Stammering, Its Cause and Cure Part 8

CHAPTER X

DEFECTIVE SPEECH IN CHILDREN

(2) THE FORMATIVE PERIOD

The period in a child's speech development dating from the second year and up to the sixth, is called the Formative Period, for the reason that this is the time when the child is busy learning new words, acquiring new habits of speech, co-ordinating and learning properly to a.s.sociate the flood of ideas which overwhelm the child-mind in this period.

The child-vocabulary at this time is but an echo of the vocabulary of the home. The words that have been used most frequently there are most strongly impressed upon the child-mind. The names he has heard, the objects he has seen, the applications of speech-ideas--these alone are now in his mind. This condition is inevitable since the child must learn to speak by imitation--and, since he has had no source of word--pictures other than the home, he must have acquired facility in the use of only those words he has had an opportunity to hear.

Former President Wilson, whose faultless diction, remarkable fluency of expression and discriminating choice of words, made him a master speaker and writer, attributed his facility to the training he received in the home of his father, a minister, where the children were constantly encouraged in the use of correct English and in the broadening and enrichment of their store of words.

From the form of simple child-speech, made up often of monosyllables or of a few brief and easy sentences, the child must now evolve a more complicated form of thought-expression, with the use of connectives, descriptions and a finer gradation of color than heretofore.

This process may be materially aided by the parent by the repet.i.tion of the child's own utterances, proving to the child that these are correct, that he is being understood and giving him confidence to venture further out in his attempts at speech amplification. This encouragement of the child-mind in its attempts to speak is so important that it is worth while to give some simple examples of what is meant, in order that the point may be clearly understood. Let us take, first, the example of a mother who, from some cause, allows herself to be of a nervous and irritable disposition. The small child may say, "Mam--ma, I want a tooky." The mother, either through indifference or through habit, says, "You want WHAT?" This, first of all, is like a dash of cold water to the child in his uncertain state of mind as to the correctness of his utterance. The child repeats, "I want a tooky," and in all probability gets the further inquiry, "You want a TOOKY--what's that?" which undermines the child's confidence in himself and in his ability to talk.

On the other hand, the mother who understands the needs of the child from a speech-forming standpoint will not insist on the child repeating the word time after time as if it was not understood. She will strive hard to understand the first time, even though the expression is imperfect and difficult of interpretation, and her nimble mind having figured out what it is that the child desires, will say, "Baby wants a cooky?" Here the child, in his comparatively new occupation of talking, finds a deal of delight in knowing that his words have been properly comprehended and feels a new confidence in his ability to express thoughts--which confidence, by the way, is essential to normal speech development in the child. It has the further effect of correcting the tendency of faulty utterance, and in time will result in the complete eradication of the natural tendency to "baby-talk" which is too often encouraged and aided by the habit of parents in REPEATING THE BABY-TALK. In no case, should defective utterances be repeated, no matter how "cute" the utterance may seem at the time. Many speak indistinctly throughout their entire life simply because of the habit of their parents in repeating baby-talk, thus confirming incorrect images of numerous words.

SPEECH DISORDERS IN THE FORMATIVE PERIOD: The Formative Period may mark the beginning of a speech disorder and in many instances chronic cases of stuttering and stammering may be traced to a simple disorder which first manifested itself in the ages between 2 and 6.

Speech disorders arising in this period may be traced to any one of a number of causes. In a child of five, for instance, the diagnostician would look for evidences of an inherited tendency to stammer or stutter; he would look also for circ.u.mstances which would show that the child had acquired defective utterance through mimicry of others similarly afflicted or through the unconscious imitation of the defective speech of those immediately about him.

Failing to find any hereditary tendency to a speech defect or any evidence that the disorder had been acquired by imitation or mimicry, the next step would be to determine whether or not the trouble had been caused by disease or injury.

As explained in Chapter III, the diseases of childhood, such as Whooping Cough, Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria, Acute Ch.o.r.ea, Infantile Cerebral Palsy and Infantile Paralysis are frequently the cause of stuttering or stammering, and a history showing a record of these diseases would result in a very careful examination for the purpose of determining if they had resulted in a form of defective utterance.

ADVICE TO PARENTS: But whatever the cause of the trouble, care should be taken to see that it grows no worse and every attempt should be made to eradicate it at this early stage. Like a fire, speech disorders in their early stages are insignificant compared to their future progress and can be much more readily eradicated then than later. Inasmuch as a child of less than eight years is hardly old enough to undertake inst.i.tutional treatment successfully, it behooves the parent of the stammering or stuttering child to render what home a.s.sistance is possible, during this period. The old adage, tried and true, that "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is never more correctly applied than here. A few simple suggestions may aid in preventing the trouble from progressing rapidly to a serious stage, even though these suggestions do not eradicate the disorder altogether.

First of all, the child should be kept in the very best possible physical condition. This means, too, plenty of fresh air and sunshine, without which any child is less than physically fit.

It is important that the child be not allowed to a.s.sociate with others who stammer or stutter, or who have any form of speech disorder.

Imitation or mimicry, as heretofore stated, is the most prolific cause of speech trouble and to place a child who stammers or stutters in the company of an older person similarly afflicted, is to invite a serious form of the disorder.

Nervousness, while not the cause of speech disorder, is an aggravant of the trouble and should be avoided. The child should not be allowed to engage in anything which has a tendency to make him nervous or highly excited. Such a condition will aggravate the speech trouble, make it worse and tend to fix it more firmly in the child.

Furthermore, parents should not scold or berate the child because he stammers or stutters. No child stammers or stutters because he wants to, but because he has not the power to control his speech organs. In other words, the child cannot help himself--and scolding and harsh words simply cause confusion and dejection which in turn react to make a more serious condition.

THE CHANCES FOR OUTGROWING: The author's examination and diagnosis of more than 20,000 cases of speech disorders has revealed the fact that at this period in the life of the child afflicted with stammering or stuttering, slightly less than 1 percent. outgrow the difficulty. With proper parental care it might be possible to increase this percentage, perhaps double it, but this should hardly be called "outgrowing." In the mind of the average person, the expression "outgrowing his stammering" means that the stammerer has been able to go ahead without giving the slightest heed to his trouble and that it has, by some magical process, ceased to exist. This is a fallacy. Stammering and stuttering are both destructive and progressive and no amount of indifference will result in relief--but on the other hand, will terminate in a more malignant type of the disorder. It IS true, however, that more care on the part of the parent in looking after the formation of speech habits in the Pre-Speaking and Formative Periods of the child's speech development, would result in fewer cases of chronic stammering and stuttering in later life.

CHAPTER XI

DEFECTIVE SPEECH IN CHILDREN

(3) THE SPEECH-SETTING PERIOD

The period from the age of 6 to the age of 11 (inclusive) is in truth the Speech-Setting Period, for it is at this time that the child's speech habits become more or less fixed, and his vocabulary, while constantly developing, manifests tendencies which may be traced through into the later life of the adult.

This Speech-Setting Period marks two very important events in the speech development of the child. First, it marks the period of second dent.i.tion or the time when the milk-teeth are "shed" and the new and permanent teeth take their place. This is a critical period and statistics show that there is a marked increase in speech disorders at this time. The second event of importance, both to child and to parents, is the beginning of the work in school. It must be remembered that heretofore the child has been under the watchful care of the parents during most of his hours, while now, with the beginning of his work in school, he is having his first small taste of facing the world alone--even if only for a little while each day.

Regardless of the att.i.tude which the child takes toward his work in school, this work presents new problems and new possibilities of danger from a standpoint of speech development. A slight defect in utterance which at home is pa.s.sed over from long familiarity, is the subject of ridicule and laughter at school. For the first time in the child-life, the stammering or stuttering youngster may experience the awful feeling of being laughed at and made fun of, without exactly knowing why. He will have to face the questions of his thoughtless companions who will attempt to make him talk merely for the sake of entertaining themselves. To the child who stutters or stammers, this is torture in its worst form. The humiliation and disgrace which the stammering child must undergo on the way to school, in the school-yard and on the way home again, is a tremendous force in the life of the youngster--a force which may seriously impede his mental development, his physical welfare and his progress in school. He finds himself unlike others, deficient in some respect and yet not realizing the exact nature of his deficiency or understanding why it should be a deficiency. He stands up to recite with a constantly increasing fear of failure in his heart and unless he is fortunate enough to have a teacher who understands, is apt to fare poorly at her hands, also. Even in the case of the teacher who does understand the child's difficulty and consequently permits written instead of oral recitations, there is a constant feeling of inability on the part of the child, a knowledge of being less-whole than those about him, which saps the self-confidence so necessary to proper mental development and normal progress. He furthermore misses much of the value of the studies that he pursues, for, as a noted educator has said, "In order for a child to remember and fix clearly in his own mind the things he studies, those things must be repeated in oral recitation." And this the stammering or stuttering child cannot do.

SENDING STAMMERING CHILDREN TO SCHOOL: With these facts in mind, the question arises as to whether it is ever policy to send a stammering or stuttering child to school, knowing that he is afflicted with a speech-disorder. In the first place the parents who send a stammering child to school exhibit a careless disregard for the rights of others and a further disregard for the many children who must, of a necessity, a.s.sociate with this stammering child, with all the consequent dangers of infection by imitation or mimicry. Speech defects of a remediable nature among school children could be materially reduced by refusing to allow children so afflicted to play or in any way a.s.sociate with the others who talk normally.

Aside, however, from the question of the parents' obligation to society and to the children of others (which should be, in the end, a means of protection for their own children, as well) there is the bigger and more selfish aspect of the question, viz.: the effect on the child himself.

No better suggestion can be given than that contained in "The Habit of Success" by Luther H. Gulick, who says: "If you take a child that is really mentally subnormal and put him in school with normal children, he cannot do well no matter how hard he tries. He tries again and again and fails. Then he is scolded and punished, kept after school and held up to the ridicule of the teacher and other students. When he goes out on the playground, he cannot play with the vigor and skill and force of other children. In the plays, he is not wanted on either side; he is always 'it' in tag. So he soon acquires the presentment that he is going to fail no matter what he does, that he cannot do as the others do and that there is no use in trying. So he gives up trying. He quits.

"That is the largest element in the lives of the feeble-minded--that conviction that they cannot do like others, and is the first thing they must overcome if they are to be helped. There is no hope whatever of growth, as long as they foresee they are going to fail."

The futility of trying to "cram" an education into a subnormal child has never been better expressed than in the statement quoted above.

There is nothing to be gained by insisting that a child who is ill, attend school--and it should be remembered that so far as school is concerned, the child who stutters or stammers is just as ill as the one with the measles, save that the illness of the stammering or stuttering child is chronic and persistent, while that of the other is temporary.

CHANCES FOR OUTGROWING AT THIS AGE: The opportunities for the stammering or stuttering child to outgrow his trouble are about five times as great in the Formative Period, between the ages of 2 and 6, as they are in the Speech-Setting Period, from 6 to 11. In the former, as previously explained, statistics show that about 1 per cent.--or one in a hundred--outgrow their trouble before the age of 6, while after this age the percentage drops to one-fifth of one per cent, or about one person in every five hundred, which is a very small chance indeed.

In speaking of the tendency of parents to wait in the hope that speech disorders will be outgrown, Walter B. Swift, A.B., S.B., M.D., has this to say:

"This suggestion may frequently be offered, even by the physician. Many people say, 'Let the case alone and it will outgrow its defect.' No treatment could be more foolish than this. No advice could be more ill-advised; no suggestion could show more ignorance of the problems of speech. Such advisers are ignorant of the harm they are doing and the amount of mental drill of which they are depriving the pupil. Nor do they know at all whether or not the case will ever 'outgrow' its defect. In brief, this advice is without foundation, without scientific backing, and should never be followed."

ADVICE TO PARENTS: Parents of children between the ages of 6 and 11 who stammer or stutter, should follow out the suggestions given in the previous chapter, with the idea of removing the difficulty in its incipiency if possible, or at least of preventing its progress. If by the time the child is eight years of age, the defective utterance remains, this fact is proof that the speech disorder is of a form that will not yield to the simple methods possible under parental treatment at home and the child should be immediately placed under the care of an expert whose previous knowledge and experience insures his ability to correct the defective utterance quickly and permanently.

In all cases after the age of 8, the matter should be taken firmly in hand. There should be no dilly-dallying, no foolish belief in the possibility of outgrowing the trouble, for whatever chances once existed are now past. First of all, the child's case should be diagnosed by an expert with the idea of ascertaining the exact nature of the speech disorder, the probable progress of the trouble, the present condition, the curability of the case and the possibilities for early relief. A personal diagnosis should be secured where possible, but when this cannot be brought about, a written description and history of the case should enable the capable diagnostician of speech defects to diagnose the case in a very thorough manner. The result of this diagnosis should be set down in the form of a report in order that the parent may have a permanent record of the child's condition and may be able to take the proper steps for the eradication of the speech disorder. With this information as to the child's case in hand, parents should be guided by the advice of Alexander Melville Bell, one of the greatest speech specialists of his age, who said:

"Stuttering and Hesitation are stages through which the stammerer generally pa.s.ses before he reaches the climax of his difficulty, and if he were brought under treatment before the spasmodic habit became established, his cure would be much more easy than after the malady has become rooted in his muscular and nervous system."

Truly may it be said of the stammering child at this period, that "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries."

CHAPTER XII

THE SPEECH DISORDERS OF YOUTH

Youth, as we shall define it from the standpoint of the development of speech disorders, is the period from the age of 12 to the age of 20.

From the twelfth to the twentieth year is a very critical period in the life of both the boy and the girl who stammers--a period which should have the watchfulness and care of the parent at every step. This is known as the period of adolescence and may be said to mark the time of a new birth, when both mind and body undergo vital changes. New sensations, many of them intense, arise, and new a.s.sociations in the sense sphere are formed.

To the boy or girl pa.s.sing through this stage of life, it is a period of new and unknown forces, emotions and feelings. It is a time of uncertainty. The sure-footed confidence of childhood gives way to the unsure, hesitating, questioning att.i.tude of a mind filled with new and strange thoughts and a body animated by new and strange sensations.

These are the symptoms of a fundamental change, the outward manifestations of the pa.s.sing from childhood to manhood or womanhood.

This is childhood's equinoctial storm, marking the beginning of the second season of life's year. In this storm, it is the paramount duty of the parent to be a safe and ever-present pilot through the sea that to the captain of this craft is as uncharted as the route to the Indies in Columbus' day.

The revolution now taking place in both the mental and bodily processes results hi a lack of stability--an "unsettledness" that manifests itself in restlessness, nervousness, self-consciousness or morbidness, taking perhaps the form of a persistent melancholia or desire to be alone.

At this time in the life of the boy or girl, the possibilities for stuttering or stammering to secure a firm hold on their muscular and nervous system are very great. Next to the age of second dent.i.tion, children at the age of p.u.b.erty are most susceptible to stammering or stuttering.