What most of us don’t know is that stammering and stuttering are normal problems and there are many solutions for them. It’s not a severe disease which accompanies a person through their life. Despite the superiority of the person’s mental abilities, they face troubles in their social lives because they fail to build a bridge of new verbal communication with others, caused by a deficiency in their talking. And here Dr. Ahnakir, a psychological and mental disease specialist, tells us the reasons behind stammering and stuttering and how to avoid it happening. How does pronunciation and the speaking of words happen normally? First of all, we should know that speaking is one of the advanced functions performed by humans through the favour of mental-movement consistency between the brain, the tongue, vocal cords, the larynx and throat muscles, as well as some other components. At the beginning we take a breath to let air enter the lungs and then start to produce the first voice by passing the air between the vocal cords to produce a tune. The tune comes out of the vocal cords in a way which produces the words and long sentences that we use. The use of words in every language involves a group of small movements for the vocal cords muscles to train it to produce different tunes. This teaches us different letters in order to be able to produce all the tunes that we need to pronounce words. What is stammering? Stammering is a disorder in the way a person verbally communicates; as the normal flow of words stops or long pronunciations are made with some syllables, words and letters, because the person can’t pronounce the words smoothly. This might be accompanied by eye closing, jaw and lip movement and other features, which may be the person’s attempt to continue talking smoothly. Stammering might increase is some situations like talking in front of many people or talking on the phone, however things like singing or speaking alone can help decrease stammering. Who does stammering affect the most? The stammering may affect people of all ages, but it is most common in young people, especially from two to six-year-olds. Boys are three times more likely to stammer than girls. However, most children grow out of it gradually, with only one percent continuing to stammer into adulthood. What are the different types of stammering? Specialists divide the verbal communication disorder into three types: Developmental stammering: Occurs in young children while they are still learning speech and language skills. As speech is a basic part of a child’s development and communication skills are more developed than language skills, children tend to search for words that express their desires. So this kind of stammering tends to disappear once the language development for the child complete. Neurogenic stuttering: As I mentioned before verbal communication needs harmony between muscles and nerves. If there are any nerve disorders or signals to the brain are not being properly conveyed this will lead to brain disability, which will affect the manner in which the voice comes out and the timing. This mainly happens after a stroke, head trauma, or other type of brain injury. Psycogenic stuttering: There are other kinds of stuttering caused by psychological. At one time all stuttering was believed to be psychogenic, but today we know that psychogenic stuttering is rare and happens when thought and reasoning are affected. This type of stuttering usually occurs in people who have gone through severe mental stress or anguish. How can we prevent our children from stammering? There are many ways to help avoid this problem. Firstly provide a relaxed home environment that allows opportunities for the child to speak, this includes setting aside time to talk to one another and avoiding criticizing or reprimanding the child when he stops conversation. Also avoid encouraging children to act out what they are trying to communicate; encourage him to use words first. How can we reduce stammering in talking? Most stammering therapy programs are behaviourism programs based on practicing personal skills to help him to recover from verbal communication problems. Examples include: -Practicing on monitoring the rate of words and control the speech in a way that encourages the smooth pronunciation of words. -Practice pronouncing words in a quiet way, in a slower and less urgent manner. -Practicing controlling the breath helps get the words out smoothly. -Start to use short sentences, slowly and then increase speed gradually to make the sentence longer and faster. -Keep doing these exercises to avoid any loss of these skills.