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From: Pam
Date: 09 Oct 2009
Time: 21:47:43 -0500
Remote Name: 67.248.58.128
Karissa, Thanks for reading and the good questions. Unfortunatley, I did not do well with my stuttering as a child and teen growing up. I started stuttering when I was 5 (as I was told). I remember fluent speech before that,and reading out loud when I was 3. . . . . I recevied negative messages frommy dad right away about stuttering - he would yell at me to "stop that", say things like "shut up"if I couldn't talk right. I became fearful of being criticized, so I learned right away to do everything I could to not get those bad reactions. The only way I could figure out to not stutter was to not talk. So I stayed quiet most of the time,learned to substitute words, avoid and make excuses to not participate. My kindergarten teacher also yelled at me for stuttering, so it was easy to see why I felt it was bad and I was bad. All those early negative messages drove me to be covert for many,many years, over 30 years as a matter of fact. . . . . . My father was non-accepting and non-supportive of my stuttering. I only had speech therapy for one school year, in public school in the third grade. It was not intensive therapy. I hardly remember anything about it, it was so insignificant and unhelpful. My father pulled me and my siblings out of public school and sent us to a private VCatholoc school after that year. Speech services were not provided and my father (according to my mother) would not allow me to attend private speech therapy. My middle-school and high school years were awkward, lonely and mostly silent. It was easy to get away with being quiet in catholic school. I just faded into the background - staying quiet and not causing any problems seemed to be valued in the late 70's and 80's. College wasn't much easier, because I was deeply covert by then. It weasn't until theree years ago, when I got fred from a job for stuttering publicly (of course, they didn't say that was the reason, but alluded to it in written and verbal evaluations)that I finally got sick and tired of hiding and came out of the "covert closet". I have been involved with a fluency program, working with grad student clinicians, ever since. I actually stutter more now than I ever did, because now I am no longer afraid to stutter openly.