Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Gifted and stuttering

I'm new here. Anyone else have a gifted child who has a speech fluency disorder or stutters?

My DS is in 1st grade and stutters. I'm already running into problems with the school not recognizing his ability level because of his speech disorder. When speaking, DS uses a lot of interjections (um, uh), substitutes words to avoid saying a tricky word or will just give up, so it gives the impression that he doesn't know the answer when he does, he's just having trouble talking.

Another problem I've had is that I haven't been able to convince the school that the timed oral reading tests (ie. aimsweb; DIEBLS) shouldn't be used with DS. The school just points to the fact that DS's score is high so they dismiss my concerns. grrr...just because the score is high doesn't mean that his speech difficulty isn't lowering the score.

Been there, fought that battle. My DS's dysfluencies are not stuttering, so I don't have a huge amount of specific experience. My DS has oral motor apraxia, which means that he cannot sequence the movements in his mouth to say the sounds in the right sequence to say the words he's reading.

The first step is to name the disorder, document it, and share the information with the school. Request a 504 plan for your child, and the 504 plan should read that the child's reading level is evaluated independently for fluency, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and decoding, and that each skills is to be taught at his readiness level.

In practice, it's a nightmare. It does get better as the emphasis tends to move away from oral fluency.

I'll second everything geofizz suggested. Our ds doesn't stutter, but has an expressive language disorder that impacts both written expression and his ability to organize speech when speaking verbally on certain types of subjects. It was *tough* to have his abilities recognized in early elementary - but what did work was to focus on the challenges first - accommodate and remediate as needed, and once accommodations etc are in place, then you'll see that your ds will have an opportunity for his strengths to become apparent and he'll be able to access challenging academics that are at the level appropriate for his abilities. Try not to worry if you can't get to the gifted side of things quite yet - get the accommodations in place first, then you'll be able to advocate for gifted services etc.

Best wishes,

polarbear

We do have an IEP. It took nearly 4 months to get it last year despite a continuous history of speech therapy since DS was 19 months old. I guess I was a bit naïve and thought that once we finally got the IEP in place that it would take care of things.

I sense the school SLP thinks that because she provides speech therapy in her office x2 a week, everything is fine. She claims she works with the teachers but I haven't seen any evidence of it. DS has an AM teacher and a PM teacher. Two months into the school year, I find out the PM teacher didn't even know DS has an IEP.

I've met twice with the teachers and the SLP (have another meeting next week). I can tell the teachers just aren't getting the connection. They *get* that he stutters and has speech disfluencies but they don't *get* the many subtle ways that this can influence his learning, how it can impacts reading and hides what he knows.

geofizz and polarbear: I really appreciate your comments. Your advice to focus on the challenges & accommodations first is especially helpful and make sense - if I can get them to recognize the challenge and its impact. Then, hopefully, they will be able to see through the disorder and recognize his gifts! Thanks so much!

It's been a long time since I've been here..but yes we deal with stuttering.
DS6.5 has a minor to moderate stutter which comes and goes in magnitude depending on.....well we have no idea, perhaps changes in brain development. Right now he is in a period of very very minor to no stuttering. We think we achieved this state, or it could just be a coincidence, by having him watch videos of himself speaking then identifying every time he stuttered. This helped him tremendously as he didn't even know he sounded like that. His brain was hearing his own voice without the stutter. I hope that this is a permanent solution, but we will see. Anyway, we homeschool, so we don't deal with others judging him based on his verbal output when he is having a hard time. But I can understand how it can be frustrating. At any rate, just throwing our experience out with the therapy that, at least for the time being, seemed to work really well, just in case it is helpful to you. Good luck.

I'm new here too but I wanted to chime in because it sounds similar to my ds, who is now 8. I gave up on the school speech teacher. (I did make sure we had the IEP.) The Speech teacher was doing everything right but it wasn't as intensive as what my son needed. So I had the pediatrician give a referral and he went 2-3 times a week to a clinic for about 4 months.

At school, his reading confidence was plummeting because of those timed tests. He had a very skilled, patient teacher, who recognized his stuttering as a “side-effect” of his intelligence and his introvert personality. It still impacted his grade, but he didn’t care, he only remembers how patient and wonderful his teacher was to him during that tough time. She is still one of his favorites.

So far he has gone through at least 3 phases of stuttering lasting about 6 months long each. The first was when he was about 3, it was terrible. He was so distraught because he has spoken in full sentences since before he could walk and then he could barely get out 2 words together. Next was end of kindergarten, all summer and through the first half of first grade. 1st grade is when we got intensive about therapy. The ums, and ahs, diminished with self awareness, the breaks between syllables lessened with breathing exercises. Now he is in another phase where he only does it if he is excited about a topic.

But my recommendation is to keep pressure on the school but not to rely on them to be a part of the solution.