How my stutter started

I was born in Birmingham, England on September 13th 1973. I was third child of Angela and Robin, my brother Gavin was six and my sister Sharon was four. My parents, brother and sister are all fluent, so it was a shock to everyone when I started to stutter at age of four.

After I was born my mother decided to leave work to look after me and up until age of four there were no faults in my speech.

At age of four she felt it was time for her to return to work and a friend of family offered to pick me up from school, take me to her house, look after me, and even feed me until my mother was ready to pick me up at around 6.30pm. Her name was Jean and she had a son who was in my class at school called Graham.

Being looked after by Jean was not something that worried me; I liked her and Graham and was actually quite looking forward to going to their house. So Jean picked us up from school and we walked back to her house where me and Graham played football in back garden. At around 5pm evening meal was ready and Jean called us into house, this is where things started to go horribly wrong.

In my family at meal times we would collect our plate from table and were allowed to take it to whichever room we wanted to or even into garden to eat food, very laid back and this is what I was used to. However in Jean’s house they ate in a dining room around a dining table, this of course should not be a problem but it turned out to be start of my stutter.

Graham led me into dining room where I saw a very well presented dining table with two knives, two forks, two spoons (why do you need two? I wondered). There were serviettes, tablemats, even flowers, there were people sitting around table who I had never met before, Graham’s father, older brother and older sister and it seemed like they were all staring at me.

I sat down at table feeling rather uncomfortable and then various people started to ask me different questions about myself, “What’s your name?”, “Which football team do you support?”, “What’s your favourite subject at school?” etc. I felt under great pressure and found it very difficult to get words out. I was aware I had not spoken properly but was unsure as to why.

How having a stutter affected my life

At age of five I attended speech therapy for first time. When we arrived I was shown to a little children’s play area while my parents talked to Speech Therapist, a man in his forties. I was unsure as to where we were and was listening carefully to conversation. It soon became clear that they were talking about my speech, he must be a speech doctor I thought, I did not know there were Speech Therapists at that point. After about fifteen minutes I was called over and therapist asked me various questions. As my parents were there I felt comfortable and safe and answered fluently. The speech therapist said something like “he sounds all right to me”. I was thinking, put me in Jean’s dining room without my parents there etc and see how I am then.

Going to speech therapist confirmed to me what I had always feared, I had a problem with my speech. The problem is very strange however as I don’t always stutter. So I thought about situations where I did. Pressure, feeling uncomfortable, meeting new people, these were situations which I had convinced myself would make me stutter, so I thought I just will not speak if I feel pressure or if I feel uncomfortable or if I meet new people. No longer did I put my hand up in class to ask or answer questions; I did not volunteer to be in any school plays, became less sociable and in general probably spoke a quarter words a fluent person would.

Also at this age I became quite clever, I was aware that I found b,d,g,k and v words harder to say than other words. “B” words were especially hard so what I started to do was to substitute “b” word to another word. For example “where do you live?” instead of answering “Birmingham” I would answer “West Midlands”. I soon became an expert at this and could think of substitute word at drop of a hat. This helped my speech to improve and people around me assumed that problem had been eradicated; however I knew truth. Having an older brother and sister I was aware that pressure at school would increase and that when I was in junior school I would be made to read out of school books and to answer questions etc. these fears were realised in junior school; reading out of textbooks was especially difficult. For example in a lesson like English, teacher would say something like, “today class I would like each of you in turn to read out of book on your desks starting with Abbott”. As we were chosen in alphabetical order I worked out that I was going to have to read ninth. I then counted down paragraphs hoping that ninth would be a short paragraph. I would then check which words I would have to read, hoping there were none of my difficult words in there, such as “b” words. By time it was my turn to read I would be a complete nervous wreck and was virtually guaranteed to stutter. The classes response was mixed to hearing me stutter, some of course laughed but at this age my best friend was one of strongest children in school and anybody who laughed at me, he would hit. People soon realised to keep quiet.

The stutter and its effects became more serious when moving to senior school, mainly because my best friend decided to attend a different school from me. During six weeks school holiday between leaving junior school and starting senior, I had a lot of time to think. At that time in my life I was a negative thinker and was thinking:

1.At junior school, I knew all teachers and most of pupils, at new school I will have to meet a lot of new people (teachers and pupils).