We have a 7 year old son with a disfluency (stammering/ stuttering) issue as well. I got a referral from our ped. for speech therapy. They gave me the name of 3 local clinics and I called them all to get a “feel” for each clinic and also to find out if they had anyone specifically trained for working with disfluency. We started w/ one clinic and had a therapist we loved, but she was young and moved to DC to persue her dream of living there. The next therapist we were assigned to, I did not care for, so we ended up switching to a new clinic, which as been GREAT.
The therapy clinic did an initial evaluation on my son, and then assigned him to a therapist that has special training with the disfluency issue. I would most definitely look for a ST clinic where someone had specialized training with this. There are lots of ways that a properly trained ST can work with your child that will definitely HELP. We have noticed great improvement. Initially, when we started our son was 5 and home with us (after being adopted in China) for a year. They told me that stuttering/ stammering can often happen during periods of rapid language growth, (which obviously was going on with him) and they thought that that could be the issue with him. He was “blocking” some though, which is when no sounds at all come out, as opposed to saying the beginning of the word over and over again, and that is more severe (the blocking) so they did agree that he needed therapy.
Whether it’s covered by your insurance, you’ll just have to see. I do think that MOST insurances do provide some coverage. You may have a co-pay and/ or be limited to a certain amout of therapy sessions per year. With our insurance we pay 100% until we’ve met our medical deducable, and then we pay 10% after that. We are also limited to 90 therapy sessions a year, and the clinic keeps track of all of that for us.
I would definitely encourage you to have your daughter evaluated.
