The gift of fluent speech

There are many people in the world who have problems with their communication. In this article I concentrate on the specific speech impediment called stuttering.

Why do people stutter?

There are many reasons people may develop a stuttering problem:

A traumatic event such as the loss of a relative

Someone in the family such as a parent may have had a stutter

The person who has a stutter may have copied a friend at say school who has a stutter and then it has resulted in them also stuttering

An over aggressive relative telling the person to spit their words out etc.

A while ago I had a female client who told me how she had developed a stutter. She was fluent until the age of twenty four. At this age she became pregnant for the first time, she was very happy and excited about the prospects about becoming a mother.

She was apprehensive about the birth and her friends had been winding her up telling her how painful the experience is. She knew that they were only teasing and tried to keep relaxed.

The day of the birth arrived and unfortunately the delivery was particulary hard and she was extremely shocked about how bad it actually was. After the birth of the baby, who was a healthy boy she developed the stutter.

Not all people who stutter have it from an early age, another one of my clients was fluent until the age of nineteen. At this age he had a car crash and this was the trigger to him starting to stutter.

Stephen Hill