The Importance Risk Factors in Young Children Who Stutter

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For many young children who stutter, risk factors are what ultimately help guide us to our treatment decisions, at least very early on in the process.  When we talk about doing evaluations with young children who stutter, one of the main things that we do is evaluate whether or not the child is likely to outgrow their stuttering or if they are more likely to continue stuttering without treatment.  Essentially, that comes down to a risk analysis.  We are evaluating what the likelihood is that this child is going to continue stuttering if we do not do some intervention. 

Craig Coleman is an assistant professor at Marshall University and a Board Certified Specialist in Fluency Disorders. He is a co-founder of MC Speech Books, where he has co-authored two children's books on stuttering and is also the founder of the Virtual Stuttering Center, a provider of tele-therapy for people who stutter.  Craig collaborated on the child versions of the Overall Assessment of the Child's Experience of Stuttering (OASES), which assesses the affective and cognitive components of stuttering.