It is known that some children will recover from stuttering without needing formal treatment. However, treatment should normally begin within one year after the onset of stuttering during the preschool years. If treatment is delayed any longer there is a risk that treatment will not be effective. Recent research has shown that not many children will recover from stuttering within that one-year period after onset.

Normally, the speech-language pathologist will wait for up to one year, more commonly six months, to see if a preschooler’s stuttering will resolve on its own. However, there is good evidence that when the decision is made to begin Lidcombe Program treatment that it is much better than natural recovery. With what is called a meta-analysis, it has been shown that a stuttering child who receives the Lidcombe Program has seven or eight times better odds of not stuttering that a child who does not receive the Lidcombe Program.