Stuttering
07-13-2004, 06:53 AM
Straight talk on stuttering
Sunday, July 11, 2004
By Sharon Emery
The Grand Rapids Press
When it comes to stuttering, the world needs to get
over it.
Certainly, most of us stutterers can't, given the lack of a cure -- a term that makes those of us who don't feel particularly afflicted cringe.
So what to do about subpar speakers in a world dominated by the glib?
How about turning back the fluency rate to slow-mo and trying to enjoy it.
I know, you can't; it's hard. That's why I like to describe myself -- sometimes fluently -- as having a voice made for newspapers. It's easier to listen to a stutterer who isn't actually talking.
Like many disabilities, stuttering has its origins in the eye, or ear, of the beholder. If the culture said it was OK to take five seconds to make a sound that takes most speakers one second to utter, would stuttering be a disabling condition? I don't think so.
Simply considered as a personal characteristic, stuttering does not threaten my health or life. Only in the social context does it threaten me -- when it limits my personal and professional opportunities. None of those is a function of the condition itself, but of society's reaction to it.
The problem comes when our self-perceptions get caught up with those of the society. That's when we do desperate things. That's when we become the afflicted.
The attitude of stutterers should be, "Hey, this is my accent, this is the way I talk. The problem isn't that I can't talk fluently, but that you can't listen patiently."
So the listener becomes the person with the disability, and the stutterer's job is to educate them, thereby making them less disabled.
Someone's got to do it.
The disabled listener is our special charge. Stuttering threatens observers like few other disabilities. That's because everyone can relate, everyone has stuttered. And it's never been pretty.
Flubbing a speech, freezing when asked a question -- they're all in that special category of little nightmares no one wants to experience but everyone invariably does.
When the fluent speaker meets the stutterer, the fear factor goes off the charts. Unless they're really acting like jerks -- like laughing and asking, "Are you sure?" when the stutterer gives a halting answer -- you have to feel sorry for them.
Often the unease is written all over their faces. Because stutterers usually don't give any outward indication they're about to inflict discomfort, they often catch disabled listeners off-guard. It's not like a wheelchair user coming into the room and giving the unsuspecting a chance to prepare.
The listener gets hit by that staccato speech and painful grimaces erupt. They can't help it. But the experience provides the stutterer with a wealth of information about the listener. It's a powerful litmus test for the listener's ability to abide the other.
Then there's the cure thyself expectation. No one expects a wheelchair user to get up and walk; no one expects a blind person to start reading sports agate in the newspaper.
But stuttering? You'd be amazed how many people know someone, or know someone who knows someone, who just up and quit one day. Take Oral Roberts, the loquacious TV preacher. Luckily, my parents, though God-fearing people, rolled their eyes at my aunt's suggestion that faith healing was the way to go.
Disabled listeners sometimes imply you're just not trying hard enough or not trying the right thing. Just ask stutterers how many times they've been advised to slow down or relax. Gee, thanks, we never thought of that.
Just the other day, I stuttered in mid-sentence while talking to a salesperson who used the downtime to get in a few words of advice from his pet-rearing experience: "Come on, you can do it!" he said encouragingly.
I had to stifle what I'm sure was going to be a perfectly fluent bark.
I have stuttered as long as I can remember and have been through all the usual speech therapies, in school and in private settings. Not to mention relaxation therapy, psychotherapy, delayed auditory feedback, etc.
I think it all helped, more or less. I am probably a more fluent speaker as a result. But, bottom line, I still stutter. So that's why I'm saying you have to get over it, because now that I'm 52, it sure looks like I won't.
I always planned to get over it, but I never consciously adjusted my aspirations to accommodate stuttering. So the decision to do what I do for a living was pretty much a no-brainer. Keeping quiet, or at least laying low, wasn't an option. Not doing journalism simply was more painful than doing it.
But perhaps that youthful exuberance would have eroded had it not been for my good fortune in having a daughter with a developmental disability. Her existence created a startling clarity for my evolving view of the world and the role of differently-abled people in it.
I became resolute in my determination to change the world one person at a time, as my daughter and I interacted with the willing and the unwilling. She died nearly two years ago at 25, the age of unlimited possibility. So I have had to become an even fiercer warrior.
Which is not to say I seek confrontation and throw myself willy-nilly into difficult speaking situations. I have only so much energy, so I've learned to pick my battles. But I have always had a pretty much unfailing belief that I had something important to say and the world should listen.
My fervor in that belief has not been unflinching. Rejections, disappointments and cruelties accumulate; they beat you up, they beat you down.
But they don't win. That's the idea: They ... don't ... win.
Say it loud, say it slow.
Sharon Emery has been an editor and reporter with the Lansing Bureau of The Grand Rapids Press since 1988. She previously taught journalism at Michigan State University and was a daily newspaper reporter in Ohio. A Detroit-area native, she has a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York and a bachelor's from Wayne State University. She was awarded a 2001-02 journalism fellowship to the University of Michigan, where she studied bioethics and disability issues. She and her husband live in Mason and have four children. The last personal essay she wrote for The Press was about donating her daughter's organs following a drowning accident.
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grpress/index.ssf?/base/features-0/108954120495260.xml
Sunday, July 11, 2004
By Sharon Emery
The Grand Rapids Press
When it comes to stuttering, the world needs to get
over it.
Certainly, most of us stutterers can't, given the lack of a cure -- a term that makes those of us who don't feel particularly afflicted cringe.
So what to do about subpar speakers in a world dominated by the glib?
How about turning back the fluency rate to slow-mo and trying to enjoy it.
I know, you can't; it's hard. That's why I like to describe myself -- sometimes fluently -- as having a voice made for newspapers. It's easier to listen to a stutterer who isn't actually talking.
Like many disabilities, stuttering has its origins in the eye, or ear, of the beholder. If the culture said it was OK to take five seconds to make a sound that takes most speakers one second to utter, would stuttering be a disabling condition? I don't think so.
Simply considered as a personal characteristic, stuttering does not threaten my health or life. Only in the social context does it threaten me -- when it limits my personal and professional opportunities. None of those is a function of the condition itself, but of society's reaction to it.
The problem comes when our self-perceptions get caught up with those of the society. That's when we do desperate things. That's when we become the afflicted.
The attitude of stutterers should be, "Hey, this is my accent, this is the way I talk. The problem isn't that I can't talk fluently, but that you can't listen patiently."
So the listener becomes the person with the disability, and the stutterer's job is to educate them, thereby making them less disabled.
Someone's got to do it.
The disabled listener is our special charge. Stuttering threatens observers like few other disabilities. That's because everyone can relate, everyone has stuttered. And it's never been pretty.
Flubbing a speech, freezing when asked a question -- they're all in that special category of little nightmares no one wants to experience but everyone invariably does.
When the fluent speaker meets the stutterer, the fear factor goes off the charts. Unless they're really acting like jerks -- like laughing and asking, "Are you sure?" when the stutterer gives a halting answer -- you have to feel sorry for them.
Often the unease is written all over their faces. Because stutterers usually don't give any outward indication they're about to inflict discomfort, they often catch disabled listeners off-guard. It's not like a wheelchair user coming into the room and giving the unsuspecting a chance to prepare.
The listener gets hit by that staccato speech and painful grimaces erupt. They can't help it. But the experience provides the stutterer with a wealth of information about the listener. It's a powerful litmus test for the listener's ability to abide the other.
Then there's the cure thyself expectation. No one expects a wheelchair user to get up and walk; no one expects a blind person to start reading sports agate in the newspaper.
But stuttering? You'd be amazed how many people know someone, or know someone who knows someone, who just up and quit one day. Take Oral Roberts, the loquacious TV preacher. Luckily, my parents, though God-fearing people, rolled their eyes at my aunt's suggestion that faith healing was the way to go.
Disabled listeners sometimes imply you're just not trying hard enough or not trying the right thing. Just ask stutterers how many times they've been advised to slow down or relax. Gee, thanks, we never thought of that.
Just the other day, I stuttered in mid-sentence while talking to a salesperson who used the downtime to get in a few words of advice from his pet-rearing experience: "Come on, you can do it!" he said encouragingly.
I had to stifle what I'm sure was going to be a perfectly fluent bark.
I have stuttered as long as I can remember and have been through all the usual speech therapies, in school and in private settings. Not to mention relaxation therapy, psychotherapy, delayed auditory feedback, etc.
I think it all helped, more or less. I am probably a more fluent speaker as a result. But, bottom line, I still stutter. So that's why I'm saying you have to get over it, because now that I'm 52, it sure looks like I won't.
I always planned to get over it, but I never consciously adjusted my aspirations to accommodate stuttering. So the decision to do what I do for a living was pretty much a no-brainer. Keeping quiet, or at least laying low, wasn't an option. Not doing journalism simply was more painful than doing it.
But perhaps that youthful exuberance would have eroded had it not been for my good fortune in having a daughter with a developmental disability. Her existence created a startling clarity for my evolving view of the world and the role of differently-abled people in it.
I became resolute in my determination to change the world one person at a time, as my daughter and I interacted with the willing and the unwilling. She died nearly two years ago at 25, the age of unlimited possibility. So I have had to become an even fiercer warrior.
Which is not to say I seek confrontation and throw myself willy-nilly into difficult speaking situations. I have only so much energy, so I've learned to pick my battles. But I have always had a pretty much unfailing belief that I had something important to say and the world should listen.
My fervor in that belief has not been unflinching. Rejections, disappointments and cruelties accumulate; they beat you up, they beat you down.
But they don't win. That's the idea: They ... don't ... win.
Say it loud, say it slow.
Sharon Emery has been an editor and reporter with the Lansing Bureau of The Grand Rapids Press since 1988. She previously taught journalism at Michigan State University and was a daily newspaper reporter in Ohio. A Detroit-area native, she has a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York and a bachelor's from Wayne State University. She was awarded a 2001-02 journalism fellowship to the University of Michigan, where she studied bioethics and disability issues. She and her husband live in Mason and have four children. The last personal essay she wrote for The Press was about donating her daughter's organs following a drowning accident.
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grpress/index.ssf?/base/features-0/108954120495260.xml