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 circumstances 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 Chorea, 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 institutional treatment successfully, it behooves the parent of the stammering or stuttering child to render what home assistance 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 associate 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.