Q: Good day doctor. My four-year old nephew, all of a sudden, started stammering about two weeks ago. Please, how do we stop this act?

A: Between the ages of 2 and 5 years, some children will go through a phase of stuttering (also called dysfluency or stammering). The child who stutters may find it difficult to start a sentence or word, prolong a word, repeat it, make no sound for some words/syllable etc which may be accompanied by eye blinks, fist clenching etc. Stuttering is usually worse when the child is fatigued, stressed or excited.

Usually at the stated ages, this may not be a source of concern as it’s part of the process of learning to speak as their language skills are often not developed enough to keep pace with all the things they want to say 🙂

There are children who are more pre-disposed to stuttering than…