Stuttering in Children

by: Jan Strydom (MA, HED, DEd)

Introduction

He remembers being teased. He remembers being asked his name and standing there, eyes closed, not breathing, trying to get the simple sounds out of his mouth. "T-- T-- T-- T-- Tom," he eventually would blurt out. Sometimes, by the time Tom Williams formed the sound of his own name, the person addressing him had walked away out of embarrassment, frustration or impatience. Tom is one of the estimated three million stutterers in the United States.

Stuttering is a problem as old as the human race itself. It is often accepted that Moses was a stutterer, although this is not stated explicitly in the Bible. The earliest stutterer that we know of was Demosthenes, the famous orator of Ancient Greece.

The life of Demosthenes is a unique story of a stutterer who through sheer perseverance became the most eloquent statesman of all time.

This remarkable man was born in Athens around 384 BC as the son of prosperous parents. Unfortunately his parents died while Demosthenes was still a very young boy. Although his father left enough money for his education, it was dissipated by his guardians. The result was that Demosthenes grew up in extreme poverty.

Apart from the fact that he stuttered, Demosthenes was a very timid, frail little boy with a thin, weak voice. Nobody, who knew him as a child, would ever have predicted that he would one day be a great orator! However, one day he heard in a court how a famous orator defended his case. The way in which this man could captivate his audience made such a deep impression on Demosthenes, that he decided there and then that he would also become such an outstanding orator, come what may.

Demosthenes' first attempt to speak in a large meeting was met with derision. However, this merely served to strengthen his determination to overcome his problem. He practiced speaking with small pebbles in his mouth. He exercised his voice by making speeches on the beach above the noise of the waves. Hour after hour he walked to and fro on the beach, practicing to speak. He exercised and ran to strengthen his breathing. He often recited poems while running up and down the sand dunes.

He also worked hard to master the art of debate. He listened to the disputes of the garrulous Greeks on the streets, and then went home to work out counter-arguments for both sides.

Demosthenes' perseverance was amply rewarded. Not only did he succeed in getting over his stutter, but he also became the orator that is still today held up as an example to all aspiring public speakers.

If the principles, according to which Demosthenes had worked, could have been discovered earlier, so that they could have been applied to help stutterers, stuttering would not have been the monstrous problems that it still is. Unfortunately, it so happens that there was only one aspect of Demosthenes' method, which attracted so much attention, that the rest of what he did was ignored. So far, it has been generally accepted that it was the pebbles that he had put into his mouth that had helped him to overcome his stutter. Many stutterers have tried this, without, however, doing the other things that Demosthenes did. Naturally, they had no success.

Demosthenes succeeded in conquering his stutter, and since then thousands of other stutterers have done likewise. This should be enough to prove to anybody that it is indeed possible to overcome a stutter. Unfortunately it is true that the number of stutterers through the ages who did not succeed in becoming normal speakers is far greater.

The reason for this is self-evident. Despite intensive research, and a steady stream of innumerable books and articles that are being written about stuttering, the cause of this devastating problem has up to now remained clouded in mystery. As long as the cause of a problem is unknown, any effort to find a solution will remain nothing more than guesswork.

During my research for a doctorate — the subject was vocal pedagogy — I discovered the cause of a stutter. In this way I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a solution to a problem, which has remained a mystery for centuries. For reasons that will be explained below, in the case of an older stutterer, the problem is difficult to overcome. However, in the case of a child aged six (sometimes seven) and younger, the problem is relatively easy to solve. Of very great importance is the fact that stuttering can also be prevented.

Popular theories about stuttering

There are today three popular theories about the cause of stuttering. In the first of these it is held that stuttering is a symptom of a neurosis. It is believed that stuttering is a symptom of an emotionally disturbed personality. Such erroneous beliefs could easily result from the fact that the stutterer's inability to move fluently through words and phrases often causes him to experience deeply a wide range of intense emotional reactions.

Most stutterers apparently feel that it is a disgrace to be a stutterer, and for that reason they become very sensitive about their difficulty. The experience of being blocked or not able to say what you want to say without being constantly interrupted by an annoying stutter can be very frustrating. A person who stands in front of another person, unable to say something he wishes to say to this person, would have to be psychologically very strong not to experience feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy, shame, frustration, depression and even fear and anxiety. The stutterer's emotions may generate so much fear and anxiety that they can affect his attitude towards others and life in general. Like the tail that wags the dog, stuttering can alter one's personality.

Stuttering fears can be of words or sounds, or of some persons, of certain situations, of the telephone, of saying one's name, et cetera. When a stutterer's fear is strong it builds up tension and he will stutter more often and more severely. Sometimes this fear can be so strong that it can drive the stutterer frantic and almost paralyze thought and action. Such fear or anxiety may prevent the stutterer from entering situations and experiences that he would otherwise have enjoyed. This can cause more shame and embarrassment, and the more frustrated he becomes, the more he is likely to stutter. So the stuttering is usually in direct proportion to the amount of fear that is present.

The role that fear and anxiety play in stuttering has caused many people to erroneously believe that the stutterer's problem is caused by his fear and anxiety. It has already been pointed out that it is the other way round: the stutterer's fear is caused by the fact that he knows that he will probably fail when he tries to speak. It is this fear of failure that causes anxiety. All people sometimes experience this fear of failure. An example should illustrate the effect of fear on human performance in such stressful situations.

If one put a narrow plank on the floor and asked a person to walk across it, the task would not present any difficulties to most people. However, put the same plank between two buildings at the height of two stories, and then most people would be so paralyzed with fear of the height that they would be quite unable to walk across. If they were forced to do so, they would most probably fall off. Something similar happens to the stutterer. He is scared that he will stutter, thereby — as he believes — making a fool of himself, and therefore he is very tense when he finds himself in a situation where he is forced to speak.

If a person had a thorn in his foot, he would also experience fear and anxiety every time he had to step on that foot, because he would know that it would hurt. But nobody would attribute the fact that such a person limps when he walks to his feelings of fear and anxiety. When the thorn is removed, he will no longer limp, and will also no longer be afraid to step on the foot. Yet one is expected to believe that the stutterer's "limp" when he speaks has its roots in fear or in some emotional conflict. The stutterer's fear and anxiety will disappear if the stutter is removed. Therefore, the stutter is the cause of the psychological problem, not vice versa.

A second, widely accepted theory is that stuttering is an organic problem. People who hold this theory believe that the cause of stuttering is something physical. It is this belief that in the past lead to operations on the tongue, instruments being placed in the mouth, and the use of many kinds of drugs. At one time it was widely accepted that stuttering was associated with handedness. Nowadays it is believed that the brain is in some way responsible. One such theory states that the stutterer hears predominantly with his left ear, whereas in the normal speaker the right ear is dominant. Professor Martin Schwartz of America believes that all stutterers stutter because of a spasmodic contraction of the vocal chords, or a "laryngospasm," as he calls it. He devised a very clever technique — "air flow technique" — to enable the stutterer to let out a little puff of breath every now and then. In this way the vocal cords are forced apart, and then the stutterer can continue speaking. However, three objections can be raised against this technique. First, it merely replaces one unnatural method of speech with another equally unnatural method, and second, it is not true that all stutterers stutter because of a laryngospasm. Third, the airflow technique is also so difficult to master that is it only of use to adults.

Unfortunately for the stutterers, all these ideas, ranging form the simple to the very complex, and the — sometimes quite bizarre — treatments based on them have all lead to nothing.

Of the three theories that are now popular, the third comes closest to the truth. This theory holds that stuttering is somehow a learned behavior. This simply means that stuttering is a bad habit. But is has never been explained how or why the bad habit began, nor precisely what it consists of. It has never been determined exactly what it is that the stutterer has learned to do wrong. If that could be discovered, stuttering would immediately cease to be the baffling puzzle is has so far been.

If stuttering is a learned behavior, it implies that it can be corrected. The stutterer merely stutters because he is doing something wrong. If he stops doing whatever he is doing wrong, he will also be able to speak fluently, like most other people. In the case of an adult or schoolchild (usually from age seven or older), this is of course easier said than done. When a person has been stuttering for some years, it is never easy to get rid of the bad habit, because stuttering is a particularly tenacious habit. The example of the thorn in the foot will again make this clear. If a person limps for some years due to a thorn in his foot, he will not stop limping immediately if the thorn is removed. He will gave grown so used to this strange way of walking that it will be difficult to break the habit. It is therefore usually much easier to help a child of six (sometimes seven) and younger to overcome the problem. The habit is still not too deep-rooted, and can therefore be broken relatively easy.

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