Of course, stuttering significantly affects a person, their character and their choices in life. Through this chapter, we will go through the impact of stuttering chronologically, by age, and how stuttering affects a person who stutters at a particular age. We will assume that stuttering appeared in preschool age (from the fourth to the sixth year of life).
First of all, of course, if you notice that your child stutters, you must visit a professional who should tell you what kind of stuttering it is and what are the next steps in the treatment!
Preschool age
Stuttering most often occurs for the first time in preschool age, but very rarely develops into the "real" stuttering, which was explained in the previous chapter. At this age, the child is usually not so aware of their stuttering or that something is "wrong" with them. Of course, as with most other problems that can arise in life, this one also depends a lot on the reaction of the parents and other close people in the child's life.
In the beginning, it is almost normal for the child not to see the stuttering as something serious or to be afraid of communication. However, as time goes by, no matter how much you (parents and family) follow the idea of positive reinforcement and instructions on your child's stuttering, he or she will soon become aware of it - either through friends who will often make fun of his or her speech, or by simply realizing that he or she isn’t able to normally communicate with others.
After that first period goes by, in which the child accepts that something is wrong with its speech, there is a great possibility that they will shut themselves in more and more and reduce communication with everyone because they think they won’t be able to say anything properly. In those moments, it is very important to raise the child's self-confidence, explain to them that there is nothing terrible with their situation and encourage them to have short, successful conversations with a lot of positive energy and emotions.
If the child attends kindergarten, be sure to check how he or she behaves with other children and whether he or she participates in all activities. Arrange a meeting with the educator, point out that the child stutters and ask for daily feedback about your child's behavior. It is very important to know what your child is going through while you are away, whether their self-confidence is growing or they close in on themselves and refuse to socialize with other children.
It is very important to ask your child about friendships in kindergarten. Who did he/she talk to, hang out with, what did he/she do, who is his/her best friend, did he/she talk to him/her, etc. The most important thing is your interaction with the child. In addition to getting closer to the child, you can also determine the state of his/her mind, whether they close in on themselves or are they open and outgoing with other children.
Okay, I guess you're wondering... The title of this chapter is "How Does Stuttering Affect a Person" and for preschool I wrote everything from a parent's point of view. Yes, I am aware of that. At this age, the child is still too young so I cannot write something concrete about its thoughts, and the child may or may not see stuttering as a big problem. While the child is at this age, he or she just wants to play and have fun and doesn't think too much about stuttering as a major life problem. That is why it is very important to use this period of the child's life for loads of interaction with them, positive energy, talking, socializing and reliving his or her experience in kindergarten, because later, when the problem becomes more serious, they will very likely confide in you without you asking them, which is very important.
School age
School age is the first real test for people who stutter, but I can speak from my personal experience and say that it is not the worst or the most challenging. Elementary school brings new acquaintances and, most likely, friendships. Along with all that, of course, comes the first major mockery of stuttering, and it is very important how you "fight" against it. There are so many scenarios here where the stutterer's character develops that I'm not sure if I'll be able to cover all of them in this chapter.
The first thing that is obvious about people who stutter is that they become very good communicators, listeners, and friends. We become a person who prefers to listen rather than talk because of the "flaw" we have, which is understandable when considering the problem we deal with is speech. We even quite often start hanging out with children who prefer to talk, because this way they make it easier for us to choose not to speak and let them have the main say while we just listen and answer here and there with an affirmative word. One problem that arises in such communication is that sometimes we will even do something that we would not actually want to do because it is easier for us to do it than to explain why we don’t want to do it.
So parents, please, pay special attention to such events because your child may not want to admit that, for example, he or she stole something just because they were afraid to speak. You have to understand such actions and decisions because the fear of speaking is sometimes so big that we would rather do such things than talk. Shocking, but true.
The first major problems at school appear later, in higher grades, with the oral exams, recitations and presentations.
The worst feeling for a person who stutters is when he learns to recite a poem and can't wait for the language class. And then... The language class comes and the teacher asks if there are any volunteers to recite the poem. You have a burning desire to report, you've learned it all, you'd like that A, but someone suddenly taps you on the shoulder and says: "You can't do it, what are you even thinking? You’ll stutter, everyone will laugh at you. Shut up, sit down and pray the teacher doesn't call your name!" From great excitement to a complete feeling of helplessness in just one second... You listen to others reciting and think to yourself how you could articulate and recite it much better. The teacher would surely like it very much. But you can't. You will stutter. Everyone will laugh at you.
When you come home, mom asks if you recited the poem. You answer: "Oh no, the teacher didn't check it today" - because you don't want to admit that you didn't have the courage to do it, and you go to your room sad and depressed. Your whole day is ruined because of a poem... What you just read was the negative side of stuttering. Sad story. Now read a different version of the story - a positive story. Same poem, same subject, same scenario. Happy story.
I'm sitting at my desk, will I volunteer, no, I won't, I can't. Everyone else is silent, no one will do it, but they don't care, they will at least recite it properly. Suddenly, I raise my hand, I look at my hand and I can't believe that I raised it, I almost said to myself quietly: "You’re out of your mind".
The teacher says my name, I get up, my mouth is dry, I have a lump in my throat. I start to recite, I stutter a bit, it's not terrible, but it's not good either. I recited the whole poem, I got a B, even though I knew it all, word for word, but of course, because of my fillers "this" (in Croatian, "this" is as good as "like" or "you know" in English) I couldn't get an A. I sit down, smiling, proud. Not because I got a B, but because I managed to do it. I'm happy with myself. I didn't recite the poem well, I struggled with it, but I'm happy because I succeeded.
I come home, I’m still at the door and I already say I got a B in reciting and the whole family is happy. I go to my room happy and fall asleep with a smile on my face. Fight whenever you can and don't let stuttering dictate your life. Make mistakes, be sad, angry and resentful, but at least try. You will be less bitter if you try and fail than if you never try at all.
This was an example and advice for parents to make their stuttering child feel more confident and courageous to do similar things. Of course, not every case is the same and there will always be exceptions, but with a proper, positive approach to the upbringing of your child, he or she could be able to choose the second story sooner than the first…
Mockery and reaction
As you probably already know, elementary school is the example of the worst mockery, taunting and making fun of your peers. This is an especially common occurrence with stuttering children, but it is also very important to address how the child will react to it.
I've talked to a lot of people who stutter, and quite a few of them said that they dealt with the taunts by fighting. That was not the case with me. Truth to be told, I responded to some taunts by taunting in a different way, but rarely. I often made fun of my own stuttering and so I didn't allow others to make fun of me. You could say I managed to beat the "mockers" in elementary school and got through that "horrible" period quite well.
But, I'll be honest - most of the time my stuttering was funny, so I didn't have to pretend when I was laughing at myself. I simply looked at my stuttering in a positive way and I think it helped me a lot to live with this "flaw".
Many children choose to resolve taunts by fighting, which is not nice and such behavior can define them as a person, and even turn them into a person who teases others in order to prevent being teased. This does not mean that the child is aggressive or malicious, but such behavior is exclusively a defense mechanism in the fight against stuttering. In each of these stories and scenarios it is very important how parents view stuttering and relate to this problem. You can read more about tips for parents in that chapter.
The last and, in my opinion, the most "dangerous" reaction which can happen is to shut in and cut off all forms of communication. Unfortunately, such a situation is quite common and should be recognized in a timely manner and approached properly.
Children who stutter may choose to isolate themselves from everyone, thinking that no one will make fun of them if they simply don’t communicate with anyone. This is extremely dangerous and alarming and can have a very negative effect on the child's character and it can lead to a very difficult life later. Since I am not a psychologist or an expert, I would not like to give professional advice on this topic because it is very serious and it would be best to consult a specialist.
Highschool
You all know what most often happens in high school - love. In elementary school, of course, we have crushes, but most of the time it doesn't develop into first, real love. High school is the period of life when we enter puberty and when we fall in love and start thinking only about that.
Stuttering can significantly set back such things, because talking to a crush is just as stressful for us as talking in front of the whole class. That is why this age is prone to bring more possible problems for people who stutter, for example - alcohol problems. Many times I have heard stories from other people who stutter that they had to drink a lot in order to relax at least a little bit in order to talk to a girl on a date. People who stutter will look for every possible way or "method" to improve their speech. For some it can be alcohol, for others maybe even more serious opiates. For me (fortunately), alcohol makes it much harder to talk, and I would usually avoid it so that I could say the sentence properly. Surprisingly, as soon as I had a few drinks, my articulation would have got so bad that I couldn't say a single sentence without a few pauses.
This period can be extremely unpleasant for people who stutter, and for a long time I also thought it was awful to approach someone and stutter. Later I found out that many people actually find it cute and endearing, which surprised me and I wish I had known that earlier.
However, as in the situation with the poem reciting, the same lesson can be learned here - it is always better to try something than to think how you could have done it but didn't! Every "failure" should be interpreted as a positive experience from which you might learn something for the next time. Also, you might not have the courage to approach someone you like without stuttering, but in that case it's easier to blame stuttering as the main reason than something else.
Aside from dating, problems with approaching others and getting to know them, there is one fun activity in which I would almost always stutter. Jokes! Jokes seem to have been created so that we always "mess them up".
Almost every joke starts out simple and easy, then all of the sudden comes the punchline which you need to say quite quickly and in a funny way, but I almost always get stuck here! I tell the beginning of the joke and, just when everyone is looking at me and waiting for the punchline, which I need to say funny and fluently - I get stuck! And then that awkward moment comes (which, in my head, lasts far too long) when I repeat the filler "this, this, this" hoping to end the joke as soon as possible while everyone’s watching and waiting, but I simply can't finish the joke! There were many times when I would curse out loud "Mother f…" and say the punchline all in the same breath, so the result was laughter in general, but not at the joke but at the situation that came out of it...
These are all situations that I retell here so that You, who have found yourself in the same situation countless times, could look at it from a different angle and understand how everything can always be turned to positivity and laughter. The worst and, I would say, the easiest way is to look at all of this as something negative and shut yourself in. You should always get some positive things out of all these situations, which you will retell later laughing, just like I do now.
College
When it comes to stuttering, college was the worst period of my life. Although it didn’t affect my character and personal development, I had a very hard time coping with everything the college offered. Just like most of the students, when we know something very well and are interested in a certain subject, we would like the professors to know it. But, at the university, everything is mostly demonstrated in front of 50-200 other students, which is a serious problem for us. It's one thing to have an oral presentation in front of your school class, where everybody is familiar, and yet your heartbeat still jumps over 110/min, but then there’s college and oral presentations, such as seminar presentations in front of almost 300 people.
Personally, I once even gained courage to do it and it was so stressful and bad that I didn't try again until the end of college. I still had seminar presentations and oral exams in front of groups of up to 50 people, but never again in front of 300. Why is this story different from others when I often say that you need to gather courage and get something positive out of everything? Well, to begin with - I tried! And yes, I was angry with myself and disappointed at first, but very soon I was also happy with myself because I tried. And I learned a lot of lessons from it such as:
- for such a thing you still need a little more work regarding speech, preparation and performance;
- it is not enough to just effortlessly stand in front of 300 people and expect a great (or even mediocre) speech;
- if I decide to do something like that again, I still have to work on my speech and prepare myself mentally for the task at an acceptable level, which in this case I didn't do;
- prepare beforehand and present the work to a group of friends or family; to create a certain pressure and try to recreate what awaits me at a real presentation.
In conclusion - something positive came out of all of this and I continued to have oral presentations in front of smaller groups (up to approximately 50 people), but I am also proud because I did something like that. By the end of my college years, there were no more presentations in front of large groups of people, even for the ones I had my friends would cover my part mostly. When I had to present something by myself, I asked the professor nicely, explained the problem, and they always respected my wishes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, how does stuttering affect the person who stutters? Honestly, a lot, but also a little. Just as every event affects any person and shapes their character, your attitude, decisions and lessons you learn from certain situations shape you. Through this chapter you could see a lot of different situations and decisions that can be made. Every decision builds your character and later shapes it into You, as a whole, as a person. Which path you will take and how you will shape yourself - it is entirely up to you.