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From: Peter Reitzes
Date: 09 Oct 2008
Time: 18:00:40 -0500
Remote Name: 69.22.250.24
Rick, yes, covert stuttering, in its strictest sense, is a difference category. Covert stuttering is often discussed and even hotly debated in the stuttering world. While most people who stutter avoid stuttering at times, covert stutterers do everything they can not to be heard or seen as stutterers. In addition, covert stutterers are largely successful at hiding their stuttering from the world. Many covert stutterers have parents, friends and even wives or husbands who have no idea they stutter. To answer one of your other questions, many of my students have said that they started stuttering at 7, 8, 9 years of age or even older. This is probably because many children are not evaluated for stuttering until they are older or the child is simply reporting the age when he or she first became aware of the stuttering. Or, a child may simply be repeating a parent’s memory of the stuttering. For example, a young child may start to stutter and “recover,” only to begin stuttering at an older age. The parent may not consider the preschool stuttering to be stuttering at all and thus reports a late onset. The child, hearing the parent, is simply reporting what mom or dad has said.