Various people tried to make me believe that there was not a cure for stuttering. I did listen to their thoughts but would never accept what they were telling me. There view point was very defeatist and negative. That may well be their character but certainly is not mine. I had to believe that one day I would be able to speak fluently without the fear of stuttering, without this dream life would not be worth living.

As a child who stutters grows older, he becomes aware of how his way of speaking differs from others and starts to experience more of the emotional ramifications of the disorder. He may see that others don’t have a hard time speaking. Other children most certainly point out the differences, either politely, “Why do you repeat your words like that?” or in a teasing manner. Feeling different from peers influences the child’s self-concept and it is crucial that he not suffer from feeling like there is something wrong with him.

Stuttering is a speech disorder in which the normal flow of speech is disrupted by frequent repetitions or prolongations of speech sounds, syllables or words or by an individual”s inability to start a word. The speech disruptions may be accompanied by rapid eye blinks, tremors of the lips and/or jaw or other struggle behaviors of the face or upper body that a person who stutters may use in an attempt to speak.

Various people tried to make me believe that there was not a cure for stuttering. I did listen to their thoughts but would never accept what they were telling me. There view point was very defeatist and negative. That may well be their character but certainly is not mine. I had to believe that one day I would be able to speak fluently without the fear of stuttering, without this dream life would not be worth living.

If you have a stutter and are wondering whether there is a cure, ask yourself a few questions. Do you stutter when you are singing? Do you stutter when you are shouting? Do you stutter when you are talking to yourself? For the majority of people who have a stutter or stammer, the answer to these questions will have been no. They were for me and this at least gave me hope.

When therapy is required—since there really is no cure for stuttering, keeping a journal and trying to eliminate triggers as much as possible will be the first step. Once this is done and your child requires speech therapy, it will be focused on helping the child learn an easier way to talk. The earlier the speech therapy begins the better chance a child has of overcoming or greatly lessening the stuttering.