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From: Lynne Shields
Date: 07 Oct 2010
Time: 13:15:29 -0500
Remote Name: 68.188.68.2
Ari, Thanks for clarifying your question. As a person who stutters, I would say that there is an increased chance that you will have children who stutter if your stuttering is, in some part, genetic in origin. The difficult thing would be to know for sure whether or not there is a genetic susceptibility within your family. Just because you are the only one that you know of in your family who stutters does not necessarily mean that there is no history in your family. A family member from another generation may have stuttered and figured out how to manage it on their own, or conversely, stuttered, but figured out a way to hide it so that no one else in the family was aware of it. I have had several adult clients who hid their stuttering so well that their own immediate family did not suspect that the problem existed. Another issue relates to the size of your family in looking at history. If you have a very large family--many aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc., then your being the only one who stutters might suggest that the cause is not genetic for you. However, if you come from a relatively small family, or not that much is known about the speech history several generations back, then it is more difficult to know whether there is a genetic link in your family. I am certainly not an expert in the area of genetics, but those are a few thoughts that may be of help to you. I have not seen any research looking at the likelihood of stuttering varying depending on whether one or both parents stutter, although I would suspect that there might well be a difference. There may be such a study--I am just not aware of it. I wonder if you are asking this question out of specific concern about your children. If that is so, have you seen symptoms of stuttering in one or more of your children, or are you concerned for another reason? I hope that Dennis Drayna, who is on the list of 'The Professor is In' might respond to your question, as genetics is his field. Best regards, Lynne