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From: Dave Williams
Date: 19 Oct 2009
Time: 12:21:00 -0500
Remote Name: 134.29.31.181
Ari, I have a vested interest in your question because I'll be 88 years old in December. I retired from teaching in 1986, and I don't know of any survey or research concerning spontaneous recovery after 65. Many speech pathologists believe that there is a tendency for stuttering to spontaneously diminish in older people, I know that Wendell Johnson was very fluent for several years before he died at age 59, whereas Charles Van Riper was still stuttering rather severely when he died at around 90. My own stuttering has decreased tremendously compared to the way it used to be, and I have no fears at all about stuttering. Why? I think it's because I learned not to fear what other people thought of me or the way I talked. Stuttering became just a minor nuisance in my life. I had other problems that were far more significant. My stuttering just gradually withered away. My only regret was the years I had spent fighting my stuttering, struggling to be fluent, trying to hide and avoid my stuttering, being constantly fearful and on my guard. I finally learned to "let go," to stop fighting and being scared, and toreally mean it when I said "To hell with it." Now I don't fear, I don't anticipate difficulty, I don't have to plan how I'm going to talk---I just talk. Whenever I do stutter--always briefly--I handle it as well as I can, then keep going, with no fear, no desperate effort to be totally fluent, I used to be terrified of the telephone; now if anything I'm more fluent over the phone than when talking face to face. It's a great feeling. I don't hold myself up as a shining example of anything. We all have to find our own solutions. Sorry I can't be of more help in answering your question. I, too, would like to know more about spontaneous recovery and a thousand other things about stuttering! Best wishes, Dave