“Stuttering affected my life tremendously more when I refused to stutter.”
A quote from my friend Jenny McGuire from MySpeech about how hiding our stutter doesn’t make it go away. Making “fluency” the goal ignores the way stuttering impacts us day to day. Covert people are still people who stutter. How people perceive us is one of the least accurate measures to determine if someone has a stutter and if they’re affected by it.
Trying to hide our stutter can possibly impact us more than anything else ever could.
Jenny is the Executive Director of MySpeech, an organization that connects and provides scholarships for people who stutter with trained speech therapists who specialize in stuttering.
It takes a sound - usually the sound you’re going to say but not always!! - and just STRETCHES it out.
Today’s lesson is *checks notes* repetition. This is an easy one. Think Porky Pig. Got it? Done.
Filling in blocks is tempting for some reason - but don’t do it. The person who stutters has the word. It feels like it’s literally in your throat, trying to get out.
Being told to “slow down” led me to not wanting to speak.
Stuttering affected my life tremendously more when I refused to stutter.
Counting the number of times someone has repetitions is an unacceptable way to view speech therapy treatments.