Ages 2–18
Fluency & Stuttering
Calm, expert help, especially in the anxious early weeks.
Maybe your preschooler suddenly started repeating sounds last month, or your ten-year-old has been tensing through words for years. Either way, stuttering deserves prompt, specialized attention, and parents deserve straight answers.
Signs to watch for
- Sound or word repetitions, prolongations, or silent "blocks"
- Visible tension, eye blinks, or avoiding certain words
- Your child noticing, or going quiet in class
- A recent onset that has you searching at midnight (call us in the morning)
Our approach
We differentiate typical disfluency from stuttering, coach parents on exactly what to do at home, and treat with age-appropriate evidence-based programs: parent-involved approaches for preschoolers (Lidcombe- and Palin PCI-informed), and speech-modification plus confidence work for school-age children.
Is this normal disfluency or stuttering?
Most children repeat whole words sometimes ("I want–I want juice"), especially ages 2–5, and most of that resolves. The signs that warrant a call rather than waiting: sound repetitions ("I-I-I-I"), stretching sounds, visible physical effort (eye squeezing, tension around the mouth), a rising pitch during repetitions, or your child reacting to their own speech. Family history and onset after age 3 also raise the odds it persists. About 75–80% of children who begin stuttering recover; early evaluation is how we tell which path your child is on, and it changes what we do.
What a session looks like for a preschooler
For a 3-year-old, fluency therapy looks a lot like specially structured play and conversation, with the biggest changes happening in how the adults around the child talk and respond. You are in the room and part of the plan: we coach you live, you practice at home in five-minute special times, and we track fluency together week over week.
What you can do tonight
Slow your own speech rather than telling your child to slow down. Give them your full attention and an unhurried turn to talk, letting them finish their own sentences at their own pace. Keep talking pressure low for a few weeks and note when the stuttering rises and falls. Then call us: at minimum you leave the conversation with clarity, and if it's watchful waiting, we'll tell you exactly what to watch.
Who treats this at TALK
Bethany Morgado, M.S., CCC-SLP
Bethany leads TALK's fluency and stuttering caseload, bringing the calm, structured, parent-involved approach the anxious early weeks call for, and you track fluency together, week over week.
Meet the whole team →Every plan begins with a comprehensive evaluation and ends with measurable goals reviewed on a set schedule. See the full process →
Begin here
Start with a conversation.
Your call reaches a person who knows speech and language, live or returned the same or next business day. We’ll listen, tell you honestly whether an evaluation makes sense, and explain exactly what happens next.
Calls returned the same or next business day · Evaluations typically within 1–2 weeks · After-school appointments available · TeleTherapy backup for busy weeks