Stuttering Awareness Day

Well, here we are, October 22nd, Stuttering Awareness Day!

Obviously the best I can do right now is a nice big link roundup. So here we go:

From Diary of a Stutterer, a post on Oct 22 and reflecting on how things have changed with regards to his views on stuttering. Love this article. It really parallels what I have been going through as well with my own stuttering over the past few years.

Thankfully, since then, I have learned of a method that has helped me get to where I am today. It’s not a magic pill, nor is it a special way of breathing or speaking or even standing! What has given me the strength and courage to accept my stutter is nothing more than self-reflection.

Pam from Make Room for the Stuttering writes about Purpose. Again, a lot of what I am hoping for myself as well — to spread the word and educate others. I know I could be doing better at it, but slowly with enough posts and thoughts on this blog, I’ll get there.

I learned about purpose after hearing parents tell me how happy they were that I had come to the conference and shared myself and stories with them. For the first time in many years, I realized that my stuttering could be bigger than just me. That I could use it to spread the word and educate others about stuttering, if I dared.

From Stuttering Story, Jaymie recalls a phone/work situation and getting laughed at.

It took me awhile to recover. I still don’t know how to handle these situations. If she had made a comment, like many people do, I could have inserted that what she heard was a stutter. Comments like, “Did you forget your name?” or “Did you forget what you were going to say?” can be answered with, “Actually, I have a stutter” or something of the like. Small chuckles can be ignored, if you want. But roaring laughter? What the heck is a person who stutters to do?!

From the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children (MPC) in London, a nice article about Oct 22 and background on stuttering that you can share with family and friends.

This awareness raising week comes at an important time. In recent years we have found that while there are centres of excellence like the Michael Palin Centre and the City Lit, NHS provision for speech and language therapy for children and adults who stammer is increasingly under threat. For example, 16 out of 34 London NHS Trusts no longer offer speech therapy for adults who stammer. One Trust no longer offers stammering therapy for children over the age of six, another for children at secondary school-age.

Here’s a Daily Mail Article about a woman who was let go because she couldn’t speak on the phone. She’s been able to get speech therapy as well as support from a group.

By her early 30s, Ms Dolan found it impossible to contribute to meetings at work and was embarrassed by her regular stammering when she introduced herself.

Here’s a lovely article about a hefty donation for the Institute for Stuttering and Research (ISTAR).

“I feel like all of that money is going to help people that need it,” Pearse said. “I know what they can do and I know other people need to experience that too.”

Research being done on mice and stuttering.

Using these parameters to evaluate mouse vocalizations, researchers were able to identify stuttering mice over a 3.5-minute period. As expected, the mice carrying the mutated gene had far fewer vocalizations, with longer gaps between “speech” compared with their unmodified littermates—Gnptab mutant mice had about 80 vocalizations compared with 190 in the nonmutant mice.

And how awesome is this — using Skype to provide speech therapy in Africa. Florida Atlantic University is the first to do so.

“The treatment is perfect for me and helping me to improve my speech,” said Francois, a 35 year old currently receiving therapy. “It’s also easy to take part in since I don’t need to move. We are using Skype video calls and sharing documents through email.”

Been falling behind in finding new voices on the Internet with regards to stuttering. But here is one, A Wishing Well of Wonder.

I’ve been stuttering since I was 10 years old. Some days I can barely get a few phrases out without stumbling over every one and some days I barely stutter at all. I don’t believe there’s a single day in which I’ve never stuttered.