Advice
What to do and that to Know when speaking with a Person Who Stutters?
Notes to listeners
When someone to whom you are talking is having trouble speaking fluently, they most likely have a stuttering problem. You will probably react appropriately by instinct, but if you are not sure what to do, you are not alone.
Stuttering is often misunderstood and can cause the listener to feel anxious. If you keep the following in mind, however, the experience will be a more comfortable one for you and the person who stutters.
What to know?
1.About one percent of adults and four percent of children stutter.
2.We do not know why people stutter, but apparently it is not a nervous or personality disorder. People who stutter are normal except they lack the ability to varying degrees to get words out fluently. It is known that stuttering runs in families, and research shows neurological components are probably involved in the disorder. Stuttering almost always starts between the ages of two and five. Also, boys are five times more likely than girls to stutter, a gender ratio we see in other developmental disorders.
3.People generally do not stutter when they sing, whisper, speak in chorus, or when they do not hear their own voice. There is no universally accepted explanation for these phenomena.
4.The degree to which people stutter varies widely. Some people who stutter have more natural control over their speech than others do. And the degree of stuttering will also vary within the individual. How much control they have will depends on the particular situation in which they find themselves, the difficulty of the words they must say, and how they feel, in general, at that moment. People who stutter, universally report having "good days" and "bad days."
5.Stuttering may look like an easy problem that can be solved with some simple advice, but for adults it is a chronic, life-long disorder. People who stutter can achieve more control over their speech, but total fluency is not a realistic goal for most adults.
