Normal Disfluency

Shortly after the release of the why questions, my son's brain also declared, "Prepare to enter stage of normal disfluency! All systems go!" That's right. He's entered the land of normal developmental stuttering. My son is definitely repeating sounds, words, and entire phrases. It's all "easy" stuttering, with none of the tension, frustration, or blocks, that a real, live adult stutterer would exhibit.

Actually, I noticed it a couple weeks ago, but no one else did, and rather than chalk it up to my super sensitive stuttering radar, I decided maybe I was imagining things. But yesterday my husband and parents both noticed it.

I knew this developmental stage was coming. I spent a lot of time wondering how I would deal with it. And of course, I wonder at what point we will know if the disfluency is temporary or if it will hang around and intensify the way mine did. The odds in favor of fluency for my son aren't the greatest. Stuttering runs in my family. Four of my father's six brothers stutter(ed), as do at least three of my first cousins.

To make the statistics a little more interesting, I am a woman and the only female in my family to stutter. Stuttering is a sex-linked disorder; the vast majority of stutterers are males. A college acquaintance who was a speech pathology student and who stuttered himself, gave me some statistics way back when about the likelihood of a stutterer having children who stutter. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I do know that the sons of female stutterers were the group most likely to stutter themselves.

I have moments when I worry about how well I would do at parenting a child who stutters. I hope my own experience would be an asset, not a liability. I know what it's like. I know what my kids will need to deal with obstacles -- you know, those little obstacles like introducing themselves.

Just a few months ago, for example, when we went to the synagogue in our new town for the first time, I was having some difficulty introducing myself to all the people we were meeting. Not everyone recognized as stuttering all of my blocking and my technique of starting my voice with a neutral "uh" before I set the first sound of my name on it (as in "UhhhhhhhhhhhMmmy name"), so they often made jokes about how I'd forgotten my own name, ha ha. I have developed a pretty thick skin about it and usually just laugh along, but sometimes frustration creeps in.

For me, the most awkward moment to block on my name is when someone is shaking my hand. I try to spit out my name, it takes a very long time, and the whole time the confused person holds onto me. It becomes this intimate hand-holding session when all either of us wanted was a quick shake -- yet the other person is almost always too polite to let go until I've finally finished. At the end of the evening at the synagogue, I was in the midst of just such a hand-holding session with a very nice gentleman when I became frustrated and embarrassed, and said, "Agh! I'm sorry. I stutter, and it's sometimes really hard for me to say my name." The man didn't flinch. He gestured to the elderly man beside him and said, "Oh, so does my father." His father, a stooped and gentle man in his late eighties or early nineties, whose mind was very sharp, took my hand gingerly, smiled into my eyes, and said, "I know. I know. All my life. All my life."

That simple act of kindness and acceptance touched me deeply (I made it to the car before I cried) and comforted me in a way no non-stutterer's kind words ever could. If my son never "outgrows" this period of disfluency, I hope I will be able to look him in the eye and repeat with kindness those same words: "I know. I know. All my life. All my life."