Dylan Madeley
I recently had an interesting experience attending part of a Canadian Stuttering Association board meeting. Although I have been stuttering since around the age of five, I first experienced a meeting of so many people who directly understood what this was like at age twenty-nine.
There is a well known saying, “we were born with one mouth and two ears because listening is twice as important as speaking”. For those of us that stutter, we probably think about communication more than most. However, what we often fail to realise is how communication is a two-way process. If I am to become a better communicator, and I don’t mean someone who does not stutter, it is imperative I listen, and do it actively. Words have for some time been my nemesis. I’ve changed what I wanted to say mid sentence, used fillers and avoided those awkward vowels and consonants to make my delivery appear more fluent. It’s a tiresome and frustrating sequence of events that has led me to wonder if I ever have the time to actually listen to what others are saying to me.
One of our readers has submitted the following essay for publication. Do you want to tell your story about stuttering? Let us know!
Living with a stutter has been an incredible challenge throughout my life. At first, I was very angry and discouraged that I couldn’t communicate like most people. In school, other kids teased me and call me names, and that played a factor in my self esteem and dignity. Luckily for me, I was talented in many other avenues, such as soccer, hockey and drawing, and that made me feel better about myself. But I have always had this one impediment that lingered in the background …. my stutter.
This video is from 2011, and contains some good information about stuttering, speech therapy, and how to listen to a person who stutters. Jaan Pill is one of the co-founders of the CSA (originally the Canadian Association for People Who Stutter). He is also a co-founder of the Estonian Stuttering Association and of the International Fluency Association. For more information about Jaan, see his website.
I was born in 1972 and raised in Conception Bay South, Newfoundland, Canada. As a very young child I knew my alphabet and was very well spoken, but about the age of 6 something happened. My parents describe it as almost an overnight change in which I was no longer able to get words out. My speech was paused, interrupted, and uncomfortable. This was devastating to my parents and family.
Throughout life, it's easy to get caught up in our past, and allow ourselves to be filled with regret and frustration. It's that very regret and frustration that if can weigh us down if we let it. For those of us that stutter, we can often find our stutter to be a constant reminder of what hardships we endured. That is, if we choose to perceive things in that manner.