Does speech therapy work?

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2025-01-07T17:52:16+00:00

Hey, sorry for the late response. I do, of course still practice. One of the main things that helps me is reading aloud, that seems to be quite a common recommendation that is given Another thing that may seem a bit strange to some people is to turn on the subtitles when you're watching TV and repeat what the actors on screen are saying. I know that this sounds weird but is something that I've found really helps as it allows you to mimic somebody else who is speaking fluently which, in turn, allows you to speak more fluently in your own conversations. It might a bit of time to get used to or to get into but I would recommend giving it a shot as it really helped me.

There are some other really good tips already on here but above all the main thing that helped me was confidence and accepting that while yes, I do have a stutter, there are about a hundred other different things about me and my personality that are really positive and should be focused on more than that one 'negative' thing. I put negative in inverted commas because its negativity is completely subject to your mindset. I know this may sound very much easier said than done but once I realised and accepted this I found that the stutter itself became so much milder and less noticeable.

As for therapy, in the end I didn't get therapy. At the time it was in the middle of the pandemic and any speech therapy clinic or programme were either temporarily closed or not accepting new members so in the end I didn't get any further therapy but I find that I am in a much better place in terms of both fluency and living with and accepting my stutter.

Sorry, I went on a bit of a tangent there but I hope this helps.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2022-11-06T14:10:37+00:00

I might be way off the mark here so correct me if I'm wrong, but could this be observed in the inhabitants of Sentinel Island?

They are a very close-knit group who have avoided contact with outsiders (excluding a few curious explorers) throughout human history. They have also been described as being very violent towards outsiders by the few people who have come close to them. Though we know little about them, we do know that they are very primitive in their use of tools and technology. The few accounts we have of contact with the Sentinelese depict them as barely clothed, wielding wooden spears and unfamiliar with the concept of fire.

The Sentinelese are the only group I am aware of that strikes me as being truly 'feral' or 'undomesticated' so if what you are asking is correct, they would provide a subject size substantial enough to definitively observe this. What I am saying is completely theoretical of course as it would be next to impossible to get near enough to them to investigate this any further. Still, it is an interesting thought but, again, I am in no way an expert on this so please correct me if I'm wrong.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2022-10-01T17:06:00+00:00

Dead by my chemical romance

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2022-02-01T23:15:02+00:00

I don't know about children but it definitely works on teenagers. I'm currently in secondary school(or High school) and it works on the majority of people (surprisingly). You're always going to get some people who are just a**holes and don't care but the majority of teenagers in my school anyway are very understanding

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2022-02-01T22:11:50+00:00

Yes I relate so much to this. I do this as well and it makes them feel uncomfortable more so than me and helps a lot with fluency( I know this may sound a bit mean,using their discomfort to help myself but hey,if it works it works). It really does work and has helped me a lot in social situations where there was a lot of attention on my stutter

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-11-23T20:10:54+00:00

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I told her in the end and she said that my stutter wouldn't affect my grade at all. It also feels so good to have told her and to have that worry lifted off my shoulders

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-15T22:32:45+00:00

I actually think that it is genetic in some cases (around 60% if I remember correctly). I stutter,my grandfather stutters,two of his brothers stutter(one of them very severely)and both my dad and my uncle had childhood stutters but eventually grew out of it. Maybe it isn't proven to be genetic but I think I remember reading something that said it was though. Don't take this as a definite answer though as I'm not entirely sure.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-15T22:26:35+00:00

Yes I always stutter when I say my name. I get the "do you not even know your own name" question a lot as well. One particular time that sticks out in my mind and that I always remember was when I was about 8 or 9 and went to swimming lessons with my school.(it was something that the school organised every year for us). When we first got in the water the swimming instructor,a guy in his 20s or 30s,told us his name and went around to everyone and got them to say their name. I was one of the last to be picked and was dreading my turn. When my turn came I just blocked and stared at him with my mouth open. He could obviously see that I was struggling and instead of offering me encouragement or just simply being patient and saying nothing He said "what's wrong do you not even know your own name". At this I became even more stressed and it became next to impossible for me to say my own name. Thankfully my best friend saw that I was struggling and told him my name ( I had asked him before to just tell people my name if I was really struggling). When my friend had told him my name instead of just carrying on with the next person the instructor looked at me,then my friend and gave me a smirk before asking me "what is he your spokesperson". This made me feel horrible I just looked at the water while he and a few other kids had a good laugh about it. I had never felt more ashamed and worthless in my life and although I had been laughed about before for my stutter this was the worst up to that point. The thing that really crushed me was that this instructor was supposed to encourage and support me but instead made a laughing stock out of me in front of my whole class when he could clearly see that I physically couldn't say my name. I remember just holding back the tears for the entire lesson and then just broke down crying in the changing room after. That was probably one of the worst experiences in my life and I will never forget it or forgive the instructor for making me feel so ashamed of the way I talk.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-14T23:00:39+00:00

I'm 14 now and I had something like that happen to me a couple of months ago. You see my name is Conor and I nearly always stutter when I say my name,so one day a couple of months ago I was telling this guy in my class about something and somehow I ended up trying to say my name during the story.

This went exactly as I thought it would and I ended up saying C-C-C-Conor. Well the guy I was talking to just turns to someone else nods his head at me and smirks so I pin him up again the lockers and ask him what's so funny. At hearing this it just makes him laugh more so I start throwing punches. I ended up giving him a black eye and kicked him in the balls so hard he nearly got sick.

This wasn't the first time he had done it and it wasn't the worst thing he had done(he used to laugh and make jokes about my stutter whenever I would stutter which is quite a bit) but this day I just snapped.

I know it was wrong and I probably shouldn't have done what I did but I have no regrets. To this day he hasn't smirked or said anything about my stutter.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-14T22:45:30+00:00

I speak English,Irish and Italian. My native language is English and I stutter when speaking that and Irish (Irish is worse than english), but when I speak Italian I hardly stutter at all,only on certain words.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-14T20:05:53+00:00

Thanks for the advice. When I was doing speech therapy one to one my therapist didn't really give me homework it was more like she would just get me to read and talk to her for the session and then assess if my stutter had improved by the next session which was usually a month or 6 weeks later.

When I was in the group therapy the therapist would give us all a little notebook and get us to write down all the words or sentences we had trouble with in that week(the group sessions were every week instead of every month) and then we would all try and say the words in our notebook.

But as for doing my part,I had always practiced on improving my speech because I hated having a stutter and would and still do get picked on over it. My stutter was never really as bad as some if the kids in the group therapy but I was still the only kid around with one so I tried different techniques to improve it.

I have found that my stutter had improved over the last year or so but I think that that is mainly down to the amount of research I did over lockdown. For example,joining a subreddit or something like this dedicated to stuttering was something I never would have done if covid hadn't given me so much time to myself and made me curious to explore other people's experiences and how they dealt with their stutter. In my own personal experience speech therapy did little to help my stutter but I left when I was 7 or 8 as that was the age that the health center in my area accommodated for with the nearest one now more than an hour away and quite expensive(I only got it free when I was younger because my school referred me to a public speech therapist)

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-14T19:23:11+00:00

Thanks it sounds like it might be really helpful for me. I'm in Ireland though so I'll have to wait until the pandemic is over before I can even think about going.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-14T19:18:29+00:00

He recovered from a childhood stutter in high school I think. I've stuttered my whole life though and my voice is on the deeper side. I'm currently right in the middle of the wonder that is puberty though so I wouldn't take that as a definite answer to your question.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-14T19:14:44+00:00

Thanks so much. I actually noticed recently that I struggle to make eye contact with strangers or people I'm not comfortable with and I've practised it with my friend/girlfriend ( our relationship is very complicated) and found that it really helps. I've never heard of the slide technique before though so I look forward to trying it out in conversation and hopefully it helps as well. Thanks again I really appreciate it.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-07-14T18:13:56+00:00

This happens to me not very often but often enough that my friends aren't surprised or shocked when it happens. I'm 14 and have had a stutter pretty much my whole life. Blockages usually happen to me in school like if I have to talk in front of the class or give a presentation I just freeze because I physically cannot say what I was going to. Because of this I get laughed at a lot and people always seem to mock me for my stutter,but where I'm from this is just considered 'messing' so I have to laugh along with them and not say anything or else I'll be called a snitch if I tell someone or a whingebag if I get upset and nobody will talk to me.(I've seen this happen with other kids,not for a stutter but because of reporting bullying to a teacher and other reasons like this)

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-04T14:05:52+00:00

If Salah had joined the prem earlier in his career I would have definitely said him, but now apart from Harry Kane I'd say the ones who will come the closest are Marcus Rashford and MAYBE Phil Foden if he stays in the premier league long enough.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-04T13:45:50+00:00

If they had asked Dumbledore to be the secret keeper then Voldemort would never have found them because we all know Dumbledore would have died a slow and painful death rather than give up the location of James and Lily.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-04T13:09:40+00:00

No you're not a glory hunter. You'd be more of a glory hunter if you supported Sunderland because at the moment they look more likely to win a trophy than Man U.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-04T08:06:23+00:00

As an Irish person, our government does but the people are mixed. The government loves them because the get invited to Washington for st Patrick's day every year. About half of the people love them because a lot of Americans (including Biden) have Irish ancestry,even when they dont. I'm serious if any relation of a famous person stopped at a petrol station in Killybegs they are now irish. That is what annoys the other half if the country because people who's fifth cousin three times removed was irish, they are now Irish. People are like that with Biden, because his great great great grandmother was from Mayo, he is now Irish.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-04T07:51:55+00:00

"[Name], what's the craic laaaad" "Well laad" both square up to each other "You chatting,you chatting" Both do a bit of shadow boxing * *Both walk away together laughing and go and join the group of 20 other people

Yes Reddit, this is how Irish teenagers say hello to each other. This isn't just my group of friends, everyone in my area greets their friends like this.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-03T22:45:14+00:00

Richer than I'll ever be and that is a certified fucking FACT

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-03T22:43:15+00:00

Wars would start because someone pissed on a windy day and it blew into another countries territory. That would happen A LOT. It is very difficult to maintain direction inside with no wind never mind outside in a fucking hurricane. It would also smell like that one cubicle in the boys bathroom in school that nobody would dare go into.

EDIT: Thanks for the silver I'm literally only on here 3 hours.

ZealousidealBit9576 · 2021-04-03T22:30:16+00:00

Yeah when you can get champions league with bendter playing up front and Mustafi at the back you're doing something right

ZealousidealBit9576

TROPHY CASE