Parents’ Feelings about Raising Children Who Stutter: Supportive Childrearing

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to clarify parents’ feelings about the supportive rearing of children who stutter.

Methods: We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 parents of children who stuttered in their early childhood or school age. From the interview data, we generated categories based on the codes’ similarity in meaning and analyzed this information using inductive and qualitative methods.

Results: We extracted nine categories from the interview data, including parents’ expectation of their children to overcome stuttering, their concern for their children’s suffering caused by stuttering, their concern for their children’s future because of the disorder, their feeling of being responsible for their children’s stuttering, their need for the assistance of a stuttering expert, and their feeling of security alongside people who understand stuttering.

Discussion: Because of the parents’ close involvement in supporting their children with stuttering, they were concerned about their children’s daily hardship caused by their disability. In addition, stuttering symptoms may change in the future, so parents are also worried about their children’s future and expect them to overcome the disorder.