Childhood Development

In the past, the cause of stuttering was most often attributed to events during childhood development. Some argued that neurotic conflict or disturbed interpersonal relationships during crucial stages of a child's development could create a stutter. Others said that stuttering develops from the normal mistakes all children make when learning to speak, when some children get caught in a vicious cycle of putting too much effort into speaking, tensing their speech-production muscles too much, and consequently worsening their speech. While such activity does worsen an already present stutter, it does not create one. Today, these theories are generally disregarded in favor of the genetic and neurophysiological models.