When a child starts to develop a stutter, it comes as a shock to everyone involved. It can be a very stressful time for both the parents and for the child.
I myself developed a stutter at the age of four or five. My mother had left work to look after me when I was born and I started to talk as normal. Everything was fine until I started school. My mother - who now had more time on her hands, decided to re-start work and I would now be going to a friend of the families after school. This friend was called Jean and she had a son my age called Graham. On the first day I spent at her house everything was going well until Jean called us in for our evening meal. Meal times at my own house were a very relaxed affair, we were able to eat our food wherever we wanted to in the house.
At Jean's house they ate in a dining room around a dining table. There were a lot of people around the table who I did not know very well and eating in front of them all, made me feel quite uncomfortable. During the meal people were asking me various questions and for whatever reason, I found it difficult to answer and started to stutter. This was the first day of my life as a person who has a stutter.
My parents a few months later took me to speech therapy, the speech therapist advised them that most children will grow out of their stutter. I continued unfortunately to stutter until I was twenty two. At this stage I decided I had had enough and that it was time to overcome the stutter.
I decided to try and find my own stuttering solution. I went about this by reading books about self confidence as I certainly had a low self esteem. I also studied people who I believed were very good talkers and tried to work out how the spoke differently than me, for example the way they breathed.
After nearly a year I was proud to be able to class myself as fluent and as a career I now help other people to achieve fluency.
