Practice Will Make it Get Easier
I, Danny, am in seventh grade and I have been stuttering for a long time. In third grade I did not mind it that much. It never came up with my friends. Same thing in the fourth grade. In the sixth grade, I practiced my techniques more and got more fluent. It was more important to me to practice because I would have to talk a lot more than I did in third grade. To those people that are still struggling with their speech, my advice is, it will get easier in the future, as long as you keep practicing.
I have some questions for you. Do you hear of more success stories or struggles over the years? Do you see a difference in questions from third graders to eighth graders and in what way?
Thank you for your consideration! Danny, 7th
grade, from Provincetown, MA
Editor’s Note: Danny, you asked great questions, but there are no simple answers. We hear both stories of struggle and stories of success. It seems everyone who stutters into adulthood will always grapple with their fluency to some degree. What we do hear a lot of is Positive Attitude stories such as “This is part of me but not all of me and I can still achieve anything I put my mind to!”As to your other question, third graders seem more interested in the mechanics of why they stutter and how to cope well with peers. Older kids sometimes just get comfortable with stuttering and they don’t let it get in the way of school or sports or friends or talents. The key is, everyone is different – even if stuttering seems the same to some, it isn’t and each person is unique! There is no “right” or “wrong” or 100% on any of it!
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What I Like and Dislike About My Stuttering A Chart by Sofia, age 10, from Rochester, MN
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