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From: Steve Stringham
Date: 10/7/03
Time: 11:47:14 AM
Remote Name: 199.33.133.67
Dear Dr. Breitenfeldt,
I was moved by the description of your challenges as a yoiung man and throughout your life as a person who stutters. I have had times in my life when I have stuttered, usually when under stress and exhaustion. I was very shy as a teenager and literally forced myself to go to the tryouts for the lowest choir at our high school. I was scared beyond any terror that could be described. I got in the choir and that led to other opportunities, public performances, musicals and plays, and public speaking opportunities. As an adult, I have served as the president and CEO for four corporations.
I am now interested in studying speech and language pathology. As a father of eight children I have been amazed to see my children grow and develop. I work as a youth volunteer and have worked with hundreds of children over the years. I have worked with severe stutterers who were almost unable to communicate at all. There is such a difference between girls and boys in the way that they develop their language skills. Girls seem so much more fluent than boys. They seem driven by communication and emoting with one another. Communication is relationships, and girls are forever connecting and reaffirming those connections. Boys tend to like to do things unrelated to relationships, that are based on skills and activities, together and separately. Their focus is different.
The articles I have been reading seem to point out that there may be as many girls as boys who stutter at a very young age, but that the girls recover from stuttering spontaneously more frequently, resulting in more boys who stutter than girls. This also persists into adulthood.
With your long experience as a speech pathologist and a professor of the same, and as a person who has suffered so much from stuttering, what do you think is the cause that more boys and men stutter than girls and women? If stress and pressure to perform are important factors in the development of stuttering, does our system of elementary schooling drive boys harder to keep up with the more naturally fluent girls? Do you think that our expectations for children's language skills should be different based on the child's gender?
Thanks for participating in this online conference. I would appreciate any insight you might have on this developmental difference.
Sincerely, Steve Stringham Pensacola, Florida