My son also was diagnosed with ADHD and he too stutters from time to time. He also receives Speech.

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My son stutters all the time though. It may be 2 seperate issues with him. He's been taking speech for 3 years now and I barely see any difference

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My son is 5. He doesn't stutter but he talks very slow. He says each word so far apart that it is hard to follow what he is saying. He is currently taking speech classes 3 times per week. He is taking Focalin

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My son stutters and has ADHD and is not on any medication. The stuttering only really started up a few months ago and we are waiting for an evaluation at the moment. His younger brother also stutters a little, and both of them have had tics in the form of grimaces and pronounced blinking. We have decided to bring the younger one in for evaluation now as well. He may have ADD as his father and I seem to, only his older brother has been evaluated. In both boys the stuttering takes the form of repeating whole words and series of words until the sentence is finished, as opposed to stuttering the initial consonent.

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Hi, I stuttered as a small boy and when I discovered that I was beginning to do this, I 'trained' myself to stop with the help and support of my mother. My very small towns the school district did not have all of the wonderful specialists that are available now and it also may have been because that was over 45 years ago. My mother and I sat down and talked about my stuttering when I was about 7-8 years old. I had so much love and respect for her that I did listen. When we talked she asked if I was aware of my beginnings of stuttering? I was becoming aware of it and wondered why it was happening, when it actually started, and how I might stop it. Mom went to the library and did research on the subject so we could do this project correctly and get the needed results. We went into my bedroom in the evenings several times per week, had a Coke to drink, and sat on the bed, talking, and she showed me what the books said, and how what needed to be done to overcome it. We sat that way for weeks, days, and hours. Over the course of seeraI months I was able to train myself to stop talking, use that little pause, to regain my thoughts, and begin again, and to speak slower. It worked and mom was her confident self from her years of a country school teacher. Back in the dark ages of education; the idea of ADHD or ADD was a completely alien idea. No one had even thought of such conditions. No one had categorized many of the learning disabilities. Way back then, kids were just lazy! All the way through grade school and high school I was accused of being lazy, or over my head with the work I was trying to do. To make matters worse; my 3rd grade teacher-Mrs. Hoover actually asked my mother if I was dropped on my head when I was a baby. I take comfort in knowing that today’s educational programs are required to provide specialists to assist children in these formative years; I was really not helped and it has taken me until 50+ years old to be able to get the college degree that I have been chasing for so many years. I have now begun taking the meds, the school provides tutoring, and I am pulling top grades in all of my subjects in my major. I have noticed I will occasionally begin to stutter if I become excited or talking faster than I should. Slower speech has helped me get though life. This bothers my wife occasionally, but she understands and tries to have the appropriate patience and that is a different can of worms.

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My son often does the same thing. He tells me because it's because he has too many things floating around in his head to pick one word. Medication does not cure everything and I really agree with the person above. When we as adults refer to our vocabulary to pull out a word, it takes milliseconds. Kids are still working on that skill so just that distraction to pull a word can send them into a "mind flurry". That one second pause is priceless and also gives them confidence because they actually feel they have control of something. I also talk to my son a lot and listen to anything and everything he has to say. Video games are not exciting to me, but the more he practices speaking and the more I challenge him, the better it gets for him. I'm no expert and speech therapy is an amazing asset to society but I would make darn sure my child really needed it before I spent all the time and money. Not to mention reaffirming my child's possible belief that there is something "wrong" with them, further putting a hit on their self-esteem.

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@ thea333 My son does the same thing...says a few words then goes bck and repeats the same few words, then another word then repeats the whole beginning of the sentence again. Sometimes it takes him so long to finish a sentence that by the time he's donw explaining whatever it is he's telling me, I've lost track of what it is he's trying to tell me. He does both really, stutters both words and sentences. I have to tell him to slow down and then he manages to get a few words out before he starts stuttering again.

@ bubbadave I think it's wonderful that you had such a patient mother. I find myself losing patience quite often when I notice no changes in his speech. I really try but it's difficult watching your child struggle and there's nothing you can do to make it right right now.

@ HGuilin My son has been in speech for almost 3 years and his stuttering hasn't improved. His speech has ( a little) but his stuttering problem hasn't. Luckily he gets speech through the school so there's no out of pocket expense, but I've always thought 20 minutes twice a week is really not enough time especially when there are other children there. There's not a lot of one on one time. By the time the teacher gets the children settled to begin lessons, 5 minutes of their speech class has been used up so it gives them even less time to work on speech. He is on meds and I am very grateful. His grades have improved 200% because he is able to concentrate, but I still find kids who, even though he's a very intelligent child, say things to him about his speech and it breaks my heart. He's an A-B Honor Roll student now but the stuttering makes him sound like he's retarded (for lack of a better word) and children at that age are very mean. We were hoping the meds would help with his speech but they have not.

I am hoping in time, he will grow out of the stuttering and go on to speak normally. I was hoping someone on here had older children that might have gone through the same thing and hopefully their speech corrected as they grew older. I now know there is hope when I read BubbaDave's story.

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Many years ago as our local support group rep I attended an open night with the David Maguire Centre - a remedial stuttering project - here in Sydney Australia, but it was an English program I think, so it must be somewhere in the States - it was like greeting people back from another planet. They did pre video tapes and these beautiful young and older people could not even give their name and address clearly. Locked up in a hotel for 4 days learning to breath (like an opera singer does) and then onto one of the busiest street corners in Sydney on top of a chair, surrounded by friends and family talking confidently. The breathing training went on for months longer of course, till it became automatic. That open night they all addressed the audience of 100 or more, slowly and with care, there wasn't a dry eye in the audience. The Speech Therapists present shook their heads and said said that they could not do anything like that. One employer said that it gave him the greatest pleasure to go his young friend and tell him to "shut up and get back to work" they had worked together for 11 years and he had barely ever heard a word from him before. One wife said that she was having trouble adjusting to not being the spokesperson for the family, and that her husband's new found independence was a tad difficult to bare. It was a night I felt incredibly privileged to share. There is now a spin off from them operating within this state, a less intensive program. Maguire was a stutterer and an opera singer, and realised that when singing he never stuttered! When my son was to be married they had been to see the preist - he stuttered - at the ceremony he never missed a beat but I could see him breathing very determinedly. A huge success.

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The links for David Mcguire Program are www.mcguireprogramme.com May 22-23 UCLA Student Union Contact Dave McGuire dave@mcguireprogramme.com June 11-13 Harrington Hotel Washington DC 3 day intensive Contact Ephraim Allon - enallon@yahoo.com

I had always thought that stuttering was only to do with the vocal cords but at the Mcguire open night in the pre-video tapes it was plain to see the facial muscle spasms that affected most of the young people. Wonderful to see that all disappear. Good luck.

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Thank you for the information. I will check into it.

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My Stepson has stammered/stuttered since Kindergarten (he is now 13). It's a classic stammer: he re-re-re-peats the beginnings of words. He also has breath intake issues where struggles to get the word out. Unfortunately, my husband and I run up against his mother on this issue ("he will grow out of it") as well as with his ADD (she forbids him to be medicated). We therefore have only "natural" remedies that we are allowed to work with. I'm positive that the stammer is attributable to his ADD because traditional speech therapy has helped only slightly.

We run speech therapy drills on the way to school, which definitely helps for that day. It's like a nice warm up and make him very conscious of "pushing" the word out and supporting his words with breath. We notice that the stronger his breathing (like after a workout or football), the more fluid his speech. HIs voice is cracking right now ;-) but once it's changed he is looking forward to singing lessons. We are optimistic that the breathing exercises for vocal support and strengthing his diaphram will be a help. And singing is something he really enjoys (thank goodness! nothing like getting an ADDer to do something he hates!)

Thank you for this thread, everyone! It's rare that people make the association with ADD and disfluency. Bummed I missed the McGuire talk, but will look into it for future.

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