r highly
excited. Such a condition will aggravate the speech trouble, make it
worse and tend to fix it more firmly in the child.

Furthermore, parents should not scold or berate the child because he
stammers or stutters. No child stammers or stutters because he wants
to, but because he has not the power to control his speech organs. In
other words, the child cannot help himself--and scolding and harsh
words simply cause confusion and dejection which in turn react to make
a more serious condition.

THE CHANCES FOR OUTGROWING: The author's examination and diagnosis of
more than 20,000 cases of speech disorders has revealed the fact that
at this period in the life of the child afflicted with stammering or
stuttering, slightly less than 1 percent. outgrow the difficulty. With
proper parental care it might be possible to increase this percentage,
perhaps double it, but this should hardly be called "outgrowing." In
the mind of the average person, the expression "outgrowing his
stammering" means that the stammerer has been able to go ahead without
giving the slightest heed to his trouble and that it has, by some
magical process, ceased to exist. This is a fallacy. Stammering and
stuttering are both destructive and progressive and no amount of
indifference will result in relief--but on the other hand, will
terminate in a more malignant type of the disorder. It IS true,
however, that more care on the part of the parent in looking after the
formation of speech habits in the Pre-Speaking and Formative Periods of
the child's speech development, would result in fewer cases of chronic
stammering and stuttering in later life.

CHAPTER XI

DEFECTIVE SPEECH IN CHILDREN

(3) THE SPEECH-SETTING PERIOD

The period from the age of 6 to the age of 11 (inclusive) is in truth
the Speech-Setting Period, for it is at this time that the child's
speech habits become more or less fixed, and his vocabulary, while
constantly developing, manifests tendencies which may be traced through
into the later life of the adult.

This Speech-Setting Period marks two very important events in the
speech development of the child. First, it marks the period of second
dentition or the time when the milk-teeth are "shed" and the new and
permanent teeth take their place. This is a critical period and
statistics show that there is a marked increase in speech disorders at
this time. The second event of importance, both to child and to
parents, is the b