disturb the parents, but can be even more alarming to the uninitiated. No worries. This tendency will pass once the child has built a large enough vocabulary — around the age of four or five. Remember monolingual three year olds often struggle to find the right word, and for that matter, adults dont always find it easy to express themselves effectively. In some ways, the multilingual kid has an advantage — if he cant think of the correct word in Vietnamese, for example, then he can say it in English. While the rest of us are speechless.
3 Effort. Perhaps the most easily overlooked drawback to taking the multilingual path is that it requires more effort on the part of the parents. Raising a multilingual child is a commitment. Much like piano lessons, you can’t expect your little one to be a virtuoso overnight. Language learning is a long-term investment in your child and will require that you are able to provide enough language exposure. At times, youll probably need to boost the second language and offer some extra encouragement. Youll need the persistence required to keep your family language rules as consistent as possible. But, if you can keep faith for the first four or five years while a solid language foundation is put in place, things get easier. Incidentally, the multilingual second child is a breeze, if your first child was raised that way. Your first will end up doing a lot of the work for you by simply being a natural chatterbox.
There’s no doubt that multilingual children have more advantages, but it can feel a bit overwhelming to someone already struggling with diapers and feeding schedules; however, I have yet to meet a single parent who regretted the decision. But, the appreciation from your child, as usual, is probably another 20 years out.

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Raising Bilingual Children: Is It Too Late To Start Now?

After we talked, Ive spoken nothing but French to my one year old for close to seven weeks now. All of his new words are French, and from what I can tell he understands me completely. Not even two months into her campaign to raise her two children speaking French as well as English, Sheilagh Margot Riordan in Forida has noticed a dramatic difference in the progress between her two children: My three and a half year old is much trickier. Even though I speak only French to her, she replies in English, but I guess that she understands about 70% of everything I say. Frankly, Sheilagh worries that its already too late for her over-the-hill three-year-old to become a fluent bilingual.

In our culture it sometimes feels that if you didnt spring for ballet lessons at two or violin at three, its all over. While theres no doubt that the optimal moment to start learning languages is at birth, its not at all impossible to achieve fluency later in life. The more language interaction you provide, the more dramatic the progress, and the easier for the child. Even older children are still kids, and theyll
remain chatty and unhampered by self-consciousness. Still, transitioning into multilingualism will require motivation; here are several tried-and-true tips.

You know how when you announce that its bedtime, your kid says, Why? Youll get the same reaction to your new language program. “Why do I have to say it in Korean if I know how say it in English already?” This is a fair question, and the answer needs to be either one of necessity, fun, or flattery. Not much else will fly. Here are some possible answers: Because I/granny/everyone else here only speak Korean. This book/this game/this song is in Korean. Because you did it sooo well yesterday. So you can teach it to baby Ethan when he is a big boy like you. So you and Greg can have your own secret language.

After the explanation your next step will be to speak only in the minority language yourself (or nanny, or whoever is your childs primary language source). When you get confusion and glazed looks, translate. And, be reasonable; accept replies in the primary language when you first start out.

• When your child answers back in the community language, say “Yes,” and then repeat the sentence in the minority language.
• If you know your child is able to say a particular word, but is struggling to remember it, jog her memory by providing the first syllable.
• Be careful not to dampen her enthusiasm. Dont make speaking the second language an inflexible rule or something that becomes onerous.
• Youll just inspire revolution in the ranks. You might require adherence to the language rules youve set up if you know she has the vocabulary just as you demand pleases and thank yous. For example, when youre child is asking for a glass of milk, you can require that she ask for it in the minority language. But if she’s excited about telling you what happened at the circus, just listen, and then repeat it back in the second language. That way, you provide her the missing vocabulary in a positive
  way.
• And, as always, praise endlessly. Even when you are providing translations or the child has just issued sixteen grammatical errors in a four-word sentence. In fact, a child simply doesnt understand if you try to correct her before the age of three. Instead, just repeat the words correctly (a process known as modeling). Alternatively, you can make a joke and say, “Oops, that came out wrong!” Laugh and provide the right way of saying it, so you keep it playful rather than corrective.

Countless parents have asked me: “So now, how do we now stay firm with our new language system?” Once the child has the vocabulary to understand the second language, sticking to the language strategy is essential — if you dont, youre back to square one and the community language! Just think of the things you could never let your child do, even if she begs, whines, and tantrums: things such as riding in a car without a seatbelt, not brushing her teeth, or crossing the street by herself. Dont negotiate about using the language any more than you do about these things, and she will get the picture eventually — despite the occasional earful. Give it at least six months, and your persistence will be richly rewarded.

Sheilagh says that she realizes her trouble is well worth it and has stopped worrying about beginning too late: Instead of looking at the things I should have done (speak French since birth), I am looking at the great achievements we have made so far.

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At school, reading is the essential tool for success in every subject, so it is vital that you lay the proper groundwork for your child.

According to Bernabe Feria, an expert in reading sciences who holds a doctorate from Oxford University, children learn to read in three stages. They are as follows:

* Stage 1: This stage typically lasts until children are 5 or 6 years old. Children in this stage learn to recognize and write the letters of the alphabet and to use punctuation, and also begin “sounding out” clusters of written letters that form short words.

* Stage 2: This stage continues until children reach age 6 or 7. They learn to immediately recognize a few hundred words on sight and to read in phrases and even whole sentences.

* Stage 3: Children reach this stage around age 8 and typically no later than 10. At this stage they learn how to read with the facility and fluency with which they use spoken language, and should be able to recognize, appreciate and emulate finely crafted language.

As a parent, you can help your children learn the value of reading at any stage through an innovative program called ReadEnt, developed by SFK Media Specially for Kids Corp.

The program’s Reading Movies seamlessly blend reading with interactive films that teach and improve vocabulary and comprehension. Each of the Reading Movies – “Trojan Horse,” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Tales of Gulliver’s Travels” – exposes students to timeless children’s literature while helping them learn through a patented technology called “Action Captions.” As the movie character speaks, the words simultaneously appear on the screen, one at a time, with no disruption to the flow of the movie.

Reading experts and educators indicate that these “Action Captions” activate the cognitive elements of the brain so that the development of both reading and spoken language skills takes place naturally. The ReadEnt reading programs can be used over a period of years to develop different skill sets as children move from one stage to the next.

The program’s Reading Movies, which are interactive with fun quizzes and games, are available for use on the TV or the computer.

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