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From: Steve Hood
Date: 10/6/03
Time: 12:46:58 PM
Remote Name: 199.33.133.50
Hi, Sharon
WOW !! What a great question. Let me try to hit some highlight, and then hope that others will chime in with additional ideas and comments.
First, let me say that there are a couple of issues to advertising. Voluntary stuttering is certainly a verbal way to do this. Non-verbal ways to do this could include wearing a pin or button that is related to stuttering. Other methods that I know people have tried include the following: wearing a Porky Pig pin, or using a porky pig pen, wearing a t-shirt from Friends or the National Stuttering Association, etc.
I designed a t-shirt with the National Stuttering Association's logo on the front, and on the back it says: "Stuttering is OK because what I say is worth repeating.
Voluntary stuttering, or wearing pins and buttons, or other such things is a way to be up fron about stuttering. The issue, at least to me, is being open and honest about stuttering-- being willing to admit the stuttering not only to others, but also to yourself. This involves tolerating and coping with stuttering: teens certainly do not need to like stuttering, but they need to accept and cope with it while they are working to change it.
This is the opposite of trying to hide, conceal, cover up and deny the stuttering. In te long run, these attempts to deny and avoid make the problem far worse than it needs to be.
The teen years are times when kids like to run with the pack, and to fit in. Nobody like to be "different." Stuttering can set them apart, if they let it. Teens usually do not want to acknowledge negative differences of any kind, including stuttering. We need to show teens that the acknowledgement is important to long term gain. It is pretty hard to superimpose long-lasting techniques for fluency shaping and stuttering modification on top of fear, avoidance and enial. Advertising, through these and other ways, is a positive way to work on these issues.
I have offered my "stuttering is ok" t-shirt to a teen we are working with this semester. So far, he has refused to accept it. I hope that he will.
I hope others will add to this important theme.
Steve Hood