“Can stress cause a stutter in children?”

Stress is definitely part of the puzzle that causes stuttering. A consultation with a speech pathologist would also be valuable to help improve this situation. How many sessions it would take is not possible to know at this point.

Absolutely! Stress and anxiety can cause a stutter.

Yes.

Hi,

Yes, stress can cause people - children and adults alike - to begin stuttering. She may feel as if there is too much pressure being put on her by distance learning. Have her take breaks and provide free time activities that are fun for her to do.

Hi there,

Stress and external pressures can absolutely be a factor in stuttering. We can't say definitively if these factors are a "cause." My recommendation for now would be to seek out a local Speech-Language Pathologist with stuttering experience to perform an assessment. In the meantime, give your daughter plenty of time to get out her entire message while she's speaking. Don't rush her or try to fill in words for her if she is having trouble. Also, make her mental health a priority, and focus on keeping her home environment a calm and safe communication space. Fear of communicating can make stuttering worse. I am sorry she is feeling so much stress from everything going on right now.

Yes, stress can contribute to a child developing a stutter.

Ali Matisse, MS CCC-SLP

According to The Stuttering Foundation (https://www.stutteringhelp.org/stress-stuttering) Medicine has now started to distinguish between “causes” and “triggers” in disease onset. A cause is just what it sounds like, the underlying basis for the dysfunction or disorder. The cause of stuttering is currently unknown, but appears to involve a heritable dysfunction with increasingly obvious bases in brain anatomy and activity. “A trigger is something that either sets off a disease in people who are genetically predisposed to developing the disease, or that causes a certain symptom to occur in a person who has a disease. For example, sunlight can trigger rashes in people with lupus. A trigger is a predisposing event” (MedicineNet.com). A number of disorders are now known to appear after a person’s system has been weakened by a viral infection, for instance – this would be an example of a trigger that allows an underlying condition to emerge. We could view some family reports of stress just prior to the onset of stuttering as quite analogous to this, and view that stress as a possible trigger for the stuttering. An important concept to remember here is that triggers may vary, but if an underlying condition is susceptible to triggering, it will eventually emerge.