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From: Peter Reitzes
Date: 22 Oct 2005
Time: 17:35:44 -0500
Remote Name: 69.22.238.4
Michele, great question. Defining “severity” is tough. A person may stutter very little but stuttering may effect him or her in a severe way. Or a stutterer may stutter a lot but the disorder may effect him or her very little. For example, I worked with a student who stuttered very little but it was enough for him to get teased a lot and he ended up dropping out of an after-school program. I would refer to dropping out of school to avoid stuttering and avoid being teased as a severe problem even though he did not stutter as much as many other people do. Voluntary stuttering really helps different stutterers in different ways. A person who stutters very little and a person who stutters on a high percentage of spoken words may both benefit equally from stuttering on purpose, just in different ways. For example, a person who is covert may benefit from using voluntary stuttering to reduce his or her fears of stuttering while a person who stutters a lot may benefit from using voluntary stuttering to practice speech tools.