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From: Anita
Date: 22 Oct 2004
Time: 01:57:19 -0500
Remote Name: 62.80.192.10
In my family it was very important to behave and speak well (etiquette). My stuttering was something very wrong and should not be accepted. To make me fight against it my parents reacted in two ways: they told me it was just a way of getting attention and it was my fault and I should make it go away, or they ignored it and walked away when it got too bad to listen to. They were afraid they would hear from the therapist it was their fault, so they didn't take me there. And they honestly thought they were helping me by making me get angry and fight it. But if your own parents cannot accept you and don't love you regardless, there must be something seriously wrong with you, right? My brothers and sisters reacted to this by not even discussing it. I reacted by trying to hide it and feeling bad and shameful. The teachers told me it was my problem and the students treated me like I was thin air or called me "fish" (as I couldn't get the words out of my mouth). And who could I talk to about that? Today I do a lot of voluntary work for the stuttering world and my family now asks me what I'm doing, they are proud of me and we can discuss the past. They now realize what it took to get me this far and admire me for that. Don't get me wrong, my parents are most loving and caring. If my finger hurts, they will move heaven and earth to find out what's wrong. It's just stuttering they couldn't cope with. So yes, I love them more than anything else and the fact that this poem brought us together was my highest dream, as they are 82 now and when time has come, we can say goodbye with nothing between us anymore. I now know it was not lack of love, but lack of knowledge and guilty feelings. That's why it's so important to include parents in therapy and to bring parents together to talk and exchange thoughts and experiences. Knowledge is the key word. That's why the ISAD is so important!