Parental perceptions of children's communicative development at stutteringonset

There has been clinical speculation that parents of young stuttering childr en have expectations of their children's communication abilities that are n ot well-matched to the children's actual skills. We appraised the language abilities of 15 children close to the onset of stuttering symptoms and 15 a ge-, sex-, and SES-matched fluent children using an array of standardized t ests and spontaneous language sample measures. Parents concurrently complet ed two parent-report measures of the children's communicative development. Results indicated generally depressed performance on all child speech and l anguage measures by the children who stutter Parent report was closely attu ned to child performance for the stuttering children; parents of nonstutter ing children were less accurate in their predictions of children's communic ative performance. Implications For clinical advisement to parents of stutt ering children are discussed.