Following is the third in a series of interviews that shaped the narrative of my next book: VoiceS Unearthed: The Impact of Early Intervention on Those Who Continue to Stutter. Names have been changes for reasons of confidentiality.
25-year-old Dwight
Early therapy for Dwight was fluency shaping and stuttering modification – the goal was to fix or at least minimize the behavior. By the time he was nine, he decided it was easier to just not talk. Then therapy shifted to a focus on increased engagement in the world around him.
“I’m told I started stuttering when I was two. My first conscious memory was probably from therapy – those are kind of confusing memories. I didn’t understand why I was there. It was a lot of little exercises. The ones that stand out the most are when they recorded me and I heard it back. I remember the first time hearing my voice played back. Who likes hearing their own voice?
For the most part I was very lucky. I didn’t have any bullies or anyone making fun of me. If it did happen, it was a small thing with people I didn’t really know. The negative impact was a bit more insidious – just not talking and not saying what I wanted to say and feeling like when I did say something, it wasn’t right. This happened a lot in a classroom environment when everyone is going around saying what they did or their name. That’s the clearest one I remember having anxiety over – going around to “tell one thing that we found.” I would not be able to get that out or I’d butcher it just to get it out. I’d think, ‘That’s not what I really wanted to say at all!’
That still happens – where I’ll say something whether it be replacing words or just getting so anxious about stuttering that I stop paying attention to what I’m saying. I’ll think, ‘I didn’t want to say that! It not only sounded bad but it was just wrong!’ What are you going to do? Five minutes later say ‘hey guys, you know that thing I said five seconds ago, that was just wrong. I wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t quite right.’ Then people think I’m this other person who doesn’t say what he means – I get into these self-talk spaces.
The idea that I didn’t talk right was definitely a thought in my head and it is still a thought in my head. It blossomed during those times in therapy as a young kid. It took root, it bore fruit and left a big impact. The therapists I saw did not help me address my feelings and get out in front of that. I think I could have really benefitted from that as a kid – to talk about those feelings in a concentrated effort, a repeating regular fashion. I don’t remember ever talking to a therapist about that – well in the sense of “oh, do you feel a little bit bad when you stutter sometimes?” Sort of talking down. Kids see right through that – that type of voice. It might work with a two-year old, but if they have the ability to understanding your words, they have the ability to understand your tone. Kids know when they’re not being taken seriously in therapy.
When I was around six, I remember being told by a speech therapist to expect questions, which I thought was a good thing – to not balk or get angry, just to understand that people don’t understand. She told me to describe my stutter as ‘a hammer on the vocal chords.’ I don’t remember them telling me why it was happening so I only had these weird images about a hammer on the vocal chords. I didn’t have a vocabulary to talk about what I was going through.
A turning point:
We stopped traditional therapy when I was around nine, but as a teenager, I attended group sessions at a local college. These sessions were facilitated by a rather unorthodox speech professor and included others who stuttered and students of speech therapy. This really helped me to practice articulating my experience and developing a vocabulary around it. This was a place where I could talk about it openly. Practice in talking about it – that was the main thing that gave me the words.
I loved going to those sessions. I was an expert. Anything I said about it was valid. There wasn’t a way I could get an answer wrong unless I actively lied. It was a space where I was totally free to just be open. It was a space where that was rewarded, a space where that felt helpful for other people too. And I felt like I was helping other people. It was great for confidence – to be able to talk to a group of adults, mostly young adults, but still adults, and have some authority – some expertise, something that I could offer. It was a space where I wanted to talk. And that was really fun. Every time I went, I just exhausted myself talking.
That experience impacted my college years quite a bit. Talking in front of a bunch of people – and the practice doing that – being able to remember a time when doing that was comfortable and fun. There was no stress. It’s like it gave me muscle memory of having done that at least once – that was good.
I think parents are in a tough position. For instance, if a kid is doing a presentation in school, they need to be allowed to feel what they feel if they do stutter and/or block. It doesn’t help to tell the kid “you should feel good about it” because they’re not going to. Maybe explain that it’s good that they tried. Ask them how they’re feeling about the speech – what they’re thinking about it? Let them bring up the stutter if they want to talk about it. You don’t have to drag that topic out of them.
Honesty is one of the more powerful things you can have in your speech and your emotions. Your stutter doesn’t have to, in anyway, undermine your honesty. Getting up there is practice no matter how it goes – and you learn from it. You’re not going to learn if you succeed every time you do something. Whatever happens, you can take what happens and learn from it.
It’s hard for parents. It’s hard for kids. It takes a while to get the right words for it and so I feel like that’s a good reason to have it be told to a person who’s not emotionally involved first like a therapist. A kid can get exercise in saying it a way that’s truthful for them before they bring it up to a parent who is stressed and worried and is going to have a desire to react and to fix things right away.
That’s another thing – the most important thing you can do is make sure there’s an open line of communication with the kid. Talking to your kid about this weird thing that neither of you have experience with – it’s not going to be perfect. There may be some little hiccups – some big hiccups – along the way. Your child may not be receptive, you may feel like you said something ‘wrong,’ but if you have an open line of communication, there isn’t anything you’re going to say with good intentions that can’t be readdressed. If your attempt to talk about it fails once, it’s not that big of a deal because, in the long run, you’re hopefully going to have mostly successes. They need to know that door is open.”