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 passes 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 associations in the sense sphere are formed.