In the school district I work, there was a little boy who was extremely intelligent. He graduated high school two years early, after taking college courses. After graduating early he went to an Ivy League college. He was a severe stutterer. He attended speech therapy sessions because of this. I was not his therapist. While in elementary school he wrote a short piece about his own stuttering. It makes me re-think trying to change someone’s stuttering. It provides great insight that others his age and older might not be able to express:
“I do not mind my stuttering too much. Even if I did, I would not be able to notice the difference. Because I do not mind, I can’t understand why my parents do. Luckily though, I also do not mind the speech “lessons” that I have, allowing me to not become angry or frustrated. In the book I read, I do not understand much why so many kids do care about the stuttering that they have. I know that even if I could hear myself, I would not be the least bit upset over it. To me, it is nothing to worry about, but, to make everyone else happy, I try to stop and relax when talking anyways. Either way, I do not understand why it is bad or important in any way. As you can clearly see, to me, stuttering is no big deal. It is only as bad as a grammar or punctuation error in a set of meaningless sounds our society uses. What is so important about that?”
