My Boy Started Stuttering

My little three year old boy started stuttering recently. I am not talking about an occasional stammer, I mean he sometimes repeats a word or syllable 10 or 20 times until the rest of the sentence finally comes exploding from his lips. I remember the moment, just a couple of weeks ago when it started, I looked at my wife and she looked back at me and we both had the same puzzled expression. Neither of us said much. First it was just a few words like You-You-You and then it got to be more and more noticeable. Some days he can barely make a sentence, some days it is hardly noticeable at all. But all of this started just two or three weeks ago.

We began to wonder if we did something that caused his stuttering. We questioned everything, from family related stress to traveling to a fever he recently had. Of course we searched online about toddlers who stammer and everything we read reassures us that stuttering in toddlers, particularly boys, is quite frequent and often goes away after a few months. Apparently stuttering in childhood often happens because the babies' language abilities are developing faster than the language center of their brains can handle. On the otherhand, I know that stuttering is something that the medical world knows next to nothing about. What causes stuttering? What is the best approach to stuttering? Will my baby stop stuttering? No one can answer these questions yet. So for now we do not know if this is a temporary thing or the beginning of a long journey.

We have discussed with his pediatrician and soon we will visit a specialist. But I suspect the final answer will be to watch and wait.