As parents, we want the best for our children. We hope and pray that things will go well for them in all areas of their life. This deep desire for our children’s well-being often results in parents feeling guilt, confusion and inadequacy regarding how to handle things that we deem potentially harmful or unpleasant. For many parents, stuttering falls in this category. As a person who stutters with a child who stutters, I fully understand why it is often viewed in this way.


For many years, my stuttering (or at least my reaction to stuttering) had a negative impact on my quality of life. It was the dominate theme that infl uenced my decisions and how I viewed myself.


not talked about in my family; I was left to come up with my own explanations and ways of viewing it.


“For the past 25 years of my life, I have lived in and explored some of the most remote places on earth. I have lived for days in caves chasing bats, I have captured and tracked bears, jaguars, leopards, tigers, and rhinos. I have discovered new animal species in northern Burma and in the cloud forests of the Annamite Mountains. I have documented lost cultures such as the Taron, the world’s only Mongoloid pygmies. I have been called the ‘Indiana Jones of Wildlife’ by Time magazine and given lectures all over the world to thousands of people. Yet not a year has passed, not a country traveled in, when I have not felt again the little stuttering, insecure boy inside who’d come home from school and hide in a corner of his closet. That boy is never far from the surface.”


My perspective about stuttering slowly began to change almost twenty years ago when I decided to go back to school to study speech pathology, specializing in the area of stuttering. My evolving views had much less to do with my growing academic knowledge of stuttering and more to do with getting to know other people who stutter, observing how they have learned to thrive. Several years ago when my own children began to stutter, I experienced strong feelings of guilt and worry. This made it clear that my views of stuttering and parenting required much more of an evolution.


I kept thinking about the challenges that I had with stuttering growing up; I did not want my children to have to deal with those same issues. Over time and after much refl ection, I concluded that the best thing I can do as a parent is to provide support and foster a healthy view of stuttering. I know I cannot take away the painful parts of my child's life. Pain is inevitable: eventually we all experience health issues, rejection, death of loved ones. In the case of people who stutter, they will stutter at times when they strongly desire to express themselves fl uently.


Both the worldwide stuttering and animal conservation communities have lost a tireless advocate, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, who at age 64 passed away on August 5 at a Manhattan hospital after a lengthy battle with leukemia. A longtime board member, spokesperson and dear friend of the Stuttering Foundation, Alan was primarily known for being an renowned animal conservationist. He served as the CEO and Chief Scientist of Panthera, a U.S-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the world’s 40 wild cat species. His high-profile career brought him not only to all corners of the globe, but also into the top media outlets throughout the world.


A severe stutterer, Alan was placed in a special classroom in his elementary school. While he struggled to speak with teachers and peers, he found an outlet in fluency while speaking to animals. Realizing his son’s gift for fluency with animals, Alan’s father regularly brought him to visit the Bronx Zoo.


In speaking to the jungle


cats in their cages, Alan remembers making them a promise: if ever he was able to overcome his stuttering, he would use his voice to fight for them. No matter where he was in the world, Dr. Rabinowitz fulfilled his promise by using his platform to speak on behalf of the animals, often recounting the powerful personal testimony of his own childhood stuttering.


38 Like many in my generation, stuttering was When stuttering


is not discussed openly, children tend to internalize that it is something so bad and taboo that it should be avoided at all costs (at least, this was my experience).


“Alan’s courage is particularly inspiring to young people whose career paths have yet to be decided and for whom stuttering often seems an insurmountable obstacle,” said Stuttering Foundation president, Jane Fraser. “Through hard work, perseverance and dedication to his true passions, Alan never let stuttering hold him back from his quest to help endangered animals.” Alan told his inspiring story in a 2011 Stuttering Foundation DVD entitled Stuttering and the Big Cats, which has been widely used in public school speech therapy programs. In addition, Dr. Rabinowitz was the


author of seven books on


wildlife conservation, including the 2014 children's book A Boy and a Jaguar, which delightfully illustrates the story of his childhood promise at the Bronx Zoo.


The suff ering we experience from painful events is directly related to how we view and relate to those events. Parents have an enormous amount of infl uence on the development of a child’s world view. If we want the best for our children, it’s perhaps wise to focus less on trying to eliminate the pain they may experience and focus more on equipping them to eff ectively deal with the inevitable challenges.


It was from this lens that I wrote down nine pieces of advice for my son when he earnestly asked me what he can do about stuttering (after a particularly challenging day with his fl uency at school).


I tried to convey the things that have helped me the most and that I wish I would have heard when I was his age. When I gave it to him it was quite an emotional moment for both of us. It’s not that we hadn’t talked about stuttering before that moment, but the explicit nature of the list allowed us to more easily discuss how and in what ways stuttering was impacting him. I talked more than I had before about how stuttering has helped me to grow. The degree of openness and connection that we had in that moment is something I will never forget and will always cherish.


This advice is certainly not all encompassing, I’m sure there are several more nuggets of wisdom that could be added. Also, it is not original. Most of it is rather universal and could be easily adapted to apply to any type of challenging diff erence or impairment. My hope is that this article and the list of advice may serve to foster open and honest communication between parents and their children who stutter.


I am


convinced that talking about stuttering is the single most important thing that a parent can do for their child.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47