My life with a dying stammer

Mr. CooL ICE

No point in me keeping a blog, as I don't have much to tell, so here is a brief life story about my stutter.

Had a stammer for as long as I can remember. When I was about 6 or 7, I started going to speech therapy at St. Finbars in Cork (was living there at the time), and I have no recollection of how productive it was. However, reports from my parents suggest it was good. Can't remember how it affected my school life though.

When I was 7, my family moved to Waterford. My new class was totally confused by my stammer and I didn't get teased much, as they were jealous of me getting a few hours off every Wednesday for speech therapy. However, my parents pulled me out of it after 6 months as they said it wasn't doing any good. I only found out why a few years ago. My therapist seemed to not know what she was doing, and her solution to my impediment was to get my parents to punish me every time I stuttered, even if it meant me missing my dinner. My parents were 100% right to do that IMO... It was hardly likely that I wanted to stammer, so that was the end of that.

At 10, my parents moved (yet again) to my current location. Only a small town and no therapy facilities to speak of, but my parents were happy with me doing without therapy, and I didn't really care tbh (just wanted to play megadrive ). However, the bullying really hit me hard. It got to the stage that my mother had to spy on me as I started coming home about 20 mins late after school every day. Reason was that I always stayed at the school until the path towards the street (about 200 yards) was cleared as I was constantly avoiding people that might bully me. Eventually I just became immune to it.

I can't really remember when it started improving, but it eventually became less apparent over time. I really only noticed it when my leaving cert german teacher was informing the class of the specifics of our oral exam. She listed off a few things that must be reported for consideration by the examiner, and speech impediments, such as stammers and lisps was one of them. I put my hand up and said I had a stammer, and she didn't believe me and thought I was joking until practically all the class defended me.

To this day, I could usually go a day or two without noticing any significant problems. I go through bad patches, but they might usually be after something that gets me down (poor exam results, gf breakups, graphics card getting fried, etc), but more often than not I am ok. The only times I stammer are when I get confused; trying to leave a voicemail when I expected someone to answer always makes me go staccato crazy, but that probably happens to people without stammers too. My speech in general is fairly fast, but if I feel something happening, I usually just stop talking for a half second, compose myself, and continue talking as normal.

Don't know what else to add. After watching that linked video with the ear device, and reading peoples posts here, I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. Feel free to ask any questions if it could be of any help

pog it

Thanks for posting that Lord Chessington! I could register with a lot of what you said and have to say I am really impressed with your German teacher for even asking about and mentioning things that can be taken into consideration by oral examiners. My personal experience in that regard is that my best subject was French in school and I was relying on it for good points. I got over 90% in the written and 70 something for my oral and well it was down to my stammer I believe that I did more poorly than I could have. And you know, in the mock exam, our teacher brought in a local guy who was fluent to examine us and at the end during his feedback he said 'it's clear that your ability in French isn't your problem', but that was it, I didn't want to discuss it and he probably picked up on that. And weirdly enough as I was very comfortable in French class and good I never got asked to read in front of the class which was great for me but my teacher had no idea about my speech problem. And the mock examiner maybe didn't discuss it with them.

Sorry that was a little long-winded, but I was wondering if people agree that more should be done in educating teachers about how to deal with speech problem? Like it seems obvious, but WHY would a teacher ask a student to read out loud, day after day, if they can plainly see that there's a speech problem there? I don't expect it's mentioned anywhere in their training, but I would love to be wrong about that.

Also, I had a situation where my national school teacher picked on me because of it which I really hope no one else had to endure. An example being during a quiz one day his making up a question when it came to my turn (out of 40 pupils) to say the rest of the word 'Hippo'. There are loads of other examples. To this day I feel anger over it but feel there's nothing that can be done.

Has anyone else had this problem with teachers and what do you think we could do to highlight this issue for teachers and to educate them?

Charlie_Boswell

I too had a lot of difficulty both in national school and also in Post Primary right up to my leaving cert. I think that teachers really don't know how to handle it. I was asked almost every day in every class in secondary schhol, I think it was because they felt it may have helped my self confidence, At the time all it did was to paint a bulls eye on my back for every dipsh*t bully that fancied a laugh, So much so that after completing the junior cert I asked my parents to change schools which I did.

When it came to the leaving cert orals I was well prepared though I had been to speech therapy for two years practising for it and it went really well in the end. that did my confidence the world of good, To be honest that was probably the turning point for me in my stammer. I have seen a few posts both here and on other boards warning people about various speech therapists but I have nothing but the best things to say about mine. I know that if things had been different and I had gone years earlier, I could have been further down the road to freedom than what I am today.

Two things I live by now are "No regrets" and "what you practise, you become"

Charlie

Stephen P

I don't know anything about the teaching teachers get but it should include been thought about different disabilities and speech disorders. Not a great deal but just how to deal with it and watch out for bullying. Have contact details of therapists to seek advice etc...