الفهرس 
CHILDHOOD DYSFLUENCYOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
S
tuttering is a speech fluency disorder characterized by involuntary repetitions or prolongation of words, syllables, or sounds, or interruptions in the flow of speech, known as blocks. It generally begins at the age of 2–4 years, with incidence rates ranging from approximately 5–11.2%, associated movements may be evident, especially in the oro-facial districts, which are not strictly related to the intended speech motor program.
As early as the child starts to utter his/her first words, s/he is suspected to go through a period of stuttering that may last six months or more, and this is called normal childhood dysfluency. By late childhood, most children who begin to stutter will recover, but only 1% of them will continue to have long-term pathological dysfluency or stuttering. The extent of public and parents/caregivers’ awareness of childhood dysfluency, its symptoms, and how to deal with the dysfluent child are essential risk factors that figure out the recovery or the persistence of dysfluency. Also, it can help in delivering the best treatment the child may need when s/he needs it.
Although it is known that stuttering exists in all societies and cultures throughout the world, there is extremely limited data available to aid with setting up stuttering treatment services for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Knowledge and beliefs about what induces stuttering may have an impact on whether one would seek help and treatment for the problem and where or who to seek help from. There is a need for phoniatricains and speech-language pathologists to have information about the extent of the public awareness of dysfluency and its symptoms, and how to deal with dysfluent children. This will help provide the public with the exact information they need and become more understanding and empathetic and ultimately behave in less discriminatory ways toward those who manifest undesirable conditions.
Surveys tend to be the most efficient and economical way used to estimate the public and/or parents/caregivers’ awareness of any disease. As questionnaires are the main tools for doing surveys, so this study aimed to validate an Arabic questionnaire on Parents/caregivers’ awareness of childhood dysfluency, as well as to make a survey using this questionnaire on parents/caregivers’ awareness of childhood dysfluency. This questionnaire was able to be disturbed faster and to a large number of the target population in presence of the world epidemic of Coronavirus (COVID-19).
This study reported according to the parents/caregivers’ answers, repetition of 1st sound was the most common symptom of dysfluency among children who stutter, followed by both “blocks” and “repetition of 1st syllable”. While the most common situations in which the children’s dysfluency symptoms were noticed or increased as reported by the parents/caregivers were while the child is talking to strangers and/or relatives, or when the child gets worried/stressed.
Children who stutter are often faced with a range of negative reactions from their parents/caregivers, and people in their community. The main reason for this is the lack of public awareness about dysfluency. This makes parents/caregivers of dysfluent children have worries and fears about their children. This study reported that parents/caregivers who took part in this study were very worried or extremely worried about their child’s dysfluency symptoms.
Regarding children’s awareness and reactions towards the dysfluency symptoms, parents/caregivers’ answers revealed that about 70% of children who stutter were either not aware and/or aware of their dysfluency symptoms but not annoyed by their symptoms. Also, most dysfluent children stutter and continue speaking normally without stopping talking and the percentage of children who did not avoid speech situations was more than those who avoided speech situations.
Parents/caregiver’s awareness of dysfluency was estimated from their responses on 4 questions concerning the change they made in the way they are treating their dysfluent child, the reaction of parents/caregivers toward the dysfluency of their child, talking about the problem of dysfluency with their child, the persons whom the parents/caregivers consulted about their child’s dysfluency problem. The extent of parents/caregivers’ awareness of dysfluency was revealed to be poor to moderate. This may be due to poor general knowledge about stuttering, lack of parental experience in dealing with dysfluent children, and limited knowledge about the role of phoniatrician and SPL in dealing with the problem of dysfluency.
So, raising awareness through public campaigns is needed to build public recognition of stuttering and to decrease negative attitudes, especially among Egyptian parents/caregivers.