This is the second in a series of blogs inspired by Seth Godin’s work in What To Do When It’s Your Turn. (I highly recommend this book!)
When a person feels stupid, there are all sorts of emotions that can come into play – uncertainty, embarrassment, confusion, foolish, shame, frustration, even anger. Godin states,
“We are supposed to be afraid of stupid, to get stupid over with as soon as we can.”*
There were many times during our journey with our son who stutters that I felt stupid. Feeling stupid was a reoccurring theme for people who stutter, parents, and even speech therapists in my latest book, VoiceS Unearthed: The Impact of Childhood Intervention on Those Who Continue to Stutter.
People who stuttered felt stupid:
- “The speech therapist was telling me it should work. I ended up thinking, ‘Am I doing it wrong? Am I a slacker? What’s wrong with me?’”
- “I felt I was dumb when I couldn’t use the techniques.”
- “I remember being able to use tools in the clinic. I was confused as to why I wasn’t able to do this in the real world.”
Parents felt stupid.
- “Sadly, when you’re parenting, you don’t know what you don’t know.”
- “We were not educated about the different approaches. When we started out, I didn’t know anything about it or that there were different approaches.”
- “As a parent I had no experience or background with speech therapy in general, especially in fluency. I knew nothing. You don’t know what you don’t know.”
Speech therapists felt stupid.
- “Even though I’m in the field, I needed professional guidance.”
- “I had a few fluency clients on my caseload, and I felt very ill equipped to work with them. I was just asking questions like shooting in the dark. I felt like walking on eggshells a little bit because I wasn’t settled on exactly how to go about it.”
- “By grad school, I started to pick up on a sense of secrecy and shame felt by many speech pathologist because they felt like they should know more about stuttering. I felt like I needed to pretend that I had the answers.”
I remember being told by a leader in the field that my first book was only going to confuse parents. My response was, “parents should be confused!” Stuttering is a complicated challenge, one that cries for people to admit their stupidity because, as Godin puts it,
“Stupid is the emotion associated with learning – we are stupid and then we are not.
The pre-learning state is stupidity.”*
Godin goes on to say,
“And so the equation is obvious: Change –> Stupid –> Afraid
“One way to avoid this is to avoid change.”
“One way to avoid this is to avoid freedom.”*
In my last blog, I quoted Godin stating:
“Freedom is our problem and freedom is our opportunity.”*
The only way we can make progress, make intervention for children safer and more effective, is to feel stupid. Come on people, we can do this!!!
Best,
Dori Holte
Author – available through Amazon:
- VoiceS Unearthed: The Impact of Childhood Intervention on Those Who Continue to Stutter. (2023)
- Voice Unearthed: Hope, Help, and a Wake-Up Call for the Parents of Children Who Stutter (2011)
*Godin, Seth (2014). What To Do When It’s Your Turn, pg. 15 & 17, The Domino Project