Your kid gets up to give a book report, or answers a question on a school Zoom call, or stands in front of the mirror rehearsing a speech for the fourth time, and it's there again: um, in the middle of practically every sentence. Sometimes it's uh. Sometimes it's like. By the third one in a single sentence, it's hard not to say something.
The instinct to jump in is understandable, and it's usually the wrong move. Correcting a filler word mid-sentence interrupts the sentence itself, and a kid who gets corrected mid-thought loses the thread of what they were saying, which produces more filler words, not fewer. Most parents have tried this. Most parents have watched it backfire.
Filler words aren't a sign that something is wrong with a child's speaking ability. They're what a normal, developing brain does while it searches for the next word, and every fluent adult speaker uses them too, just at a lower rate and in different places. The actual goal isn't eliminating um and uh completely. It's lowering the rate enough that a formal audience, a teacher, a judge, a college interviewer, stops noticing, and getting there works differently than most parents try to do it.
What a Filler Word Actually Is
Linguists don't treat um and uh as mistakes or nervous tics. Cognitive scientists Herbert Clark and Jean Fox Tree, in a widely cited 2002 study published in the journal Cognition, found that uh and um function as real words with their own meaning: uh signals a short upcoming delay in speaking, and um signals a longer one. Speakers use them, mostly without noticing, to tell a listener a pause is coming and roughly how long it will last, which helps a listener follow along rather than confusing them.
That reframes the whole problem. A child who says um while thinking of the next word isn't failing at speaking. They're doing something every fluent speaker's brain does, out loud, because kids haven't yet built the reflex adults have of filling that same gap with a silent pause instead. The skill to build isn't never pausing. It's learning to pause without narrating it.
What Not to Do
Do not correct it in the moment. Interrupting a kid mid-sentence to point out a filler word breaks their focus on what they were trying to say, and losing that thread produces exactly the stalling that triggers more filler words. Save the feedback for after, not during.
Do not count fillers out loud while they're talking. Tallying "um" after "um" in front of your child, even as a joke, trains them to monitor themselves while they're supposed to be thinking about content. A kid who is watching for their own filler words can't fully focus on what they're saying, and that split attention usually makes the habit worse, not better.
Do not aim for zero. A child instructed to never say um again tends to freeze instead, replacing the filler with an awkward silent gap or grinding to a stop entirely, because literal zero is unnatural for anyone, adult or child. Psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld, in a 1995 study in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, found that listeners rated speakers using natural, spontaneous ums as more relaxed than the identical speech with those same pauses edited out, even though the same listeners said on a survey that they disliked filler words in general. What people say they mind and what actually reads as more natural aren't the same thing. The goal is a lower rate, not elimination.
Do not treat it as an anxiety problem by default. Filler words show up in relaxed, casual speech just as often as in nervous speech. They're a normal feature of thinking out loud, not automatically a symptom of stage fright. Treating every um as an anxiety symptom can send a family toward the wrong fix (reassurance, breathing exercises) for what's actually a fluency habit that needs practice reps.
Do not try to fix it the same week as a big performance. A filler-word habit built up over years doesn't change in days, and asking a kid to consciously suppress it right before a graded presentation or a competition adds a new thing to think about at the worst possible moment. Work on it during low-stakes practice weeks, not the week of the event.
What Actually Works
1. Teach the swap: silence instead of um. The actual skill is replacing a filler with a pause, not eliminating pauses altogether. Have your child practice this directly: say a sentence, stop, count one second of silence in their head, then continue. It feels enormous to the kid saying it and is close to invisible to the person listening.
2. Slow the whole pace down first. A lot of filler words come from a mouth moving faster than the brain is choosing words. Slowing the overall speaking pace by even 10 to 15 percent gives the brain time to catch up, and the filler rate often drops before you've targeted it directly.
3. Record thirty seconds and count together, after the fact. Have your child answer a simple question on video, then watch it back together and count the fillers as a team, treating it like a shared puzzle instead of a critique. Counting after the fact, calmly, builds self-awareness without the mid-sentence interruption that backfires.
4. Practice in casual conversation, not formal speeches. The swap is easier to build in a five-minute dinner-table conversation than in a rehearsed speech, because back-and-forth conversation gives far more reps per minute than a two-minute speech does. Build the habit in conversation first, then let it carry into formal speaking.
5. Praise the catch, not just the absence. When your child notices themselves mid-um and pauses instead of filling the gap, point it out specifically and right away. Praising the self-correction, not just a filler-free stretch they got lucky on, reinforces the actual skill being built: noticing and swapping.
The Three-Question Filler Check
Not every um needs a fix, and it helps to know which ones do before spending weeks of practice on a habit that isn't actually costing your child anything. Run it through three questions.
1. How often, not just whether. A filler every ten or fifteen seconds in normal conversation is unremarkable and not worth addressing. A filler in nearly every sentence, several times a minute, is a rate worth working on.
2. In what setting. A relaxed rate of fillers in casual conversation with friends costs a child nothing and, per Christenfeld's research above, can even read as more natural. That same rate in a job interview, a debate round, a class presentation, or a college interview is a different story: a 2019 Cal Poly study, in which 145 listeners rated recorded interview answers with and without vocal fillers, found that more filler words consistently lowered how professional and credible the speaker sounded, regardless of the speaker's gender. Fix it for the formal setting; leave it alone at the dinner table.
3. Is your child aware of it. A child who has no idea they're doing it needs the recording step above before anything else, since you can't fix what you can't hear. A child who already notices themselves saying um and gets frustrated by it is ready for the swap-to-silence practice directly.
If the answer to all three is rarely, only in casual talk, and they don't notice or mind, there's genuinely nothing to fix. Save the practice reps for a kid whose rate, setting, or self-awareness says otherwise.
How TalkMaze Fits
TalkMaze is an online communication academy for kids ages 5 to 17, and lowering a filler-word habit is exactly the kind of thing that improves faster with a coach watching than with a parent trying to catch it solo. A TalkMaze coach hears a child's actual filler rate in real time, in a low-stakes 1-on-1 setting, and runs the swap-to-silence practice as a specific weekly drill rather than an occasional correction, with written feedback after every session so you can see the rate come down over time instead of guessing.
Every family starts with a free 30-minute assessment. Your child meets a coach, does one short activity together, and you both get a specific read on where their filler rate actually stands and what a first month of coaching would look like before you commit to anything. Founder Ghalia Aamer is a national debate competitor, TEDx speaker, and Princess Diana Award recipient, and every TalkMaze coach is trained on the method she built. Book the free assessment here.
If your child has an upcoming speech and needs a second set of eyes on the written draft first, TalkMaze Speech Review catches the filler-prone spots in the writing itself, the sentences most likely to trip up delivery, before the speaking practice even starts. And if the bigger question is how long real improvement takes, our guide to how long it takes for a kid to get better at public speaking sets realistic expectations for a skill like this one.
Frequently Asked Questions
At what age do kids start saying um and uh?
Even toddlers respond to filler words well before they produce many of their own. A 2011 eye-tracking study published in Developmental Science found that children as young as two and a half already use another speaker's uh to predict what's coming next, looking toward an unfamiliar object roughly 70 percent of the time when a speaker paused with uh beforehand. Kids' own use of filler words tends to become more noticeable once they're regularly speaking in longer, more complex sentences, typically in the early elementary years, in part because there are more word choices for a young brain to search through mid-sentence.
Is saying um a sign of nervousness or anxiety?
Not by itself. Filler words show up just as often in relaxed, casual speech as in nervous speech, because they're mainly a byproduct of the brain searching for the next word, not a symptom of fear. If your child's ums come with other signs of distress, like avoidance or dread that doesn't ease once they start talking, that's a different, separate pattern worth discussing with a pediatrician or child therapist, not something a filler-word drill will fix.
Should I correct my child every time they say um?
No. Interrupting mid-sentence breaks their focus on what they're actually trying to say, and losing that train of thought tends to produce more filler words, not fewer. Save feedback for after they've finished talking, and focus it on the swap-to-silence skill rather than pointing out each individual instance.
Is it bad to just eliminate filler words completely?
Aiming for literal zero usually backfires. Research on natural speech has found that listeners rate speakers using occasional, natural ums as more relaxed than the same speech with the pauses edited out entirely. The realistic goal is a lower rate in formal settings, not the complete disappearance of every um and uh.
How many filler words is too many?
There's no universal number, but a useful gut check is whether they show up in nearly every sentence versus every ten or fifteen seconds of natural pausing. The setting matters as much as the count: a rate that's unremarkable at the dinner table can read as underprepared in a class presentation, a debate round, or a job or college interview, where research has linked a higher filler rate to lower perceived credibility.
What's the fastest way to actually reduce it?
Record a short answer on video, watch it back together calmly, and practice swapping a silent one-second pause in for the urge to say um, starting in casual conversation before moving to formal speaking. Slowing the overall speaking pace by even a little also reduces the pressure that produces filler words in the first place. Consistent short practice reps, not one long lecture about it, are what move the number.
Does this need coaching, or can we fix it at home?
Plenty of families make real progress with the home practice above, and it's worth trying first. What a coach adds is a trained ear that catches a filler rate a parent misses because they're used to how their own child talks, plus a structured weekly drill instead of occasional at-home correction, which is usually the difference between a habit that fades over months and one that comes down within a few weeks.
The Bottom Line
A kid who says um isn't doing anything wrong. They're doing what every speaking brain does while it searches for the next word, just without the trained reflex yet to do it silently. The fix isn't more corrections in the moment. It's fewer, better-timed ones, built through short practice reps that teach the swap from filler to silence. If you'd rather have a coach run those reps and tell you exactly where your child's rate stands, book the free assessment and find out in thirty focused minutes.
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