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I know this is one of those things where I should just LET IT GO! But I can’t!! (Sorry if the frozen song is now ringing in your ears!) I went back and forth on whether or not to post this because my intention is not to speak negatively of others or others blogs, but I feel, as a professional that is my responsibility to share truthful information. I tried to comment nicely (and offered to guest blog about stuttering in preschool based on the research and provide resources for parents) but my comment was never made public (in other words it was deleted), so I will post my thoughts here for you to reference.

For quite some time now I have followed and shared the Pre-K Pages blog as I think it is a wonderful resource. Last week they sent out an article about children and hand dominance written by an occupational therapist. While I think it was a decent article and was going to share it on my Facebook page, I was shocked to see the following statement in the article (which I then decided to refrain from sharing based on this statement alone). Can ya tell I am having a hard time letting it go?

“Encouraging or forcing the use of a particular hand in functional activities such as handwriting may actually lead to stuttering, stammering, and increased levels of stress within young children.” – Dr. M. Gibbs

While I agree that we should not force hand dominance and a child should develop it on their own, I need to make sure that you as a parent, know the following:

There is NO known cause for stuttering
Stammering is the same thing as stuttering
Encouraging and even forcing hand dominance (which I do not recommend) will NOT cause stuttering/stammering; in other words no research exists to support the above statement that I am refuting
As a parent or therapist, please know you cannot believe everything you read!

If you take nothing else from this post today, please know that you cannot believe everything that you read online. Even from websites that you know and love. For truthful information on stuttering please see stutteringhelp.org or reference an article I wrote on stuttering in the preschool years.

Stuttering can be a very scary and stressful topic for a concerned parent so it is my goal to make sure you have the most accurate, research-based information on the topic. I will continue to debunk other myths that pop up in my daily readings but please let us know if you ever have any questions about what you read on a given blog and we will be happy to answer to the best of our knowledge!

With Love,

Hallie