Child and speech pattern change

Could there be an underlying neurological issue with the following issue I discovered with my son.

My 2 1/2 year old child had no apparent speech impediments up to about 1 or 2 weeks ago.  Recently I found when reading a book with him that he was having trouble saying the word "read".  He would say it many times (up to ~10 - 20x) (fully or partially) before he could move on to the next word in his sentence.  Although I thought this was somewhat odd, even after quizzing him to say it again, I did not think too much about it.  He did get kind of conscience about me quizzing him and not being able to tell me why he could not say the word.

I noticed the same day or day or two later he was experiencing similar difficulting in saying some other words.  There didn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to when this would occur.

It is beginning to concern me that he may have had some sort of head or spinal injury that could be contributing to his difficulty.

My wife told me he did fall backwards and hit his head on our rug after being pushed back while sitting by our 4 year old, but I'm not convinced this would be the cause of this.  Apparently my mother-in-law who cares for him 3 days of the week noticed this change in speech pattern ~2 1/2 weeks ago.

Could there be anything else that could have caused this, or is it possible this could be a not uncommon behavior that can occur in young childern?

Any advice you can provide would be much appreciated?  I believe I am at a point that I would lkke my wife to take him to see the doctor.

[Cleveland Mom]

I agree with Rock Rose.  Dysfluency is quite common in young kids and generally is something that they develop out of around school age.  You should check with your pediatrician and request a speech language evaluation especially if his language seems behind.  The kind of fall, hitting his head on the rug is likely nothing to be concerned about, at any rate you can run it by his pediatrician if you are concerned about it.  Best wishes...

[RockRose]

Tommy,  he needs to be seen by a speech path and evaluated for treatment.  

He is showing definite signs of disfluency,  that often turns into true stuttering.  This is the age where this begins,  and this is how it begins -

http://www.drgreene.org/body.cfm?id=21&action=detail&ref=817

Best wishes.  In the meantime,  try not to make a big deal of it.

[tiredbuthappy]

in my experiences, it is common for children to develop a stutter at that age. in most cases, the parents did not pursue special treatment for it, and it did go away on it's own within a few months. it did resurface occasionally in the future, especially when the child was emotional or frustrated, but for the most part, it faded. One little girl had a particularly strong stutter. she did receive therapy for it for a short while, but hers too faded quickly, even after they stopped the therapy. the important thing is to give the child a chance to say what he wants to say, and be patient. Some of the children noticed they were stuttering and got frustrated; others did not show any indication that they were aware of it. One little boy actually took up to 30 seconds to get out a single word!