Saturday, June 28, 2014

June 26 Meeting Update

Five members were present including two new members - welcome Josh & Theo! One new member talked about an intensive 3 week speech therapy program he recently completed in Boston - The New England Fluency Program. The program is run by one Adriana DiGrande, a Speech Language Pathologist and Board Certified Specialist-Fluency. It is very intense, going from 8:30AM to 3:30PM daily plus "homework assignments." The new member had very high praise for the program, saying it changed his life mainly by changing his attitude toward his stuttering. He had been hiding his stuttering a great deal, & one major thing the program did was to get him to stop this or at least do it much less. The program helped him not to avoid or substitute words. One interesting part of the program was a "homework assignment" in which he & others stopped people at random in Boston Common & asked them if they would take part in a survey about stuttering. The new member talked about how once he got past the "mental aspects" of stuttering (eg. the hiding, shame, embarrassment & negative attitude toward stuttering), his fluency got better by itself. One actual technique he mentioned was "stabilizing the 1st sound" - elongating the 1st sound or syllable of a word for 2 seconds.

We then went to the old standby: Table Topics. We each talked for about 5 minutes. Topics included: Baseball, Is there intelligent life on other planets?, World Cup soccer, Vacations & If the opportunity arose would you go to Mars? One member would go to Mars only if there were parking - there's always one wise guy in the group. These topics led to some lively offshoot conversations. A side topic was: Do you stutter in your dreams? One person said lately he has been stuttering in his dreams & even in the same way he stutters when awake - hiding, substitutions, etc. I wonder what the Freudian implications of this are.

We talked a little about stuttering in other languages. Two members that were present speak another language besides English & another member speaks two other languages. All said they stuttered more in the languages other than English.

There was a little time remaining so we began a conversation on: What advice would you give parents of children who stutter? & Do you wish your parents had done anything different in relation to your stuttering? One piece of advice offered was: Don't give advice (such as "slow down") if you don't know what you're doing. Another piece of advice was to get the child into speech therapy as soon as possible. There was general agreement on this one, as it is well established that the earlier a child who stutters starts speech therapy, the greater the chances that he'll stop stuttering. One person mentioned a speech pathologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, Woody Starkweather, who claimed close to a 100% success rate for stuttering children brought to him at a young enough age. I personally think it's crucial to get a stuttering child into speech therapy before he becomes aware of his own stuttering - usually about 7 or 8. One member said he didn't really become aware of his stuttering until age 12, but I think this is an exception. We agreed to continue these two topics at the next "4th Thursday" meeting.

That's it folks. The attendance again wasn't great, but the quality of the meeting made up for it.

The next meeting, led by Matt & Mihaela, is Thursday, July 10 at 5:45 PM at Kaiser. Remember the mantra: 2nd & 4th Thursdays - 5:45 - Kaiser. That's as easy to remember as OOOOMMMMMM. Come to the meetings!

Have a good 4th of July. Remember: light the fuse to the firecracker, not your finger.

Friday, June 13, 2014

June 12 Meeting Update: Challenging Assumptions



Five people attended our meeting. After reading the Welcoming Words and introducing ourselves, we had a free-flowing discussion that kept returning to the idea of challenging assumptions about stuttering. It's our most important responsibility as people who stutter, and also the most difficult one, because many of us have internalized these assumptions without really examining them to determine if they're right or wrong.

One person in our group was told by his boss that his stutter was going to be a problem in an upcoming oral examination. Our group member gave the perfect reply: Why? He studied hard, he knows the material, and taking longer to give the right answers doesn't change the fact that they're the right answers. Stuttering doesn't cancel out competence. Self-confidence doesn't just depend on how fluent we are when we speak. Many people don't believe this. But it's up to us to show them that it's true.

Another person in our group had to give a last-minute presentation at work. It didn't go as well as he would've liked, in part because he didn't have a lot of time to prepare. He received positive feedback about the presentation, as well as advice to practice more. But he questioned whether he deserved to be paid for his work since he couldn't give presentations as well as fluent speakers.

But why do we assume that fluent speakers are by default good presenters? I've heard many who aren't. And why do we assume that our stutter cancels out all the other work we do at work? Why not focus on the fact that we are dedicated, finish projects on time, stay late to do extra work?  Many people think that if you sound "weird" when you speak, you must be "weird." It's up to us to show them that they're wrong.

Of course we can continue to work towards fluency, but without making it the be-all and end-all of our lives. One member shared that he's able to maintain fluency when he tries to speak like he writes: using phrasing and punctuating his speech with pauses like commas and periods. Another member said that what feels to him like speaking too slowly sounds "just right" to his listeners. We have to remember that our internal clock as stutterers doesn't keep time properly. We have to retrain our sense of timing in order to stutter more easily and experience fluency.

Sounds like a lot of work! And it is. Often it can be frustrating. But it can also be amazing to change someone's mind, as well as our own, for the better, and to realize how much potential we have as human beings to get better and make the world a better place.