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About 5% of all children go through a period of stuttering that lasts six months or more. Three-quarters of those who begin to stutter will recover by late childhood, leaving about 1% of the population with a long-term problem. The sex ratio for stuttering appears to be equal at the onset of the disorder, but studies indicate that among those children who continue to stutter, that is, school-age children, there are three to four times as many boys who stutter as there are girls.3
Risk factors that predict a chronic problem rather than spontaneous recovery include: being male, unrecovered stutterers in family history, delay in articulation or language development, stuttering that has persisted for 18 months or longer.
At present, none of these risk factors appears, by itself, sufficient to indicate a chronic problem; rather it is the cumulative or additive nature of such factors that appears to differentiate children for whom stuttering comes and goes versus those for whom stuttering comes and stays.