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From: Paul Goldstein
Date: 03 Oct 2011
Time: 14:53:26 -0500
Remote Name: 88.88.238.25
Thanks for the nice comments, Mary Ellen. Yes, it was a major transformation in attitude for me - from one of intense concentration on fluency targets to one of peaceful acceptance of myself as a person who stutters - and a transformation that came about very gradually. Liv is very knowledgeable about stuttering and about people who stutter, and really helped me to make this transition in my way of thinking. There has been no problem in all in the acceptance of my stuttering by my Norwegian family. It just seems to be a total non-issue. (We have a special-needs "weekend daughter", now a teenager. When she was a young girl, and she heard me block, she came over to kiss me!) Although I can read and write Norwegian quite well, and can speak it to some extent, I continue to have problems in understanding Norwegian when it's rapidly spoken by native adults. This is my main problem with conversations when family and relatives gather; it's really one of language rather than speech. It does greatly help me when I only have speech to contend with during conversation, rather than speech plus language. But I don't feel any speech-based anxiety with family and relatives who I know well. It is a very quiet country here. I find there is not as much expectation to speak - especially among strangers, neighbors, and casual acquaintances - as there often is in the United States.