I am a stutterer. My childhood was a continuous stream of embarrassment. I had dozens of habits for avoiding it; certain problem-words I would seek to not use, the addition of little tics to syncopate my speech and let me get words out.
I attribute my malady to having at some time been forced to become right-handed; a basketball coach in my high school told me with absolute certainty that I was left-handed, not right-handed as I thought I was. That made sense. Both cerebral hemispheres try to speak at once, causing what in a computer would be buss contention. Get me on a topic that excites me and it's guaranteed I will stutter. I have read that forced changes in handedness underlie most cases of stuttering and I am completely convinced of this. I can feel it.
After tendon surgery on my right arm I had a brace across my palm and I tried chopsticks in my left hand, in five minutes I was using them effortlessly. When I write with my left hand, I have to hold it up to a mirror to read it; it's backwards.
The one time, aside from singing, when I never stutter, ever, is speaking before an audience. I have never stuttered once in my life in that circumstance. I eulogized my father in January 2009, delivering a speech I was still writing even as I was delivering it, a speech I had not even thought about what I was going to say until it was my turn to speak, and I never stuttered once.
One of my favourite priests, Fr Jack who was a dear friend of my family had a stutter. As a young man he was nearly incomprehensible, so much so that the Missionary Order he joined gently told him they could not ordain him, but they could accept him as a brother. The superior paired him up on a farm the order owned with another older brother who was nearly deaf. So then brother Jack spent 2 years working the dairy with this other brother, shouting at him from dawn till dusk (and turning the that diary into highly sought after breeding stud in the process). His speech improved dramatically as a result and his superior was able to ordain him and sent him out as parish priest to some of the most remote parts of Australia. He carried a unique lilt and had a little trouble starting sentences. It all seemed to fall away whenever he said Mass though. He died about 4 years ago from stomach cancer in Sydney after his last assignment in Broken Hill.
Another dearly loved Christian Brother we got to know also had a rather obvious stutter, one he inherited from his father and shared with one of his brothers. He had us all in stitches laughing as he retold some of the family dinner conversation with three stutters. He usually ended all the stories with “and that’s how we made our mother a saint!”
It’s amazing to me how little we understand about why some people stutter and others don’t. And just how gloriously complex human language capacity is.
I've got a roommate with a mild speech impediment. He often restarts sentences, like a psychological sort of stutter, as if he's iterating on his thought in real-time, searching for the right turn of phrase. One of my favorite uncles has a pronounced stutter, as did several of my close friends in high school, and I've had healthy relationships with all of them.
However, at the risk of sounding callous, I'd like to suggest that, when it comes to communication, it shouldn't be all give on the part of the fluent.
You wrote: "Those who stutter neither ask for, nor expect special compensatory accommodations from the rest of the world [...] In short, people who stutter want us to listen to them actively and attentively — no matter how much time they take to express themselves"
As you've mentioned, stuttering is a complex neurological process that we don't fully understand. It's a fact of life, especially for the stutterer, and you're not doing them any favors by pretending their articulation isn't especially taxing on listeners. The above quote seems to swallow its own tail attempting to wish away this unpleasant reality.
The problematic assumption seems to be that we'd all be perfectly patient listeners in a normal conversation, which is absolutely NOT the case. Whether or not we should be is debatable. My point is that those of us who are fluent are held accountable for our various styles of communication. If you are long-winded, oblivious to conversational tempo, or - for whatever reason - consistently speak at an inappropriate volume, you'd be lucky if well-intentioned criticism was the harshest form of social feedback you got about it. This is a healthy mechanism that often misfires, resulting in people feeling bullied or - at the other end - bullies feeling justified in their mistreatment.
There should be a feedback loop for anybody who struggles with communication (for whatever reason) that results in them improving their skills, and anybody with a speech impediment really needs to account for the reality of their situation. It's just not as easy to listen to somebody tell you about their rhododendrons when it takes them twenty times longer than their neighbor, AGAIN - REGARDLESS OF THE REASON.
I couldn't agree more that we should extend patience and respect to those individuals with fluency issues, but we don't achieve that by pretending it's no effort at all to extend the patience. The reality facing the dysfluent is that they've been saddled with an unfair burden, and that the onus is on them as much as the fluent to work within the boundaries of reasonably afforded patience.
It's good and healthy to acknowledge that conversational flippancy is much costlier for dysfluent individuals, because articulating an errant thought might take five seconds for a fluent person but five minutes for them. It's entirely possible to be disrespectful and inconsiderate (as a dysfluent individual) if you're not aware of this, especially if you're told repeatedly that you should have special protections against being interrupted while you're trying to verbalize a thought.
I feel like, probably, you don't disagree with any of this. I'm struggling with my reaction to this article because it's a bit sentimental, which is fine except that it seemingly ignores the reality of the daily struggles I've encountered? Like, we can't just pretend dysfluency doesn't affect listeners. It's like pretending that the weight of a morbidly obese individual has no effect on certain carnival rides or medical equipment.
Consider this an invitation to level with me, or call me down if what I've shared seems totally out of line. There seems to be a call to 'treat them like anybody else' written into this, which is what I think is niggling at me, because, when anybody else trips over their words, reminding them to "Relax," "Slow down," and "Breathe" is just considerate. This makes it feel like what you're suggesting is that dysfluent individuals should expect special treatment, and that we should give it to them while pretending we're not, which I can't imagine is what you meant?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I do understand your point of view. However, those who stutter do, of course, do everything they can to communicate as effectively as possible. It's much different than somebody tripping over their words, to use your phrase. I think the more adept analogy is the fact that I walk slower when I'm walking along with my colleague who is in a wheelchair, or, even, that I walked much slower when I was walking with my children when they were just three or four years old. In both of these cases — to my mind — the burden to be patient is on me. I was the only one who had the choice. Unless, of course, I wanted to walk alone (figuratively and metaphorically). Thanks again for sharing your thoughts! I'm happy to continue the conversation…
> "However, those who stutter do, of course, do everything they can to communicate as effectively as possible."
I love my dysfluent friends, I really do, but I don't see why you would put this forward as though it is universally true. Good communication isn't always as simple as being able to speak fluently. We ran into this problem with my roommate awhile back. He had a tendency of trying to share errant thoughts while you were cooking your breakfast. These would naturally lead to little conversations that would probably conclude quickly with two fluent conversationalists, but in his case it became a problem where now both people were stuck in the kitchen and breakfast is getting cold. Interrupting him led to hurt feelings that, initially, he interpreted as being unfair.
Eventually, we had a long conversation and it clicked for him that the calculus involved in evaluating an appropriate moment to interject an errant thought was a little trickier for him than just observing when everybody else did it. There were real, logistical differences and it hadn't occurred to him to account for them. He thanked me for taking the time to discuss it with him.
If I had just assumed that he was already doing everything he could to communicate as effectively as possible, and that no strategy could ameliorate the inconvenience facing both of us then we would both be worse off. I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but it also strikes me as a rather limiting view, and a coddling approach.
> "It's much different than somebody tripping over their words, to use your phrase."
I mean, yes. To the extent that it's a consistent feature of their lives. I'm not sure on what basis you would assert that it's different otherwise, since - as you mentioned - we don't know very much about the mechanisms involved in stuttering. Isn't it likely to be the same neurological processes at fault when a fluent person stutters? They present identically anyway, which is my point, so interpreting a typically considerate response as condescending seems a little ungenerous. Unless you're saying that it should be status quo to recognize this as an exception, and thereby view the transgressor as guilty of some faux pas? I don't know if I support that either, since there are so many social edge cases nowadays and I'd rather just give people the benefit of the doubt (i.e. assume they're being considerate rather than condescending).
I don't know anything about your situation, but suppose that your wheelchair-bound colleague were a little less considerate than they probably are. They see you heading out for your lunchbreak, which for you involves a quick jaunt down to the local coffee shop where you also snag a donut and make the trip back just in time to clock-in again. Depending on the route, if they try to tag along it might be impossible to make the trip in time. If you decline to have them along, is this rude? Are you being an ableist, or is it possible that your friend might've chosen the wrong moment to tag along?
This is a toy example, obviously, and I'd like to stress that I'm not trying to shift the blame. I'm actually questioning the need for blame in the first place - and suggesting that, in reality, these situations are often complex. We have a responsibility to address these issues by tackling the very real logistical problems that isn't helped by pretending that they don't exist, or that they aren't really an issue.
Just get over it and walk more slowly (regardless of the context) or listen more patiently (regardless of the context) or use more inclusive language (regardless of the context) strike me as over-generalized prescriptions that relegate those with disabilities or impediments to a position where they are the permanent recipients of our charity, which I am given to understand they DO NOT WANT. This mindset seems to be built on the sort of implicit condescension you're trying to avoid.
I think the real ask isn't to give people who stutter a special patience, but rather to listen to them the way someone would listen to others. Also, we should be held accountable if we have poor listening skills.
If the stutter is the ONLY reason someone is being impatient, then the listener needs to do better. If someone who stutters is also someone who has other things going on and may struggle to communicate effectively, that's a different conversation. While I personally am under the belief that we need to do better for neurodivergent and autistic people, that is not the point that is trying to be made here. However, you seem to conflate the two in your comments.
For example: I stutter, and I am also frequently complimented on my effective and easy conversational skills and communication ability. Once people adjust to the stutter - it doesn't take much, just listening to me - it's really easy. Some say "you don't really stutter after I've talked to you for awhile." - but I do!! People just don't notice after they get used to it.
THAT SAID, I don't think someone needs to sound like me to be respected and listened to. I think our world is better when we take the time to listen to each other. Complaining about the way someone speaks is just odd, to me. Like people who get upset over accents. When you listen to someone who has a strong accent, you begin to adjust to it.
My point is that a stutter does not necessarily mean communication skills are 'lacking' (as far as social expectation goes). There may be a larger than normal overlap for a variety of reasons. But I communicate much better than many "fluent" speakers, and I stutter. Let's not conflate the two. Social skills are just DIFFERENT from stuttering, which I believe Frederick is saying in their comments.
I know I'm very late to the convo. Just stumbled upon this. Great blog btw, Frederick. Thank you for doing some of this work as an ally : ) it means a lot.
Thank you for this very thoughtful comment! I I agree with you completely… Late or not, I'm glad you're in the conversation, and thanks for the compliment. I just subscribed to your Substack and will be reading it today. It looks very interesting. By the way, feel free to repost my piece on your Substack if you think your audience would enjoy it. Sincerely, Frederick
I understand what you're saying. You're just confusing stuttering and social competence, and stuttering with fluent people occasionally tripping over their words. I don't think anybody in the community is trying to pretend that problems don't exist. They just don't want to be unnecessarily and unfairly excluded: https://www.say.org/mystuttervideos/
Very interesting post. Thank you. I also enjoyed the film, "The King's Speech", about George VI. Strangely, as a (now long-retired) university teacher, I don't remember ever encountering stuttering, despite putting a great emphasis on student spoken contributions - presentations and speaking in class. I did get a lot of satisfaction from responding to the challenges of other conditions such as dyslexia and autism spectrum disorders. (I do wonder whether the methods required of the teacher to deal with these outliers, and other, more physical deficits, are actually only best practice, and all the students benefit. I don't know.) Either (a) students with a stutter had already been screened out (I was also an admissions tutor, and would be surprised if our admissions process were at fault), (b) I was too unobservant to notice them, (c) my approach to teaching allowed them to prosper without me needing to notice them, or (d) possibly the figures suggested in your post might exaggerate.
Thank you for the comment. I've only had a few students (that I know of) who stutter in all the time that I've been teaching. Many people who stutter have become adept at hiding that fact using a variety of strategies, especially in class. So, it's often not evident. (For instance, many people don't know that my son has a stutter.) I'm sure, too, that your teaching approach did allow your students to prosper irrespective of any challenges. Thanks, again, for the comment!
I am a stutterer. My childhood was a continuous stream of embarrassment. I had dozens of habits for avoiding it; certain problem-words I would seek to not use, the addition of little tics to syncopate my speech and let me get words out.
I attribute my malady to having at some time been forced to become right-handed; a basketball coach in my high school told me with absolute certainty that I was left-handed, not right-handed as I thought I was. That made sense. Both cerebral hemispheres try to speak at once, causing what in a computer would be buss contention. Get me on a topic that excites me and it's guaranteed I will stutter. I have read that forced changes in handedness underlie most cases of stuttering and I am completely convinced of this. I can feel it.
After tendon surgery on my right arm I had a brace across my palm and I tried chopsticks in my left hand, in five minutes I was using them effortlessly. When I write with my left hand, I have to hold it up to a mirror to read it; it's backwards.
The one time, aside from singing, when I never stutter, ever, is speaking before an audience. I have never stuttered once in my life in that circumstance. I eulogized my father in January 2009, delivering a speech I was still writing even as I was delivering it, a speech I had not even thought about what I was going to say until it was my turn to speak, and I never stuttered once.
Thank you for this article.
And thank you for your fascinating comment. I sincerely enjoyed learning about your journey. Sincerely, Frederick
One of my favourite priests, Fr Jack who was a dear friend of my family had a stutter. As a young man he was nearly incomprehensible, so much so that the Missionary Order he joined gently told him they could not ordain him, but they could accept him as a brother. The superior paired him up on a farm the order owned with another older brother who was nearly deaf. So then brother Jack spent 2 years working the dairy with this other brother, shouting at him from dawn till dusk (and turning the that diary into highly sought after breeding stud in the process). His speech improved dramatically as a result and his superior was able to ordain him and sent him out as parish priest to some of the most remote parts of Australia. He carried a unique lilt and had a little trouble starting sentences. It all seemed to fall away whenever he said Mass though. He died about 4 years ago from stomach cancer in Sydney after his last assignment in Broken Hill.
Another dearly loved Christian Brother we got to know also had a rather obvious stutter, one he inherited from his father and shared with one of his brothers. He had us all in stitches laughing as he retold some of the family dinner conversation with three stutters. He usually ended all the stories with “and that’s how we made our mother a saint!”
It’s amazing to me how little we understand about why some people stutter and others don’t. And just how gloriously complex human language capacity is.
Wonderful stories... thank you!
I've got a roommate with a mild speech impediment. He often restarts sentences, like a psychological sort of stutter, as if he's iterating on his thought in real-time, searching for the right turn of phrase. One of my favorite uncles has a pronounced stutter, as did several of my close friends in high school, and I've had healthy relationships with all of them.
However, at the risk of sounding callous, I'd like to suggest that, when it comes to communication, it shouldn't be all give on the part of the fluent.
You wrote: "Those who stutter neither ask for, nor expect special compensatory accommodations from the rest of the world [...] In short, people who stutter want us to listen to them actively and attentively — no matter how much time they take to express themselves"
As you've mentioned, stuttering is a complex neurological process that we don't fully understand. It's a fact of life, especially for the stutterer, and you're not doing them any favors by pretending their articulation isn't especially taxing on listeners. The above quote seems to swallow its own tail attempting to wish away this unpleasant reality.
The problematic assumption seems to be that we'd all be perfectly patient listeners in a normal conversation, which is absolutely NOT the case. Whether or not we should be is debatable. My point is that those of us who are fluent are held accountable for our various styles of communication. If you are long-winded, oblivious to conversational tempo, or - for whatever reason - consistently speak at an inappropriate volume, you'd be lucky if well-intentioned criticism was the harshest form of social feedback you got about it. This is a healthy mechanism that often misfires, resulting in people feeling bullied or - at the other end - bullies feeling justified in their mistreatment.
There should be a feedback loop for anybody who struggles with communication (for whatever reason) that results in them improving their skills, and anybody with a speech impediment really needs to account for the reality of their situation. It's just not as easy to listen to somebody tell you about their rhododendrons when it takes them twenty times longer than their neighbor, AGAIN - REGARDLESS OF THE REASON.
I couldn't agree more that we should extend patience and respect to those individuals with fluency issues, but we don't achieve that by pretending it's no effort at all to extend the patience. The reality facing the dysfluent is that they've been saddled with an unfair burden, and that the onus is on them as much as the fluent to work within the boundaries of reasonably afforded patience.
It's good and healthy to acknowledge that conversational flippancy is much costlier for dysfluent individuals, because articulating an errant thought might take five seconds for a fluent person but five minutes for them. It's entirely possible to be disrespectful and inconsiderate (as a dysfluent individual) if you're not aware of this, especially if you're told repeatedly that you should have special protections against being interrupted while you're trying to verbalize a thought.
I feel like, probably, you don't disagree with any of this. I'm struggling with my reaction to this article because it's a bit sentimental, which is fine except that it seemingly ignores the reality of the daily struggles I've encountered? Like, we can't just pretend dysfluency doesn't affect listeners. It's like pretending that the weight of a morbidly obese individual has no effect on certain carnival rides or medical equipment.
Consider this an invitation to level with me, or call me down if what I've shared seems totally out of line. There seems to be a call to 'treat them like anybody else' written into this, which is what I think is niggling at me, because, when anybody else trips over their words, reminding them to "Relax," "Slow down," and "Breathe" is just considerate. This makes it feel like what you're suggesting is that dysfluent individuals should expect special treatment, and that we should give it to them while pretending we're not, which I can't imagine is what you meant?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I do understand your point of view. However, those who stutter do, of course, do everything they can to communicate as effectively as possible. It's much different than somebody tripping over their words, to use your phrase. I think the more adept analogy is the fact that I walk slower when I'm walking along with my colleague who is in a wheelchair, or, even, that I walked much slower when I was walking with my children when they were just three or four years old. In both of these cases — to my mind — the burden to be patient is on me. I was the only one who had the choice. Unless, of course, I wanted to walk alone (figuratively and metaphorically). Thanks again for sharing your thoughts! I'm happy to continue the conversation…
> "However, those who stutter do, of course, do everything they can to communicate as effectively as possible."
I love my dysfluent friends, I really do, but I don't see why you would put this forward as though it is universally true. Good communication isn't always as simple as being able to speak fluently. We ran into this problem with my roommate awhile back. He had a tendency of trying to share errant thoughts while you were cooking your breakfast. These would naturally lead to little conversations that would probably conclude quickly with two fluent conversationalists, but in his case it became a problem where now both people were stuck in the kitchen and breakfast is getting cold. Interrupting him led to hurt feelings that, initially, he interpreted as being unfair.
Eventually, we had a long conversation and it clicked for him that the calculus involved in evaluating an appropriate moment to interject an errant thought was a little trickier for him than just observing when everybody else did it. There were real, logistical differences and it hadn't occurred to him to account for them. He thanked me for taking the time to discuss it with him.
If I had just assumed that he was already doing everything he could to communicate as effectively as possible, and that no strategy could ameliorate the inconvenience facing both of us then we would both be worse off. I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but it also strikes me as a rather limiting view, and a coddling approach.
> "It's much different than somebody tripping over their words, to use your phrase."
I mean, yes. To the extent that it's a consistent feature of their lives. I'm not sure on what basis you would assert that it's different otherwise, since - as you mentioned - we don't know very much about the mechanisms involved in stuttering. Isn't it likely to be the same neurological processes at fault when a fluent person stutters? They present identically anyway, which is my point, so interpreting a typically considerate response as condescending seems a little ungenerous. Unless you're saying that it should be status quo to recognize this as an exception, and thereby view the transgressor as guilty of some faux pas? I don't know if I support that either, since there are so many social edge cases nowadays and I'd rather just give people the benefit of the doubt (i.e. assume they're being considerate rather than condescending).
I don't know anything about your situation, but suppose that your wheelchair-bound colleague were a little less considerate than they probably are. They see you heading out for your lunchbreak, which for you involves a quick jaunt down to the local coffee shop where you also snag a donut and make the trip back just in time to clock-in again. Depending on the route, if they try to tag along it might be impossible to make the trip in time. If you decline to have them along, is this rude? Are you being an ableist, or is it possible that your friend might've chosen the wrong moment to tag along?
This is a toy example, obviously, and I'd like to stress that I'm not trying to shift the blame. I'm actually questioning the need for blame in the first place - and suggesting that, in reality, these situations are often complex. We have a responsibility to address these issues by tackling the very real logistical problems that isn't helped by pretending that they don't exist, or that they aren't really an issue.
Just get over it and walk more slowly (regardless of the context) or listen more patiently (regardless of the context) or use more inclusive language (regardless of the context) strike me as over-generalized prescriptions that relegate those with disabilities or impediments to a position where they are the permanent recipients of our charity, which I am given to understand they DO NOT WANT. This mindset seems to be built on the sort of implicit condescension you're trying to avoid.
I think the real ask isn't to give people who stutter a special patience, but rather to listen to them the way someone would listen to others. Also, we should be held accountable if we have poor listening skills.
If the stutter is the ONLY reason someone is being impatient, then the listener needs to do better. If someone who stutters is also someone who has other things going on and may struggle to communicate effectively, that's a different conversation. While I personally am under the belief that we need to do better for neurodivergent and autistic people, that is not the point that is trying to be made here. However, you seem to conflate the two in your comments.
For example: I stutter, and I am also frequently complimented on my effective and easy conversational skills and communication ability. Once people adjust to the stutter - it doesn't take much, just listening to me - it's really easy. Some say "you don't really stutter after I've talked to you for awhile." - but I do!! People just don't notice after they get used to it.
THAT SAID, I don't think someone needs to sound like me to be respected and listened to. I think our world is better when we take the time to listen to each other. Complaining about the way someone speaks is just odd, to me. Like people who get upset over accents. When you listen to someone who has a strong accent, you begin to adjust to it.
My point is that a stutter does not necessarily mean communication skills are 'lacking' (as far as social expectation goes). There may be a larger than normal overlap for a variety of reasons. But I communicate much better than many "fluent" speakers, and I stutter. Let's not conflate the two. Social skills are just DIFFERENT from stuttering, which I believe Frederick is saying in their comments.
I know I'm very late to the convo. Just stumbled upon this. Great blog btw, Frederick. Thank you for doing some of this work as an ally : ) it means a lot.
Thank you for this very thoughtful comment! I I agree with you completely… Late or not, I'm glad you're in the conversation, and thanks for the compliment. I just subscribed to your Substack and will be reading it today. It looks very interesting. By the way, feel free to repost my piece on your Substack if you think your audience would enjoy it. Sincerely, Frederick
I understand what you're saying. You're just confusing stuttering and social competence, and stuttering with fluent people occasionally tripping over their words. I don't think anybody in the community is trying to pretend that problems don't exist. They just don't want to be unnecessarily and unfairly excluded: https://www.say.org/mystuttervideos/
Thanks, again, for the comment. FRP
This doesn't read like the response of somebody who is 'happy to continue the conversation', but that's alright. I can take a hint, I'll let it die.
Has there been any work on stuttering biotype definitions? Is there a pattern in stuttering prevalence when stratified by demographic groups?
There is not much information on broad demographics given the overall low incidence of stuttering However, see, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027273580600119X But, like some other neurodevelopmental condition, it is more prevalent in males. https://www.stutteringhelp.org/research-incidence-and-prevalence-stuttering Thanks for your question!
And thanks for your answer, Dr. Prete!
The movie, The King’s Speech…..
Very interesting post. Thank you. I also enjoyed the film, "The King's Speech", about George VI. Strangely, as a (now long-retired) university teacher, I don't remember ever encountering stuttering, despite putting a great emphasis on student spoken contributions - presentations and speaking in class. I did get a lot of satisfaction from responding to the challenges of other conditions such as dyslexia and autism spectrum disorders. (I do wonder whether the methods required of the teacher to deal with these outliers, and other, more physical deficits, are actually only best practice, and all the students benefit. I don't know.) Either (a) students with a stutter had already been screened out (I was also an admissions tutor, and would be surprised if our admissions process were at fault), (b) I was too unobservant to notice them, (c) my approach to teaching allowed them to prosper without me needing to notice them, or (d) possibly the figures suggested in your post might exaggerate.
Thank you for the comment. I've only had a few students (that I know of) who stutter in all the time that I've been teaching. Many people who stutter have become adept at hiding that fact using a variety of strategies, especially in class. So, it's often not evident. (For instance, many people don't know that my son has a stutter.) I'm sure, too, that your teaching approach did allow your students to prosper irrespective of any challenges. Thanks, again, for the comment!